Valinard's Tower

Just as economic actions help to bind PCs to the material world of the campaign, social activites connect them to its NPCs and organisations. By developing relationships they can build a growing network of allies, friends, contacts, lovers and frenemies; retainer rules allow them to take some of these along on adventures.

In my game, in the course of the story it just made sense that certain NPCs would become close to the party and even tag along on adventures – it made sense to give the PCs some control over this process and made my job easier if I could identify a particular PC as being responsible for controlling, say, Modron Paladin Sir Enceladus.

Rules for revelry or carousing allow for celebration or high living, and help to make PCs feel less like dungeon-crawling robots and more like real people (no offence intended to the characters who actually are dungeon-crawling robots.)

I’m struggling a bit with the carousing rules for a few reasons:

1. Experiences. Not using numerical experience means gold-for-XP involves translating wealth into experiences, at an exchange rate that changes every level.
2. Player Agency. It feels weird in my game for PCs to surrender the level of control required for most carousing tables.
3. Downtime Results. The unified system for good/mixed/poor results doesn’t always fit with the variety of tables out there – different die sizes, some curved and some flat, some divided into boons and mishaps, others just one long table with good and bad results, and some divided by theme.
4. Specificity. I hate having to stop and come up with a detailed table or example while writing general-purpose rules!

That said, it’s an action with a lot of potential. I like to have games with beach episodes and victory celebrations and whole sessions of the PCs just hanging out with each other and their favourite NPCs and drinking, making merry, and talking long into the night. I’ll be revisiting these rules and looking at other ways they can be used – I love this idea of using revelry actions as a way to play out melodramatic emotion.

Art by Russ Nicholson

Developing Relationships with NPCs

This action allows a PC to form or deepen a tie with an NPC or organisation. Relationships can change organically during uptime, but only at the DM’s discretion, but this action allows a PC to focus their efforts and exert some control over the process.

Each relationship has a level associated with it which determines what the NPC or group is willing to do for the PC:

1. Strangers: The NPC does not know the PC.
2. Acquainted: The NPC knows the PC’s name and has seen them around. They’ll do common courtesies.
3. Associates: There’s some degree of friendship, gratitude, or shared experience with the PC. The NPC will do small favours.
4. Friends: A serious connection; they genuinely enjoy one another’s company, share a common cause, owe each other a great deal or have shared a major experience. The NPC will go out of their way to help the PC.
5. Close: True and old friends, lovers, comrades in arms, a beloved mentor and their student. The NPC will risk their life for the PC.

Note that all of these bonds cut both ways; if an NPC is in trouble they will call on their PC friends for help. A refusal may reduce the level of the relationship.

An NPC may do favours above their relationship level, but will want something in return. If the request is more than one level above the level of the relationship, it may be off the table entirely.

Some NPCs and in particular organisations may have specific relationship trackers with more or fewer levels, and specific rewards and requirements for each level.

Action: Develop Relationship

Improving a relationship costs one downtime and is usually modified by CHA, though if the PC is clearly using another attribute to impress the other party (such as bonding with the comic relief strongman through wrestling and flexing together) another attribute may be applied.

• Good: The relationship advances one level.

• Mixed: The relationship advances one level, but the PC must do something for the NPC first. The difficulty or danger of the task should be commensurate with their current relationship.

• Poor: The relationship does not advance.

Seeking or Training Retainers

There are two kinds of followers available to PCs:

Hirelings are NPCs paid to serve the PC. They may be soldiers, sages, labourers and so on. They will not enter dungeons or embark upon adventures. Soldiers will escort a caravan through the wilderness and fight monsters who attack it, but they will not enter a dragon’s lair willingly. A PC may have as many retainers as she can afford to hire, and the only limit to hiring them is the number available in the local community.

Retainers are NPCs who consider themselves to some degree a part of the PC’s party. They may require pay, and often expect a share of the treasure. The total number of Retainers is limited by the PC’s CHA. They will go on adventures, enter dungeons, and join in the risky activities of the party, though may balk if they feel they are being treated poorly or the situation is too dangerous.

A PC has a total number of Retainer slots equal to their CHA. A retainer with a close relationship with the PC uses one slot; a friend uses 2, an associate 3, an acquaintance 4, and a stranger 5. So a PC with a CHA or 11 could recruit three associates and one friend to adventure with them.

When adventuring in any situation in which a Retainer has to make a morale check, either in combat or as a result of frightening events or orders, make a test on their PC’s CHA, with advantage or disadvantage based on particularly good/bad pay or treatment. The difficulty of the test is the number of slots the retainer is taking up.

On a failure, the retainer balks. In combat they may retreat to a safe distance or fight more defensively; when being given dangerous-sounding orders they may refuse; and they will usually make some kind of demand, usually either for greater rewards or less danger.

If their demand isn’t met and the PC fails another roll, they may consider abandoning or betraying the party instead of making another demand.

In combat, Retainers are controlled by and act on their leader's initiative. The leader's initiative die is reduced to the lowest of the followers, unless the leader is a fighter.

Action: Seek Retainers

Spend one downtime and modify the result by CHA.

• Good: 1d6 potential retainers answer the call, and they have all heard of the PCs (starting relationship of Acquainted.)

• Mixed: 1d6 potential retainers.

• Poor: Only 1 retainer is available, or 1d6 of an unsavoury type.

