The player’s characters are in a hard place. They are physically and mentally beat up. They really need to take Downtime, but have not done a score since the last Downtime. They’ve been busy dealing with the fallout of that action. Ok to let them take a Downtime without doing a score? Or, should they have to do a score?
The player’s characters are in a hard place.
The player’s characters are in a hard place.
How have they been dealing with the fallout that doesn’t count as a Score?
You can take extra downtime actions, it just costs you 1 coin per activity. So if they need to reduce their stress, they need to spend 1 Coin to indulge their vice again, etc.
The answer is already “built in” to the system.
They can take additional downtime actions, but it costs them coin.
Don’t forget, we aren’t tracking coin as exact amounts of money. We assume that profits from scores cover their operating costs, cost of living, maintenance and replacement of their gear and hideout etc.
Even if some scores wouldn’t earn them money and others would, we assume it overall evens out and keeps their “business” running – with the coin reward being the “extra” money they’ve managed to earn above those baseline costs.
So if they’re not going on another score, it makes sense that the extra downtime actions cost them coin. They’re still paying expenses, but not bringing in payments. If they don’t have expenses (our crew lived in the sewers and hunted for rats!) then you can assume the coin is spent doing the downtime actions themselves.
Another option is to allow them to deal with the fallout – but present it as another score.
The toecutters are after them, so they’re planning to lie low? OK – that’s going to cost coin to stay hidden (either in direct costs, or because their businesses will earn less with them gone) – but only because the toecutters are actively searching. If they interfere with that search somehow, they’ll be able to keep doing what they do. So maybe they deal with the fallout by doing a “score” where they are going to spread misinformation and make the toecutters think they’ve left the city. Or where they’re going to firebomb the toecutter’s factory as a warning not to mess with their crew. Or something.
That becomes the roleplay of how they’re “dealing with the fallout”, but gamewise it’s another score, and afterwards they get another two downtime actions.
They can also spend Rep for extra downtime actions, 1-for-1.
I’m probably not doing things correctly (or being clear), but… 1) The team had a score, successful 2) Per rule, allowed to engage in Downtime. Did so. 3) Played Free Play to handle some of the story issues generated so far. During this, they are stressed and injured. Now they are preparing to handle an issue from a previous score (a demon), but really could use a heal up (Recover) before that. That requires Downtime, correct? But not having done a Score, can they go directly to Downtime from here?
Also, they are busted (no cash).
Sherman S do they have any rep to spend? if so, great. if not… tough luck, they have no resources and have to pull a score before they can afford to relax and recuperate
They get 2 free downtime actions after every score. If they spent those free actions and haven’t done a score since, then they need to spend 1 rep or 1 coin per extra downtime action. (Remember that they can trade-in Stash for Coin, 2-for-1). If they have no coin or rep on hand, it seems like they’re going to have a pretty desperate score on their hands! Sounds like fun.
Now. Maybe that free play with a demon was pretty intense. Maybe you realize after the fact that it shouldn’t have counted as a score. That’s fair – in that case, do rep, payoff, entanglements, then 2 free downtime actions again.
Either option works. But don’t give them another 2 free downtime actions, consequence free. They gotta fight for that stuff – that’s what the game is about
If they’re tapped out, they’re tapped out. They’ll need to pull a job to have the resources to take care of themselves.
Remember that the “flat broke and broken down” heist is a classic trope of crime fiction
But yes, important to remember that there are options like
– spending Coin or Rep for extra downtime actions
– using up some Stash to get a little Coin
– creating a new character to take on a score to get the resources they need
Sherman S , did they become stressed and injured during the Free Play, or did they not have enough actions/Rep/Coin to fully recover after the last Score?
If it’s the first, what they were doing should maybe have counted as a Score. Remember that before Downtime they have to deal with Heat and Entanglements, so it’s not just giving them free resources to retroactively rule that a Score.
If it’s the second, they’re basically out of luck. Before facing the demon, they could try doing a Score that’s more straightforward, where you give them softer consequences, but that’s not as lucrative. You may also want to discuss expectations as a group for how exhausting you want your Scores to be.
Benjamin Davis excellent other options there
Just so it’s clear: you CAN intersperse free play and downtime … There’s no need to go into a new score to “enter Downtime again”. You can take downtime actions after some free play just fine (you just have to pay if you have no free actions left).
Jakob Oesinghaus is there somewhere in the rules that specifically says that?
Not quite explicitly. However, I inferred it from a) following the fiction, b) from this (pg. 153): “Activities on the downtime list are limited; normal actions are not. During downtime, you can still go places, do things, make action rolls, gather information, talk with other characters, etc. In other words, only activities that are on the list are limited.”
Obviously, the things mentioned here are part of free play, and since downtime is more or less by definition the time between scores… this just means that you can do free play and downtime alongside each other, using downtime mechanics for downtime things.
It’s also a thing that just happens naturally during the game, in my experience. Forcing all the downtime actions to be done before people can do things that are not downtime actions makes everything weird and mechanical, in my opinion.
Thanks everyone for the input!