Periodically, the team will be offered the chance to take a round of downtime. Downtime represents the characters taking some time, usually an hour or more, to tend to themselves or work on personal tasks. Once each player has had a chance to perform a downtime activity, it is usually going to be time to move on to gathering information in anticipation of the next scene. When downtime is declared, you are allowed to decide on one of the following activities to perform:
- Rest: You don’t attempt any work, but give yourself a chance to recover and collect your bearings. You are allowed to do one of the following:
- Reduce the injury level of one scuffed or broken limb by one step. Lost limbs require proper attention and cannot recover with rest.
- Recover one piece of spent equipment, making it ready to be used again. Jackrooms characters must choose one of the items you had when you became lost, not anything you have found or scrounged along the way.
- Recover up to three effort chips. This may not bring your total effort above six.
- Recover a single point of effort, regardless of your current total.
- Heal: You attend to the injuries your team has been accruing, including your own. You must perform an action, usually treat but easily create or command depending on what kind of character you are playing. When the reveal occurs, recover your bet as normal if you succeed. Instead of receiving a payout of effort, you instead may reduce a number of injury levels from amongst your team’s wounds equal to the amount you would have been paid out. You must have some means of treating the injuries you are trying to reduce, such as a first-aid kit, psychotherapy training, or other narratively-appropriate means to provide care. The characters you are treating may perform other downtime activities as they please. If you fail your action, no injuries are recovered by your team.
- Scrounge: You spend your downtime searching your environment for useful equipment. This may be used in one of two ways: either to recover your spent equipment or to add a new piece of equipment to your playbook. Either way, you must perform an action which is narratively appropriate to how you describe your character’s search. If you fail your action, you are unable to find anything useful while scrounging. When an item which was scrounged in this manner is spent, it is removed from the playbook and cannot be recovered like the rest of your equipment.
- If you are trying to recover your spent equipment, recover your bet as normal if you succeed. Instead of receiving a payout of effort, you may recover a number of spent pieces of your equipment equal to what you would have been paid out. If this causes all of your current equipment to be recovered, you may use your remaining payout to recover the equipment of your teammates.
- If you are trying to find a new item to add to your playbook, recover your bet as normal if you succeed. Instead of receiving a payout of effort, you may add the item to your playbook and those of a number of your teammates. The total number of playbooks which may add the item is equal to what you would have been paid out.
- Plan: You spend your downtime analyzing what you have been through so far, as well as thoroughly examining the surroundings and any objects you may have collected. By the end of your downtime, you will hopefully have some insight into your path forward. You must perform an action, narrating how your character is trying to come up with a plan. When the reveal occurs, recover your bet as normal if you succeed. Instead of a payout of effort, you may ask and (if you wish) answer one question to the dealer as if you were gathering information per effort you would have received. You may pass off any number of these questions to your teammates if you desire. After you have asked your questions, the dealer will remove a chip from a stack of your choice to represent your plan making your way forward easier. If this brings a stack to zero, narrate how the team effortlessly enacts the plan as soon as downtime ends.
- Start/Work on Project: Sometimes you want to use your character’s downtime to perform something which will take longer than the current round of downtime would allow, such as building an item from scratch. This is called a project and happens in two stages: starting and working.
- When you start a project, tell the dealer what you want the final result to be. Common examples could be fabricating a sturdy weapon from found objects, finding an NPC lost in the Jackrooms to assist the team on their journey, or any other long-term goal. The dealer will then create a Project Stack for you: a pile of chips based on how difficult they feel the project is. A simple but multi-step process should have a stack of six chips, while a very complicated project which is hindered by your current predicament could have up to twelve. You are allowed to immediately work on a project in the same downtime you start it.
- If you are working on a project you have just started or are continuing, you must perform an action appropriate to the methods you are using to do that work. Recover your bet as normal if you succeed. Instead of receiving a payout of effort, remove a number of chips from the Project Stack equal to what your payout should have been. If this causes your stack to have zero chips, you have completed that project and its effects enter the narrative immediately.
Jackrooms charcters typically receive a round of downtime after each scene, taking advantage of that space's infinite emptiness for protection. Dungeoneering characters must either withdraw from the dungeon or make a space within it safe.