Running Downtime

Determine how involved your group wants downtime to be at the start of the game. If your players vary greatly in preference, you might need to find a middle ground, or some way to give the players least interested in downtime something they would find compelling. You can adjust downtime depth as the game goes along, and you might find it becomes more important to the players as their connection to the setting grows stronger.

Pay attention to the amount of real-world time you spend in downtime and the level of detail. Downtime should rarely last a whole session. Usually, a half hour between significant adventures is about right, and 15 minutes for shorter lulls in the action, such as when PCs return to a port of call briefly in the middle of an adventure. You can extend this time as needed for more detailed roleplaying scenes.

For the level of detail, it's important to give more than just an overview, but often the basics will do. “A fleet of ships await boarding clearance, and a uniformed vesk officer puts you to work double-checking manifests” might do for using Piloting to Earn Income, and “Your shipment of UPBs arrives late, but you're able to complete the armor” could be enough for Crafting. Go deeper if the player sets out to do something specific or asks questions you think have potential for an interesting story, but be careful with too much detail, as you run the risk of boring most of the table with minutiae.

Downtime is more satisfying when the PCs work toward longterm goals rather than perform disconnected tasks. You can ask players what their PCs' goals are, and also look for storylines they're interested in that you can use as seeds for long-term goals. Long-term goals might include running a business, befriending their starship's artificial intelligence, establishing an arcane academy, returning a species from the brink of extinction, running for political office, or becoming a pop star. If players don't have clear ideas for their goals, look at their backgrounds, NPCs they know, and things they've expressed interest in during adventures to develop some suggestions. Remember that you're not trying to get them to accept your exact suggestions but to pick a goal they really like.

Long-term goals should shape the game, and reinforcing their progress is key. Show changes, good and bad, that result from the PCs' efforts, both in downtime and on their adventures if applicable. This doesn't have to be subtle! You can directly say, “You've been trying to get an audition with a media label, but the infosphere gossip campaign orchestrated by your rival diva means nobody's calling you back.”

Think ahead in stages. For instance, if a PC wants to be a pop star, you might have them...

• Start by performing on the infosphere as a virtual avatar.
• Get enough fans that you plan a live show.
• Sell so many tickets you book another concert at a bigger venue.
• Get a small but loyal following.
• Sign with a media label.
• You're invited to perform with Strawberry Machine Cake as the opening act in their upcoming galactic tour!

And so on. You can deliver each of these details through a little vignette. For example, if you use the fifth bullet point, you might describe the bodyguards, manager, and other label staff as NPCs in later downtime activities or skill encounters. Downtime goals are a great way to weave the PCs' agency into the story.

At the start of a given day of downtime, have all the players declare what their characters are trying to accomplish that day. You can then resolve one character's efforts at a time (or group some characters together, if they're cooperating on a single project). Some activities, such as Earning Income, require only a simple roll and some embellishment from you and the player. Other activities are more involved, incorporating encounters or exploration. You can call on the players to play out their downtime activities in any order, though it's often best to do the simplest ones first. Players who aren't part of a more involved activity might have time to take a break from the table while the more complex activities are played out.

Characters can undertake their daily preparations if they want, just as they would on a day of exploration. Ask players to establish a standard set of preparations, and you can assume the characters go through the same routine every day unless their players say otherwise.

Running downtime during a long time off—like several weeks, months, or even years—can be more challenging. However, it's also an opportunity for the characters to progress toward long-term plans rather than worrying about day-today activities. Because so much time is involved, characters don't roll a check for each day. Instead, they deal with a few special events, average out the rest of the downtime, and expend any resources, such as crafting materials.

Players will often look to you for tasks they might take on during downtime, especially if they're looking to Earn Income. You should also interject special events to surprise your players and add interesting scenes. If you need some quick ideas for tasks characters might offer a PC, look at the tables below for inspiration. The Earn Income tasks are arranged with tasks appropriate for low-level PCs first, but most can be adapted to the level you need. For the events, you might need to “zoom in” to focus on a special scene or even a short encounter or adventure.

After an adventure yields a windfall, the characters might have a number of items they want to sell. Likewise, when they're flush with currency, they might want to stock up on gear. It usually takes 1 hour of downtime to sell off a few goods or shop around to buy a couple items. It can take longer to sell off a large number of goods, expensive items, illegal goods, or items that aren't in high demand.

