Acquiring Assets and Timing
Hey folks. Wanted to get some thoughts about how to time out downtime, gathering information, and scores, particularly in regards to Acquiring Assets.
A major feature of BitD seems to be focused around “in-the-moment” action, and not doing too much planning. However, what to do if a crew decides they want to have an asset to complete a score, or even in the midst of a flashback? How do you handle this situation?
The obvious-ish solution is that players can spend Coin to get an extra downtime activity, and use it right then-and-there in the moment to acquire the necessary asset. However, for the frugal player, the incentive seems to be towards “planning ahead”, and using your “free” downtime activities to gather assets for a job they might not even know they’re doing yet.
Hopefully I’m explaining this correctly. Essentially, how do you square the circle of “in the moment” planning with downtime activities giving a bonus if you plan in advance?
I’m not sure what the problem is? If a player knows what asset they want ahead of time, they can spend a downtime action to get it. If they don’t realize that they want an asset until the middle of a score, they flashback and spend the coin for the extra action.
In my experience, players almost never do only 2 downtime actions, so it’s not like they save anything by doing the acquire asset ahead of time. That action would have just been spent on something else.
Is it ever a problem that the scoundrels have plenty of downtime actions and just don’t know what to do with the 2 they get for free? I don’t think so.
Technically, I see no reason to REQUIRE the PCs to spend all their “free” downtime actions before moving on to the next score. If they want to spend one and then save the other for a free flashback, I’m fine with that. I’ve never actually seen that situation HAPPEN though.
Caveat: Any unused downtime actions expire at the start of your next downtime.
I find a decent solution for this that meets half way is for a player to acquire contacts through downtime that can be rather generalized and use those contacts to aid in acquiring an asset they might reasonably have access to.
As an example, the player has used downtime to gain favor with a back alley merchant in silkshore. He could use a flashback to approach the merchant and make an appropriate roll (Sway, Command, Consort, ect.) to get anything from an illegal painting to highly controlled drugs. Depending on the rarity and difficulty of the object the effect can fluxuate, with more limited effect requiring potential future payment or services. But Standard effect grants him the item without payment (But repeatedly pressing a contact could cause problems). Risk could be handled in a variety of ways, such as angering the Contact or Being spotted doing business causing increased heat.
It allows planning forward in a direct and measurable respect, but allows in the moment responses without limiting freedom or freely granting blanket access. Contacts can further be divided by difficulty to befriend, but granting rarer or more desirable assets.
This has the Triple threat of not just granting players ability to plan assets while keeping decent GM control and Fiat, but also can bring up good fiction and story hooks. A Player might get exactly what they want quite easily, but just who owned the Electroplasm carriage before your contact, and why was he so eager to get rid of it?