Writing about Empire

Do I Need To Worry About Downtime?

A guest post from Andy Raff, modified from an original post to the Empire page in November 2017

Downtime is straightforward, and there's no requirement for you to actuall do anything if you don't want to.

With an eye to the fact this may be some of your first events, I thought I'd do a quick guide to Downtime and whether you need to worry about it.

First of all, the actual wiki page for downtime is here.

How to do it
Go to the Profound Decisions website and log in. On the drop down at the top, go to Your Account -> Characters and click on your character name. From there, you can spend xp, manage your inventory, and submit your downtime by following the helpful wizard. For now I'm going to concentrate on "Downtime".

The Interlude Page
When we open downtime, we put together an "interlude" page that contains a bunch of reminders and explanations about special effects that are in play. You can find it from anywhere on the main wiki by going to The Empire at the top of the page, selecting "Recent History" from the drop down, and going to the Winds of Fortune page for the next event.

Your Personal Resource
Some personal resources let you make choices about what they do in downtime.

• Mine, forest, herb garden, farm, business, mana site - these straightforward resources just produce whatever they produce. You don't even need to log in - the only reason to do so would be to check your projected income for the next event, and to double check that any enchantment you had cast on them has worked (but see Overclocking below).
• Congregation - you can choose to sell some of the liao you produce. You can automatically sell liao for (currently) 18 rings a dose if you want some cash for some reason. If you want all your tasty, tasty liao you don't need to worry about downtime.
• Fleet - If you leave your fleet to its own devices, it will engage in privateering and produce you a chunk of resources of a random type. However, you have another option - you can send your fleet to trade with a foreign port. Each foreign port provides different income; selecting ports from the drop down automatically calculates what your income will be.
• Military unit - If you leave a military unit to its own devices it will engage inpaid work, producing a chunk of resources of a random type. As with a fleet though you have more options - you can choose to assign your military unit to support an Imperial army, defend a fortification, or assist a special project such as a spy network. By assigning a military unit to an Imperial army, you can browse the orders the general has issued, Depending on what you support, you may or may not get shares of the Imperial Guerdon - only some armies provide an income when supported by military units as determined by the Quartermaster General of the Imperial Armies each event.

Overclocking
If you own a mine, forest, or herb garden you can choose to "overclock" them. This costs you 6 crowns which needs to be in your inventory, and produces an extra 5 ingots, 5 measures, or 7 herbs respectively. Characters with a mana site have also recently gained the ability to "overclock" their resources using the "white seed" - a unique alchemical product from the Principalities of Jarm. Unlike the other resources, you can choose to spend more money to gain more crystal mana rather than simply paying 6 crowns.

In both cases, the money to pay for overclocking must be in your inventory - that is you should hand it in in to GOD in your event baggy after the event

Upgrading and diversifying
Any personal resource can be upgraded. Depending on the resource, it requires either white granite, mithril, or weirwood. The number of wains you need is equal to the new rank, and you can upgrade a resource a maximum of one rank each downtime.

To upgrade, just select the option in downtime after making sure you have the appropriate number of wains in your inventory. Diversification works the same way, but changes some of your basic production to something else - mines, forests, farms, and businesses all have diversification options.

Ministries
A particular subset of Imperial Titles come with a "ministry" - the ability to swap something for something else in Downtime. For example, ambassadors can purchase trade goods while the Overseer of the Gloaming Road can trade iridescent gloaming for mithril with the Faraden. Obviously, you only need to worry about this if you have a ministry. If in doubt, check the page for your title on the wiki.

Artisans
If you have the artisan skill, you also log in to Downtime to make your magic items. You need to make sure you have the materials you need in your inventory, and pick the items you want from the dropdown. Because of the way the game is designed, everyone with the artisan skill has the ability to make at least one item - a two-month item that requires no materials.

Arcane Projections
You also use the downtime system to prepare an arcane projection. You need to make sure you have 10 mana crystals in your inventory, then follow the instructions on the screen. Arcane Projections are documents that allow ritual magicians to perform spontaneous magic. You must submit your arcane projection before the event, but there is usually a short window after Winds of Fortune are published to allow last-minute submissions.

That's about it
In summary then. You don't need to do anything with your personal resource, or log in to do anything during downtime. Your resource will produce something automatically, and there's not a lot more to worry about with our downtime system. We keep the downtime system as streamlined and straightforward and devoid of extraneous clicking as we possibly can! If you're having any problems, you can ask for assistance from a fellow player or e-mail matt@profounddecisions.co.uk with as many details of your problem as possible.

