Downtime

Version 0.10 · not yet playtested

Jon Mayo. PUBLIC DOMAIN (CC0-1.0)

Downtime

Between one expedition and the next, the heroes are home and safe: a city, a waystation, the company’s own stronghold. They mend, they train, they spend their takings, and they chase the rumors that will set the next delve. Downtime is the rules for that gap, the half of play that is not a dungeon.

This is an optional layer, not part of the core loop. A table that just wants to delve can hand-wave the time between sessions; a campaign that wants its heroes to grow roots, a holding, a reputation, a workshop full of half-finished projects, runs downtime. It is also the engine the stronghold rules sit on (see the campaign-frame module): the base is where downtime happens on the frontier, and the two share one clock and one purse.

Like the rest of the game it adds no new dice. Every downtime roll is the familiar 3d6 + attribute read on the standard ladder.

1 The downtime fortnight

Downtime runs in fortnights (about two weeks each), the comfortable span for a building project, a stretch of training, or a holiday. A fortnight is the campaign clock, distinct from a dungeon’s exploration turns or a fight’s activations. Usually one fortnight falls between two sessions, but the unit is the fortnight, not the session: a long gap in the fiction may cover several. (Other-language editions may use their own fifteen-day term for the fortnight.) Downtime happens at a safe haven, somewhere the party can sleep behind a door. A safe haven grants a full rest for free (all Hit Points and stress back, Shaken lifted, per the core); downtime is what you do beyond patching up.

In a fortnight, each character takes two downtime actions. Spend them on the activities below. Some finish in a single action; the larger ambitions are projects that take several fortnights to complete.

Downtime is not free, though. While the heroes rest and tinker, the world keeps moving: rumored threats ripen, rivals act, debts and wages come due, and (if the party holds a stronghold) the frontier tests the wall every fortnight. The more fortnights you take, the more the world takes back. That tension, press on or shore up, is the point.

2 The three currencies

Everything in downtime is bought with some mix of three things:

Coin. Money from treasure and trade. Pays tuition, commissions, bribes, wages, and upkeep.

Materials. The specific items a job needs: a titan-bronze ingot, a basilisk’s eye, a rare grimoire. The best work is gated by materials, and materials are usually won on expeditions, not bought. This is the lever that keeps a workshop from outrunning the dungeon.

Time. Downtime actions, and the project clocks they fill. Time is the cost that cannot be skipped: even with full purse and every component in hand, a great work still takes the fortnights to make.

2.1 Materials, the haul

When the party strips a delve, the worked metal, hides, reagents, salvage, and stray relics they drag out are abstracted as materials. This is the clean answer to “we loot the room and the bodies”: rather than itemise and resell a dead foe’s gear (and rather than a GM inventing reasons no one will buy goblin armor), the take is a count of materials, which have an honest use, spend them on crafting and building, or sell them at a market for coin.

Materials come in two grades. Loads are the common bulk: three loose families the GM names to taste, salvage (worked metal, cut stone, mechanism parts, good timber), reagents (venom, hide, ichor, herbs, essence), and relics (old arcane fragments, blessed remnants, titan-work shards). A component is the rare single prize, a basilisk’s eye, a titan-bronze ingot, a ghost-silver heart, won from a notable foe or site; it is the keyed gate on the grandest work. (Settings reskin all of this; Theogonia’s titan-relics and monster-parts are the default flavor.)

What a delve yields (per character):

Delve | Materials each
small | 1d3 − 1
medium | 1d6 − 1
large | 2d6 − 2

Roll per character (a d3 is a halved d6, rounding up; the −1 / −2 means a lean delve can come up dry). There is no bonus for level or strength, materials are a matter of time and transport, not muscle. A notable foe or site also yields its component, named by the GM.

Carrying them out: your pack is not your cart. Materials are bulky. A character’s pack holds only a couple, and only if they spend the time to drag them; a riding horse’s saddlebags take a few; a real haul needs transport, a mule string, a camel train, a team-drawn cart, which carries roughly ten materials per person in the party. So a full delve’s take fits a cart easily, but a party that brought none leaves the heavy goods behind (or makes slow, repeated drags to load their packs). Bringing the cart is the choice, and a laden cart on the road is a slow, tempting target. (Transport is gear and hirelings, or the stronghold’s stables.)

