Sometimes, maybe all too often, investigators survive the end of a scenario. What to do, what to do! Well, there’s always the next adventure! But in the meantime …
… there’s downtime!
What should investigators actually do between adventures? I’ve had a great time running solo downtime side quests for my players. Want to learn a skill? I can figure out the tests and you roll the dice. Want to stay in a sanitarium? Let’s see if you can find a decent place and how much SAN you recover.
Often, I’d create a recipe for some dice rolls, we’d see how they resolve, and then we’d have a little narrative. Players are busy and keepers are busy, so it wasn’t unusual that we’d just handle asynchronously. You know, a kind of mini-play-by-post. But there never seemed to be enough time to do side quests for everyone who wanted one.
(I remember watching videos from both Matt Colville and Bob World Builder about how, sometimes, they’d just work in side quests with player-friends while driving from point A to point B or hiking. It’s a great use of imagination. I am not so lucky as to have as much real life time with my players.)
I like downtime to feel real. Rolls. Outcomes. Something more meaningful than a number changing between sessions. But I also didn’t want anything to happen to a character without my sign-off first. And downtime shouldn’t really be as risky as game time.
So, like you do, I tried to translate that idea into something that would keep some of the fun in there for downtime but take away some of the work.
SanityFree Side Quests is a web app, kind-of-sort-of in beta, for Call of Cthulhu game masters and players. Investigators run between-session solo activities through the app; the Keeper reviews the results and approves or rejects outcomes before anything touches a character sheet. Players have agency over what they attempt. As the keeper, I have the final word on what sticks. The web app uses email to invite players to side quests and for little reports and notifications after said questing.
There are four quest types.
- Sanitarium Stay. The investigator checks in—public ward or private clinic, depending on Credit Rating (which I never seem to test for often in live games)—chooses a duration, and starts the slow process of recovering SAN. One month in a public facility returns 1 point. A private clinic does better. Neither is pleasant, which is appropriate. (The app comes with different institution options built in.)
- Skill Training. Investigators practice a skill between adventures. The system checks different attributes depending on what’s being trained—physical and intellectual skills work differently—and higher skill levels require more successful sessions to improve. Keepers also control which skills a given investigator can even work on.
- Tome Study. Players declare what they’re trying to learn before they start rolling for a specific spell, a piece of Mythos knowledge, or a language. How much of that goal they reach depends on the outcome. A failed roll still costs SAN and time. You don’t put down the Necronomicon unscarred just because the study went badly. (Keepers have to enter their own tomes.)
- Artifact Examination. Every roll reveals something. Regular, Hard, and Extreme successes each expose progressively more. A failure gives an incomplete impression. A fumble may harm the investigator. There’s no “nothing happened” outcome, which I think is right. Picking up a Mythos artifact should always leave a mark. (Keepers have to enter their own artifacts.)
Rolls happen automagically. That is, you have to enter your attribute or skill numbers from your character sheet. Paper sheet. Roll20 or whatever. It’s all fine all long as you can read and retype. I’m not doing any integrations. But then you get a random roll on a d100 to see if your skill tests go forward. You can use Luck sometimes. You can push a roll sometimes. Deity of your choice help you.
(“I don’t like how you set up the skill tests.” “I don’t like the roll mechanics and why are your dice against me?” Hey, just, like, do things some other way.)
I’m done working on the app for now, until I’m not again. Other Keepers can try it. Or not. If your campaign has meaningful downtime, or you’ve been meaning to give downtime more meaning, think about it. It’s currently free, although I won’t say no if someone wants to buy me a coffee or chip in to help me with hosting.
Keepers, apply to use SanityFree Side Quests here. I’m not opening it up to everyone everywhere all at once. (Anybody can read the help page if they want to get a sense for how it works and what it can do.)
Players, you just have to wait, I guess, to see if your game masters want to open up the path and let you tread. Or dread!
Happy Gaming!
