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Squire
 
Group: System Moderators
Last Login: 2 days ago @ 6:35 PM
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Gorram it! Having spent over an hour typing this up, I accidentally closed the tab and have to start again. Sigh...
Anyhow, here is the core structure of the downtime system for which I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with baited breath, or some other equivalent display of anticipation. This post covers the core rules, though Jon and I will be getting in touch with individual crews to discuss various financial details, especially with regards to your ships. This will occur primarily through email, and/or through the Crew Forums set up and run by StormDancer (http://fireflycrews.myfreeforum.org/index.php), which I heartily advise you sign up to if you haven’t already. Also on those forums are a set of excellent designs and deck plans for the various ships in the Blue Sun catalogue (also produced by Mr StormDancer) which are definitely worth checking out. Kudos to the gentleman.
Downtime occurs over three IC months, and consists of three things – earning money by doing jobs, paying bills, and engaging in the age-old tradition of self-improvement (id est, learning new skills). Normally, you perform one job and spend a month’s worth of training per month – thus, you perform three jobs, and spend three months learning skills in a standard downtime. However, if you’ve raked in the money at the previous event, you can spend less time working (only doing one job) and more time learning (packing four months of training into the space of three). Vice versa, if times are hard and you need every cent you can earn, you can perform four jobs in the three months, but only get the equivalent on one month’s training done. No matter how you split you time, your costs remain the same – you have to eat, after all.
Skill progression is quite straightforward. Each skill takes a month to learn for each point it costs at start-up, plus one – so a three point skill takes four months of training to learn. The additional cost for lacking prerequisite backgrounds still applies, as do reduced points costs from merits. If you have a teacher to aid you (another member of the crew who has the skill already) the skill does not incur the extra month of training – so a three point skill for which you have a teacher only takes three months.
Also note that half-learnt skills do still have an effect in uptime, though the precise benefits depend on the skill, and on the amount of time you’ve already spent learning it – contact an organiser for details.
You can spend one month of skill training on personal training instead of skills – this allows you to spend the rest of the downtime with +1 to any single background, which can lower the cost of certain skills, and this effect lasts until the end of the next event.
Jobs are representative of the range of work that a character would do over the space of a normal month, and are more an abstract mechanic than a literal definition of how you spent your downtime. The precise details of what that job represents, what planets you visited, how many jobs you actually did, et cetera, is up to you. Equally, how you contributed to the job is up to you – the job may have been “professional gambling”, but whilst the gambler did the actual ‘work’, the pilot got paid for flying him from place to place, the surgeon was on hand to patch him up when a bad loser decided to get pay back, and so on.
Each job or mission requires a (short) description of what it involved – were you smuggling, salvaging, hauling cargo, gambling, preaching, engaging in acts of sponsored violence, servicing clients of the Companion’s guild, engaging in a faeces-hurling contest with a monkey – no, wait, scratch that last one. Characters with relevant skills (especially Guild/Gang/etc. memberships) will make more money from a job than those without. Note that the number of characters engaged in a mission doesn’t affect the money that each one gets – more people means bigger missions, but a smaller percentage each. Equally, the description of the mission won’t affect the money you get, beyond how it ties in with your skills. What does affect the value of the mission is how risky it is – low risk missions don’t pay as well, but you stand almost no chance of getting hurt in the process. ‘Normal’ risk missions pay normal rates, but can involve complications, whilst high risk missions are liable to get someone hurt badly, but pay well for it. It is also possible for a job to go badly and so pay much less than you expected – again, low-risk jobs are less likely to do this, whilst it’s a real concern for high-risk jobs. Remember that ‘normal’ risk isn’t normal risk for that job description, but for work in general – cargo hauling is typically low risk, whilst mercenary work is typically high risk. It all depends on the kind of trouble you want to get into. The other factor influencing pay is the number and skill level of Cortexers on board – as they can find the best jobs and the best opportunities, they raise the income of everyone on their ship.
Jobs are decided for a whole crew - so if one character is smuggling, everyone is smuggling. For that reason, it’s worth finding something that everyone can contribute to. The alternative is engage in multiple missions. Whilst multiple missions do mean doing two (or more) jobs at once, you have to split your crew between them, so overall they pay the same – the advantage is that if you have crew with widely different skills, you can still get them all doing missions that fit their abilities. The number of multiple missions that you can divide your crew over is determined by the number of functioning shuttles on your ship – each shuttle allows an extra job beyond the first. Each mission can have a different description, and a different level of risk, so one half of your crew could spend the month smuggling low-risk contraband, whilst the other half spend the month engaged in high-risk bounty hunting.
A good example of this is Inara – whilst the crew of the Serenity is off committing crime, she stands to make a damn sight more money if she services clients, as that’s where her skills are most useful.
