Money in Downtime

The downtime system isn't meant to deal with investing credits, receiving interest, or the like just to make more credits. Rather, investing should result in changes in the universe. PCs might invest in founding a museum and find on their return that the collection has grown. If they fund an expedition, they might get access to interesting trade goods later on.

When characters are investing in a major endeavor, the amount of in-world time invested often matters more than the credits. While spending additional credits greatly increases the efficiency of Crafting an item, you can't build a shopping mall in a day just because you have enough money to pay for the whole process. Downtime is a good opportunity for characters to start long processes that can continue in the background as the PCs adventure, provided they can find a trustworthy, competent person to run things in their stead.

If the PCs have a very long time between adventures, especially years, they have the opportunity to collect a great deal of credits through downtime. Use the guidelines for average progress and the Cost of Living table to figure out how much they get. Because you're trying to convey that a long time has passed, have them spend it before you jump to the end of downtime. What did they invest in during those years? What drew their interest? Did their fortunes rise or fall? Did they acquire interesting objects or hire compelling people? Consider this expenditure another way to show how the PCs impact the universe.

Tracking cost of living is usually best reserved for months or years of downtime since that's when someone might earn a substantial amount of money from downtime activities and find that costs really add up. You can usually ignore it if there are only a few days of downtime, though if a PC is roleplaying a fine or extravagant lifestyle, you might charge them during even short periods of downtime to reinforce the story they're telling. For short periods of downtime, characters are usually just passing through a settlement or spending a bit of time there. You can use the weekly cost of living listed in the Cost of Living table and divide by 7 to determine the combined prices of hotel rooms and meals per day. Deduct these costs from a character's funds after they gain any credits from their other downtime activities.

A character can live off the land instead, but each day they do, they typically use the Subsist activity to the exclusion of any other downtime activity.