Spending them. Loads feed crafting and building, what the facility tables call “some materials”: a fine custom item or a Tier II facility wants a few. A component gates the top end: a masterwork or a Tier III facility needs the named prize (plus loads). Spend materials alongside coin and time when a craft, research, or build project begins (see Craft and commission and the stronghold rules), or sell the surplus for coin.

3 Quick actions and projects

A quick action resolves the moment you take it: one roll (or none), one result. Buying common gear, a night’s carousing, a day’s wage-work.

A project is a longer effort tracked on a clock, a row of segments you fill over several downtime actions:

Clock | Scope
4 segments | a modest undertaking: study a rumor into a solid lead, brew a batch of remedies, mend a lingering poison
6 segments | a real work: research a new spell, forge a fine custom item, drill a new Advanced Action
8 segments | a grand work: a masterpiece, deep arcane research, a major facility (shared with the stronghold rules)

Each downtime action spent on a project is one roll, 3d6 + the fitting attribute and skill, read on the ladder:

Roll | The work goes
Masterstroke (a natural 17 or 18 on the dice) | fill 2 segments
18+ crit | fill 1 segment, plus a boon
13–17 success | fill 1 segment
9–12 partial | your choice: fill 1 segment and pay a cost, or stop clean with no progress and no cost
8− miss | no progress, and a setback lands whether you like it or not

Why a crit is only one segment. Critical is read off the total, so it grows common as a craftsman masters their art (a +4 hand crits often), and letting it fill two would let a master trivialize every clock. So a crit fills the usual one segment and instead pays a boon, the work goes well rather than twice as fast. The boon is the maker’s choice of:

a refund: recover some of the coin or materials this job cost,

momentum: an extra project roll this fortnight, on this work or another facility,

or relief: clear one tick from the complication clock (below).

Only a Masterstroke, a natural 17 or 18 on the raw dice (see core Resolution), the rare flash of inspiration that never gets more likely no matter how skilled you are, fills two segments. It is the one leap that does not scale away, so it stays special at every level.

A partial is the interesting roll: you may push, take the segment but pay one cost (the GM picks the fitting one), or you may walk away with nothing spent and nothing gained, banking the action for next fortnight. The costs:

Coin or materials: the work overran, spoiling stock or wanting more money.

Your other action: the added effort eats your second downtime action this fortnight.

A tick on the complication clock (below).

The complication clock. A risky project (volatile research, a deal with a shady fixer, anything the GM flags) carries a small 4-segment trouble clock alongside its progress clock. A partial’s cost can tick it; a miss always ticks it (that is the setback). When it fills, the trouble lands: the experiment backfires, a rival catches wind, the materials are ruined, the wrong people take notice. Safe, routine work simply has no complication clock, a miss there just wastes the action.

When the progress clock fills, the project is done. A project may also demand coin paid up front and the right materials in hand; without the materials, the GM caps how far the clock can fill (a fine blade, but not the masterwork).

Others can pitch in: each helper who spends a downtime action on the same project rolls too, so a crew finishes a clock faster than one pair of hands.

4 The activities

4.1 Train (advance)

This is how a character realizes an advance they have earned. Whatever the campaign’s advancement track (milestone, XP, or treasure), gaining the new skill, attribute, Advanced Action, or spell is a downtime act of training, not something that happens mid-dungeon.

Advancement is gated across the whole game, but the gate is light:

In an established city-state, training is easy: the schools, temples, guilds, and masters are already there for hire. Spend one downtime action and a tuition in coin and the advance is yours, no roll.

On the frontier, those services do not exist until you make them. A far-flung company must either travel back to a city, find a teacher in the field, or build the facility at their stronghold (a library for a mage’s spell research, a training yard for fighters and paladins, a temple complex for clerics and paladins, a guild safehouse for a rogue, a cloister for a monk). Until then the advance is owed but unrealized.

The GM may waive the gate to keep a milestone game moving; it is a tool for making the base and the cities matter, never a wall that stops a hero from leveling.

4.2 Craft and commission

With a workshop or a hired crafter, turn coin, materials, and time into gear.