Make a morale check to hire any retainer the PCs choose to hire. Retainers expect 1gp per day and half a share of treasure as their pay; anything less than this provides disadvantage on the hiring roll, significantly more will provide advantage. Failures can usually be rerolled if the PCs improve their offer.

Hiring an NPC with an existing relationship to the PC doesn’t take a downtime action; just make the offer and the morale check. The DM can always override the check result based on their knowledge of the NPC’s motives!

Action: Train Retainers

Spend a downtime to train one or more retainers who are 2 levels more lower than the PC, and have been on an adventure with the PC since they last levelled up or attempted training.

The chance of successfully training a single Retainer is 1-6 on a d6; for every additional retainer being trained at the same time, reduce the chance by one. Roll 1d6 for each retainer to see if they gain a level.

The result is not modified by any attribute, unless the retainers are all of the same class as the PC, in which case modify it by the PC’s prime requisite.

• Good: Reroll a failed training roll. If all succeeded, instead make a free Develop Relationship action for one of the trainees.

• Mixed: No additional effect.

• Poor: Reroll a successful training roll. If they all failed, make a morale check for all those retainers with the worst roll.

Carousing

Action: Carouse

Carousing is a way to trade gold for an Experience. It requires access to a site of excess, which may be a Holding. Each such location has its own set of tables. Carousing is not modified by a particular attribute.

• Good: Roll on the boon table; if using a single table, move your roll by 1 point per 4 options on the table.

• Mixed: Roll on the standard table or invent an experience.

• Poor: Roll on the mishap table; if using a single table, the DM moves your roll by 1 point per 4 options.

If the player thinks the character would not do the thing described in the result, they can negotiate a comparable event with the DM. If they can’t think of one, they can have an unremarkable night of partying providing no experience. The gold and time spent are still lost.

The base cost of carousing depends on your level, as higher level PCs become more jaded and accustomed to wild experiences. The cost is 25 times your next level squared, as shown here:

Current Level	Base Carousing Cost
1	100
2	225
3	400
4	625
5	900
6	1225
7	1600
8	2025
9	2500
10	3025
11	3600
12	4225

These activities present ways to directly improve your character in some way. The original rules for Martial Training provided an alternative to the Feats and options of modern D&D – instead of locking them away behind levels, experience and complex prerequisites, the kind of abilities normally covered by feats are things you can simply spend time studying – if you can find a master to teach you.

Now this overlaps with the Fighter Techniques system a bit, but techniques are primarily a way for fighters to spend their bonus reactions, while martial backgrounds provide smaller or more situational benefits that don’t consume reactions.

And if the system allows you to master feats of arms, why not have it also cover proficiency in carpentry or theology? And what better way to establish that your character is good at something than to have had them spend substantial amounts of time studying it?

Since The Black Hack already included proficiencies as Backgrounds, that’s what I categorised all of these abilities as.

I love the idea of a spiritual journey as a downtime. It’s a staple of fiction and film, and having a lever for the player to pull to make it happen opens up so many possibilities for the game. Mechanically it provides for some more esoteric feats and abilities, and makes a little bit of magic available to all classes.

I’ve included Splendid Items here on the basis that signature equipment is often part of how a character is expressed.

Action: Martial & Skill Training

Training allows a PC to gain a new Background.

• A martial skill providing a special move in combat.
• A skill such as painting.
• A new language.
• Deep knowledge of a particular subject.

The PC should first find a master or the skill in question and convince them to train him, then the DM should prepare a clock, usually with 1-5 ticks. For skills with varying levels of mastery, 1, 3 and 5 could represent basic, expert, and master competence.

The PC should spend a downtime and roll with no attribute modifier.

• Good: Advance one step, and treat the next – as =.

• Mixed: Advance one step.

• Poor: Don’t advance.

Action: Spiritual Journey

A journey of the spirit may consist of meditation, fasting, vision quests, counselling, studying holy texts and relics, and can accomplish a number of goals such as:

• Obtaining a minor special ability.
• Understanding the nature of a place or power.
• Binding a daemon.
• Soothing a troubled soul.
• Renewing a broken vow (in particular, Cleric Bonds.)

The DM creates a clock based on the power of the outcome sought:

1: A one-off or highly situational ability. (Bonus to poison saves for the expedition to the Serpent Tomb.)

3: A small benefit or minor goal. (Restore the mojo of a disillusioned master.)

5: A permanent benefit or moderate goal. (Turn an evil magical sword good.)

Spend a downtime action modified by WIS.

• Good: Advance the tracker, next attempt is a =.

• Mixed: Advance the tracker.

• Poor: Don’t advance the tracker, and resolve an obstacle before trying again: Make an offering, learn a lesson, perform a ritual etc.

Action: Commission/Create Splendid Item

Spend a downtime to find a master craftsman (or attain a 5-step mastery of a crafting skill yourself) and convince them to take the job. They may give you a quest. Spend 1000cn or 100 times the price of the normal item, whichever is higher.

• Good: Item will be finished at the end of the next downtime.

• Mixed: Item will be finished at the end of the downtime after next.

• Poor: Item will be finished after three downtimes.

Making the item yourself requires that you spend those downtimes crafting, but cuts the cost in half.

