Version 0.10 · not yet playtested
Between one expedition and the next, the heroes are home and safe: a city, a waystation, the company’s own stronghold. They mend, they train, they spend their takings, and they chase the rumors that will set the next delve. Downtime is the rules for that gap, the half of play that is not a dungeon.
This is an optional layer, not part of the core loop. A table that just wants to delve can hand-wave the time between sessions; a campaign that wants its heroes to grow roots, a holding, a reputation, a workshop full of half-finished projects, runs downtime. It is also the engine the stronghold rules sit on (see the campaign-frame module): the base is where downtime happens on the frontier, and the two share one clock and one purse.
Like the rest of the game it adds no new dice. Every downtime roll is the familiar 3d6 + attribute read on the standard ladder.
Downtime runs in fortnights (about two weeks each), the comfortable span for a building project, a stretch of training, or a holiday. A fortnight is the campaign clock, distinct from a dungeon’s exploration turns or a fight’s activations. Usually one fortnight falls between two sessions, but the unit is the fortnight, not the session: a long gap in the fiction may cover several. (Other-language editions may use their own fifteen-day term for the fortnight.) Downtime happens at a safe haven, somewhere the party can sleep behind a door. A safe haven grants a full rest for free (all Hit Points and stress back, Shaken lifted, per the core); downtime is what you do beyond patching up.
In a fortnight, each character takes two downtime actions. Spend them on the activities below. Some finish in a single action; the larger ambitions are projects that take several fortnights to complete.
Downtime is not free, though. While the heroes rest and tinker, the world keeps moving: rumored threats ripen, rivals act, debts and wages come due, and (if the party holds a stronghold) the frontier tests the wall every fortnight. The more fortnights you take, the more the world takes back. That tension, press on or shore up, is the point.
Everything in downtime is bought with some mix of three things:
When the party strips a delve, the worked metal, hides, reagents, salvage, and stray relics they drag out are abstracted as materials. This is the clean answer to “we loot the room and the bodies”: rather than itemise and resell a dead foe’s gear (and rather than a GM inventing reasons no one will buy goblin armor), the take is a count of materials, which have an honest use, spend them on crafting and building, or sell them at a market for coin.
Materials come in two grades. Loads are the common bulk: three loose families the GM names to taste, salvage (worked metal, cut stone, mechanism parts, good timber), reagents (venom, hide, ichor, herbs, essence), and relics (old arcane fragments, blessed remnants, titan-work shards). A component is the rare single prize, a basilisk’s eye, a titan-bronze ingot, a ghost-silver heart, won from a notable foe or site; it is the keyed gate on the grandest work. (Settings reskin all of this; Theogonia’s titan-relics and monster-parts are the default flavor.)
What a delve yields (per character):
| Delve | Materials each |
|---|---|
| small | 1d3 − 1 |
| medium | 1d6 − 1 |
| large | 2d6 − 2 |
Roll per character (a d3 is a halved d6, rounding up; the −1 / −2 means a lean delve can come up dry). There is no bonus for level or strength, materials are a matter of time and transport, not muscle. A notable foe or site also yields its component, named by the GM.
Carrying them out: your pack is not your cart. Materials are bulky. A character’s pack holds only a couple, and only if they spend the time to drag them; a riding horse’s saddlebags take a few; a real haul needs transport, a mule string, a camel train, a team-drawn cart, which carries roughly ten materials per person in the party. So a full delve’s take fits a cart easily, but a party that brought none leaves the heavy goods behind (or makes slow, repeated drags to load their packs). Bringing the cart is the choice, and a laden cart on the road is a slow, tempting target. (Transport is gear and hirelings, or the stronghold’s stables.)
Spending them. Loads feed crafting and building, what the facility tables call “some materials”: a fine custom item or a Tier II facility wants a few. A component gates the top end: a masterwork or a Tier III facility needs the named prize (plus loads). Spend materials alongside coin and time when a craft, research, or build project begins (see Craft and commission and the stronghold rules), or sell the surplus for coin.
A quick action resolves the moment you take it: one roll (or none), one result. Buying common gear, a night’s carousing, a day’s wage-work.
