I'm also curious to see how much time you spend handling downtime. I've been in gaming groups were it certainly felt like we spent more time slinging emails back and forth than we did actually gaming. My current group doesn't really bombard me with emails but I usually spend an hour or two between games clarifying things or dealing with player specific issues. Is there a superior time to do downtime? Or do you feel that it's a matter of whatever works for your group?

I voted "My game is nothing but downtime", although that's not correct - we do have runs, but we don't separate between runs and downtime. A session starts, and characters act and react to the situations as they develop, ranging from clubbing or looking for a new library to breaking and entering.

I voted "At the beginning" but by Fuch's definition it's all downtime. I ticked every box in the multi options, that about covers my games, with short interludes to earn money.

Downtime for me is whatever you do between jobs and without (necessarily) the interaction with the whole gaming group, I agree that that definition can cover a lot of ground depending on how your game is run.

I take care to make sure that there's a lot of overlap outside runs as well, between characters. Characters using the same gym, mage doing wards for the others, similar pastimes or side jobs, helping each other out outside runs, etc.

Our downtime is handled mainly on our own personal forums. The PCs will want something (mostly buying or moding gear), ask the GM on the forums, the GM will tell them yes or no plus any modifiers, then the players roll what they need to by themselves to determine time and such. Any complications (glitches, etc) are usually dealt with via IM. There is very little downtime between sessions, and the slight amount there is, is the players asking "Can I get such and such", asking for GM approval before they go about deciding if they actually want it.

Half my sessions could be considered 'downtime'.

Boy, it's awfully hard to answer some of these questions when you run a game entirely online...

Generally downtime takes up about a quarter of my time. About half of the people do some simple task which makes money, the other half (basically the sams) go on a little side-run or mission and basically kill a bunch of stuff.

Well I put at the start of the session, but as its an online game, there is no real set time to do it.

Same here.

Yeah, our game just intermingles downtime during the session. We sometimes talk about things outside of the session, on messageboards and whatnot, but nothing really happens until we are at the game table.

Mostly players are too tired after a session to discuss downtime events. They do give me some leads, which we discuss over mail / in person before the next run so I can accomodate changes and / or some downtime-generated encounter somewhere in the next session. I must add many "runs" have been totally character generated, including a couple story arcs which involved many sessions.

And of course, every once in a while I use my "Suerte o Muerte" downtime table, just to spice things up. <That table was accidentally deleted from my computer some time ago, now I am working with my paper version, but If you search the forums more than 1 month ago it might come up>

Currently, my most active gaming group is laying real low after faking their own deaths and moving continent. (quite a story) As they can not shadowrun for some months, all they have in front of them is downtime. The mage has retired his character (again) , the adept is working at the docks, the former company man is trying to get a cabbie license and the sammy is looking for a job as a bouncer.

Cheers,

Max

I hunger for player driven runs...

Downtime is preferrably handled via email, for things like gear purchases, initiations, drone rebuilds, character improvement. Failing email the early arrivers tend to get the most attention for downtime. Once the pizza has arrived and been consumed we try to make sure that we push through as much game action as possible.

:cry: Dont we all Brother...

Seriously though, Im sooooooooo bored with Gear buying downtime. Since only one or two of the players really want to stay around longer than the run, and we only have so much time to run in, we never really get a chance to advance the character themselves. Just slowly collecting gear is BORING.

i'm missing the point of skill based character developement . . training and the such *g*

Hehe... I'm actually getting good character advancement, but I think that's because I keep screwing with their NPC's

We have sporadic downtime as well but we try to take care of most of it before we start the actual game. We do alot of little side things when we have the chance. My mage and the rigger/decker got our hands on a tow truck and "reposes" peoples vehicles, for , needing a throwaway vehicle, or revenge. We have uniforms and everything.

This is how I run my game and my players cannot get enough. I actually cannot conceive running a game without playing downtime. How would you ever build character personality?

For my group at the beginning of the session players detail how they are spending whatever money and Karma they want to use. Other than that, there is essentially zero downtime.