Campaign News January 31

PLAYERS & CHARACTERS

Although there are now four potential new players who have expressed interest in joining, none of them played in January. Nor was there any participation in the online session. In fact, only one of the four sessions scheduled for the month was attended, and that by only two players. This was not the surge of participation I predicted in mid-December last year, but I remain optimistic that it will pick up shortly.

I made use of the lull to play a group of characters about 650 years in the past in fictional Wessex. Doing so has been not just enjoyable, but good practice for competitive play and an opportunity for me to refine my refereeing tools and techniques. I may write up how that has played out so far. 

As advertised, all the characters were synchronized to the "global clock" two days ago. Today every character in the game is at April 9, 1480. Of those eleven extant characters, only one executed productive downtime orders with its slack time.

SCHEDULE

The next scheduled session is Tuesday, February 3rd. As a reminder, the full schedule for the year is laid out graphically for your convenience. Please RSVP for each session a week in advance if possible. Besides being helpful to me, this gives you the chance to make plans with the other players in the session without using session time on such decision-making and even sorting out any equipment purchases, mercenary hiring, and so on ahead of the session. That leaves more time in the session for gold and XP acquisition!

TIPS & TRICKS

Disease and Infestation 

As it happens, a player asked about disease a couple of days ago, and a character happened to be affected by a parasitic infestation with the check that was due today.

Last July I touched briefly on the game's disease and parasitic infestation rules. Recall that every month, every PC in the game needs to make rolls to check for these health mishaps. I make these rolls in the players' private Discord channels so you can see your characters' rolls there. The odds are normally quite low that anything will befall the character, and in the cases when it does, this is typically that the character is simply unable to go off adventuring or the like for a period of time while the affliction runs its course and the character recovers.

If the character is not meeting his or her upkeep requirements for the month when this check occurs however, the chances of a mishaps increase, and the consequences are more likely to be fatal.

If a character is not meeting upkeep requirements, he or she is "sleeping rough," and will add the "filth" and "improperly cooked meat" modifiers. This increases the likelihood of contracting a disease by 1% and of infestation by 3%. Even with these modifiers, the chances are quite low, however a number of these afflictions, if even moderately severe, can leave the character "totally disabled" for a week or more. For the "un-housed" character, that means death.

In the 21 game months that this game has been running, with a total of 27 characters, there have been four occasions of a character suffering from disease or infestation. In the first case, the character was not meeting his upkeep and knowingly exposed himself to communicable diseases. He became completely disabled for 3 weeks and permanently lost 3 points each of strength and constitution. [Today that character would have died, but I had not yet clearly stated that rule to the players, so being "totally disabled" while sleeping rough was not fatal.]

The second and third cases happened in the same month and location as each other, oddly enough. One of the characters was mildly afflicted and couldn't perform strenuous activity for a week. The other one died from stomach parasites. Both of these characters were meeting their upkeep requirements and had no penalties, just bad luck.

The fourth case happened today. This time to a character "sleeping rough." Although the respiratory infestation caused no permanent damage, the character is totally disabled for a week, and will have another week of no strenuous activity and recovery. This is the last character not making monthly upkeep to survive being totally disabled.

I imagine that many players would wonder why these rules are in the game and why they should be followed. Aside from the pat answer that not following the rules equates to not playing the game, I can see very interesting implications from these rules.

Having a chance of your character dying for really no good reason, merely the passage of game time, creates pressure on the player to preserve the character. The first way to do this is to meet the character's upkeep requirements. That upkeep costs 100 gold per level per month. A character that is being actively played should have no problem keeping up with that monetary demand. The gold only becomes a problem if the character is allowed to languish in inactivity too long. The second way to preserve one's character, is to take direct precautions. Any disease or infestation contracted naturally from these check can be cured by a 5th level cleric or a 3rd level druid. Hire one. Or do a favor for the local church in exchange for a guarantee of care. At the very least, hire a house servant to take care of the character should he or she fall ill. Any character that has survived a single, moderately successful dungeon delve ought to be able to afford a house and a couple of servants, probably a guard or two.

Playing actively and planning ahead are the bulwarks against losing a character to random disease.

 

Campaign News January 13

Getting the Most from Downtime

Characters all have a great deal more time on their hands than that which is played out during game sessions. Skillful players will use this time to their characters' advantage. 

Character Agency 

One key to understanding how downtime works and how to use it to your characters’ advantage is consciously considering the level of “character agency” the character has in different circumstances. That is to say, how much direct control you are exerting over your character as its player versus how much control is handed over to the character itself (via the management of your impartial referee). For simplicity, I’ve described four levels of agency here, but it is of course a continuum, not four discrete settings.

