Downtime lets the players recover resources during short and long rests, but it also provides an opportunity to zoom in on the relationships between characters and how they process the intense emotions of their adventures. You can use downtime scenes as a pressure release valve to vary the intensity of the story and give the PCs room to breathe.

Empower your players to frame their own downtime scenes. Ask the players what it looks like as they tend to their wounds or unwind together, encouraging them to take the reins and work with other players whose characters are involved.

Projects During Downtime

The Work on a Project downtime move requires more GM input than other downtime moves and is best suited for long-term endeavors the PCs wish to undertake.

These projects are typically tracked using a Progress Countdown. When deciding the starting value of the countdown, consider the complexity of the project, the availability of relevant tools, and the impact of the project on the story. If completing the project will give the group essential information they need to move on, you may want to set the starting value at a low number to ensure the group doesn’t have to wait too long for the next clue or story beat. If the project isn’t tightly linked to other parts of the story and it simply requires time, you might start the countdown at a higher number.

Simple projects might tick down the countdown each time the player uses the Work on a Project move. However, if the project is skill dependent, you can ask how the PC makes progress and then call for a roll using a trait that matches their approach.

When a player rolls to progress their project, it doesn’t feel great if the roll simply ends in failure. If you use the Dynamic Countdown Advancement table in the earlier “Countdowns” section, consider letting a failure give the PC special insight into their goal, which grants them advantage on their next roll for that project. Alternatively, you can instead use the following criteria so the PC always makes progress even on a failure:

• Critical Success: 4 ticks
• Success withHope: 3 ticks
• Success withFear: 2 ticks
• Any failure: 1 tick

GM Downtime

When players use downtime to rest and refresh, you gain Fear and can progress a countdown happening in the background:

• On a short rest, gain 1d4 Fear.
• On a long rest, gain an amount of Fear equal to the number of PCs + 1d4 and advance a long-term countdown.

This helps make the world feel alive—and it reminds players that the more resting they do, the more the world moves without them, so they might want to be careful how much they rest.

Extended Downtime

If you’re fast-forwarding the story across multiple days (or longer), you probably don’t need a separate scene for each long rest during that time. During these longer stretches, consider talking to your players about what their characters want to accomplish, then using montages to illustrate the passage of time. You gain 1d6 Fear per PC and can advance the long-term countdowns as appropriate for the extended period of rest.

Some PC goals might require a single roll (or none at all). Others might call for a series of progress countdown rolls to advance a project across several long rests. It’s trivial for a bard to gather rumors during a week-long stay in the city, but you might ask them to make a Presence Roll to see whether they learn some especially important information in the process. Similarly, you could ask your warrior to make a Finesse Roll if they’re trying to enhance their armor with rare materials obtained in their last adventure.