Downtime

That's All Folks! is a game where the action takes place entirely during the sessions. To help make the sessions as fun as possible, there are still a couple of things for players to do between sessions.

Between the end of an Episode and the Downtime submission the following Thursday at 23:59 the GMs will open the #messages channel in the Discord server. In this channel players can create threads that will allow them to have conversations that the GMs can see.

When players create these threads, they are private by default. Therefore, it is vitally important that when players create these threads, they @GMs and @crew, and they give the thread a sensible name. Otherwise we (as GMs and Crew) will not necessarily notice them, which defeats the point!

Messages have three primary roles, summarized below.

The first and foremost role of messages is to help Players coordinate what they will be doing next Uptime! By chatting about this they can coordinate their Downtime submissions and calibrate expectations about what they want, both IC and OC.

Having these conversations take place in messages means that GMs will be able to see them, which will give them greater insight into the intention behind the Next On… submission. They can also weigh in if they notice any misunderstandings that could make a potential plan difficult to process!

Messages are a great place to discuss character relationships in a forum that GMs can see (and potentially even weigh in)! While you are of course welcome to talk about your characters in any forum, if they are here it can help GMs understand what is going on between two PCs and we can therefore factor it into responses to Downtimes.

That's All Folks! is a show with a venerable history, and as such Characters probably had interactions in previous Seasons! Again, because GMs can see them, messages are a great place come up with Backstory on how Characters have interacted in the past that you can then reference in Session (or, indeed, the GMs might bring up…).

Players are welcome to use messages to roleplay interactions between their characters, which is representative of storyboards The Writers made for fun or to work through ideas that never made it onto The Show, potentially because they were too long form to be animated. While these can be “yes, and'ed” into reality during an Episode, in the same way anything else can be, it is must be remembered that The Audience never saw them! It is therefore important that if they are explicitly canonized during an Episode, that this is done in a way that is not jarring or incomprehensible to someone who only saw the last Episode.

Any roleplay that happens outside of Session is inherently touching on the Artifice themes of the game. Did the characters really experience these scenes, or are they just acting like they did? If they did happen was it the way they played out in messages? Did characters experience or are even aware of Scenes, or parts of Scenes, that are never referenced in The Show? These are not questions that this game will give answers for.

Players will be able to use Discord threads on a specific channel to discuss the relationships between their characters, roleplay draft storyboards that didn't make it to production but nonetheless may influence how the Writers think about characters relationships, invent new backstory and plan their next Uptime together.

A Downtime is a short outline of what you're hoping to do next session to help the GMs plan. This should be a high-level overview, not a detailed breakdown of each step. You are under no obligation to stick to your plans or schemes¹⁾. Just remember that you will still have to enact your plans yourself during a session – the game team will not be doing write-ups for you outside of the session!

A Downtime consists of:

1. The main thing you want to do, including a 1-3 sentence summary of what you're trying to do, location(s), item(s), PCs, and NPCs involved
2. Any additional plans others have which you want to be involved in. Include a 1-2 sentence summary of what you hope to do as part of that plan. There is no limit to how many of these you can include, but remember that you are the one who needs to follow through with these, so consider how many are practical to get involved in

Even if you don't have a plan for what you want to do next session, you should still submit a Downtime just to let the GMs know that.

To submit a Downtime, go onto the little person icon on the top left of the wiki. Click “Home-Page”. There will be links for each session. Click the one for the session that just happened, then “Create this page” on the toolbar on the right (you might need to move your mouse around the right side of the screen to make it appear). Fill in the template.

Downtimes are due the Thursday immediately after a session at 23:59.

Main Plan: Next session, I want to attach the glooping ray I got last session to turn the Frowntain into something which showers passersby with gloop.

Location(s):

• The Frowntain

Item(s):

• My new glooping ray
• Harold's sneaky disguise moustache

PCs and NPCs involved (if any):

• Winsome Windmill – she offered to help distract the maintenance crew
• Harold

Other Plans:

• Work with Winsome Windmill to get her door key back. I'll squeeze into smaller spaces to investigate
• Go to the new nail salon and help the opening day be a success
• Hang out with Harold. They said they have something secret to talk about?

The GMs will inform you what session and time your Curtain Call is scheduled for at the start of the game. Using a form, we will also ask you for more information before that session on what (or who) you want your Curtain Call to involve. Please complete this the Thursday immediately after your penultimate session at 23:59.

More information on Curtain Calls can be found on the Curtain Call page.

For those familiar with previous Society Games, you may notice a few things missing. These are:

• Turnsheets – These have been replaced with Downtimes, and are a planning tool, not a way to complete actions between sessions (although they are still called Turnsheets in parts of the Wiki, due to us using the same plugin for them)
• IC Emails – Characters cannot communicate between sessions. You can still send OC emails to GMs, for example to check information or discuss ideas

There is no action between episodes (i.e. sessions). Characters are only active during each session.