You survived your first session. You schemed, you politicked, you maybe even threw a challenge or two. The session ends, everyone heads home, and then... what? Does your character just freeze in place until next game?
Not even close. What your character does between sessions is called downtime, and it's one of the most important parts of Vampire LARP. Downtime is where your character manages their unlife, pursues personal goals, and sets up the dominoes that will fall at the next gathering.
Here's how it works.
Your Character Doesn't Stop When You Do
The game session might be two or three hours once or twice a month, but your character exists in a world that keeps moving between those nights. They need to feed. They have holdings to manage. They have schemes to advance, information to dig up, and allies to cultivate.
Laws of the Night V5 from By Night Studios handles this through the Downtime Action system. Between sessions, you submit a limited number of actions to your Storyteller describing what your character is doing during the nights you're not actively playing. Your Storyteller reviews them, decides what happens, and sends you the results before the next game.
Think of it as the space between chapters in a novel. The big dramatic scenes happen at game, but a lot of the groundwork happens in the quiet hours.
How Downtime Actions Work
The core concept is straightforward: between each game session, your character has a limited number of actions they can take. Your vampire is busy with the fundamentals of surviving and thriving in the World of Darkness, so they can't do everything they might want to. You have to prioritize.
Each action should be something you can describe in a single sentence. "I use my contact in the police department to run a license plate." "I patrol the docks to watch for unfamiliar Kindred." "I ask my ally on the City Council to push back on the new surveillance ordinance." One sentence, one action.
Your Storyteller takes all the submitted actions from the chronicle's players, figures out what happens, and gets you the results. Some actions are simple and just need a narrative response. Others might require a challenge to resolve, or might even generate a scene that gets played out at the next session or between games.
If you're playing in the Cities of Darkness network, the website at citiesofdarkness.com has a Downtime Actions form built right into the chronicle tools. You'll find it under Player Tools in the My Characters menu. Fill it out and it goes straight to your Storyteller's inbox. No hunting for email addresses, no formatting a message from scratch.
For the full mechanical details on how many actions you get and how they resolve, check the Laws of the Night V5 book or the free SRD at lawsofthenight.com.
What Can You Do With Downtime?
The short answer: almost anything your character would reasonably do between game sessions. The Storyteller is the final arbiter of what's appropriate, but here are some common uses:
Feed. Your character needs blood to survive. Downtime is when most routine feeding happens, especially if your character isn't the type to hunt during the chaos of an Elysium gathering.
Investigate. Got a lead on something? Downtime is when you follow up. Run that license plate. Dig through public records. Stake out a location. The information you uncover might be exactly what you need at the next session.
Manage your holdings. If your character has territory, a business, or other resources, downtime is when you tend to them. Check on your herd, manage your haven's security, make sure your mortal assets are running smoothly.
Work your network. Use your Backgrounds to get things done. A character with Contacts might tap a source for information. A character with Allies might ask a favor. A character with Resources might acquire something they need. Your Backgrounds represent the mortal connections and infrastructure your character has built, and downtime is when you put them to work.
Advance a scheme. Planning to make a move against a rival at the next gathering? Downtime is where you lay the groundwork. Gather intelligence, position your allies, set up the pieces so that when the moment comes, everything falls into place.
Craft or create. Whether it's forging documents, building a device, or creating something with a Discipline, downtime gives your character the uninterrupted time that the middle of a session rarely provides.
Patrol or protect. Keep an eye on your territory, watch for threats, or make your presence known in a particular area.
The key thing to understand is that your Backgrounds and other character resources can dramatically change how effective your downtime actions are. A character with no connections trying to get information from the police department might need to break in and hack a computer, which is risky and difficult. A character with a Contact in the department can just ask. Same goal, very different level of risk and effort.
Group Downtimes
Characters can work together during downtime, too. If your coterie wants to jointly patrol a neighborhood, investigate a shared lead, or pool resources for a bigger project, you can submit a group downtime action. Everyone involved submits it as a single collective narrative to their Storyteller, clearly labeled as a group effort, so the Storyteller can resolve it as one coordinated action.
This is great for coteries that operate as a unit between sessions. It also means that downtime isn't a purely solo activity. The alliances you build at game carry weight even when you're not in the room together.
Downtime Strategy for New Players
If you're new to LARP, downtime can feel overwhelming at first. You have limited actions and an entire World of Darkness full of things you could be doing. A few tips:
Don't waste actions on things that don't matter. Every action you spend on something trivial is an action you're not spending on something that advances your goals. Prioritize the things that will have an impact at the next session or further your character's long-term plans.
Use your Backgrounds. This is the single biggest piece of advice for effective downtime. Your Backgrounds exist to make things easier. If you have a relevant Background for what you're trying to accomplish, lean on it. It can turn a risky, multi-step operation into a simple phone call.
Think about what you need for next session. Downtime is prep time. If you know there's a court gathering coming up and you want to make a play for a position, your downtime actions should be setting that up: gathering support, collecting leverage, positioning yourself. Walk into the next session with a plan already in motion.
Talk to your Storyteller. If you're not sure whether something is a valid downtime action or how to phrase it, ask. Storytellers would rather help you craft a good action than receive something vague they can't work with. A well-written downtime action gets better results than a muddled one.
Keep it to one sentence. This is a rule, but it's also good practice. If you can't describe your action in one sentence, you're probably trying to do too much with a single action. Break it into pieces and prioritize.
Between-Session Play in Cities of Darkness
In the Cities of Darkness network, downtime isn't the only thing happening between sessions. The Cities of Darkness Discord bot handles some between-session mechanics like hunting, and players can request scenes with Storytellers for moments that deserve more than a one-sentence action and a written result.
Your downtime actions still go through the formal system described in Laws of the Night, but the Discord community keeps the world feeling alive between games. You'll see characters interacting, news spreading through in-character channels, and the political landscape shifting in real time. It means that when you walk into the next session, you're not catching up on two weeks of nothing. You're stepping back into a story that's been moving.
If you're interested in seeing how between-session play works in practice, check out the Cities of Darkness Discord through citiesofdarkness.com.
Downtime Is Where Games Are Won
Here's the thing that experienced LARPers know and new players figure out fast: the players who use their downtime well are the ones who shape the chronicle. The player who walks into session with intelligence gathered, alliances secured, and a plan already in motion has an enormous advantage over the player who shows up cold and reacts to whatever's happening.
The game session is the stage. Downtime is the rehearsal, the strategy meeting, and the intelligence briefing. Use it well, and you'll be the one setting the agenda instead of reacting to someone else's.
Cities of Darkness is a fan-run chronicle network using Laws of the Night V5 by By Night Studios.
Cities of Darkness material is not official World of Darkness material. Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.