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Ideas for downtime activities

Infinity The RPG
#1

Hello everyone

In the campaign I’m running we find some room between each session where my players usually engage in some shopping, surgery for augmentations and working on their fortunes (one member of the group just advanced to hyper-elite). But as we’ve progressed we started to come to the conclusion that we wanted to add a more exciting element to these downtimes. Having come to Infinity from the Conan rpg we figured that adapting the carousing events table would work neatly in that regard.

I figured that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel and started to browse the career events for anything that would fit (staying away from the “you died” and “you were fired”-events) and have gathered a neat little list of things that could happen (but haven’t adapted them quite yet).

I was wondering if any of you had any fun ideas I could add to such a table? I’m mostly looking for simple events that you could spin a short little story around. I’m not looking for things that would be full missions/adventures on their own, but anything that could carry forward into the next (or a future) session as a story hook sounds like it would fit in neatly.

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#2

The first thing that comes to mind is the downtime system from the rpg blades in the dark, where you play a gang of scoundrels executing scores for riches and reputation. After the score come the downtime activities, aka the activities with a mechanical effect. This is a very good system and I think it fits well with an infinity setting. The list is something like:

  • acquiring assets
  • indulging their vice to reduce stress, which is a mechanical effect, so not exactly relevant here, but it usually à good vector for roleplay
  • healing
  • crafting
  • training
  • working on long term project, from acquiring secret or sensitive informations to developing their business or creating schematics for new and original equipment.
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#3

Good idea - the Blades system is a good mechanical implementation of downtime events - including those that can have follow-on events. There is also the table of additional complications that can happen in downtime that will then feed into future game sessions, depending on how much trouble the group are currently in.

#4

I would suggest offering Wilderness of Mirrors activities during downtime. Interacting with old or new handlers, performing some side-missions independent of the usual O12 Bureau Noir missions. All of which could lead to a lot of complications, trouble with other factions etc.

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#5

Some good suggestions, thank you very much. I’ll look into how Blades in the dark does it.

We had already been acquisition of assets, surgery and the like and we’re just hoping for some random things to spice up time that otherwise seemed rather empty.

Tying it to previous Wilderness of Mirrors missions is interesting and definitely something I’ll be looking into.

#6

One of the thing I didn’t think of and which might actually be the most interesting for you is what come at the beginning of the downtime in blades in the dark (or the end of the score, but it’s the same thing really).

When then players finish a score or mission, they go through a phase where consequences for the score and actions taken increase heat on their crew, progressively increasing the attention of others factions towards them, ultimately leading to a faction taking actions against them.
Now I think it might translate well in infinity, there are multiple factions who might not take kindly to the players meddling in their affaires, or might even take preemptive actions to get them out of their way.

And if the players tend to resolve their missions for o-12 in explosives or borderline fashion, it might trigger inquiries, interrogations and even jail time, or force the players to go rogue.
So not only does that bring interactions and roleplay outside of the missions, but it’s also driven by the players since it would be consequences to their actions.

I officially like my own line of thoughts about this and gonna use it in my game!

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#7

I always liked the idea of Eclipse Phase featuring 'arguing on forums." :wink:

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