Resources / Downtime

[The Shadow]

Yes, but time is just different from money, all proverbs to the contrary. :)

[ValhallaGH]

...I'm having trouble coming to grips with this.

Time Management, as covered by the exact same mechanics as Financial Management.

Did that help?

I'm just not seeing how this is any easier; if anything it seems the opposite. But perhaps I'm just not getting it yet.

Wow, had a flashback to explain / defend the Wealth system discussions.

The idea is to make off-screen time truly Narrative. The character has some amount of it, represented by their Downtime score, and their ability to use it efficiently is covered by their successes and failures rolling Downtime to get a time advantage when doing stuff.

[elf23]

Hm... Maybe i've just completely gone off an a tangent!

It makes a lot of sense to me though, to have Downtime work the same way as two other existing systems, rather than introducing a completely new way of doing something. (Which a points pool system is in True20 - nothing else, except Conviction kind of, works in that way.)

Here's how i'm looking at it: Downtime, Wealth and Reputation are all qualities or resources that give you a chance of achieving something you want. You declare what you want, and make a check against a Difficulty. If you succeed you get what you want and maybe lose some of the resource. If the check fails you don't get what you want.

[The Shadow]

OK, let me try to articulate what I see as the problem.

The reason why we have a Wealth system at all is that there are different kinds of money we don't want to keep track of. If all transactions were strictly in "gold pieces", and you could carry any number of gold pieces in your belt pouch with no issues, then we wouldn't need a Wealth system. It would be simpler to just subtract the cost of items from one's gp total and be done with it.

But Wealth saves us from having to deal with credit ratings, stocks and bonds, T-bills, objets d'art, currency conversion, and so on and so forth. Not many people have fun keeping track of that stuff in real life, so who wants to keep track of it in a game? The abstraction lets us answer the question, "Can I afford it?" which is all we want to know for the story.

Likewise, I modelled Reputation on Wealth in part because there are lots of different kinds of Reputation we don't want to keep track of. I didn't want to have to remember that Village A adores me for defeating the goblins, while Village B is scared of me because I beat up the blacksmith for cheating me. The Reputation score boils down all the things I've done and how people see them into a number that lets us answer the question, "Can I impress him?" which is all we want to know for the story.

But there's only one kind of time. We basically do measure time in consistent units, and we already have it in our 'belt pouch' so to speak. So why not just 'spend' it? Why abstract something that's already abstract?

Oh, and elf23, while I used the idea of 1 Downtime point = 8 hours as a guideline to set difficulties, I never intended to be doctrinaire about it. You don't need to call a year 365 Downtime points. In fact, part of the point was that the Narrator wouldn't have to say, "It's been a year;" he'd just say, "Take 50 Downtime." When people tell stories, especially serial stories, they seldom bother to give exact numbers for time. They just say, "It's been a few months." Comic books are notorious for having fluid time flow - and I see no reason why campaigns need to be any different.

If we do go with a Downtime-as-Wealth system, though, I'd have to think it would be much more fluid than Wealth. Awards and losses would be flying around all over the place.

EDIT: A further thought. What basic question is Downtime-as-Wealth answering? "Can I...?" What?

[The Shadow]

Here's how i'm looking at it: Downtime, Wealth and Reputation are all qualities or resources that give you a chance of achieving something you want. You declare what you want, and make a check against a Difficulty. If you succeed you get what you want and maybe lose some of the resource. If the check fails you don't get what you want.

OK, I see what you're saying. Consolidating mechanics is good.

Am I right about the fluidity, though? It seems to me that one's Downtime would be bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, in a way that Wealth does not.

[ValhallaGH]

"Can I...?" What?

"Can I take the time to do this? Can I take the time to prepare for this?" A vitally important question at certain points in the narrative.

Am I right about the fluidity, though?

Maybe. I'm not sure.
That's something that we'll have to discuss as we develop this from vague notion to functional rule.

I can see it going up and down like a mad-man's version of whack-a-mole.
But I can also see it staying fairly constant because you don't add and subtract for every little thing, much the same way a character's Wealth doesn't fluctuate for buying some donuts or finding a penny on the ground.

How it ends up is a different question.

[elf23]

But there's only one kind of time.

I think the concept of Downtime can be expanded to represent a character's general ability to be able to leverage time to do stuff. This would include the number of "days off" you've had recently, but also would involve factors like how well you use your available time, and the amount of other commitments you have in your life that prevent you from Crafting longswords all day (So it's not quite as simple as just time...) It could even include things like (in a modern setting) the amount of holiday you can get off work, or how forgiving your boss is if you just don't turn up one day!

