Downtime Order of Operations

Procedures and order of operations-

Hail Heroes!

In an effort to streamline the downtime process, I am enacting an order of operations for resolutions. Previously, there was something loosely enforced, so this should look familiar to Staff. However, it wasn’t enforced to the point of bouncing player actions. My understanding of automation and further logical streamlining is such that having an order of operation is important (and frankly having a soft one was making my job very difficult). Downtimes will be resolved in the following order. It is important that players be aware of this order; items utilized in a previous stack can be used by other players in that same downtime. Its possible this will change a bit if players ever get the ability to generate their own tags with Ravn (which is a big project, but one we are working on). Actions that have multiple aspects (such as someone producing ‘free’ items, having the Street Savvy perk, Bookkeeper and committing themselves to Warfare) are installed in the first appropriate stack and transferred as each phase resolves. In the case of Ally use, they will be resolve in the order that their action would take place (Labor, in the labor stack), and will have their own tag generated for that purpose. For the time being, this is what we will be working with-

1- Virtue/Vice Spends. Magistrates and Rulers that spend virtues to perform actions will be resolved first. Effectively, each use that acts in the downtime will generate its own tag in the appropriate column. That is to say, if you spend Law for a Muscle action, we generate a Muscle action and slide it into the stacks. If you spend Commerce to ’employ’ a Merchant NPC, we generate a Staffing action and slide it into that stack.

2- Muscle. This downtime has the possibility to preventing other actions, so it needs to be resolved early. Remember, the more specific you are, the less people can wear this down.

3- Wage War. While these actions are commonly resolved with Warfare, this is the order that this is accounted for.

4- Travel. Traveling somewhere should take the bulk of your downtime. Specifically this means that you can’t have a friend make you a bunch of things and then travel to sell them that same downtime.

5- Labor. This means that using Labor in a way that requires resources (such as building a building) need to have those resources allocated at the start of the downtime. This means you can’t have someone else generate Lumber for you and slide it to you that same downtime to be used to build a building. All materials need to be provided at start of construction.

6- Room Construction. This doesn’t strictly take a downtime, but this is the phase that they will be resolved in. We have had some difficulty in resolving this when someone makes items and hands them to someone who then makes a piece of furniture and then hands them to someone else who then uses them to construct a room that then affects other downtime actions. Hopping around the stacks has caused much headaches and user error.

7- Staffing Rooms/Buildings.

8- Gather Actions. This includes other aspects of gathering skills such as drilling a new mine shaft or forwarding a forest. Within the stack, these will be resolved logically as needed- having someone knock down the last ticks on a forest and someone else that same downtime forwarding the woods to drop it a level and having a third person harvest that sweet Hard wood is valid so long as its clear to Staff the intention and the players are clear with the quality they are expecting/product they are expecting back. In the cae of ambiguity (like a player not listing what they are hunting for), the most expensive item will be selected by staff in order of availability.

9- Training.

10- Masterwork Production.

11- ‘Other’- This category is to account for otherwise nondescript downtimes, such as the Spymaster investigating Vices, or rituals that take a downtime like Call of Pathos.

13- Invention- This is to start an initiative; continuing with a started project will be resolved in the ‘Research’ phase; meaning you can have other players help the same downtime you start a project.

14- Production (basic/Mass). This is the phase where ‘free’ production, mass production, and other ‘this generates a normal item’ are resolved.

15 – Research- This is a broad category covering reading a book to creating spells to collaboratively working to Invent something. Its a very complicated phase.

16- Streetwise- This includes rumor creation as well as other applications of streetwise.

17- Trade Routes/other automated Chapter activities- this is more of a place holder for back end resolving of items. For the few characters actively interacting with Trade Routes, what this effectively means is that you have most of the downtime to fulfill your requirements, but won’t get the benefit of your route until the end of the cycle. Plan accordingly.

18- Virtue/Vice generation.

As you can see, downtimes are very complicated to resolve. A common pitfall is relying on someone else to do a thing that they didn’t do and your action failing. In the case of ST or technical error, we will work with the player to resolve things expediently. However, this will be tightened up a bit. In my short time on staff, I have seen actions stretch on for weeks or months while we try to sort out player actions via tickets, emails or messenger. It can be exhausting and frustrating. Towards that end, downtime errors will have timelimits associated with them; all possible effort will be made to contact a person for speedy resolution, but we need to move out of the quagmire of never ending discussion and stagnation to keep these on track.

Those who invest a great deal into planning, please understand the order of operation when chatting with your people. The purpose of this isn’t to restrict players (though it will, a bit), but rather to greatly reduce staff difficulty. It is subject to change as further automation becomes available and implemented.