Savage Worlds Moonlighting Downtime Mechanics
- February 9th, 2012
- Posted in House Rules
- By Mockingbard
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Some games get pretty ridiculous, with characters going from farmers to gods in a matter of in-game months. Sometimes, for various reasons, you want to have a few weeks of in-game downtime between or during sessions. Apocalypse World has a great mechanic for this and I’ve altered it to make a Savage Worlds version that we’re now using in my 1-on-1 city-based home game. I’ll present the mechanics, then a little explanation on the design.
Moonlighting
Whenever there’s a stretch of downtime in play, or between sessions, choose a number of gigs to work. Choose no more than the number of dice you have in Smarts. Describe a gig then roll your wild die and the relevant skill, like Fighting for protection gigs, Stealth for picking pockets, or Investigation for academic research.
- On a raise, you get profit from the gig you chose; if you get multiple raises that means exceptional success, perhaps extra pay, recognition or connections.
- On a success, you get profit but with some complication (or failure but you got out of it clean: no profit, no fallout, no hard feelings).
- On a failure, you failed the gig and suffer some fallout, like lingering wounds from a protection gig gone wrong, fines or jail time for criminal activities, and maybe someone is mad at you.
- On snake eyes, double ones, you can’t roll for any more gigs this session and your failure was a fiasco: someone is definitely mad at you, you’ve probably lost something you care about, and the trouble is immediate.
The GM should discuss any profit, complications or fallout with you. If you didn’t roll snake eyes, you can now roll again for any remaining gigs.
It’s heavily based on the Apocalypse World version which, if you don’t own the game, you can check out in the free playbook downloads; moonlighting is one of the Operator’s moves. In AW you roll once for all your gigs combined, using the main stat of the ‘class’. I decided I wanted this to be a mechanic any SW character could use, so I’ve generalised it. I also then adjusted it to take multiple raises and critical failure into account, just for fun and granularity.
Gigs can be anything the character has the skill and opportunity to do. If you have a high boating skill and you could reasonably get sailor’s work or own a boat you can ferry people on, that’s a gig. Gambling can be a gig. Most skills should work fairly well.
It’s the profit and failure that require the most thought on the part of the GM. I haven’t listed what the profit would be because it’ll be different depending on how long the downtime was, what sort of gigs the character did, and so on. AW does list some gigs and their profit (1-barter, 2-barter, etc.) but SW isn’t that abstract. Profit can also be information, if you’re doing some research on strange magical runes, or could be connections and friends if you’re using persuasion or streetwise to schmooze with the nobles or bar flies. It’s intentionally left open for the GM and player to discuss.
One last thing worth noting is that regular success comes with complications. I took inspiration for this from AW and the way I like to run my games. It turns the mechanic into not just a profit machine for PCs, but also a story machine for GMs. So, PC, you took a protection gigs and failed? Well, maybe you’re on 2 wounds and the person you were protecting has gone into lockdown: no chance of pay now. Snake eyes? Well, you really screwed up: 2 wounds, the person you were supposed to protect has been kidnapped (or killed) and now the ones who did it are after you too, hot on your trail. No time for any other gigs. What do you do?
Savage Worlds Deluxe has the Interlude mechanic too, but moonlighting is a different flavour. I’m pretty excited about it. I hope you enjoy using it too. And if you do – or have some other downtime mechanics you like – I’d love to hear about it.
Happy moonlighting!
I really like this idea and it is easy enough to convert for other systems also. I also like the idea how this downtime of characters can even turn into a playable mini quest or even a seed for bigger picture.
+1
@Thaumiel Nerub Thanks Thaumiel! Glad you like it
I totally agree about the mini-quest or a seed for bigger things. I haven’t fully explored that side of it yet, in play, but I have used it a few times recently and it’s worked great even so.
So far, a double raise has resulted in a new NPC contact and double pay, a raise resulted in the PC getting paid for leading some NPCs deeper into the ratman sewer warrens she cleared out the entrance to in play, and a failure resulted in minstrel NPC friend getting roughed up and now relying on the PC to pay for her food and board until her fingers healed so she could make a living again.
It was an easy way, in all instances, to expand the world and the PC’s experiences. It also nicely fills in the gaps, so when we say one session = about one week in-game, we know some of the things that happened ‘off screen’ and she still profits from those.
Apocalypse World and Dungeon World have several good crunchy bits that have story seeds worked right in. I’ll have to have another look and see what else I can steal and modify
I don’t have any special “mechanics” or process for handling special events during downtime. What we use to do back in the good old days of regular real time sessions (playing 2-3 times per week) was we would announce the downtime length and the next session would be for players that wanted to do “extra things”
Usually all the players wanted to do a little something during downtime so we’d meet for the next session and that session was very very streamlined. All it consisted of was numerous skill checks. There was no awesome story, or combat or anything. It was simply a matter of what did you want to do and did you succeed or fail.
After that session was over, we would take real time downtime for a good while, like 2 weeks (when you’re playing 2-3 times per week, a 2-week real downtime is major) and then get back to the story.
As far as in-game downtime is concerned, it depends on what kind of game it is. If it’s a bunch of smaller adventures then sure, decide that the next event won’t happen for a while and then the players can have more exploration “downtime”. If it’s a campaign taking players from level 1 to level 20+ then chances are the in-game downtime will be limited to smaller stuff that can just be quick checks.
One of the things I do like about running games on IRC is my players can contact me on IRC during downtime and if they wish to do something in downtime, we can handle it quickly then and there and not have to hold a special session. If they can’t get to me on IRC (which is rare) they can email me their request and we can handle it.
What I think is more important, especially in the internet age where people are running games online (either IRC, or skype/ventrilo or a virtual table top), is for people to have good amounts of REAL downtime.
I have seen players get bored and burned out from playing long sessions multiple times a week. I handle my games like college courses. My sessions are 3-4 hrs long and maybe 2 days a week, spread out like Monday & Thursday or Tuesday & Friday.
Whatever system you use, whatever mechanics/house rules you use, the idea of in-game downtime should be about giving them a nice diversion from “questing” and giving players the freedom to explore or invent or whatever other ideas are in their heads. It also helps extend your campaign like Mockingbard said.