Armour takes twice as long. A single piece is produced; an entire suit of Splendid armour would consist of 2-6 pieces. Splendid armour can have some sort of minor beneficial effect, count as one step lighter (for all purposes other than the requirement to have no more than two pieces of each type), or have a +1 AC bonus, but only plus from once piece of each type. So a suit of plate (AC 15, six pieces) with three Splendid pieces would be AC 18.

Weapons can provide a cd12 chaser die to hit, or +1 to damage, extend the range of a ranged weapon by a step, or provide +1 to initiative for attacks using the weapon.

Wands & Rods can be used in place of a free hand to cast spells with, and provide the usual splendid item bonus until they awake – -1 to saving throws, or +1 to spell damage, etc., but can be awakened and then recharged via a ritual researched by a Wizard (via Research Information or a Spiritual Journey, whichever seems appropriate), usually involving risk, inconvenience or privation, such as submerging a Wand of Fireballs in lava and retrieving it, leaving a Rod of Cancellation 1 mile away from any magic item, creature, or wizard for a week, or feeding a Staff of Healing with your own CON.

Spellbooks are splendid books, each holding six spells – two of level 1, 3 and 5, or two of level 7, 9 and 11. A wizard can spend one DT to fill a spellbook with any spells for which he possesses a formula, existing spellbook or scroll. Empty chapters can be filled later.

Other Items provide a small situational bonus – splendid boots might improve travel rolls slightly.

Awakening Splendid Items

Weapons & Misc Items

Splendid items which experience epic or tragic events may become magical or cursed. Curses are inflicted at the whim of the DM. For an item to awaken, a PC must invest it with an Experience gained while carrying the item. The Experience is checked off as though used for levelling.

If it has pluses the item will usually awaken to +1, though +2 or +3 are possible if the event is particularly dramatic.

To advanced to further bonuses more Experiences must be added, and they must be in some way compatible with – and perhaps greater than – the first. Research or Spiritual Training may be used to reveal potential experiences to advance an item, which can then be sought out.

Armour

An armour piece that awakens gains a magical +1 with a chaser die instead of its splendid bonus; these pluses can combine to provide a magical bonus of up to +5 and a corresponding d4 chaser die.

Under this system only heavy armour can exceed +4, and light armour is capped at +2. Alternatively, simply rule that armour pieces become magical in the same way weapons do, and through the investment of further experiences can reach +5, and only the die from the highest plus in the suit applies – though other magical armour pieces can contribute other effects.

Wands & Rods

Once awakened through the investment of an experience, receive ud10 charges and may be recharged with a ritual usually involving risk, inconvenience or privation, such as submerging a Wand of Fireballs in lava and retrieving it, leaving a Rod of Cancellation at least one mile away from any magic item, creature, or wizard for a week, or feeding a Staff of Healing with your own CON.

Optionally, ud8 charges for rods and ud12 for staves.

If there are potions, scrolls and spells in the world, Wizards are going to want to make them. Magical item creation rules are often a grueling mess of gold and XP costs, often not showing up until mid-high level. The downtime system gives us a simple framework to put these options in the game from the start.

These rules focus on magical consumables (durable items are covered by the Splendid Item concept, covered under Personal Development.) To avoid PCs stockpiling limitless amounts of scrolls and potions, I’ve tied creation to adventuring: Scrolls require gems of particular colours, while potions require monster parts. Cleric potions are limited mainly by the time taken in meditation and prayer to create them – which might prove to be a boring way to provide a bottleneck, we’ll have to see how it works in play.

The creation of new spells has another issue – new spells alter the rules of the game, so they can easily render areas of play trivial and boring. In my campaign, even being aware of the issue and putting restrictions on spells, new magic quickly rendered questions of resupply, travel, and communication moot.

This isn’t always a bad thing – sometimes you want everyone to be able to get together and get on with the story without a lot of long sea-voyages – but because of the impact spells can have I wanted a system where they are shaped gradually, over several DTs, with both DM and players able to consider and tweak their effects before they’re unleashed on the world. Having each spell in progress provide a cantrip immediately also provides a little bit of immediate gratification and expression of the character.

I’ve also gone with a Gygaxian conception of spells as straightforward formulae for accomplishing magical results, rather than Laurence’s vision of them as virulent potencies imprisoned on the page. I think it’s an interesting idea, and a good explanation as to why wizard’s towers should be at least half a mile from populated settlements, but in my conception D&D wizards have always been less the kind of guys who traffick with forbidden powers from beyond time and space (the domain of my clerics, perhaps) and more the kind of nerds who will use their mastery of the fundamental laws of creation to create a hovering disc they can carry money on.

Action: Brew Potions

Wizards and Clerics can brew potions.

A wizard potion requires four things: A base, an effective ingredient, a formula, and an alchemical laboratory.

The base must be a magical material, such as glowing crystals, broken magical items, or a component from an enchanted, summoned or constructed creature.

The effective ingredient must be recovered from an appropriate monster – the wing of a giant bat for a Fly potion, for example. In general, 1 item of reagents may be harvested from a willing creature without harming it (hair, saliva, a small quantity of blood etc.) A dead creature yields 1 item per HD.

The formula for a potion can be uncovered via the regular research rules. A one-tick clock will reveal the effective ingredient required for a given potion, or a potion that can be produced from a given ingredient. See Information Gathering.

A laboratory is a Holding which the Wizard must either own or be permitted access to. Only one wizard may use the laboratory at a time.