1. Immediate: This low level of character agency is typical in actual session play. The referee makes only minimal assumptions about the character’s actions, relying on the player to respond, moment-by-moment, to the circumstances of the setting.
2. Managed: This level of character agency is often applied in session play as well, when time is accelerated for cross-country travel, resting periods, and so on. The player doesn’t describe actions for every moment of play, but rather has indicated what the character will do and a stop condition, such as “my character returns to town.” At this level of agency the referee will not present every minor detail of the setting that might be noticed by the character to the player. Instead the referee only mentions those circumstances which might reasonably cause the player to consider the character changing his plan, or otherwise demand attention, such as a possibly hostile encounter.
3. Removed: Outside a session, a player may provide a general disposition or high-level course of action for a character to pursue such as performing duties in an organization to which he belongs or traveling from one town to another between sessions. At this level of agency, the character is trusted to handle the details of whatever happens without player intervention until the end of the character instructions are reached--unless something extraordinary happens in the setting that could influence the player’s decision. The referee will report the consequences after the fact, possibly even conducting combat on the character’s behalf.
4. Autopilot: In this rarely employed level of character agency, the player instructs the referee to fully manage the character’s actions and choices. The player might describe instructions for the character to a very specific level or only a very general one. The player might also indicate conditions under which the character should exit “autopilot” mode. While in the mode, the character might encounter any number of situations which require decision-making that unless the player has specified how to be handled, are decided by the referee.

In normal session play, we switch, largely unconsciously, between the “immediate” and “managed” modes of game play. In downtime, the “removed” mode is typical, but “autopilot” is a useful option in some circumstances.

Downtime Options 

Idling: When a player has not provided any instructions for their character outside the session, the referee will assume that the character is “idling.” That is, the character accomplishes nothing, remains where he or she is (hopefully within the relative safety of civilization), and incurs the normal upkeep expenses. The character is very likely to stay alive, but will not advance in any way. 

Training: Most of the players in this campaign have, at some point, taken advantage of downtime to improve their characters or accomplish objectives using a "removed" or "autopilot" level of character agency. Doing so requires having an objective in mind. Learning to read and write has been a downtime objective for a couple of characters in this campaign, for example. Training for the next level is another good example.

Working: It's possible for a character to make part or all of his or her upkeep costs in a job. Job pay can even exceed those costs for characters who have developed sufficiently valuable skills such as those needed to be a spy, a sage, an alchemist, an engineer, and a few others as described in the DMG. This option can work in downtime at any level of character agency. Some of the options do carry risks, however. Many jobs aren't well-suited to a character sporadically disappearing on adventures and later reappearing either.

Research & Information Gathering: Another good use of downtime which requires little in the way of specific goals or instructions, is information gathering, or researching a specific topic. This might be conducted at any level of character agency, but would typically be a removed sort of activity. Most likely, the player would want to know the results once the character knows them, and possibly issue new orders for subsequent downtime based on those. 

Characters have the same tactical infinity in downtime that they do in session play. How that is used is limited only by the player's acquired knowledge of the setting, ability to think ahead, and willingness to investment time in the game outside of sessions. That investment can be quite low and still produce valuable results..

Operationalizing Downtime

Outside the game session time passes for characters at the same rate as real world time, so three days after the last session in which you played a character, three days have passed for that character. In the game sessions, however, time is sped up and slowed down as desired or needed for game play. Most often, an evening's session of 3 or 4 hours will cover several days, maybe even weeks, of character time. This means that characters in the session have moved further into the future than characters who were not in the session. That creates opportunities.

Whichever character(s) have been played the furthest into the future set the "global game clock." That date advances one day in the game world each day in the real world. Characters that were not played in the most recent session will be further in the past, and the gap between their date and the "global game" date is what I call their "slack days." Slack days can be used in downtime instantaneously. In this manner, a character that is behind another might use downtime to travel a couple of days to where that character is without the global clock also moving forward a couple of days.

To gain the most advantage from downtime, consider how much time you as a player have to dedicate to managing it between sessions.

• A fairly small investment is sufficient to set a character on a specific objective with a high level of character agency such as learning a skill or finding out information.
• If you have sufficient time to manage your character in more detail between sessions, it's possible to accomplish more without knowing ahead of time all of what it is you'd like to accomplish with the character. As their initial steps are completed and reported by the referee, you can issue new instructions.
• A player can also take the approach of trying to accomplish a more ambitious goal without managing it so closely by setting the character off with agency closer to "autopilot," having the referee manage the character's actions.

I will generally err on the side of providing less character agency rather than more, if it's unclear whether the circumstances encountered in downtime trigger player intervention based on the player's instructions. A player wishing to send a character deep into its own agency will need to be quite explicit about that intention.