An item can usually be purchased at its full Price and sold for half its Price. Supply and demand can affect these numbers, but only occasionally. However, the game leaves it up to you to determine what items the PCs can and can't purchase and the final market Price for them. Settlements the size of a town or bigger typically have at least one vendor for basic, common gear, and even magic and pharmaceutical items of 1st level. Beyond that, it all depends on how much you want to allow the players to determine their abilities and how much verisimilitude you want in your game. If the settlement has access to a planetwide infosphere, it's usually possible for your PCs to find what they need that way, even if it takes 1-2 days for their item to be delivered via courier or drone. You can set the specifics where you need, but let's look at three possibilities.

PCs can buy what they want where they want. You gloss over the details of markets. PCs can sell whatever they want for half the Price and buy any item to which they have access at full Price. This approach is focused on expediency over verisimilitude and is likely to reduce the number of unusual or distinctive items the PCs have, as many players seek out the ones that most directly support their characters' strengths. This still means there's a limit on purchasing uncommon or rarer items, but you could even do away with rarity if your group wants, or add a surcharge instead (depending on your group's play style, that could be anywhere from 10% to 100% for uncommon items, and 25% to 500% if you also want to open up all rare items).

PCs can buy what they want but must put in additional effort. If they want to sell or buy items, PCs must be in a location where the markets can support that. They can usually sell a single item for half its Price, but the Price for selling something already plentiful on the market could be as low as 25% (or they can ship it to a buyer in another market, if they can find one, making 40% of the item's Price after paying for shipping). Buying an item usually costs the full Price; buying higher-level items (or uncommon items if they're available at all) requires seeking out a special vendor or NPC and can take extra time, representing getting the item shipped to the PCs. They might be unable to find the item at all even after their time investment, based on the settlement's parameters. This approach allows PCs to determine some of their items, but it forces them to really work to get more powerful items and discourages looting every enemy to sell off fairly ordinary armor. This can be the most work for you but can make the world feel diverse and complex.

High-end markets are rare or nonexistent. PCs get what they find in adventures and can Craft their own items, if you allow them to get formulas in some way. If you have high-end marketplaces at all, their selections are small. They sell items at full Price and have difficulty attaining the funds to buy more items. They might purchase items for half of the Price but are far more selective about what they take. If you use this approach, PCs are far more likely to use strange items they find but might be dissatisfied or even underpowered depending on what items you give them. Even in this style of game, you might want to allow them to get upgraded weapons and armor fairly easily, or make sure you award those on a regular basis.

Universal Polymer Base Conversion: You can reduce the amount of time it takes for PCs to sell items by allowing PCs to reduce the items to UPBs. These services can be found at most major settlements and allows the conversion of any tech gear into its base components, resulting in 50% of the equipment's value in UPBs. You might lower the redeemed value up to 10% to represent the cost of using the facilities or the material lost in the process. Magitech and magic gear will only give up to 25% of the item's value, as most of the cost of those items is in the magic that's lost in the process of converting the items to UPBs.

While the amount of credits the PCs can earn during short periods of downtime is significantly less than the value of the loot they gain while adventuring, it can still serve as a satisfying bonus. The PCs might use their credits to outfit themselves better, donate it toward a good cause, or pool it together to save for a major purchase. If you find that a PC tends to forget about their credits or save it up more cautiously than they really need to, offer them rewarding opportunities to spend it. For instance, they might be approached to contribute to a charity in desperate need or sponsor an artist looking for a patron.

Each full 24-hour period a character spends resting during downtime allows them to recover double what they would for an 8-hour rest. They must spend this time resting in a comfortable and secure location, typically in bed.

If they spend significantly longer in bed rest—usually from a few days to a week of downtime—they recover from all damage and most nonpermanent conditions. Characters affected by diseases, long-lasting poisons, or similar afflictions might need to continue attempting saves during downtime. Some curses, permanent injuries, and other situations that require magic or special care to remove don't end automatically during long-term rest.

The retraining rules allow a player to change some character choices, but they rely on you, as the GM, to decide whether the retraining requires a teacher, how long it takes, if it has any associated costs, and if the ability can be retrained at all. It's reasonable for a character to retrain most choices, and you should allow them. Only choices that are truly intrinsic to the character, like a mystic's connection, might be off-limits without extraordinary circumstances. Consider what effort each PC puts forth as they retrain, so you can describe how they feel their abilities change. What kind of research and practice do they do? If they have a teacher, what advice does that teacher give?

You can run a campaign without retraining if you want the PCs to be more bound by their decisions or are running a game without downtime. However, if your campaign doesn't use downtime rules but a player really regrets a decision made while building or leveling up their character, you might make an exception for them by letting them simply change the decision.

Some players enjoy making retraining into a story. Use NPCs the character already knows as teachers, have a character undertake intense research at a university, or ground the retraining in the game's narrative by making it the consequence of something that happened to the character in a previous session.