To make the potion, the wizard must mix equal amounts of base and effective reagents together and spend a certain amount of coin to replenish the lab’s supplies for each ingredient used. The costs are determined by the quality of his laboratory (see table below.)

The downtime result is modified by his INT and the DT Roll Bonus of his laboratory.

• Good: Every two items of ingredients produce 3 potions.

• Mixed: Every item of ingredients produces one potion.

• Poor: Potion compounding fails, half the money and ingredients can be salvaged.

Additionally, the wizard can hire a number of alchemists (75cn each) not exceeding the number allowed by his laboratory. The number of potions produced are multiplied by the number of alchemists, and any ingredients lost are divided by the number of alchemists.

Laboratory / Wellhouse Shrine Table

Tier	Cost/Ingredient	DT Roll Bonus	Max. Alchemists/Acolytes	Cleric Font Capacity
1	100	-1	-	-
2	100	0	1	1
3	75	0	1	5
4	75	1	2	12
5	50	1	3	18
6	50	2	3	32
7	25	2	4	48

For clerics, the first step to making potions is to bless holy water. This requires a holding of a holy font or wellhouse shrine of at least 2nd tier. The cleric may spend a downtime to fill the font to capacity. Water can be taken from the font in containers costing 5cn; if it is removed in any other manner it loses its holiness within 2 turns.

To create potions Clerics must first complete a Spiritual Journey. This provides 3 items worth of sanctified materials appropriate to their faith (1 on –, 5 on +). The sanctified materials must be combined with an equal quantity of holy water. From here the process is identical to that for Wizards, but the Shrine serves the function of a Laboratory and Acolytes (50cn each) may be hired instead of Alchemists.

Action: Scribe Scrolls

Wizards and Clerics may scribe scrolls. Cost of a scroll is 20 cn per level per tier (tier increases at 5 and 9.) See table below.

The cost must be paid in gemstone dust appropriate to the school of the spell to be scribed.

Level	Cost Per Level	Total Cost
1	20	20
3	20	60
5	60	300
7	60	420
9	80	720
11	80	880

The downtime roll is modified by INT for Wizards or WIS for Clerics:

• Good: Scribe a total of 16 levels of spells before having to spend another downtime and roll again.

• Mixed: Scribe 8 levels.

• Poor: Scribe 4 levels. On a natural 1-2, 20 dust is wasted and a cursed scroll is created.

Action: Research New Spell

A wizard may attempt to research a new spell.

The wizard must have access to a library, and write a description of the spell’s effect. Research costs 100gp per spell level per DT.

The first week of research grants the wizard a cantrip version of the spell, in addition to his usual cantrips. This cantrip is replaced when the wizard begins research on another spell, but is always available to the wizard to select as one of his regular cantrips.

If the DM decides the spell is reasonable as described for a 1st level spell, with one more DT the wizard completes his work and receives a formula which can be inscribed into a spellbook or onto a scroll.

Otherwise, the wizard receives clues as to what needs to be changed, and has the option to try again. He may raise the level by raising the gold expenditure correspondingly.

The roll is modified by INT and a modifier from the wizard’s library and the spell’s level:

Library Tier	Spell Level	Research Modifier
1	11	-3
2	9	-2
3	7	-1
4	5	0
5	3	+1
6	1	+2
7	Cantrip	+3

So a wizard of 17 INT (+1) with a tier 5 library (+2) researching a 7th level spell (-1) would add +2 to their d12 downtime roll.

• Good: DM will suggest amendments to the spell as well as obstacles to research.

• Mixed: Obstacles to research are revealed; if none remain, the spell is completed.

• Poor: You must spend 1000cn toward upgrading library before getting the results.

These actions give players a way to tease information out of the game world, uncovering answers to pressing questions and leads on new adventures or avenues of research.

Often as a player I’ve been faced with something in the game world – say, a mysterious magical barrier, or a conspiracy afoot – and just felt stumped. I’d try trial-and-error, but soon begin to feel that there was not experimental way to get through the barrier, that it was a matter of waiting for the story to spit out the specific magical amulet that would let us through. We’d find the trail of bodies left behind by the conspiracy, but instead of doing legwork to cut the killing spree short we’d just have to follow the trail to its end.

This is largely a problem of modern adventure design, but information gathering downtimes provide an alternative by giving players levers to pull and choices to make, while the DM gets a dispenser into which he can feed little pellets of information. It’s good for world building, for nudging the players in a particular direction, and for pacing the unfolding story.

Action: Research Information

This action entails poring over old tomes and archives for hidden lore. The player must specify what question they are attempting to answer, and which sources of information they are consulting.

The DM provides a clock. Each tick of the clock reveals more information about the topic, with the final tick answering the question asked if such information is available. The clock may be designed with branches, where some steps unlock further questions and new clocks to answer them, or walls, where a new source of information must be found before proceeding.

Roll modified by INT:

• Good: Seredipity: Gain one tick, and advance a second clock one tick (the PC may propose a new question if there are no other open clocks to advance.)

• Mixed: Gain one tick.

• Poor: Gain one tick, but a complication arises.

The DM will determine the nature of the complication. If the research is sensitive, enemies may learn of it. An additional tick with false information may be added to the clock. A wall may be added to the clock where current sources of information are inadequate.