Conclusion

Use your character's time wisely and it will get more done, provide you with more information about the setting and the game, and advance more quickly. I am always happy to help players who are unsure how to use their characters' time figure that out!

  

Campaign News December 28

There are no updates on characters, players, or schedule since the last news posted on the 17th, so it's just Tip & Tricks today.

TIPS & TRICKS

All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given. - Gandalf

How to Not Waste Downtime

Characters have limited lifespans. Although their "natural" longevity could be as high as 139 years or as low as 62, it's most commonly it's 92 to 97 years. With 1:1 time, who cares what we do with their time between sessions? The character, which is likely in his or her teens or 20s at the start of play, will outlive the player anyway, right? Well, not likely.

Besides the fact that characters are subject to far more deadly violence than we players are, using magic and sustaining attacks from the supernatural creatures in the game can unnaturally age the characters. They are checking monthly against the (albeit fairly unlikely) chance of random death by disease or infection too. In any case, what our characters accomplish in their fictional lifetimes isn't so much the question as what we, as their players, accomplish with them as our game pieces.

A week or two of time passes in both the real world and the game world between each session. Each session our characters miss adds "slack" to their game clocks as the other characters who did play in the session advance the "global clock." If your characters don't use that time, they lose it. They can only use it if their players give orders for the use of their time to the referee in advance of that time passing. As such, as soon as you have ended a session with your character you should be issuing down time orders for what they're doing next. Every day you wait deciding, or getting around to it, they lose to inaction.

One source of resistance in players against issuing down time orders seems to be uncertainty about what they can do, and what would be valuable for them to do. As in session play, your character is operating with "tactical infinity" to take any action. The actions are only limited by the rules of the game and the integrity of the fictional world which, in most physical, social, economic, and other respects generally resembles our own real world. To that is added magic and monsters and the supernatural, creating a great latitude of possibilities. This wide ranging freedom of action often leads, ironically, to less action being taken.

Here are some suggestions to help players cut through the unlimited possibilities to reach some of the most practically useful choices early in their careers.

• Learn to read & write.
  The culture of the Erin1478 setting is not pervasively literate. Player characters cannot read and write unless they have acquired literacy as part of their class training (clerics, magic-users, and illusionists) or their family background skills (most commonly mercantile). The practical benefits of literacy, even in the fictional AD&D world, are legion. As characters progress in levels, social standing, and political power, illiteracy will increasing become a serious handicap. Acquiring literacy can be accomplished in as little as two months, and the rules are built in a way that attempts to simulate the reality of acquiring the ability while permitting the character to interlace that activity with session play, provided the player pays attention to the rules constraints.
• Gather information.
  Most general information such as the existence of nearby dungeons, the general political situation, recent regional news, and so on, is automatically acquired with a week's worth of effort. No skill or charisma checks required. Specialized information: what is monster XYZ's weakness, where can this rare item / plant / animal be found, or are there any higher level NPCs of a particular class around here, can likewise be found with a little more time or with specific actions such as hiring a sage.
• Plan your next expedition.
  This is the number one best thing you can do as a skillful player. Talk with other players about the next session and get the legwork for it done. Hiring mercenaries, upgrading equipment, figuring out what more information needs to be researched and researching it in downtime uses your between session days instead of your in-session days. It also means that more of the actual session time is available for taking actions that acquire gold and experience.
• Sort out your character's domestic situation.
  A few character classes are required to limit themselves to the wealth that they can carry and that is a significant handicap. If your character is so limited, or has to donate some part of his wealth, sort this out outside the session. Convert coins to gems. Buy a mount. Find a good cause to support. Whatever it is your class requires. If you're not so limited, find a place to stash your stuff. Hire people to guard it and make sure they're loyal. Carrying pounds and pounds of treasure into the dungeon or wilderness makes no sense.
• Find a patron.
  For lower level characters, hiring on as a henchman can be helpful in a number of ways. Most obviously, the money. Henchmen are paid 100 gold per level per month (their upkeep costs) plus gifts and treasure shares. A patron can also give the player who is unsure what he or she wants to do with his character some direction. Perhaps the character will be a loyal minion, then trusted lieutenant, and maybe even heir to their patron. Maybe the player will learn that he or she has been playing for the wrong team. In any case, treasure and experience flows to the character from this relationship. The player who researches possible patrons in downtime will more likely end up with a compatible match and a satisfactory mission in session.

Anyone who feels unsure about how to couch their down time orders, or in what order to do things, or isn't feeling clear and confident about the concept, should just reach out to the referee. I will be very happy to help however I can!