Downtime values would be a kind of exponential(ish) scale, like Wealth, ranging from having virutally no free time to use at very low values, up to having ample time for large projects at high values. Imagine the contrasts of a high Wealth-low Downtime character vs a low Wealth-high Downtime character.

Another really big advantage of doing Downtime like Wealth / Reputation, which i didn't explicity mention previously, is that i think it fixes the Downtime accumulation issue that we were having with the old system. The two hack fixes that we've tried out (either limiting the amount of Downtime you can accumulate, or limiting how much Downtime you can use per scene), are both attempts to get around the problem of what happens if the players get their hands on loads of Downtime. In a system where each point of Downtime really doesn't represent anything literal, that's not a problem at all - your Downtime score doesn't actually represent anything "accumulated" - it's an indicator of the general time-spaciousness of your life, in the same way as Wealth being a general indicator of your financial solvency, rather than literally how much money you've got in your pocket.

It'd also reduce micro-management - characters with a decent Downtime score would be able to Craft simple items (for example) without making checks, and without losing Downtime. (Which beats the 1/4 days we were talking about in the other system.)

Am I right about the fluidity, though? It seems to me that one's Downtime would be bouncing up and down like a yo-yo, in a way that Wealth does not.

I'm not sure... I feel like with what i've said above that it wouldn't be so. But, could you give an imagined example?

[The Shadow]

"Can I...?" What?

"Can I take the time to do this? Can I take the time to prepare for this?" A vitally important question at certain points in the narrative.

But it seems to me that the answer to that question has a lot more to do with the exigencies of the adventure than the details of one's lifestyle.

The point of Downtime was that it represented those hours of, well, Downtime between adventures. You could say during an adventure that you'd spent some of those hours doing X. Once you used it up, it was gone. There was, intentionally, a sharp separation between Adventuring and Downtime. One's measured in scenes, the other in points.

Now we've got a score that represents the chinks in one's day on an ongoing basis? Regardless of the pace of the adventure? This is a different animal. Maybe it's a more attractive animal, but it's definitely not the same one.

I'll try putting it yet another way. If the Narrator hands me a Wealth award, I know what it means - I'm richer, I can afford more stuff. If he hands me a Reputation award, it means I'm better known, I can impress more people.

If he hands me a Downtime award (in this new Wealth-like system) what does it mean? My lifestyle is now more 'time-spacious', to use elf23's term? Why is that even under the Narrator's control? Don't I decide how many commitments my character has, what his lifestyle is like?

If I reveal during a scene that I've been practicing my swordsmanship (to get a re-roll), how much does my Time go down? Where's the practical limit to how many re-rolls I can get? Can we agree that it is vitally necessary to limit how many re-rolls I can get, far more necessary than to limit how much stuff I can buy?

But if he hands me Downtime points, that just means, "You have X amount of breathing space before adventures suck you in again. Use it up, and then it's gone." (Again, I never intended the 1 point = 1 day to be literal - that was just a guideline to help me rationalize Difficulty levels. I always intended it to be the Narrator giving out however many points he thought was fun.)

I admit I do see one benefit to this new way, though. At character creation we could have a pool of points that the player divides between Wealth, Reputation, and Time. You could create a character who is poor but has lots of time on his hands. Or is well-known, but somewhat cash-starved and with no free time. Likewise, Profession checks could improve any of them, but only one at a time. Currently, there is no incentive at all to have a poor character. With this system, there could be.

EDIT: I'd like to hear iwatt weigh in on this. It's possible I'm just obtuse on this subject.

[elf23]

If he hands me a Downtime award (in this new Wealth-like system) what does it mean?

It could mean many different things. Typically it'd mean that you'd had a bunch of free time lately, in between adventures, which you can retrospectively spend in the future to get stuff you want. But it wouldn't have to mean just that. Just like a Wealth award typically means you've earned some money, but it doesn't have to mean just that.

I guess i've just come to find the following features of the current system a drag: 1: fiddling around spending 1/2 points to make arrows (on the one extreme), 2: having to accumulate 187 Downtime points to make a suit of armour (on the other extreme).

And those are exactly (some of) the reasons for the Wealth system.

The example of high-cost Crafting points out why it is actually reasonably important (in the current system) that Downtime is tied to day values. ("Come on, haven't a few months gone by yet? I've been trying to save up enough points for this armour forever...")

Can we agree that it is vitally necessary to limit how many re-rolls I can get, far more necessary than to limit how much stuff I can buy?

