Downtime
Downtime Actions
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman
Many aspects of a character’s life are critical to her continued existence, yet they do not make for dramatic roleplaying during a game. It might be important for a character to maintain her holdings, learn disciplines, and see to other common tasks, but these are exceptionally dull to play out during a game. Instead, players use downtime actions to define their characters’ night-to-night activities. These downtime actions describe what your character is doing between game sessions, such as hunting to maintain her blood supply, spying on another character, or learning a discipline through research or physical exertion.
Nights pass quickly, even for immortal beings. Time is cluttered with many activities, and a vampire has a limited amount of time to take care of business before dawn. Players log their downtime actions with the Storyteller, who collects all actions for the troupe and then disseminates results as appropriate. Sometimes a Storyteller uses a player’s downtime actions to jump-start plots or to provide interpersonal character roleplay away from the main session of the game.
All characters have 3 downtime actions for each period of time between sessions of the chronicle. These actions must be spent between sessions, and they do not roll over to the next period of time. There are ways to acquire additional downtime actions, such as purchasing dots of the Computer skill. Total downtimes for any given session may not exceed ten.
A player should be able to describe each of her downtime actions in a single sentence. After the Storyteller receives these actions, she will decide if challenges, details, or further roleplay are required to successfully fulfill the downtime actions. The Storyteller will then adjudicate the results accordingly.
Sample downtime actions include:
• Crafting: The player spends a downtime action and uses her character’s Crafts skill to design, build, or repair an item in the character’s possession. This may require a static challenge to succeed, per the discretion of the Storyteller.
• Feeding: Finding safe ways to drink the blood of mortals is often time-consuming; to reflect this you must spend 1 downtime action between each session feeding. If you fail to spend an action feeding, you enter every game at half your normal Blood pool (round up). For example, a Neonate who did not spend 1 of her downtime actions feeding enters game with only 5 Blood in her pool.
In some situations your Storyteller may require you to spend more than 1 downtime action feeding. For example, if you are feeding in territory where humans don’t normally wander around at night, if you’re feeding extremely carefully to avoid the attention of the locals, or if the Masquerade has been strained and mortals are on high alert, it may require 2 downtime actions to come into game with your maximum Blood pool.
Vampires with the Herd background can expend a level of that background instead of using 1 of their downtime actions to feed. Some vampires have specific disadvantages that require them to spend more than 1 downtime action feeding. For example, a Ventrue’s clan disadvantage might increase the number of downtime actions needed for feeding, or a character might have a flaw that increases her difficulty to feed. If a player does not spend the appropriate number of actions to feed, that character will enter the next game with only half the number of traits in her Blood pool.
• Investigation: Stories often end on cliffhangers, and some plots take multiple sessions to come to fruition. A player may use 1 downtime action to investigate potential leads, enemies, or strange occurrences. She may use a downtime action to research knowledge or to uncover hidden information. The player must spend a downtime action and also utilize backgrounds and abilities as is appropriate, in order for her character to spend time on such investigation. Again, this may require a static or opposed challenge to succeed, per the discretion of the Storyteller.
• Patrolling: Spending downtime actions to patrol your territory, looking for interlopers, increases the difficulty of feeding for interlopers. Each action you spend patrolling increases the difficulty by 1 downtime action. For example, if you spend 2 downtime actions patrolling, the difficulty for uninvited vampires feeding in your territory increases from 1 downtime action to 3.
Note that patrolling doesn’t precisely make it more difficult to feed, it makes it more difficult to feed without getting caught. For example, if the difficulty to feed in Malkavian territory has been increased to 4 downtime actions, you could choose to spend 4 actions feeding discreetly or spend 1 action and risk getting ambushed by a pack of insane vampires.
• Beyond your Means: If you don’t have any dots in the Resources background and want to acquire an expensive item (such as a sniper rifle), your Storyteller may require you to spend downtime actions to obtain that item. Your character must pay in advance, doing favors or earning money. Note that a downtime action should not be required to simply steal something; smashing in the window of a car and driving off for example, would not require a downtime action, but stealing expensive items often has consequences.
