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“Before the next game, I’m going to teach Auspex to two people, Celerity to a third, follow one of my Auspex students home and kill his dog, visit my sire and ask him to loan me some cash, go to the all-night branch of the Public Library and read up on Mesopotamian blood gods and pick up my dry cleaning.”
“No.”
Kindred are up and doing stuff every night of the week, and not just the two nights a month that the players get together. But just like you only get a few hours of game time in which to play your character, there’s a limited amount of downtime available to everybody as well.
Note that the first part of this is just a primer; it doesn’t replace the rules for downtime actions published in Mind’s Eye Theatre or The Requiem. There’s a bit toward the bottom for actual additions and tweaks to the downtime rules specific to the chronicle.
Every character gets a number of personal actions during downtime equal to their Resolve attribute. Granted, everyone has the same two weeks between game sessions, but characters with more Resolve are more driven and can make better use of their time. Characters can use these actions to do whatever they’re actually capable of doing. It might require a test on the character’s part, but generally, this is treated just the same as if you did something during a game session, except that you can do certain things that take longer (like teaching or learning disciplines).
Beyond personal actions, Kindred tend to accumulate people and things around them who they can manipulate and use to their own advantage. These are usually represented with social Merits on your character sheet. If you have Merits like Resources, Allies, Retainer, Contacts, Mentor or Status, you can get one “free” downtime action for each one, to represent you handing off jobs to people more qualified or just with more time on their hands. The actions you hand off still have to be within the capability of the person or group you’re handing them off to, however. You can’t call on your Allies at the stock exchange to go out and rough up the guy who stepped on your shoe, for instance.
Anything a character does between game sessions with the intent of gaining some objective advantage requires a downtime action. Anything that consists purely of soft roleplaying scenes doesn’t require an action. Most things that a character spends experience on don’t require actions in addition, with a couple exceptions. For example, seeking out a very skilled private eye to track down your rivals’ assets would require an action (likely one of your own personal actions, if not a Retainer’s). Hiring that detective for the case would require another action (probably Resources, though maybe your Allies could provide him with an appropriate favor). Roleplaying the scene in which you go to his office and explain the job to him doesn’t require an action, and once he’s hired, regular phone calls and check-ins with him won’t, either. Doing the necessary footwork to find evidence to prove someone is a diablerist will cost (probably a few) downtime actions, but presenting that evidence to the Reeve or a political high-up in the city won’t.
First and foremost, any sort of direct roleplaying, whether it’s a scene on an in-character mailing list or a conversation roleplayed out face-to-face between sessions, never costs a downtime action. Roleplaying, after all, is the reason we do this thing, so you’re never penalized for doing it.
Most of the time, when you spend experience on raising a trait on your sheet, there’s no need to also expend downtime actions as well. A lot of players send in actions like, “I mingle around in society, and I get to know lots of people and make connections, so I can buy my Allies: High Society up.” While this adds narrative depth to what you’re doing with the mechanics, it isn’t necessary to spend actions to “build up” your Merits; that’s already assumed when you spend the points. Instead of putting this in your downtime submissions, you can write it up as a character journal when you spend the points; tell us how you met your new Allies, where you picked out your new ghoul Retainer and so on; that way, you can get rewarded with experience for adding that depth instead of having to pay for it with downtime actions.
The one time you do have to spend both experience and downtime actions to increase a trait is when your character is being instructed in an out-of-clan discipline. The character learning the discipline has to receive instruction from someone who has it among their clan specialties. Both the teacher and the student have to spend a number of consecutive downtime actions equal to the level of the discipline being taught.
Players can submit downtime actions either at the game, written down and handed to the Storyteller, or (and this is the preferred method) via e-mail to WhiteCityST@gmail.com.
In order to make it a bit easier to put together your results, make sure you’ve got all the relevant information together when you submit actions. This means that the e-mail or paper record has to have yours and your character’s name on it. Each action should be marked whether it’s a personal action or one you’re delegating to Allies, Retainers or some other Merit. Personal actions should be marked as “Resolve 1,” “Resolve 2,” and so on, up to your Resolve attribute. Delegated actions should list the relevant Merit, your rank in the Merit and, if applicable, the particular area you’re specialized in.
Then, of course, tell us what you actually want to do. Be specific about this, and definitely say what you’re trying to get out of it. Don’t just say, “my ghoul is following Tony Testafrenzzi around for a week.” You probably don’t want to know about how many red lights he blows, where he gets his suits cleaned and what he watches on TV. Instead, say, “I’m having him followed, and I want to know who he’s talking to in the Chicago PD.” Otherwise, you might get results that omit what you’re actually after.