Absolutely. And this is the big problem in the current system. You have to be able to save up huge amounts of Downtime to Craft complex things, whereas getting a re-roll only costs 1. Perhaps this could be fixed by adjusting the costs of things, but it feels like a more fundamental problem to me... It just doesn't feel fun, or particularly useful, to make a re-roll cost 5 or 10 Downtime. Though that would perhaps be more balanced.

Yeah i'd like to hear iwatt's thoughts on this too...

(It's been fun discussing this with you guys! )

EDIT: It just occurred to me that, whatever system we end up with, the precedent for limiting Downtime use to once per scene is there - the way using Reputation is limited to once per scene. That's a relief

[The Shadow]

If he hands me a Downtime award (in this new Wealth-like system) what does it mean?

It could mean many different things. Typically it'd mean that you'd had a bunch of free time lately, in between adventures, which you can retrospectively spend in the future to get stuff you want. But it wouldn't have to mean just that. Just like a Wealth award typically means you've earned some money, but it doesn't have to mean just that.

What else would a Wealth award mean? No, really.

I guess i've just come to find the following features of the current system a drag: 1: fiddling around spending 1/2 points to make arrows (on the one extreme), 2: having to accumulate 187 Downtime points to make a suit of armour (on the other extreme).

I definitely agree with not wanting to mess with half-points. Just round up.

Sounds like the extremes need to be compressed. But how is your system helping matters? That suit of armor might just be *out of reach* of your Time score, just like some things are too expensive to be bought with your Wealth. Amusingly enough, no matter how much game "time" you put into crafting that armor, it's never enough, because your Time isn't high enough. :)

And then there's the question, "What exactly does it mean to take 20 on a Time check?" It can't mean I'm taking more time to find the time, can it?

The example of high-cost Crafting points out why it is actually reasonably important (in the current system) that Downtime is tied to day values. ("Come on, haven't a few months gone by yet? I've been trying to save up enough points for this armour forever...")

Fair point. How does the new system address this concern? Seems to me the exact same complaint could be voiced.

Can we agree that it is vitally necessary to limit how many re-rolls I can get, far more necessary than to limit how much stuff I can buy?

Absolutely. And this is the big problem in the current system. You have to be able to save up huge amounts of Downtime to Craft complex things, whereas getting a re-roll only costs 1. Perhaps this could be fixed by adjusting the costs of things, but it feels like a more fundamental problem to me... It just doesn't feel fun, or particularly useful, to make a re-roll cost 5 or 10 Downtime. Though that would perhaps be more balanced.

It may well be that the costs need to be adjusted. But isn't that equally a problem in your system, or any conceivable system?

For the sake of playability, we may need to bring down the cost of Crafting a fair amount, and bump up the cost of re-rolls a bit.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that, whatever system we end up with, the precedent for limiting Downtime use to once per scene is there - the way using Reputation is limited to once per scene. That's a relief ;)

Sure. It would get very tedious for someone to make re-rolls every round with increasingly lame excuses.

[elf23]

What else would a Wealth award mean? No, really.

(If meaningful for the story:) A payrise? Paying off a debt which had been plagueing you? Moving to a country with a cheaper standard of living? Your kids leaving home? All sorts of things in a modern setting... Usually hard cash though.

And then there's the question, "What exactly does it mean to take 20 on a Time check?" It can't mean I'm taking more time to find the time, can it?

You can't Take 20 on Downtime checks. Unless travelling at velocities close to the speed of light

You're right of course that a Wealth style system doesn't per se fix any of the issues i mentioned. However by its very nature it 1: must compress the range of values into a much smaller range (1 to 40 or so - compared to 1 to hundreds in the current system), 2: absolutely removes the need for check values to represent anything literal. This last point would really help out with the cost of a re-roll. We could just make a re-roll cost 15 (that is, have a Difficulty of 15), without that having tinges of "what so it takes me 15 days of rest / training / research to get one re-roll?" Do you know what i mean? We could, alternatively, expunge from our minds the idea of one point of Downtime being round about one day in the current system, and just look at them as points and readjust things. But i think we'd be needing to go for an exponentialish scale anyway, which is exactly what the Wealth mechanic does.

I was thinking about "your one use of Downtime in a scene" (to parallel Reputation), and how it could be either a re-roll (or a Take 20 or whatever we decide this should be) or a Conviction gain. Both dramatically appropriate, and the sort of thing it's nice to have up your sleeve to pull out once in a scene. (And, as it happens, tying in to the sort of thing a character with lots of Experience levels would want to do, versus a character with lots of Dramatic levels, respectively.)

That suit of armor might just be *out of reach* of your Time score, just like some things are too expensive to be bought with your Wealth. Amusingly enough, no matter how much game "time" you put into crafting that armor, it's never enough, because your Time isn't high enough.

