So, rules (or rulings?) question for you folks. By suggestion of the “lost” overindulgence, one of the players in my Scum & villainy game has decided to create a second character. With this, we’ve hit some resistance from the rules. We agree that we don’t want to encourage the best strategy being ‘create 20 characters’ – we agree it makes sense that he would choose which of his PCs to bring to any given mission. We also think it makes sense that he would get 2 downtime actions as a player, and he could use any character during downtime, as long as they are fictionally present.
Where we’ve hit some snags are some very specific moves. His current character is a Muscle, with the new one being a Scoundrel with Speaker moves.
First, The Muscle’s “Flesh wound” gives the character 3 ticks (half the clock) on their healing clock if they are wounded at the start of a downtime. In S&V, this means that they could essentially skip one mission, and get 6 ticks for free, which clears any and all harm. RAW it feels like it should apply, but it seems maybe unfair?
Second, the speaker’s “Air of Respectability”, which gives an extra downtime action to spend on acquiring assets or reducing heat. We feel like it makes sense that he could use this every downtime, so long as he can justify it, but this maybe sets a dangerous precedent about creating additional characters with special abilities that give more free downtime actions.
Any and all advice on the situation would be greatly appreciated!
If you don’t go on a mission, you don’t get a bonus downtime.
Hundred percent agree with David Gallo. No risk, no reward.
Also, every new character comes with fictional entanglements. How does the group justify using those abilities but not being vulnerable to those entanglements?
thanks! the advice from peers and people on here seems pretty unanimous in the “no risk, no reward” front, which makes a lot of sense to me.
But, i do think there is an issue of versimilitude. I’m afraid it’s going to inevtiably at some point feel like, when the group did a mission that included up to a month of travel time due to the setting of S&V, the absent character spent all that time doing nothing – while it might be hard to justify the character showing up and leaving as they please, with how difficult travel can be for a band of scoundrels in procyon. i recognize that’s an issue that comes from the fiction as we’ve established it, but it’s still something i would love to know how others (would) deal with. i’m a big fan of playing fiction first, but in this case, it would seem that that leads to the ideal strategy being “make 10 characters” which i want to avoid.
I understand what you are saying, but the question is – if that person wasn’t on the mission, what were they doing? The cycle is Free Play > Mission > Downtime > Free Play. So if they had their downtime and then decided not to participate in the next mission, then they don’t get more downtime (unless they want to pay). Fictionally? If they had some healing working, then it sounds like they were healing all that time! There’s a clock and there’s a downtime action, but there is nothing that details how long that lasts! So they could have been engaging their downtime actions the entire time until they decide to get their character back in the spotlight.
Chrome Viper I’ve run “in the past” missions for side characters to catch them up with the main characters of the current group. That gives the group access to those characters during that “travel time” the other group is doing. That means some time dilation, but its a role-playing game. We’re in the meta-game as well as the fictional space sorta simultaneously. There’s lots of tools and options to craft that realism – just have to talk in through with the group.
yeah, mechanically that makes sense to me. i guess i’m worried about the fictional implications, especially considering the character is a Muscle who is established to be a quick healer and super tough, so it’s a bit of a perfect storm of problems trying to figure out what they were actually doing fictionally when other shit is going on. I think treating it like free play and just not giving them more downtime actions unless they pay or do a job could definitely work, and is pretty flexible fictionally. For now, i have some tools for the toolbox, and we’ll have to try them and see how they do. Thanks for taking the time to help!
When you overindulge your vice to the point that you lose all presence and perspective on your responsibilities and life, yeah time passes and you come out of it having achieved nothing. It’s a vice. It’s a pointless dalliance, a black hole, sucking your attention and energy, and leaving you with little than a hunger for more.
Speaking to the Air of Respectability:
Acquire Assets and lay low are specific downtime actions. Speakers get an extra one of those IF they participated in the previous mission (that seems to mesh with the Free Play>Mission>Downtime>Freeplay model which the game is built around).
Yeah, the entire point is that they get an extra downtime action, but limited to those two things. It doesn’t break it any more than the Scoundrel’s ability to easily generate gambits. It also helps balance the Speaker since they are Resolve heavy to start.
I would ask the player – “who your character is running away from and why avoiding it consume most of your free time while you’re not with the crew?”
just to be clear, my question was about what to do AFTER the lost overindulgence happens, and we end up with a player with two PCs.
Right! The rules don’t say.
Not sure about tying downtime to the player. That’s definitely a rule change that will have weird side-effects. I think it’s easier to say you get downtime only if you go on the score. That’s how we’ve run it in some of my games, when a player only wanted to play one PC at a time.
Fiction-wise I’d use the same excuse as above: they’re just indulging their vice and killing time. Only when they’re on screen are they actually doing anything significant with their time.
But I’d also let players run multiple PCs, each with a full share of downtime actions, XP, and stash profits. If they’re enjoying it, can handle tracking everything smoothly, spotlight still shared about, and no one ends up talking back and forth to themselves, then what’s to worry about. GM’s run multiple characters, it’s not that hard.
I’d only let the ‘used’ character have his downtime activities. Non active characters are ‘busy’ doing ‘stuff’. My current game I’ve let players who miss 1+ sessions have a ‘free’ indulge vice OR healing roll. I’m much too kind to my PCs.