Downtime for Tony Testafrenzzi (player: Smapdi)
Resolve 1: I’m going to the library and looking up whatever I can on major shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. I want to see if a ship called the Babalon, painted all red, ever went down in Lake Michigan, and what they were doing at the time. I’m thinking that boat I saw out in the distance last game was a ghost ship, and maybe I can talk to the crew if I had a piece of some lost cargo or whatever.
Resolve 2: For some reason I promised Nightblade I’d teach him a little Animalism, so I’ll spend this to mentor him on the subject. I’m not telling him I own that warehouse on the south side, though, and last time we talked, it looked like this instruction was taking place at his haven.
Resolve 3: While I’ve got access to Nightblade’s place, I’m going to take advantage whenever he’s not around; if necessary I’ll tell him to go up on the roof and try to coo at some pigeons while I ransack his place for anything that looks small and valuable, like jewelry. I’m not gonna steal it yet, but after I learn Mist Form, I’ll be back for it.
Allies (UIC) 4: I’m causing trouble for the student Socialist organization that Nightblade always hangs out with. I can’t get them kicked off campus, but I want them to get jerked around on their meeting room assignments without notice and maybe get Public Safety to enforce the rules a little more strictly when they’re out there selling newspapers.
Retainer (Meathook) 4: That weird cultist dude, Tommy Ten Tongues, ripped me off on some magic beans; promised me they’d grow a ganja bush as tall as my house. Meathook’s gonna knock some sense into him. Tommy’s always hanging around Neo, so the Hook will just follow him into the bathroom and beat on his kidneys when he goes into the stall (Ten Tonges likes to pee in peace). I’m also talking to the bar owner and passing bribes to the bouncers to make sure Meathook gets out unmolested.
Resources 3: Spreading cash around the bouncer staff at Neo; see Meathook’s action.
Allies (Club Scene) 4: I’m letting the people in charge at Neo know they don’t have to worry about Tommy Ten Tongues; he’ll get roughed up a bit, but nothing permanent, and Tommy can’t call the cops on account of a certain fetish he’s got. So as long as no one makes it into a bigger scene, the club will maintain its sterling reputation.
Now that I’m done paraphrasing the rulebooks, we can get down to the special stuff. For the most part, these rules are expansions and clarifications of the “official” system and not changes to the fundamental stuff.
If you have a suitable retainer as well as the Allies merit, you can have the retainer work on persuading your allies in your place (this uses the retainer's action for the round too). Doing that lets you test with your Allies, but your retainer's social traits...useful if you've got, say, something holding you back when it comes to social dealings with mortals.
Also for the socially challeneged, you can throw your Resources merit behind any downtime action that deals with mortals. This doesn't add your Resources, but it does let your Resources substitute for your lowest social attribute or skill in the test. This uses up your Resources as well as the action you're assisting.
It might be possible to have all Kindred keep their networks of informants, blackmailers and corrupt officials completely to themselves, but that’s neither likely nor would it make for a terribly interesting game. Sooner or later, you’re going to end up stepping on someone’s toes or, if you’re like most Kindred, stomping. This can be done through bribery, character assassination, slander, or any of the other delightful tactics employed by Kindred in their night-to-night existence. The targets of such attacks are generally organizations, industries or material resources; attacking individuals requires a more…direct…approach (which would likely involve the “combat” section of the rules more than this one).
The Target: The most important thing you need when you’re carrying out an attack is to know who you’re targeting. You could go after a target in response to something that happened before (“I’m going to mess up whoever was in charge of the gang that robbed my bookies’ office”), in which case you don’t have much choice over who will be affected (though you might be able to make an educated guess).
The other option is to target a specific character with your attack. Doing this requires that you do some legwork to find out who the chosen character is connected to, and through which channels. You’ll have to spend some actions beforehand and probably make some tests (see “tracking people,” below) in order to make sure you’re after the right person. Otherwise, you might know that Character X runs with Crime Family Y, but when you go after Crime Family Y, maybe you’re not hitting the right people, and instead, you’re weakening Character Z, who you didn’t even know was connected. Maybe Character X was bluffing when he said he was that connected anyway.
In either case, you’re going to end up hurting a Social merit on somebody’s character sheet. This could be the obvious Allies, Contacts or Status, or you could get more creative and find ways to affect someone’s Resources, Staff, Herd or even Haven Location (not by moving their haven, of course, but by altering the neighborhood around it).