That's a good point. It'd require some negotitation with the Narrator to gain Downtime if you needed it for something big - negotiation as to how exactly you were going to find enough time to do it. Same goes for Wealth though, or for any kind of points the Narrator hands out - it can potentially limit (or be used to limit) what the Heroes can do. (Losing Wealth or Reputation to gain time may be possibilities...)

I'd say - maybe, if you're up for it, could we forget about the theoretical underpinnings of the system for a while, and just go with it and try out coming up with a few values and scenarios, and then see if we end up with a nicer system or not...?

By the way, i think we're really getting somewhere now. Regardless of what mechanic we end up using, i think we've clearly identified at least two things that need fixing with the current system: 1: that the points really shouldn't have even a hint of a literal representation, 2: that the scale of values needs to be compressed somehow.

And i really liked your idea of having a pool at character creation to distribute between Wealth, Downtime and Reputation!

I'd also be interested in a re-discussion of recovery within the Downtime system. Most of the time all the Narrator wants to say is "some time has passed since the last session, you all get back to full health" (and maybe full Conviction). Rather than a series of fiddly rolls to see who recovers what when. (Sounds like a case for some kind of "full reset" / "long fade" to be added to the Narrative Time system. Which was how Climactic scenes were envisaged when that system was originally discussed. But for less cinematic styles i think we'd need something else.)

[iwatt]

Sorry, I've been sick as a dog lately.

So, I am deeply conflicted here. I'm all about condensing mechanics into one single system. Time, wealth and Reputation working the same way is certainly attractive. I am hitting a conceptual wall (similar to The Shadow's) regarding what a Downtime Score would represent. I think I can wrap my head around it though, given that we simply forget 1 DT=8 hours. Simply say 1 DT is whatever we want it to be (weeks honing my special attack, that book I read during a flight, the time I spend searching on ebay...). I think that's good enough for me, and I'm willing to work on that premise. If the result is attractive enough, I will embrace it wholeheartedly

So let's start ironing out issues.

Rerolls: always cost a DT. Easy, simple and conceptually sound.

Conviction Recovery: always costs a DT. The rising cost of conviction recovery (cha vs DC 10+ Current Conviction) will keep heavy stockpiling controlled, I believe.

That seems to work for me. Now one of the things I loved of our previous system is that you spent DTs to gain either Rep/Wlth. What should the cost for these be? Personally, I love my streamlined wealth system, were a DC 15 purchase doesn't mean an automatic decrease in Wealth score. I will be using the same for Rep, and DT if we go with it. So how much DTs should a REP/Wlth cost? 3 DTs?

Actually, I'm starting to see a pattern. I'm assigning flat costs. As I mentioned, I am very reluctant to add in the auto Wealth loss rule for DC 15 items (if ever I've seen an ugly rules hack it's that one). What about DC 10+current Wlth/Rep? So it's easy to increase your Wlth/Rep with time when they're low, but it becomes increasingly harder (diminishing returns) to increase your rep/wlth when you are already filthy rich/famous. Only problem, it's now 2 checks to boost your rep/wlth: first a DT check, then a profession check. small enough problem in my book.

Now, for crafting objects that are way outside your DT reach, that's what helpers are for. Check my rules for combining wealth. Adding others to help you (which only makes sense by the way), will allow you to craft that stuff in a more normal time frame. For an item you built singlehandedly during 10 years...that's what narrator fiat is for.

[elf23]

Rerolls: always cost a DT. Easy, simple and conceptually sound.

This is one area of uncertainty. At the moment with Wealth and Reputation you never "spend a point" of either. It's always a check against a Difficulty to see if you get what you want. Now for re-rolls, as we've thought of them so far, that would mean making a roll which you don't like, rolling a Downtime check to see if you can get a re-roll, then (if that succeeds) actually making the re-roll. That's clearly no good!

One possibility would be to replace the idea of a re-roll with using Downtime to get a free Take 20 (like a Reputation check allows you to do for an interaction skill). This would be best limited to once per scene, and would probably work best as a "pre-roll" rather than a re-roll. Maximising your potential with a skill due to having put in a lot of work training it.

Example: A scholar is presented with an ancient tome which he wants to decipher. He can choose to either roll a Knowledge check as normal, or can make a Downtime check - trying to draw on all the hours of study he's put in. If the Downtime check succeeds he gets a Take 20 on the Knowledge check. If it fails he can still make the Knowledge check as usual (but might still lose Downtime).

