Downtimes in Dark Metropolis

What is a downtime?

Downtimes are a way of keeping your character’s story going between games through writing - and a way of having your character perform activities that wouldn’t really work in uptime.

• Want to open a shop or develop your bank account? A downtime is good for that!
• Want to schmooze NPCs who aren’t coming to games? A downtime is good for that!
• Want to spend countless hours cracking the secrets of a coded book? A downtime is good for that too!

We would like to keep as much dramatic tension and interest in uptime as possible, and downtimes are here to supplement and support uptime play. Throwing a Kindred-only launch party for your shop, confronting an NPC about your suspicions about their motives, or using the book's code to open a locked safe are best suited to uptime.

Downtimes are also where you spend your Experiences, to mechanically develop your character. It will usually take one action to spend an Experience on an Attribute, Skill or Merit, although there will be times where the story may take longer to play out, particularly if you’re looking at making a new mechanic like a custom ritual or devotion.

If your character doesn’t have much in the way of Feeding Grounds or Herds, you can use one of your actions as a Hunting action. This means they are going out in a particular bit of the city and finding people to feed from, so your character will get more blood at the start of the game.

Plus, you can gain Beats in downtimes from achieving your Aspirations, up to a limit of 5 Beats per game/downtime cycle for each player. Downtime is also where you reset your Aspirations: when you achieve one, you have to wait till the downtime period to choose a new one.


How much can I do in a downtime?

• 4 downtime actions, representing your character’s own time and efforts.  A downtime action is a single course of action that at most takes a week of time (although this time does not need to be contiguous).

• 1 downtime action for each of the following Merits, representing the time and effort of the people represented by the Merit is question.  In general, these Merits will be at their most effective when supporting one of your personal downtime actions rather than working on their own on an independent project.
• Allies: a group positively disposed to you, and will take action on your behalf.  The more dots you have in the Merit, the more they’ll be willing to do.  1 dot Allies will do minor favours that require little effort, 3 dot Allies will do substantial favours that involve significant effort but little risk, and 5 dot Allies will do major favours that carry some risk (be it personal or legal).
• Contacts: a group who will provide you with information.  Asking for specifics is good - a general “what’s going on in your field” won’t get you much and is hard for the STs to respond to in an interesting way.
• Mentor: an individual who acts to support and guide your character. When designing your Mentor, choose three Skills the Mentor possesses (you can substitute Resources for one of these Skills).  Your character can ask their Mentor for a favour which must involve one of the three selected Skills or be within the scope of the Mentor's Resources. The Mentor is automatically considered to have successes equal to their dot rating on any rolls that might be required to do this favour. Mentors are likely to ask for favours in return, and the more you ask for, the more they’ll expect from you...
• Retainer: an individual who works for and is loyal to your character.  Choose an area of expertise for your Retainer.  If they need to make a roll within their field, double the Retainer dot rating and use it as a dice pool. For anything else use the Retainers basic dot rating as a dice pool.
• Staff: can be assigned projects during downtime, although they are generally less capable than the Merits listed above. For every dot in the Staff Merit, choose one type of assistant, and one Skill. Your staff can take actions using that Skill. These actions automatically garner a single success.

Choosing New Aspirations

If you’ve completed Aspirations during a game, or thing you’re likely to complete an Aspiration in downtime, you’ll need to choose new Aspirations to replace the completed Aspiration. Find out more about Aspirations in this blog post.

It’s worth including a note of roughly what time frame you’re hoping to achieve your Aspiration in: uptime during the next game, the following downtime, or during the game and downtime cycle after that.  Aspirations that are likely to take longer than two game and downtime cycles to complete should probably be broken down into smaller steps.

As always, if you’re struggling with choosing new Aspirations or want any advice on how to turn your character’s goals into Aspirations, please do drop us a line.


How to Write a Downtime

Please follow the following framework for your downtime:

Action 1:
-What are you trying to achieve?
-What mechanics are you using to help you?

Action 2:
-What are you trying to achieve?
-What mechanics are you using to help you?

Action 3:
-What are you trying to achieve?
-What mechanics are you using to help you?

Action 4:
-What are you trying to achieve?
-What mechanics are you using to help you?

Mentor/Retainer/Allies:
-What are you asking your Mentor/Retainer/Allies for?
-How is it relevant to them?

Contacts:
-What information are you looking for? It must be more specific than “What’s going on?”
For example:
(Homeless Contacts) “Has anyone gone missing recently?”
(Medical Contacts) “Have you heard of Dr Sanchez? What’s his reputation like?”
(Occult Contacts) “Where would I go to get proper occult texts?”
(Criminal Contacts) “Who are the big gangs in the underworld at the moment?”

If you are doing a Hunting action, please give us a brief description of your hunting method rather than going into too much detail. Most Hunting is likely to be opportunistic, and you’re going to be Hunting in someone else’s territory, so elaborate traps that require set-up are probably not suitable for a Hunting action. Please use the following format for a Hunting action:

Action X: Hunting action
I will be hunting in [District] of [Regency]
I will be hunting by [method], I have [relevant skills/attributes/disciplines]
I do/do not have permission from the Baron/owner of Feeding Ground dots

New Aspirations (if any):
- A short explanation of the Aspiration, and what time-frame you hope to complete it in. (Uptime at the next game, the following downtime, or the downtime after that.)


If you have any questions about formatting your downtime, please e-mail us in plenty of time at shadesofnorwichdarkmetropolis@gmail.com. We can’t guarantee that downtime queries received close to the downtime deadline will be answered before the deadline.

We’ll announce the downtime deadline at each game, but if you know you have a commitment that means you won’t be able to get a downtime in by the deadline, send us an e-mail before the deadline.