The Hit: Supposing you have all your information straight, submit the attack like you would any other downtime action. Make sure you say that this is intended to be an attack; sometimes, a regular action might also wind up hurting someone else’s plans without you meaning to, but if you do mean it, you should say it, along with a more specific description of how exactly your people are clamping down on your target. Don’t just say, “My UIC Allies (4) are attacking Nightblade’s political allies.” Instead, something like the actions in the example above would be necessary. If you’re not specific as to how the attack is going to happen, the best case scenario is that the Storyteller gets to make it up. The worst case is that the whole action doesn’t count (this, of course, is dependent on how much free time the Storyteller has at the moment).
The Test: To figure out who wins in this little power grab, the Storyteller will make an opposed test for the attacker and defender. Both characters’ pools will be the total of their most appropriate attribute and skill, plus whatever Merit is being used to attack or is being attacked. Defenders, if they sense that trouble might be coming their way beforehand, can spend their downtime action to defend against an outside attack, in which case they get +2 to the test pool in case someone does make a move. For every success that the attacker gets above the defender, the defender’s actions with that merit will be tied up for one future downtime turn; also, during this time, the victim of the attack can’t spend experience to increase his level in the Merit that was attacked.
The time frame of someone’s actions being “suppressed” like this isn’t cumulative. If Tony Testafrenzzi gets three successes to knock out Tony Testafrenzzi’s political allies this turn, then goes ahead and attacks again next turn and gets another three, only the most recent attack counts; his lost actions don’t get pushed back to the end. Also, even while a character’s merits are tied up, he still gets to use them in tests to defend against attacks, though he can’t spend any actions to defend.
Using the UIC/Socialist action from the example downtime, the only thing we really need to add is the official “this is an attack” message.
Allies (UIC) 4: I’m causing trouble for the student Socialist organization that Nightblade always hangs out with. I can’t get them kicked off campus, but I want them to get jerked around on their meeting room assignments without notice and maybe get Public Safety to enforce the rules a little more strictly when they’re out there selling newspapers. I’m pretty sure Nightblade has Allies with this group, so call this an attack.
As it happens, Nightblade does have Allies (Political) 2, by way of a network of student Socialist clubs throughout the city; he also thinks Tony is his good friend, so he hasn’t spent actions to defend against anything this turn. Looking at the facts, the Storyteller decides the test should be Tony’s Manipulation (4), plus his Academics (3), plus his Allies at UIC (4). To the total pool of 11, the ST draws a 9, for a total of 20 (three successes). Nightblade’s test is going to be Wits (2), plus Politics (2), plus his Allies (2); he’s boned even before the draw comes up a 5; a total of 11 makes for a single success. Since Tony, the attacker, got two more successes, Nightblade is going to lose use of his Political allies on the next downtime turn and the one following. His player will get a message back this turn to let him know about the loss:
Some of your friends at the Socialist club got busted for distributing papers in an undesignated area, and they’ve been having trouble actually meeting officially, since their rooms got changed. They’re not going to be able to help you out with much of anything for the next month or so.
If Tony chooses to kick Nightblade when he’s down and attack again next turn, the same test would be pulled again. Say, this time Tony gets three more successes. Nightblade’s actions are only out for the next three turns, even though he’s got one turn of hurt left from the first attack.
All you need is a few hundred bucks, a list of names out of the telephone book and a PO box, and you’ve got an official corporation. That corporation can then go around buying and selling things, making deals, earning favors and as long as your name isn’t one of the bogus ones on the Board of Directors, it will be very hard to trace any of these things back to you. It’s a trick used by mortals since time immemorial, and you’d be a fool to think Kindred haven’t picked up on it yet. Of course, corporations aren’t the only group that can be used as a front for various shady activities: the same could be said about gangs, cults and secret societies.
Besides helping to defray culpability, front organizations give characters a little more flexibility in what they can do with their Allies and Status merits in exchange for their players enriching the game and making the chronicle a little more interesting.
Assets: Just like every character has a sheet of traits that define it in rules terms, every front is defined by a list of assets. These assets are made up of a bunch of social merits, typically Allies, Contacts, Resources, Retainers, but sometimes more esoteric things like Haven, Staff or Mentor. All these things have ranks, just like characters have ranks in their merits.