Personally, I love my streamlined wealth system, were a DC 15 purchase doesn't mean an automatic decrease in Wealth score. I will be using the same for Rep, and DT if we go with it.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but the problem i see with that is that if a character had a Wealth of like 30 or 40 he could potentially buy anything without ever making a Wealth check and without ever losing Wealth. I think that's why the "DC 15 or higher always reduces you Wealth" rule was put there...? But maybe it is realistic - if you're a king or Bill Gates you can just buy whatever you want. I guess the clause is put in as a balancing factor though, so that Heroes just won't reach that state - which wouldn't be much fun in a game, really.

Only problem, it's now 2 checks to boost your rep/wlth: first a DT check, then a profession check. small enough problem in my book.

I thought that a profession check could work as: if you succeed on a Downtime check (against whatever Difficulty we might choose - though a scaling one, like you suggested would probably work well) you gain a bonus of your professional skill / 5 to Wealth or Reputation. (That might be too much, but we can tweak it. Anyway it'd only require a single check.)

An alternative might be to just allow the free transfer of points between Downtime and Wealth and Reputation? (Like the Shadow suggested at character creation - but it might work at any time.) You put time into getting wealthy or famous, but you lose time. Work less = lose wealth but gain time. Stop attending so many social functions = lose Reputation but gain time. Though that does away with the idea of a professional skill...

Now, for crafting objects that are way outside your DT reach, that's what helpers are for. Check my rules for combining wealth. Adding others to help you (which only makes sense by the way), will allow you to craft that stuff in a more normal time frame. For an item you built singlehandedly during 10 years...that's what narrator fiat is for.

That's a good point about aid.

[iwatt]

Correct me if i'm wrong, but the problem i see with that is that if a character had a Wealth of like 30 or 40 he could potentially buy anything without ever making a Wealth check and without ever losing Wealth. I think that's why the "DC 15 or higher always reduces you Wealth" rule was put there...? But maybe it is realistic - if you're a king or Bill Gates you can just buy whatever you want. I guess the clause is put in as a balancing factor though, so that Heroes just won't reach that state - which wouldn't be much fun in a game, really.

There's already a built in limiting factor: time spent purchasing. Sure, you can buy anything you want. But really, what about the time required to buy it. That is an often overlooked advantage of the Wealth system over gp mechanics. It takes purchasing time into account.

Which brings us into another problem. How much DT is spent on a purchase check? Easiest way is too decrease DT by comparing it to the Wealth DC. So people with a lot of time don't actually loose enough DT when buying something expensive, while those with very little free time are hurt more.

I thought that a profession check could work as: if you succeed on a Downtime check (against whatever Difficulty we might choose - though a scaling one, like you suggested would probably work well) you gain a bonus of your professional skill / 5 to Wealth or Reputation. (That might be too much, but we can tweak it. Anyway it'd only require a single check.)

That might work. I'd remove the profession skill, and simply make it a Time check against 10+Rep or 10+Wealth. The only reason the profession skill exists is to give a mechanic for Wealth gains. Basically, we needed a system to gain wealth/rep but I see no need for it to be level based, really. Effort based makes more sense.

An alternative might be to just allow the free transfer of points between Downtime and Wealth and Reputation? (Like the Shadow suggested at character creation - but it might work at any time.) You put time into getting wealthy or famous, but you lose time. Work less = lose wealth but gain time. Stop attending so many social functions = lose Reputation but gain time. Though that does away with the idea of a professional skill...

Creating time....the engineer in me is disturbed. But it does make some sense in the way you present it.

[elf23]

Hm... It does seem that most of the uses of Downtime are to "buy" checks with other traits (re-rolls with checks, profession checks, recovery checks, wealth checks to purchase stuff). And it's not nice to have to make a check in order to make a check...

I've got myself completely twisted up now, as i'm kind of coming back round to the original point of view that Downtime should be a pool of points that you spend from! (Shame to lose the potential symmetry with Wealth & Reputation though...)

Well, whatever, i think it's been a useful discussion in that we've noticed a couple of big things that could do with fixing anyway.

Obviously simple things like a re-roll should just cost 1 Downtime. But one thing that would really help out with the more expensive things would be a way to spend any amount of Downtime for these checks, and have it so that the more time you put in the greater your chance of succeeding. The profession checks are the best example - rather than saying "a profession check costs 5 Downtime" or whatever, it'd be much nicer if the check was of a form something like:
Profession check = Professional skill rank + (Downtime * X) vs Difficulty Y + current Wealth.

(I think the maximum recommended Wealth award of +4 could be a good guideline for us as to how much Downtime might be awarded / accumulated.)