Downtimes

Downtimes are the period of time between games during which your character can perform actions. For example you can manipulate the world of the mortals, make money, research, create pieces, interact with NPCs, visit other Courts. This is by no means a definitive list and you can do pretty much anything you can think of.

The standard downtime between each session lasts 5 years of in game time unless the storyteller says otherwise.

During your downtimes there are some standard things you can do.

- Update your character using Character Points - Update Boons - Purchase Soft Merits - Write to NPCs - Carry out Actions - Use Pieces - Spread Rumours

You cannot change your status allocations during your downtime. That activity can only be performed during Court.

It is important to remember that you can trade items, ghouls, actions, information, pieces etc. during Court. If you put in effort during your downtimes the more leverage you may have in Court.

Lifestyle
Lifestyle comes as a five point soft merit, i.e. it must be purchased for each standard downtime. You level of lifestyle dictates how many Downtime Actions you can spend.

This is because if you do not have the resources you spend the majority of your time sustaining yourself and therefore do not have the time to perform other tasks.

The best way to solve this problem is to find an investor.

Common Actions
Actions can be anything that can conceivably be done as one single task that could take less than a couple of years. Below is a list of common downtime actions and some examples.

- Increasing your own influence - Attacking someone elses influence - Creating a piece - Strengthening a piece - Attacking a piece - Creating a Ghoul - Research - Making money- Travelling to Other Courts

Example Actions
Sarah shall do research into the plague of locusts by investigating in the local library.

George shall travel to Egypt and deliver a message of hostilities to the Prince of Cairo and then guage the response of the Court there. (FAIL)

Paula shall increase her Industrial influence by throwing lavish partys for key members of the field.

Mark shall follow James for 2 years and see what locations he goes to.

Laura sets up a new charity feeding the homeless, and uses this to get blood.

Creating a Ghoul
To create a ghoul you simply have to identify the mortal you wish to ghoul and coerce them into drinking your blood.

For each downtime you maintain your ghoul you must spend one point of Blood.

Ghouls have the same stats as pieces and can be used as if the Ghoul was a piece.

Travelling
Travelling as a Vampire is incredibly difficult, as you can only travel during the night. Unless of course you have a private jet in which you can box up for the day...

Travelling internationally is rarely done amongst Kindred, but if it is done it is generally only done by those with a very high lifestyle.

Also it is worth noting that, when travelling to other areas, you may encounter people that are not entirely welcoming.

Pieces
A piece can be used for several things. Owning a piece means that it can do actions on your behalf, usually very specialised and designed for that specific action. For example owning a Bank would make you money each downtime.

Creating a Piece
A piece can be an organisation, a collaberation, a building, a group of people, an institution or the like.

Creating a piece takes downtime actions, resources or blood and depending on what you want your piece to do there are several aspects of pieces you can work with.

Each piece has 4 stats.


 * Attack - Its capability to attack other pieces.
 * Defence - Its capability to defend itself from attacks from other pieces, influences and infiltration from other Kindred.
 * Acumen - This is the pieces ability to enact the role that it has been given. The higher its acumen the better the piece is. For example if the pieces acumen is 4 and it is to provide blood it would provide 4 blood per downtime.
 * Loyalty - This is the pieces loyalty to you. When this falls to 0 then the piece will either have gone rogue or will belong to someone else.

Each of these aspects can be increased by spending downtimes or resources to improve. The more specific you are the more interesting the piece can be.

When a piece attacks another piece if the attack is successful against the pieces defense then depending on the attack the acumen or loyalty will decrease.

You can trade pieces with other members of Court.