Hi,
I have a few questions about downtime and freeplay activities.
1) How do you decide if a downtime activity have a consequence. For example, if somebody uses a downtime activity to lower heat by beating up someone. Should a 4-5 roll also decide if the player get wounded ? Or if the guy will plot revenge ?
2) Can freeplay actions have mechanical consequences ? For example, if you go talk to somebody and try to sway him into helping you, can it become a contact ? Or should it be considered as a long-term project ? And therefore, how do you draw the line between freeplay and long-term project ?
Thank you for your help !
The point is that Downtime activites generally do not trigger consequences. That’s why you have two actions, and that’s why it’s downtime. For instance, you “work on a long term project” which is studying the whole fotress you want to infilitrate during the next score. As a long time project, if you do 1-3, you just tick 1 (no consequence).
If you already used your two downtime activities, you can still do your research. But this time, as “downtime” is over, you can suffer from consequences.
The distinction between “downtime” and “freeplay” is there to simulate an in-game pace thenmake you feel the pressure after a few actions.
That’s why there’s no consqeuence (and actually no fail, juste limited effect) on Downtime activites’s roll.
If you want to “change the rules”, it’s usually a long-term project. That includes adding something new to a character- or crew-sheet, like a new item or contact.
A rule of thumb may be: if a clock is involved, it is usually a long-term project. Unless it’s too risky.
That said, it is perfectly ok to fill the clock of a long-term project with an appropriate freeplay action; but then it is a risky/controlled/desperate position and consequences might occur.
Hmm, not sure if this sounds confusing, let’s try an example:
Killing a demon is not a long-term project, because it can’t be played safe.
On the other hand finding a weakness of the demon to explore in a score is a long-term project.
And downtime activities can be spend to hunt for rumors, to fill the clock.
Or you kick in the door of a cult meeting to get the information, but that’s a pretty desperate freeplay action.
to add to that with question 2), I would say that freeplay can and should have mechanical consequences. The results should routinely adjust the fiction, and thereby, position and effect. However, your reference to mechanics seems to be specifically referring to adding things to the playbook. While one could add a contact to a playbook after a single sway attempt, I personally wouldn’t…primarily because it would seem to defeat the intended purpose of the contacts part of the system. As I understand it, they (contacts) are there to help build a more interesting and compelling narrative. If we imagine a typical crew of 3 PCs that gives us 15 NPC contacts, plus the 5 from the crew sheet, and say, another 10 named NPCs the crew met during scores, as part of cohorts, etc. That is an impressive cast of characters to keep straight. The +1d for contacts encourages players to pull their contacts into the story, thereby developing them into interesting characters. The more characters you add to the pool of “important” NPCs, the muddier the pool gets. For instance, why add another contact to a PC’s playbook, when three of the contacts are barely more than a name and a single word descriptor in everyone’s imagination?
Good point Richard McNutt, I sometimes just replace those default, unused NPCs with those that fit better: ie those the players have detailed in backstory, or engaged on-screen (rather than have them start a project, we just fix the contact list)
1. While I wouldn’t have characters get wounded in downtime activities, I absolutely would have story based consequences. If a PC beats up an NPC, that NPC can come back to hurt them later. Just keep him in mind if you ever need a rival or an NPC out to get them. Similarly, if they lower heat by bribes or making friends, those NPCs might come back to help them out sometime, because they don’t want to stop the money coming in.
2. Think of a long running TV show. Supernatural pretty much follows this model really well, but any serialized show tends to do it. The Score is the thing that a particular episode is focusing on. The Free Play parts are all the character development and fun having outside the Score. Like making friends or enemies, hanging out in a bar, etc. The Long Term Projects are the three seconds of camera time devoted to reminding the viewers that a big, season wide arc exists and is still developing.
Any of the modes of play can and should have consequences (not necessarily the defined, mechanical Consequences, but just things that happen as a reaction to the PCs). The difference in modes of play is the focus. If you’re zoomed in on the action, following players from room to room, it’s a score. If you’re just asking “So, how did the meeting go?” But there could be immediate good or bad results, free play. And of you really don’t see any reason to focus on an activity beyond saying “It happened”, that’s a long term project.
Lots of good answers I would just like to add that the lines between downtime and free play are intentionally blurry don’t forget your players can pay 1 coin or 1 rep to gain an additional down time action and I’ve always seen this as acceptable to take “during” free play.