Downtime deadline for Game 22 is Wednesday 23rd October.

The deadlines for Downtimes is always the Wednesday after any Downtime Session. This usually gives one and a half weeks to submit a Downtime after the game, as we try to have a Downtime Sessions one week Saturday after every game.

XP for the session will be awarded before the next session, but unable to be used in this Downtime period. However, if you had XP banked from character creation you will be able to spend this now.

How to use Influence: see Chapter Thirteen (p. 509) of the pdf! It's the first few pages.

Downtime returns will all be done via Google Drive.

Between each game there is a downtime period where players can submit actions to further their goals and help with their uptime role-play. 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.

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 Storytellers, 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. Fluff and plot-hooks might come into Downtime responses.

All characters have 2 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.

It is your responsibility to ensure that your downtimes meet the requirements and criteria listed in the rule book. If you include a downtime submission that is not possible for your character according to the rules (such as learning an Out-Of-Clan discipline without a teacher or relevant ability) the action will be ignored and you will be given a return of "outside of rules action". You will not be able to convert this action to something else. If you have any questions about your downtime submissions, please contact the ST team before the downtime deadline.

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 fulfil 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.
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 horse), your Storyteller may require you to spend downtime actions to obtain that item. Your character must pay in advance, doing favours or earning money. Note that a downtime action should not be required to simply steal something; smashing in the window of a house and pilfering the kitchen of silverware for example, would not require a downtime action, but stealing expensive items often has consequences.
Feeding: See below.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” — Philip Pullman

Feeding and Downtime Actions

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 to feed. 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.

Converting to a Path

To follow a Path of Enlightenment, you must purchase one of the path merits in Chapter Five: Merits and Flaws, Morality Merits, page 253. If you purchase one of these merits during character creation, lower your Morality rating to 4 (instead of the standard 5).

To switch from Humanity to a Path of Enlightenment (or from one path to another) after your character enters play, you must spend 6 downtime actions studying your chosen path. These actions do not need to be spent all in the same month, but you must spend at least 1 downtime action per month studying your chosen path. If you skip a month, you must start over from the beginning. If you do not have a teacher for your new path, you must spend 12 downtime actions (instead of the standard 6). After spending the required time studying your path, your Morality rating drops by 1. If this drop reduces your character to 0 Morality, you must immediately spend XP to purchase a dot of Morality. If you cannot, your character enters wassail and becomes an NPC.

Characters who follow a path may spend XP to raise their Morality in the same way that a normal character would raise her Humanity, with one exception. Characters who follow a Path of Enlightenment cannot raise their Morality above 4.

Downtime Form

The website will not save this form if you leave this page. It can also eat your work :o