Action: Gather Intelligence

Choose a place, person, organisation or community and ask around. Each tick provides a rumour or piece of news or gossip about the target.

Roll modified by CHA:

• Good: Gain 1d3+1 ticks.

• Mixed: Gain a tick.

• Poor: Complication. Roll 1d6:

1-3: “What’s it worth?” Bribes of d6xd6x10 cn are required to make progress.

4-5: Someone doesn’t like you asking. The DM prepares an encounter.

6: Sources clam up, and won’t reveal more until you find out what they’re afraid of.

Action: Spying

The DM creates several clocks: One representing each question you seek to answer about the organisation, and a six-tick clock to represent ‘heat’ – how suspicious the organisation is of you.

Relationship tiers count as walls within the information clocks – certain secrets cannot be obtained without gaining access to the inner circles of the organisation.

If the organisation expects your regular participation, each week you don’t use this action gives you -1 to the roll.

Roll modified by WIS:

• Good: Gain three points to spend on either reducing heat or advancing clocks.

• Mixed: Advance a clock and heat by one.

• Poor: Roll on the heat table.

Heat Table

Roll 1d6. If the result exceeds your current level of heat, ignore it and increase heat by 1 instead.

1. Associations: People outside the target organisation see you fraternising with it and think you’re allied. Reduce heat by 1.
2. Fancy Meeting You Here: Someone you know is involved in the organisation; or someone in the organisation is getting too friendly. Add 1 heat.
3. Suspicions Aroused: They’re unsure of your loyalty, and will try to get you to prove it, either by forcing you to make a morally dubious choice, by grilling you and listening keenly to your answers, or by demanding you make significant personal sacrifice or take on a difficult mission for the organisation. If you pass their tests, reduce heat by 2, otherwise increase it by 2.
4. Caught, Sort Of: You’ve been caught, but either by another spy observing the organisation for their own reasons, or by a less-loyal member who would rather blackmail you than rat you out. Reduce heat by 1, but the NPC can blow your cover at any time if you don’t keep them happy.
5. Ghosted: They may not know you’re a spy, but they aren’t going to risk it any more. The organisation cuts you off.
6. Caught!: The organisation confronts you and accuses you openly. How this turns out depends on the organisation; they might seek to abduct or kill you, shake you down, or simply scold you and send you on your way.

A key part of downtime is giving players somewhere to sink their ill-gotten gains into. PCs can develop extensive Holdings, find more expensive and luxurious places to live, and trade in obscure treasures.

Action: Invest in a Holding

To upgrade a holding or create a new Trivial holding, the PC must spend a downtime and the listed upgrade cost.

Tier		Upgrade Cost	Description
0	-	100	Starting from scratch.
1	Trivial	500	A food cart, a handful of street urchins, a busking corner, a shelf of mouldering tomes. It’s not nothing, but it’s nearly nothing.
2	Minor	1000	A small shop, a local gang, a regular gig at a dingy tavern, a study library. Insignificant and unmemorable.
3	Notable	2500	A cosy but thriving cafe, a criminal operation with a small but well-defined turf, regular shows and a small but devoted fanbase, a specialist library. A small but successful holding with a distinct niche.
4	Major	5000	A large and busy restaurant, racketeers cornering the city’s smuggling or gambling operations, nightly shows to a full house, a library that other wizards wish to consult. Whatever the holding is, it’s an important example of it in the local scene.
5	Influential	10000	A restaurant booked up for weeks in advance, perhaps the most feared syndicate in the city’s underworld, a star troupe playing their own venue to an avid fanbase, the most complete library in the city. Defines the scene.
6	Famous	25000	People travel from afar to sample the cuisine. The troupe’s music influences the very mood of the city. The crime cartel receives tribute from the underworld of other cities. The wizard’s library is known far and wide as a trove of arcane lore. Its influence extends both geographically and thematically.
7	Legendary	-	Unique, fabulous, and known throughout the land.

• Poor: The holding does not advance, and 1d6x10% of the upgrade cost is lost.

• Mixed: A complication occurs. If the complication is resolved, the holding advances to the next tier.

• Good: The holding advances to the next tier without incident.

Holding Complications

Roll 1d8:

1. Rumours: Vendors won’t sell the wizard books for his library because they’ve heard he’s involved in a sinister cult; customers are led to believe the PC’s restaurant secretly serves osquip meat; false reports circulate about the mercenary company’s mortality rate, drying up the supply of new recruits; the cleric’s shrine is said to be a front for demon-worship; word on the street is, the thief’s gang as gone soft.
2. Competition: Another wizard is buying up all the rarest tomes; a new restaurant has opened across the street; sleek, black-armoured mercenaries are picking up every contract; a travelling priest holds an exciting revival on the edge of town, drawing away the faithful; a neighbouring gang is muscling in on the thief's turf.
3. Sabotage: Cursed tomes smuggled into the library, rats released into the restaurant, a rust monster in the armoury, someone peed in the font, the watch have set up a sting operation.
4. Shortage: That one vital series of volumes can’t be found for love or money; local merchants can no longer keep up with the restaurant’s demand for its signature spice; there aren’t enough armourers to equip the troops; the trade route that delivered incense to the shrine has been cut off by bandit activity; customs officers have seized so much contraband the black market is languishing.
5. Blackmail: Roll again, but the problem can be made to go away by doing a favour for the NPC behind it. If you roll blackmail twice, two blackmailers with competing agendas know of a weakness the holding has and seek to exploit it at cross purposes.
6. Red Tape: The authorities want a piece of the action, and seek to levy taxes or assess fees equal to 300 cn per tier.
7. Shakedown: Criminals seek protection money equal to 100 cn per tier every downtime until dissuaded.
8. Alliance: An NPC or organisation with a similar holding of higher tier seeks to pool resources. If the PC accepts, the next upgrade attempt is half price due to the assistance, but automatically rolls on the complication table due to attention from the NPC’s rivals.

