Downtime & Standing
Between the crises there is the hour when the pressure dips and the crew is alone with itself. That hour is downtime, and it is where the game becomes about people instead of targets. Every downtime action costs something — a scene, a supply, a piece of yourself — and pays back in standing, healing, or the record.
Standing
Standing is a number, −5 (loathing) to +5 (devoted), between you and each other crew member. It is the lever that makes social rolls behave: every point shifts the target in your favour or against it. Standing changes only through downtime actions, betrayals, and deaths — never through a single good roll. One great speech does not turn adversity into friendship. The GM should tell you that plainly when you try.
The actions
| Action | What it costs | What it gives |
|---|---|---|
| Share a Drink | A scene of daylight | You and another clear one stack of Shaken. |
| Tend Wounds | Supplies, someone goes without | A Medicine check at Tricky clears Bleeding; a cost holds but scars permanently. |
| Stand Watch | You gain Winded; you did not sleep | Another character clears Exhausted. |
| Argue It Out | The risk itself | A Rapport check at Hard repairs two standing — or costs one more, and everyone hears. |
| Confess | The secret is out | You tell another a true secret; standing jumps hard. |
| Pore Over Intel | One stack of Frayed | A Ciphers check at Tricky opens a lead in the world state's mysteries. |
| Clean & Count | A scene not watching the door | Restore ammunition, clear a jam. |
| Keep the Record | Free — and how you survive | The GM logs the scene; the crew may consult it later. |
Why any of this matters
The quiet hours are the ones that decide what the loud ones cost. Every action is a choice between the crew's closeness and the crew's survival, and the system makes you pay for both. Lowering your own guard is literally how you clear your own mind — but it is never free. A drink costs a scene of daylight and whatever was in the bottle; a confession costs you the secret, permanently, and the GM may hand it to someone else later. That is the design on purpose: trust is the resource the math keeps forcing you to spend, and the math keeps being right that it is worth it.
The record
Downtime is also where the crew keeps its survival instinct alive. Keeping the record is free, and it is the only action that costs nothing at all — the game's way of saying that remembering what happened, and writing it down, is the cheapest thing a doomed crew can do. The world state event log is where those scenes go. When the loop notices, it notices through the record.