As an example, we could take the LaBlanca crime family; their assets would read: Resources 3, Allies: County Coroner 2, Allies: City Council 2, Contacts 1, Retainer 3, Status (Criminal) 4.
The list of assets represents the things that can reliably be exploited out of the front, not necessarily everything it controls. For example, both UniGroup Oil Conglomerate and the LaBlancas both have Resources 3 among their assets. UniGroup controls vastly more money than the LaBlancas, but its funds are closely watched for abuse or misappropriation, while the LaBiancas are free to spend their wherever they want. In the end, a Kindred manipulating UniGroup has exactly as much money to exploit as one working with the LaBlancas.
Buying In:
Anyone with the Allies or Status merits in one of these front groups can exploit the front’s assets. Just like most merits, anyone who spends the experience can buy Allies in a front; these groups are comprised of far more individuals than just the player characters who utilize them, and those individuals can be manipulated, extorted, blackmailed and otherwise coerced into helping you just like anybody can. Buying Status in a front is a little trickier, since that merit represents more overt, formal control over the organization. Any time a character raises their Status in a front, every other character who shares Status in the same group is notified of the change. If you’re not on their good side, that Status might not last long.
Cashing In: Having Allies and Status in a front allows a character to use the front’s assets for his own purposes. In every downtime turn, a character can “swap” his Allies and/or Status action for one on the front’s list of assets, up to whatever level the character has in Allies or Status.
As an example, let’s say that Tony Testafrenzzi has Status (LaBiancas) 2 and Allies (LaBiancas) 3. He can use his Status merit to take advantage of the LaBlancas’ pull in the coroner’s office and get a death ruled as an accident. He could then use his Allies merit to take advantage of the family’s reputation in the criminal world (in other words, the family’s Status) to get a meeting with a ring of heroin dealers operating out of Wrigleyville. But since the LaBlancas’ criminal Status is higher than Tony’s pull with the family, he only gets to use the lower of the two ranks. Similarly, if Tony used his Allies to take advantage of the family’s Contacts, he’d only get the equivalent of a Contacts 2 action, despite his Allies merit of 4.
Knocking Down: The real fun begins when two characters try to use the same asset in a given front. Since the group only has so much to go around, only one character can benefit from an asset in one turn; this, of course, is the character with the most dots in the appropriate merit. In the case of a tie, the asset goes to a character with Status over one with Allies. If it’s still tied, the Storyteller will make a test for both parties, similarly to an attack.
That’s not it, though. While the front is scrambling to figure out who gets what, regular day-to-day business gets ignored. After the contested asset is used, its rank drops by one, permanently. Both characters keep the same level of Allies and Status, but the front they’re exploiting will have a little less to offer next time around.
Kicking Out: Obviously, with everyone competing for scarce resources, someone might eventually want to knock their rivals out of the way. This is handled like a regular attack, as above, with a few exceptions:
A character with Allies or Status in a front can only be attacked using other Allies or Status in the same front.
Characters with Status have an inherent advantage over those with Allies. When Status is used to attack a character’s Allies (or vice-versa), the character holding Status gets a +2 bonus to the test (on top of the +2 he can get for defending).
Status can permanently change the face of a front. If a character with Status attacks another character’s Allies or Status in a front, the test is unopposed. If the attacker gets successes equal to the victim’s dots, that victim loses a dot from their merit permanently instead of having their actions suppressed for future turns. This is why upward mobility is something of a foreign concept to a lot of Kindred.
Building Up: Players can (and should) work at creating their own front organizations; just submit a writeup for what the group is all about and then work with a Storyteller to build up a list of assets. When creating an asset list for the group, the Storyteller has final say, but obviously the group will be able to do more or less what the player is looking for. Typically, the Storyteller will build a starting asset sheet with fifty experience worth of merits (at the regular price, not the crazy covenant discount rates).
The assets of a front can be increased in two ways. First, whenever a character spends experience to increase his Status in the group, the group gains a like amount of points to buy into new Merits (this also means that the group loses points whenever anyone loses Status). Also, anyone with Status in the group can use that downtime action to manage the group’s resources; the Storyteller makes a test appropriate to the type of group it is (Attribute + Skill + Status), and the group gains a pool of experience equal to the character’s successes.
Any character with Status in a group can use an action to order the front to spend its saved experience; all the typical rules that apply to a character spending to increase merits apply to a front organization doing the same. If two characters both try to spend experience in the same turn and the group doesn’t have enough to pay for both, the character with the most Status gets his way, as with most conflicts.