Action: Obtain Lodgings

The PC specifies what she is looking for – general budget, location, or vibe. The DM creates an appropriate lodging which the PC can move into if she meets the requirements – a down-payment may be required, or particular relationships or quests.

• Good: Bargain! Ignore the first upkeep result in the new lodgings, or reduce any initial payment required.
• Mixed: No additional effect.
• Poor: Complication. There’s a problem with the new lodging – maybe it’s haunted, in poor repair, or has troublesome neighbours.

Action: Find a Buyer

Obvious treasures – gold statuettes, jewelry, gems and so on can always be sold for face value in a large enough town. More obscure treasures – fabrics, rare books, furniture and so on – require a buyer. Any number of roughly similar items can be sold together with one DT action.

Roll modified by CHA.

• Good: Roll 1d6 on the boon table.

• Mixed: The items sells for full price.

• Poor: Roll 1d6 on the complication table.

1D6	Boons	Complications
1-3	Sells for 1d6x10% over the listed price.	Will only sell at 1d6x10% discount.
4	Grateful buyer gives small gift or useful information.	No sale.
5	Gain a contact who will buy similar items automatically in future.	Swindler attempts to obtain item without paying.
6	As above, but contact likes the PCs and will pay +10% per relationship level.	Sells at full price, but causes a problem – NPC or faction is angered, item turns out to be dangerous, stolen, etc.

These rules can also be used to Find a Seller when looking to buy unusual items, or to fence illegal or stolen goods.

One thing I liked about Ben Laurence’s rules for Building an Institution is how far apart the two ends of the scale are. An Institution could be a fantasy Library of Alexandria (70,000+ gp invested), or it could be a small study full of carefully selected tomes in the back of a PC’s townhouse (250gp.) The range further was merely a suggestion, with some institutions having no potential to reach international significance, and others having even longer and more expensive tracks.

It provided players with a way to make their mark on the world, starting very small and building up over the course of the campaign. It was the perfect money sink and motivator for treasure-hunting. It tied the PCs into the setting and game them things they were invested in (emotionally and financially) and cared about protecting.

In my game we broadened the scope a little and referred to these assets as Holdings. In this article I’m going to look at the different types of Holdings and think about what they provide the PCs with and how to balance those benefits, with an eye to making the process of the DM writing them up more structured and straightforward.

A holding is any institution, facility, or amenity a character controls which is neither a vehicle, a Stronghold (a fortified base capable of controlling territory on the hex map) nor Lodgings (a character’s place of residence.) Holdings may however be physically part of a stronghold or a character’s lodgings, such as a library in a wizard’s tower or the castle training grounds.

Example holdings include:

• A thieves guild or criminal gang.
• A group of mercenaries, watchmen or bandits.
• A band of musicians or troupe of players.
• A shop, restaurant, tavern or inn.
• A gambling or opium den.
• A theatre, racetrack or concert hall.
• An alchemical laboratory.
• A magical or mundane library.
• A shrine or wellhouse.
• A temple or other place of worship.
• A manicured garden or protected grove.
• A pleasure palace.
• A school or training grounds.

Types & Benefits of Holdings

The benefits of a holding include all the obvious benefits that would accrue narratively – for example, you could read a child a book from your library, or have a drink with a friend in your tavern – as well as one significant mechanical benefit. I want to make these benefits more rigid and quantified for my rules – I like to have a little more guidance when designing holdings for the players.

In addition to the main mechanical benefit, additional benefits can, if thematically appropriate, be treated as distinct but connected holdings, with their own tiers. Any one of the connected Holdings can be upgraded, and if the one being upgraded is lower than at least one other, the cost to upgrade it is halved.

For example, a tier 3 temple with a tier 2 library and a level 1 holy font can upgrade the library to tier 3 at half price.

Alternatively, a holding could have a different effect at each tier, at the cost of no other effects improving that Tier. For income, this would mean dividing the usual income for the tier by 7.

Cash Returns: Spend money to make money.

While the idea of getting rich running a business is fun, it’s not what the game is about and it’s hard to see PCs – used to finding 500sp lying around in a sack as a regular occurrence – getting excited about making 7.5% per annum on their investment.

Fortunately we aren’t talking about a modern, fully developed economy here. Medieval trading voyages could easily provide 50% profit over the course of a year – and PC investments which routinely involve unwanted attention from NPCs and attacks by monsters could easily provide that kind of profit.

If we treat income from a going concern the same way as upkeep then we can roll a d4 for profits and return 4% of the value of the Holding. Here’s a table with the average value of a holding of each tier (including the chance of losing money when upgrading) with returns for three different frequencies. The returns are rounded to look neater and improve by a small amount at each step as a reward for the PC’s patience.