A project is a longer effort tracked on a clock, a row of segments you fill over several downtime actions:
| Clock | Scope |
|---|---|
| 4 segments | a modest undertaking: study a rumor into a solid lead, brew a batch of remedies, mend a lingering poison |
| 6 segments | a real work: research a new spell, forge a fine custom item, drill a new Advanced Action |
| 8 segments | a grand work: a masterpiece, deep arcane research, a major facility (shared with the stronghold rules) |
Each downtime action spent on a project is one roll, 3d6 + the fitting attribute and skill, read on the ladder:
| Roll | The work goes |
|---|---|
| Masterstroke (a natural 17 or 18 on the dice) | fill 2 segments |
| 18+ crit | fill 1 segment, plus a boon |
| 13–17 success | fill 1 segment |
| 9–12 partial | your choice: fill 1 segment and pay a cost, or stop clean with no progress and no cost |
| 8− miss | no progress, and a setback lands whether you like it or not |
Why a crit is only one segment. Critical is read off the total, so it grows common as a craftsman masters their art (a +4 hand crits often), and letting it fill two would let a master trivialize every clock. So a crit fills the usual one segment and instead pays a boon, the work goes well rather than twice as fast. The boon is the maker’s choice of:
Only a Masterstroke, a natural 17 or 18 on the raw dice (see core Resolution), the rare flash of inspiration that never gets more likely no matter how skilled you are, fills two segments. It is the one leap that does not scale away, so it stays special at every level.
A partial is the interesting roll: you may push, take the segment but pay one cost (the GM picks the fitting one), or you may walk away with nothing spent and nothing gained, banking the action for next fortnight. The costs:
The complication clock. A risky project (volatile research, a deal with a shady fixer, anything the GM flags) carries a small 4-segment trouble clock alongside its progress clock. A partial’s cost can tick it; a miss always ticks it (that is the setback). When it fills, the trouble lands: the experiment backfires, a rival catches wind, the materials are ruined, the wrong people take notice. Safe, routine work simply has no complication clock, a miss there just wastes the action.
When the progress clock fills, the project is done. A project may also demand coin paid up front and the right materials in hand; without the materials, the GM caps how far the clock can fill (a fine blade, but not the masterwork).
Others can pitch in: each helper who spends a downtime action on the same project rolls too, so a crew finishes a clock faster than one pair of hands.
This is how a character realizes an advance they have earned. Whatever the campaign’s advancement track (milestone, XP, or treasure), gaining the new skill, attribute, Advanced Action, or spell is a downtime act of training, not something that happens mid-dungeon.
Advancement is gated across the whole game, but the gate is light:
The GM may waive the gate to keep a milestone game moving; it is a tool for making the base and the cities matter, never a wall that stops a hero from leveling.
With a workshop or a hired crafter, turn coin, materials, and time into gear.
Study turns the unknown into the usable. A mage researches a new spell (a 6+ segment project, Wits and the arcane skill, gated by a tome or a master’s notes). Anyone may research a lead: take a vague rumor, a fragment of a map, a creature’s name, and grind it into actionable knowledge, where the lair is, what the ward needs, which kind of harm the thing fears. A studied lead is worth a clear head start on the next expedition.
A full rest already fixes Hit Points, stress, and Shaken. Recover is for what a night’s sleep does not: a lingering poison, disease, or curse, or a wound the GM has flagged as grievous. Treat it with the Medicine skill, a healer’s care, or a temple’s blessing, a quick action if mild, a project if dire.
Ply a trade with a relevant skill to earn coin between delves: smith, scribe, sellsword, sailor, hedge-healer. A quick action and a roll; the better the result, the better the pay. Honest work that offsets upkeep, for the party that would rather grind coin than risk a raid.
Spend coin in the taverns, temples, and markets to buy talk. A night’s carousing is a quick action: spend the coin, roll on the ladder, and collect leads and rumors for the next expedition (the more you spend, the better the talk). It is the engine that keeps play player-driven, the party chooses their next delve from what they dig up, not from a hook handed across the table.
Carousing has a bite. On a partial or a miss, roll a complication:
| d6 | The morning after |
|---|---|
| 1 | A debt: you owe coin you do not have, or a favor you will regret. |
| 2 | A rival or enemy now knows your business. |
| 3 | A brawl, a duel, or a night in the cells. A grudge is made. |
| 4 | The rumor is false, or a trap baited for fools with coin. |
| 5 | You drew the wrong eye: a faction takes an interest in you. |
| 6 | A friend is in trouble and only you can help. A new obligation. |
Court the powers that be: a guild, a noble house, a faction, or, in Theogonia, a city’s living god. A downtime action spent here builds a standing tie: discounts, access, a writ, a blessing, a debt called in later. Favor is its own currency, slower than coin but it opens doors coin cannot.
When the safe haven is the company’s own holding, downtime gains a second layer, the stronghold rules (campaign-frame module). The same fortnight, the same purse, the same clocks, plus:
Downtime stands on its own without a base; the stronghold is the richest place to spend it. The two are built to fit together: one cadence, one economy of coin, materials, and time.