It’s also worth pointing out the downtime benefits of the Pilot and Surgeon skills. It is not possible for a crew to work without a Pilot – if you don’t have one, or yours is put out of action, you have to hire one for a month, and that really ain’t cheap. Surgeons, meanwhile, reduce the consequences of a mission going bad, especially when people are hurt. Characters that ended an event on -4 body, or who are reduced to -4 body during the course of downtime mission, only earn half as much as normal for the next month (as they must spend time recovering), and cannot use their Pilot, Navigate, Surgeon, Mechanic or Cortexer skills. They can still learn new skills as normal, though – we aren’t that cruel – and will be back to full health by the next month.
Each player has personal costs per month– the cost of food, clothing et cetera, which is multiplied by their ‘luxury factor’, plus the cost of interest on a character’s spent investments. The luxury factor determines how well you treat yourself – if you spoil your character with fine clothes and food, you perform better (+1 to any single background) but must spend twice as much. Conversely, if you scrimp and save, you will find yourself tired, listless and having difficulty functioning (-1 to all backgrounds), but can save half the cost of feeding yourself. Luxury factor applies to a whole downtime – you can’t treat yourself one month and starve yourself the next.
Note that if you combine personal training with a high luxury factor then rather than stacking the +1s, you receive a single permanent +1 to a single background.
Ship costs are a tad more complicated, and are almost entirely crew specific, however, in brief summary-
A ship costs money for repairs plus fuel. The cost of repairs is increased by the age of a ship (up to 200% for a forty-year old ship), its size, and the complexity of its systems, but reduced by the number and skill level of Mechanics in the crew. Fuel costs are greater for larger ships, but are reduced by the number of Navigators on the crew.
That pretty much sums it up. As I said, we’ll be in touch with both players and crews to sort out details regarding the ships that you bought, what you’re doing to them, and your personal funds, plus we’ll be writing up a cheat-sheet to summarise this post and provide a step-by-step guide to submitting a downtime.
From next Monday, crews and characters also have two weeks to submit an open downtime which may take any format and cover any downtime action. This is primarily to allow players to notify the organisers of anything that they wish to do before the next event which is not covered by the formal downtime system. Any submissions received after the deadline may still be accepted, but we cannot make any guarantees. A new submission address (given that Jon no longer lives at the previous address) will be posted next week for those who prefer snail mail.
Hope this all makes sense!
Andrew
Organiser, Blue Sun Events
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Initiate
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Thursday, November 02, 2006 12:12 PM
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Shiney.
I've mirrored it on the crew forums - here
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Basic How-to guides. Ever expanding - http://stormdancer.huntress.org/
Rarely come here, so PMs are best if you want a new guide making.
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Thursday, January 14, 2010 7:28 PM
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Is the plan for Serenity to become a fest system like Maelstrom?
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, January 17, 2010 12:27 PM
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| It isn't the objective of Serenity, however sci-fi fest is something we are looking at as a future possibility. The purpose of the mechanical system is to deal with the economics of running a ship and ensure we are being fair across the board. It won't replace a narrative system, but it does provide an explanation of what the narrative needs to cover. I enjoy reading stuff players write more than I do tapping numbers into a calculator.
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1) Boys hit each other with sticks for the fun of it
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and Minimeister
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Last Login: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 11:52 AM
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Jon (7/11/2006)
It isn't the objective of Serenity, however sci-fi fest is something we are looking at as a future possibility. The purpose of the mechanical system is to deal with the economics of running a ship and ensure we are being fair across the board. It won't replace a narrative system, but it does provide an explanation of what the narrative needs to cover. I enjoy reading stuff players write more than I do tapping numbers into a calculator. OK. So are you going to ask them to do the calculations of moving stuff for you? Or have you decided not to use quantitative terms at all with regards to downtime? Like, exactly how much can you stick in a "small" hull.... 
By the Emperor's Golden Commode! Cultists and cultists and guardsmen, oh my! Come and see the plans for Anti-Heretical, Investigative and sometimes shooty larp at Firefight.---- Dropzone will have Serenity LARP.
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, January 17, 2010 12:27 PM
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We'll handle the niggly bits of calculation, but as with real life haulage you will know how much it is practical to transport. There is no reason qualatative and quantative can't live in harmony and heck, if something really doesn't work we can always change it. What's important is giving it a try.
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1) Boys hit each other with sticks for the fun of it
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Knight
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Thursday, April 23, 2009 5:51 PM
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| Guys, is there a working email address I can send mine to? I've tried to the ones on the website a few times now, and they've always bounced back.
----
Power Corrupts.
This is only a problem for the powerless.
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Champion
Group: Basic Members
Last Login: Sunday, January 17, 2010 12:27 PM
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jonathan.townshend (at) gmail.com
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1) Boys hit each other with sticks for the fun of it
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