Common items are simple to obtain and carry no balance risk: a commission for a common item is just a reskin of something already in the gear lists (the same stats under a new name and story). Always allowed, a quick action and the listed price.

Custom or modest variations are the GM’s call. The GM sets the cost and the materials and keeps the result inside the existing stat bands. The hazard is real, a poorly tuned item can warp a campaign, so the bias is conservative: reskin first, and any change stays within the core gear language and the inventory-card slots. A true custom piece is a project (6–8 segments) gated by a materials-quest.

4.3 Research

Study turns the unknown into the usable. A mage researches a new spell (a 6+ segment project, Wits and the arcane skill, gated by a tome or a master’s notes). Anyone may research a lead: take a vague rumor, a fragment of a map, a creature’s name, and grind it into actionable knowledge, where the lair is, what the ward needs, which kind of harm the thing fears. A studied lead is worth a clear head start on the next expedition.

4.4 Recover

A full rest already fixes Hit Points, stress, and Shaken. Recover is for what a night’s sleep does not: a lingering poison, disease, or curse, or a wound the GM has flagged as grievous. Treat it with the Medicine skill, a healer’s care, or a temple’s blessing, a quick action if mild, a project if dire.

4.5 Earn a living

Ply a trade with a relevant skill to earn coin between delves: smith, scribe, sellsword, sailor, hedge-healer. A quick action and a roll; the better the result, the better the pay. Honest work that offsets upkeep, for the party that would rather grind coin than risk a raid.

4.6 Carouse and gather rumors

Spend coin in the taverns, temples, and markets to buy talk. A night’s carousing is a quick action: spend the coin, roll on the ladder, and collect leads and rumors for the next expedition (the more you spend, the better the talk). It is the engine that keeps play player-driven, the party chooses their next delve from what they dig up, not from a hook handed across the table.

Carousing has a bite. On a partial or a miss, roll a complication:

d6 | The morning after
1 | A debt: you owe coin you do not have, or a favor you will regret.
2 | A rival or enemy now knows your business.
3 | A brawl, a duel, or a night in the cells. A grudge is made.
4 | The rumor is false, or a trap baited for fools with coin.
5 | You drew the wrong eye: a faction takes an interest in you.
6 | A friend is in trouble and only you can help. A new obligation.

4.7 Curry favor and network

Court the powers that be: a guild, a noble house, a faction, or, in Theogonia, a city’s living god. A downtime action spent here builds a standing tie: discounts, access, a writ, a blessing, a debt called in later. Favor is its own currency, slower than coin but it opens doors coin cannot.

Back from the barrow with silver and a cracked titan-bronze gorget, the company spends a downtime fortnight in Dritsa. Vela (the mage) spends both her actions researching a warding spell, a 6-segment clock; she rolls a success (fill 1) and then a partial, pushes it for a second segment and pays the cost by ticking the research’s complication clock, 2 of 6 filled, four to go. Bram spends one action at the training yard to finally learn Cleave (he leveled last session), paying the tuition, no roll, and one action carousing: a partial, so he gets a lead on a flooded crypt and, rolling a 3, wakes up having promised to clear a cellar of rats for the innkeeper. The bronze gorget is materials, so next fortnight Bram will commission a custom buckler, a project the smith cannot even start without it.

5 At a stronghold

When the safe haven is the company’s own holding, downtime gains a second layer, the stronghold rules (campaign-frame module). The same fortnight, the same purse, the same clocks, plus:

Base orders: spend the fortnight building or repairing facilities (the very workshops, libraries, and yards that the activities above call for), funding the garrison, or contributing pooled treasure to the base.

Upkeep: wages and provisions come due each fortnight. A full garrison is expensive, so defending the walls genuinely competes with growing the base for the same coin.

Raids: each fortnight the region’s threat tests your defense (garrison + walls); the shortfall is the loss (see the stronghold rules). When a raid would cost you, the players decide their session, are the heroes going to defend the walls? Either take the attrition (it drains the treasury and can damage facilities) or make the session a set-piece battle for the hold.

Downtime stands on its own without a base; the stronghold is the richest place to spend it. The two are built to fit together: one cadence, one economy of coin, materials, and time.