This can be considered the base income for a revenue-generating Holding. If we throw in some additional costs such as a need for a rare material, holding a mining site in the face of monster attacks, or a chance of troublesome random events, the DM could increase the rewards accordingly. Similarly if the income relies on a unique find (the holding is a pond for the goose that lays the golden eggs) rewards don’t have to be commensurate with investment.

Tier	Rounded Value	Return on ¼	Return on 1/6	Return on 1/12
1	100	4	7	15
2	500	20	30	75
3	2000	80	120	300
4	5000	200	330	750
5	10000	400	650	1500
6	20000	850	1300	3000
7	50000	2000	3300	7500

Military: Trains and billets troops.

Increases the availability of hirelings by a) attracting more recruits b) improving the quality of recruits and c) keeping them around. Overlaps with strongholds; I want to leave this out for now and consider it as part of the domain game.

Domestic: Provides lodgings for PCs and their allies.

This function is deprecated – it’s simply obtaining new lodgings under the new rules. If you’re building or renovating a place to live, perhaps a holding could have the function of upgrading your lodgings as it tiers up?

Enable DT: Allows a DT to be attempted at all.

Your fabulous salon grants you access to Gather Information or Cultivate Relationships in high society which would otherwise snub you. Your library allows you to perform spell and mundane research from home.

• Alchemical Laboratory – Required for a wizard to compound potions.
• Wizard’s Library – Required for spell research.
• Font Shrine/Wellhouse – Used by clerics for creating holy water and compounding potions.
• Workshop – Used for Creating (but not commissioning) Splendid Items.
• Library or Archives – Technically required for general research, although for most research PCs will seek out public or institutional archives rather than building their own.
• Pleasure Dome – Allows for Carousing in the absence of other sites of excess – a bustling city wouldn’t need one.

Further other DTs could be increased in scope by a holding – the right holdings might for example allow you to Develop Relationships with high society, spirits of the grove, foreign dignitaries, the criminal underworld, or secret societies.

At the lowest tier they may not provide any bonuses or even apply a penalty to your results for the unlocked action, but as they tier up they will usually also provide:

Aid DT: Provides a benefit to some other downtime.

For instance, a spy network improving Gather Information, or a fancy garden providing a good place to Cultivate Relationships.

This can provide a simple bonus to the roll, but only one holding should provide such a bonus to any action; your library will enhance your rolls to research spells, but your wizard’s salon will have to apply some other effect – though it may still aid in spell research indirectly.

Perks: Produces benefits such as gifts, adventure hooks, clues and so on.

Creates a specific event die offering the PC positive outcomes. For example, a PC might tend a magical tree whose apples function as healing potions, or a roadside tavern might provide a steady stream of rumours. A magical school might periodically produce graduate 1st level Wizards who owe you a favour. A criminal gang might produce a hot but valuable piece of jewelry. These specific benefits can vary widely and should generally be more generous than income on investment, as they’re more interesting.

Roulette: Produces benefits, but also negative events.

The same as Perks, but add bad things to the event table as well, and improve the rewards correspondingly. This type brings to mind a criminal gang at war with their rivals or a magical lab carrying out dangerous experiments, producing a steady stream of uptime problems for the PCs as well as significant progress on taking control of the city’s underworld or breeding the perfect owlbear.

However, any type of holding can have negative events attached – the simplest being an upkeep cost. While many holdings either don’t require expensive upkeep when not in use (the wizard’s library) or pay for themselves (a shrine or shop) it makes sense for certain types of activity to have ongoing costs.

Summary

Which leaves us with three main Holding effects:

• Enable/Aid DT
• Generate Income
• Generate Events

There’s also no reason why a holding can’t provide ongoing bonuses in uptime (advantage on high society CHA rolls because you own the Opera House, or a free relationship level.) I’ve focused on random events and DT modifiers here because they affect downtime prep the most, and they took up a lot of time and energy in my campaign – I’m hoping some more structure makes them easier to keep track of.

In my game: One player hollowed out everything he killed and wore it as a Splendid Item and raised an army to retake his homeland; another turned the Inquisitors’ Theatre of their first adventure into an inn; a third founded a thieves guild, and a fourth a mercenary company, while another created spells that crashed the local economy. In other words, Ben Laurence’s downtime rules gave the players ways to make their mark on the world and drive the campaign forward.

We used them as written with a few tweaks; now I’m in the process of codifying the Red Hack rules, I want to make the system my own, though by necessity it will always owe a huge debt to those original articles on Mazirian’s Garden.

This is the most frustrating part of the design work for me. Downtimes move slowly so they’re difficult to test, and I want there to be a framework and an interconnectedness to them that allows players to play with the procedures in a consistent way. As always I want to have a lot going on without a lot of pressure on the DM, but where combat rules are easier to implement when they’re simpler, downtime rules are more straightforward when they’re more complex, and cover more cases without calling on the DM to make something up.

I’m also, perhaps unwisely, trying to roll other simulationist elements such as upkeep costs and the security of the PC’s home into the same system.

