Post by ST Wendi on Sept 10, 2010 19:31:59 GMT -8
In Pawn’s Gambit we will be utilizing Personal Action Traits (PATs). These traits will be used to account for your character’s free time in any given month. Each month you will be given five (5) Personal Action traits to use as you see fit. If you do not use your Personal Actions they will not carry over to the next month (it would be as though your character sat on the computer playing a video game instead of getting out of his haven).
One (1) PAT is needed to initiate any action. An ‘action’ for the purpose of this discussion is any singular scheme adopted to accomplish a job or mission.
Examples of how personal action will be utilized:
Personal Action Traits are one of the subtleties of this game. Since we will only meet once per month, we need to have more structure to our downtime actions. Yes, PATs can work like proxy experience (3 PATs reduce experience cost by one) but they are more than that. If you want to start a nightclub - PAT's reflect time spent towards that. If you want to investigate a black market blood bank - spend a PAT. If you want to use influences to acquire a SWAT van - use a PAT. PAT's represent about a week’s worth of effort towards a goal, some actions will take multiple PATs over months (Digging a tunnel across California with a spoon, for example). Other things might not seem to take a week (like making a phone call to use an influence) but they still consume a weeks worth of resources. Thus a PAT might be a measure of time, or a measure of focus, but they are meant to allow you to do a fixed amount of things in a downtime.
So what then are downtime scenes, and why bother with those? Downtime scenes represent the critical moments in a particular action (like breaking in to a rivals warehouse and confronting her minions) where your character's participation is essential, or very influential. Thus a downtime scene is less useful when using influence actions to gather information on a rivals operation, or in doing a lot of research. The reward for doing a downtime scene is another PAT trait, so effectively, a downtime scene will let you accomplish certain tasks "faster."
Obviously, since ST's are running the downtime scenes, we will let you know if your idea is appropriate for handling as a scene - I am not going roleplay Mr. Miyagi doing "wax on, wax off" so you can learn celerity faster.
It might be obvious, but I should say that some things are accomplished within the framework of Game Night, and these will not necessarily consume PATs for the month... A phone call to use resources for example, would not cost a PAT on game night, assuming what you wanted to accomplish with that call could be done in one night.
Influences still work like normal...they can stealth, attack, defend, observe, etc. (Dark Epics rules apply). But taking an influence action requires you to spend a PAT.
In a growth action, a PAT can be used on a one for one basis for a point of influence. My caveat is that except for opening an influence at level one, you must spend at least one real influence point on any growth actions. So you could spend two PATs plus another influence action to grow from level one in an influence to level two.
Unused influence will default to defending itself, unless it is specifically committed to an action from the previous month.
Philosophically speaking the PATs represent where your attention is focused. They should limit your ability to direct influences, but not prevent every influence you have from taking an action. You just need to tell me which influences are on autopilot.
Any other questions, please let us know and we will happily address them for you.
One (1) PAT is needed to initiate any action. An ‘action’ for the purpose of this discussion is any singular scheme adopted to accomplish a job or mission.
Examples of how personal action will be utilized:
- Spend PATs traits to grow influences.
- Spend PATs to follow lead.
- Spend PATs for research.
- Spend three (3) PATs ‘practicing’ and reduce the xp cost of your Discipline by one (1).
Personal Action Traits are one of the subtleties of this game. Since we will only meet once per month, we need to have more structure to our downtime actions. Yes, PATs can work like proxy experience (3 PATs reduce experience cost by one) but they are more than that. If you want to start a nightclub - PAT's reflect time spent towards that. If you want to investigate a black market blood bank - spend a PAT. If you want to use influences to acquire a SWAT van - use a PAT. PAT's represent about a week’s worth of effort towards a goal, some actions will take multiple PATs over months (Digging a tunnel across California with a spoon, for example). Other things might not seem to take a week (like making a phone call to use an influence) but they still consume a weeks worth of resources. Thus a PAT might be a measure of time, or a measure of focus, but they are meant to allow you to do a fixed amount of things in a downtime.
So what then are downtime scenes, and why bother with those? Downtime scenes represent the critical moments in a particular action (like breaking in to a rivals warehouse and confronting her minions) where your character's participation is essential, or very influential. Thus a downtime scene is less useful when using influence actions to gather information on a rivals operation, or in doing a lot of research. The reward for doing a downtime scene is another PAT trait, so effectively, a downtime scene will let you accomplish certain tasks "faster."
Obviously, since ST's are running the downtime scenes, we will let you know if your idea is appropriate for handling as a scene - I am not going roleplay Mr. Miyagi doing "wax on, wax off" so you can learn celerity faster.
It might be obvious, but I should say that some things are accomplished within the framework of Game Night, and these will not necessarily consume PATs for the month... A phone call to use resources for example, would not cost a PAT on game night, assuming what you wanted to accomplish with that call could be done in one night.
Influences still work like normal...they can stealth, attack, defend, observe, etc. (Dark Epics rules apply). But taking an influence action requires you to spend a PAT.
In a growth action, a PAT can be used on a one for one basis for a point of influence. My caveat is that except for opening an influence at level one, you must spend at least one real influence point on any growth actions. So you could spend two PATs plus another influence action to grow from level one in an influence to level two.
Unused influence will default to defending itself, unless it is specifically committed to an action from the previous month.
Philosophically speaking the PATs represent where your attention is focused. They should limit your ability to direct influences, but not prevent every influence you have from taking an action. You just need to tell me which influences are on autopilot.
Any other questions, please let us know and we will happily address them for you.