Winds of Fortune

This post was shared on Facebook to the Empire group, and deals with the purpose of Winds of Fortune. It was originally in response to a player feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Winds of Fortune material before every event. Matt is not what you might call a natural football fan... July 18th 2018

I like to try and read the news most days. And the Grauniad is my paper of choice for English news because it's free and it fits my bias.

But I pick and choose the bits I'm interested in - I assume nobody actually reads all that stuff about football or sports and stuff... I mean there was a thing... and like some people played football and... someone won. Or something. Germany I assume - I mean they usually win everything. Or Brazil? I mean I could care less....

The Winds are just "Empire News" - they are there so people whose characters are well informed can be well informed and to create stuff people can choose to roleplay about in the field. But it's perfectly fine for it to be just "more articles about football". Nobody should read articles about football unless they want to and they enjoy reading them.

If I could find a way to say "This content is a supplement to your game - it is optional - you don't need to read any of it - you can just go into play and roleplay finding out the news" then we would.

But there is literally no way that I can think of to say that that works. I don't know what words would communicate that in a way that would make any difference at all to people. We've tried really hard - but nothing works.

Personally I suspect the game is probably more fun if you don't read them. I think I'd enjoy turning up and being wide-eyed and knowing nothing and be like "What? The Columbians have won! That can't possibly have happened. Why weren't the Belgians using the 4-7-5 formation". I don't really understand football so I think the analogy has probably gone too far now... but basically I'd find it more fun to play in the field than read online.

Now obviously the fun of that relies on the fact that *some* people do want to read it online and get super-excited about it. And it seems a bit rude to make them do all the work and do none of the heavy-lifting yourself. But statistically - there doesn't seem to be a shortage of people mad keen to read the winds. So I don't think I'd lose any sleep over the work they put in to make your game better so they can portray well-briefed NPCs who know whats happening when you turn up in-character.

But... it just doesn't make a difference. Its mere existence seems to act as a psychic anchor for some players and I genuinely cannot work out what on earth we can do to help other than to just say over and over (largely ineffectively) "Just don't read/worry about it."

Using Social Media

This post was originally made on Facebook, on the Wintermark group, as part of a discussion about advertising In Character services, and talking about your group and such on Facebook. in it he talks a bit about our approach to Social Media and its positive impact on the game. April 7th 2018

My view has always been that players advertising services on Facebook does give an advantage to players who are active on Facebook and reading the group regularly over those players who aren't.

But an advantage at what? At getting involved, at finding game, at knowing about places to go, help seeking out characters to talk to. Basically help having fun at the event?

I think it's hard to convincingly critique much of that. Our goal is to get as many people involved and enjoying the game as possible. I'd give that advantage to everybody if I could. It doesn't matter to me if one player finds it easier to enjoy the event than another - equality in enjoyment is not the goal - the goal is to get *everybody* more involved - to make it easier for everyone to have fun. If a rising tide lifts some boats more than others... I'll accept that.

For the most part roleplaying games are fundamentally cooperative out-of-character. They're not like sports - it's not just about winning and losing and competing. The more fun you are having... in a game in which much of the roleplaying is cooperative player-with-player - then it's likely that I'm having more fun. A busy bustling field full of characters going about their business is a cooler game setting for *everyone* - even if you personally are less informed on what is happening.

It's easy to think of these things in terms of competitive advantages - because some of the game is competitive in-character. Players compete against each to become senators, cardinals, grandmasters - and so on. Now clearly it would damage enjoyment to turn up and find everything like this had been stitched up in advance on Facebook - that would spoil the fun - not just for the person losing out but for everyone coming out on top as well.

But that's why we limit the scope of what people can post - IC adverts of services are fine - organizing meetings is fine - pushing agendas and discussing issues... is over the line. It's fine to find out what is going on on Facebook - but play out your response to that when you're live in the field.

I welcome any discussion of these things (provided it stays civil!) but PD have a pretty well developed sense of where we think the line is these days and generally speaking we're pretty happy with that. We're not going back to the bad old days of "FOIP" - that is not happening.

What I would say is this - posting adverts on Facebook and having signs at the event is not an either/or. You can do both... You can post adverts for stuff on Facebook... AND you can make Anvil a much cooler place by building beautiful signs...