The Bay Area Masquerade

I want to ask the community's opinion regarding gaining Beast Traits in downtime.

The rules as written say that when you do terrible things you gain Beast Traits. They also say that every day you sleep, your beast traits reset to 0. Beast Traits have specific dramatic effect during uptime play - it makes it easier for you to Frenzy, and of course accumulating too many can cause you to lose humanity.

While this works great for our Friday nights, I have some concerns about downtime. Specifically, if you do "Terrible Things"(tm) during your downtime (say multiple murder), there is no carry over mechanical effect during the next play session. There really is very little possibility of you Frenzying due to Beast Traits in downtime; nor is it really possible to do some "Terrible Things" and then end up in another scene where you may accumulate more.

In essence, the current system would allow you to commit 3 instances of mass murder without ever risking your Humanity 5.

This is ultimately a game of personal horror. I sort of feel like the things you do in downtime should generate the effects.

One possibility is to say that things you do in downtime the would generate Beast Traits actually happen first thing Friday night.

This week, two people generated beast traits in their downtime. In both cases, I decided to ask the player to come into game with beast traits.

How I handle it in the future will depend on what you as a community tell me here.

Thank you for your input.

Love it.

I like the idea of coming in on Friday night with Beast Traits that get accumulated/generated during downtime.

- Samantha

love ramifications and consequences for character actions; totally approved

So, my thoughts on this: Cool, it makes some sense, and it does kind of address my issue of "I can murder 1 person a day, every day, and never drop humanity!". However, I'm not entirely cool with retroactively changing the rule and penalizing the characters who submitted the downtimes without knowing about the change.

I'm all for having consequences to your actions, but I feel that this is something that should have been addressed sooner. Changing the way downtime works after all downtimes have been answered and retroactively applying the rules change to certain actions is sort of a dick move.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're generally in favour, but feel we should not issue any beast traits until the issue has been decided and we've published the change?

Seems reasonable.

Personally, I'm in favour of uptime consequences for downtime actions.

I am in favor of these consequences of downtime actions!

I like the idea of having beast traits carry into game - to a point.

Not all things that will earn you a beast trait at humanity 5 are terrible terrible things - so, if I say, hurt someone by accident - I gain a beast trait. If this happens twice in one week, does this mean I come in with 1 beast trait because the worst thing I did was only worth one trait? Or do I come in with two beast traits?

I sorta feel that if we're going to make it so that they don't reset during the week until after game, that the week should be treated like a single scene and you gain traits only equal to the worst thing you do in the week instead of cumulative.

I can see pros and cons either way. So, I would be against a change (because every change means more home-rules).

I think one possible solution would be that characters who frequently commit heinous activities "earn" the nightmares flaw but receive no points for it. Having nightmares would mean it takes longer to lose beast traits and it makes sense that repeated atrocities would eventually take their toll on a character's psyche. Characters that earn the flaw in this manner may also have the chance to buy it off through intense rp over a certain amount of time, similar to raising one's humanity or buying off a derangement.

Nightmares (1 point flaw)

You experience horrendous nightmares when you rest during the day, and those images haunt you during the waking hours. You rarely get a full day’s sleep, and it is difficult for you to overcome your agitated Beast. When you sin against your Morality, your mind fixates on those events, playing them (and other emotionally painful incidents of your past) over and over while you sleep during the day. You lose Beast traits at a rate of 1 per day of rest, rather than losing all Beast traits with a single day’s sleep.

Conversely, if beast traits acquired during downtime don't refresh until after Friday night, it severely lessens the impact of the nightmares flaw on the characters that already have it. Taking the flaw would essentially be a free point as long as your character takes the weekend off from being a monster.

Drea - that's an interesting idea. I'll consider that. I see your point about it lessening the impact of Nightmares. I sort of see the two things going hand-in-hand, but I guess that's because I don't expect we actually have any characters who gain beast traits very often at the moment, even in downtime.
Nightmares just extends the tail on how long you are in a foul mood after getting blood on your shoes.

One thing I was going to mention is how I would implement the idea of keeping Beast Traits - Essentially you would come into game with the beast traits of the worst thing you did over downtime. Broke a guy's jaw? (1bt) Financially crippled someone? (2bt) Killed a third dude? (3bt) - come into game with 3 beast traits.

Pros: The humanity system reads as a little light, such as "I can murder 1 person a day, every day, and never drop humanity!"

Con: We haven't given it an honest try as written.
Seems to have a weird interaction with nightmares (as Drea mentioned) and people who don't come to game every week (Ralph's suggestion would change that).
"I do fight club often, but don't come to game often, so I'm constantly losing humanity" also seems off.

Leveque wrote:"I do fight club often, but don't come to game often, so I'm constantly losing humanity" also seems off.

Can you expand on your point here? I'm not sure I understand.

Without special exemption, players are not permitted to turn in more than three downtimes between attendance sessions.

Also, the proposed plan would bring you into uptime with traits for the single worst thing you've done between games. They wouldn't accumulate.

I am all for coming into game with beast traits you earned in Downtime. It allows for the consequences of those actions to effect your uptime play.

Conversely. Can someone explain to me the details of the nightmares flaw? How would nightmares effect uptime play and the loosing of beast traits you may have earned? If a player has the nightmares flaw, do they need to submit in their DTs that they attempt to sleep off some beast traits? How do we keep track of these things?

Thanks!

Out of curiosity, am I allowed to come into game with beast traits if I choose to? Lets say I feel that I've done something particularly heinous, whether or not Staff agrees with that assessment. While technically the rules state that the traits should reset between games, can I elect to come in with additional traits simply because I think it's thematically appropriate?

stegan wrote:Out of curiosity, am I allowed to come into game with beast traits if I choose to? Lets say I feel that I've done something particularly heinous, whether or not Staff agrees with that assessment. While technically the rules state that the traits should reset between games, can I elect to come in with additional traits simply because I think it's thematically appropriate?

I'm gonna say "with staff approval, yes". I can't imagine we'd say no, but there might be extenuating circumstances.