Spending Money
All characters have a wealth stat. If it’s 0, you don’t need to worry about spending money… although your poverty might worry you. If you have a wealth of 1 or more, you have a capacity to spend it and otherwise use it. A number of things can be done with your money during downtime:
1. Give it away. You can move your wealth to another character, giving them the Cash advantage at a level up to your own wealth. You must PERMANENTLY reduce your wealth on a 1-1 basis to that you are giving. This doesn’t get rid of your advantages – think of it as mortgaging land, selling tools of your craft or whatever but essentially you still own it.
2. Pay back a debt (see the Debt Disadvantage)
3. Buy an Advantage. This is the big one – you can use your money to build castles, hire mercenaries and the like. You can convert Wealth into another Advantage that could conceivably be bought on a 1-1 basis. The reduction is permanent. If you buy an Advantage that grants wealth, it only does so in TWO downtimes hence. In the meantime your Wealth has dropped.
Vast Wealth
Some characters are rich enough that the rules above don't entirely apply to them. If your character is Wealth 4 or greater, they have Vast Wealth. A character with Vast Wealth can take one extra action in Spending Money WITHOUT suffering any drop in their Wealth. They can either:
i. Give another character the Cash advantage at Level I
ii. Construct or purchase a single Advantage that could conceivably be built or purchased
Campaigns and Armies
If you have either the Soldiers Advantage or the Castellan Advantage, you can contribute directly to military campaigns. In your downtime you should indicate:
1. Who your Soldiers and Castles support, in general terms
2. If you want your Soldiers to support a particular Army you know of
3. If you want your Soldiers to raid any particular place
4. If you want your Soldiers to defend your land (Castles always do this, regardless of which side they are in support of).
Soldiers and castles both assist the side they support, particularly if fighting with their Armies.
Raiding is a bit different – it’s turning up somewhere and looting and burning. You need to direct it at the lands of another character, be they PC or NPC. Those lands will, if they are not successfully defended, become Wasted. They will stop granting Wealth, and give the Raider at least one Wealth in cash. You might also have other effects, at the GMs discretion.
Downtime Resources
Some Advantages or Disadvantages do something specific in downtime – usually give you information. Where that’s the case you can see it in the description of the particular Advantage.
Childbirth and Dynasties
The last thing you can do in Downtime is attempt to have children. You require someone with the right parts to help you, obviously. Beyond that, it’s down to hard work and getting a little lucky.
Basically, if you want to have a baby in downtime you will have a 1/3 chance of doing so. You will need to indicate who you are trying to make your baby with. If that’s multiple people we randomise the person. We will also randomise the gender the baby is assigned at birth. For those who Fight and Rule in particular, having an heir can open up political opportunities and advantages.
Letters to the Pope: a Downtime Option for Those That Pray
Any character with Ecclesiastical Rank of at least I has the option of writing letters to the Pope in downtime in order to help him decide on Church policy. Other opportunities to influence the Pope may arise, especially if a papal legate or other emissary attends an event.
Well, to be fair, any literate character could write a letter to the Pope. But the Pope is a very, very busy man, and the Curia can’t be expected to bring every missive to his attention. Even letters from important clergy won’t necessarily reach the top of his in-tray - if a Crusade goes badly wrong or the Holy Roman Empire kicks over Rome yet again he’s going to have more on his plate than the affairs of the English Church.
So, for submitting your downtime, there is no need to write out a full letter to the Pope at first. Instead, name no more than three people and specify whether you consider them Naughty or Nice. (We could, I suppose, choose less Santa Claus terminology… but that wouldn’t really disguise the basic Santa-ness of this process.) The referees will take the names so nominated, adjust the weighting to take into account the rank of the people naming them (archbishops have a louder voice than bishops for instance), and have the Pope consider what to do about the names which come up the most. All else being equal, a name that appears in several people’s missives will tend to attract more Papal attention than a name that only shows up once.
Note that if the Archbishop of Canterbury lists someone as Naughty and the Archbishop of York lists someone as Nice, that doesn’t cancel out - it makes as much noise as if they both declared the individual Naughty or Nice. If the consensus of the Church goes in one direction or the other, the Pope sits up and takes notice accordingly, but if the Church in an area is clearly divided he also pays attention to that, because that suggests confusion and division within the Church - the absolute last thing he wants to see.
In the event that the Pope decides that a name has come up often enough to merit his attention, we will reach out to those players whose characters named the individual in question as Naughty or Nice and ask them to specify exactly what they are telling the Pope about the person in question, so that we can formulate his response. Bear in mind that the Pope would especially like to know why it is that the English Church can’t handle this themselves.
Where the consensus is that someone is Naughty, the Pope may empower people to investigate or put them on trial, or even just excommunicate them himself or dish out other papal sanctions. Where the consensus is that someone is Nice, he may give them rewards. Where is no consensus, he may make inquiries and send investigators to try and discover the truth for him.
You are welcome, of course, to write out your letter in full if you wish, even if the Pope doesn’t take an interest in the people you have mentioned - but it won’t be taken into consideration in terms of considering the Pope’s downtime actions. (Waving it at a papal legate in uptime might have an effect.)
What If I Want To Raise An Impersonal Topic With the Pope?
Then you need to cite whoever it is involved in the matter who you think the Pope should be putting pressure on. For instance, if you generally want the Pope to take a position on the Anarchy, you could write to him and name Stephen, or Matilda, or both as people of concern.
Generally, anything the Pope can meaningfully help you with will have a person involved in it; he can’t actually stop storms or plagues or earthquakes with a wave of his hand, but he can put enormous social pressure on people, and generally speaking “Sir Baddie of Murdertown is murdering priests!” is more helpful information for him than “Priests are being murdered!” because the former suggests someone he can lean on to deal with the problem, whereas in the latter case he can’t do much except feel sad, pray a bit, and appeal to people to be nice.
Again, lobbying a papal legate or other emissary of the Pope in uptime may also be an effective way to influence his policy, especially on more nuanced matters of broad policy.
What If I’m Excommunicated?
Excommunicated characters cannot make use of this option. The Pope is not interested in anything you have to say unless it’s “sorry”.
Wait, there's Two Popes…
At the start of the Anarchy there are two Popes - Innocent II and Anacletus II. Until this schism is resolved, you should specify which of these Popes you are sending your letter to. Sending letters to both is an option, but may be even more embarrassing than supporting the losing Pope in the struggle. (It's one thing to have misplaced loyalties, it's another to be actively two-faced.)
For what it's worth, Innocent II currently seems to be winning, and was the Pope that King Henry supported.