Fantasy City by Pedro Arnaut

The Downtime Table

My first attempt at this was the Single Downtime Roll, which I want to revise into a D12, which splits nicely into multiples of 2, 3, 4, and 6, allowing for different probabilities of events:

D12 Roll	Downtime Result	1d6 Events	1d4 Events	1d3 Events	1d2 Events
1	Poor	1	1	1	1
2	Poor	2	2	2	2
3	Poor	3	3	3	1
4	Poor	4	4	1	2
5	Poor	5	1	2	1
6	Mixed	6	2	3	2
7	Mixed	1	3	1	1
8	Mixed	2	4	2	2
9	Mixed	3	1	3	1
10	Mixed	4	2	1	2
11	Good	5	3	2	1
12	Good	6	4	3	2

A High or Low relevant attribute adds or subtracts 1 from the roll; bonuses from Holdings and other sources can simply modify it further.

Events & upkeep occur on the natural roll of the die. Lodgings and anything else that causes random downtime events can be tracked by rolling dice against the PC’s die; the event occurs on a match.

• Roll a single d4 for everyone to determine if upkeep is due.
• Don’t roll more than 1 die of each type unless a single PC has two event dice of the same size.
  • Example: If a PC has a Holding that provides a roll on a rumour table one DT out of four, roll an extra d4 instead of using the upkeep die – unless the source of rumours is his talkative landlord!
• For 2-in-3 events you can simply count the number on the d3 and the next number in sequence, with 3 wrapping around back to 1. The same goes for ¾ or 5/6.

Lodging events when triggered are rolled on a separate table specified by lodgings (which will no longer include upkeep results.) I also want certain types of Holdings to generate events – for instance, the thieves guild should throw up periodic rewards and hazards, while the inn might generate a supply of rumours.

The DT event system could also be used to advance campaign clocks; you could roll a ‘nemesis’ die and the particular enemy of any PC who matches progresses in their plans that week (alternatively, factions could be arbitrarily assigned to PCs – the player might not know which faction acts on a match to their die, or even whether a match has taken place – event dice are easy to roll out of sight of the PCs, after the session.)

Downtime Actions

A PC gains one DT to spend on the first day of each week they spend between adventures.

Generic Downtime Action

Modify the roll by an appropriate attribute, if there is one.

• Good: You get what you want, or make reasonable progress toward it.
• Mixed: You get what you want, but a complication arises to be addressed in uptime. This might involve an encounter or negotiation at home, unexpected costs, a side-objective in your current adventure site, or a trip to a new adventure site. (Downtimes can be a great way to get PCs to visit a site you have prepared, because not only does it give them a reason to go there, the reason is player-driven – they’ve already bought in!)
• Poor: You don’t get what you want.

Downtime Action Categories

Since there are 15+ different downtime actions available, I’ll divide them into rough categories and tackle each in its own article:

• Economic Ventures – Rent, buy, sell.
• Information Gathering – Doing some digging.
• Magical Creation – But what’s the stuffed crocodile for?
• Personal Development – Your skills, your stuff.
• Social Activities – Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

One problem with the ‘roll to improve your attributes each level’ mechanic we inherited from the Black Hack is that it makes the expected attributes of higher level characters murky.

Since starting attributes are random the DM is free to create established characters with whatever attributes are desired, and rolling up the advances level by level is simply enough, but time-consuming.

Elric by John Picacio

I’ve come up with a simple points-buy system:

Current Attribute	Cost to Raise
3-4	2
5-8	3
9-11	4
12	5
13	6
14	7
15	8
16	10
17	13

Your Prime and Secondary Requisites automatically get points invested in them equal to twice your level advancements (i.e. your level, minus one.)

To these, and to any other attribute, you can add points equal to 4 times your level advancements.

If for any reason you want to start a character off with average attributes instead of rolling 3d6 in order, you can use the following standard array: 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, 7.

Example

An average 7th level Fighter starting with 14 STR and 12 points in each of STR and, in this example, CON. Assuming these are the two highest starting attributes in the standard array, we have:

STR 14 (+12pts = 15 with 5pts remaining)
DEX 11
CON 12 (+12pts = 14 with 1pt remaining.)
CHA 10
WIS 9
INT 7

And 24pts to spend. We can immediately spend 5pts to raise STR to 16, and 6pts to raise CON, bringing us down to 13pts – enough to bring STR up to 17, with 3 left over to bring INT up to 8.

STR 17
DEX 11
CON 15
INT 8
WIS 9
CHA 10

Usually experience is gained at the end of an activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Take the following experience triggers:

• Entered a new dungeon, level, region or adventure site.
• Agreed to a quest or contract.
• Faced a terrible foe.

Compared to:

• Cleared a dungeon level.
• Completed a quest.
• Vanquished a terrible foe.

XP for entering the dungeon could be abused in theory – you could just stick your head inside and then go home, but I’ve never seen a player try that, and if they did you could just specify with intent to explore. It looks better in the campaign record, too – Entered the Mines of Moria is more of a milestone than Finally Killed the Last Seven Goblins in the Mines of Moria.

The quest one is fun, because it is definitely abusable, but abusing it has consequences. If the PCs want to go around taking on quests for every king, wizard, crime boss, dragon, count and merchant in the land with no intention of completing any of them, things are going to get interesting for them. It’s a little less satisfying on the campaign record – you want to know when you Rescued the Princess, not when said yeah sure we’ll pick up the princess if we have time I guess.

Similarly, slaying a dragon and surviving a dragon both feel similarly dramatic. If the foe is important and powerful enough, and the encounters are far enough apart in time, it seems fine to double-dip here – having to flee from the big bad and fight another day, and then finally bringing him down, both feel like significant experiences.