BGA

Between Game Actions are things your character does when there's not an event happening. Commonly, these are things that are either undesirable or impractical to do in the middle of a game - traveling moderate distances, holing up in a museum to learn something, visiting with a busy NPC that can't make time during games, and so on. BGA's are great for laying foundations for things to do at events. They're not mandatory (I have a twitch about games that require attention all day, every day) and you can survive just fine without ever opening the form. They're available if you'd like some more depth, or to get some things done that aren't time-critical but are still interesting. Here's the brief description from the form (https://www.thefallenempires.net/between-game-actions)

The Rules

Each month a character can take up to 4 actions between games (representing the roughly 4 weeks between games), this limitation is placed 1) to represent the free time each character may have during the month, and 2) it is a constraint on the plot team for the time taken to process the additional work and get the results put out on a whole. The following are the types of actions that can be taken and the requirements.

• Research- This action allows a character to hit the books and look for more in depth answers. When taking this action to research a topic you must submit a question, along with up to 2 Knowledge Areas you are using to find an answer; additionally noting where you are doing the research may affect outcomes. Characters with the Researcher Power can submit 2 research questions to be asked for each action, these do not have to be on the same topic. This can also be used for the action of Recipe research by noting which Recipe submission you are working on.

• Training- Characters can spend their downtime learning skills that require an instructor from a prearranged teacher. Keep in mind that non-Advanced class skills require no teacher.

• Contact- Traveling to a known location to make contact with a character's Attunement or NPC, this takes into account for travel time as well as standard tasks a character would perform while reporting to a base for their group or having an extended conversation with the NPC. This also will give the player access to potential plot info as it pertains to the organization.

• Duty- If your character has a set role in the game, be it a noble title that requires your efforts and attention, holding a guild position or other important role in game, it takes time from your life to do so. This action represents your service and grants benefits to the position you serve.

• Legwork-- This action is for short travel to a specific location, that you have the means to travel to, for the purpose of info collection on said location or to meet with an NPC for the same reason. This action requires the following to be submitted (single sentence responses),
  • Location and how you are getting there,
  • What you are looking for or what the goal of going there is,
  • Specific location or NPC name if you know it that you are trying to meet or learn about.

Some Extra Guidelines

Training, Duty and Contact are pretty self-explanatory and rarely need elaboration. Contact can get a little dicey if you're visiting someone in a hostile environment or very far away or reclusive - you'll have to explain how you're getting an appointment and keeping it - but it's interactive in a way Research and Legwork are not.

Research

Research actions are done with the intent to learn something. What that thing is can vary a lot from case to case. This can get tricky and gets harder to manage as it gets more abstract. Consider this:

You overheard someone talking about some mineral that makes food taste better. That's what you know and where you're starting. You need more of this, and in order to get more you have know what it is, where it comes from, how to extract it, maybe how to refine it if the raw form isn't good. It's a perfectly reasonable Research option. The actual request when we get it can take a lot of forms and this is where confusion sets in. It's very hard to respond to something like this:

• Research - "Researching food minerals"

Because we don't know who you're asking, or what you're asking, and very likely we don't know what the actual end goal is. You'll get something, probably something very broad and not very useful for your project, because it's all we can provide under those circumstances. This is better:

• Research: "Researching edible minerals at the Dwarven Institute of Dirt Stuff Or Whatever, looking for the one people were talking about putting on fries."

Now we know what you're looking for and we know what the Institute knows about your question. That's a much easier, more informative response to write. The dwarves probably already have that answer but if they don't, they know who does and they can easily point you in the right direction.

As questions get broader, answers get less useful. They have to. If you're asking about Sea Elves via "researching Sea Elves", the only commonalities we can provide are things like "blue, pointed ears, live in saltwater" and you probably already knew that. If you're looking for their history, or culture, or tech, those are cleaner questions, and if you're looking for the history of a specific enclave of Sea Elves, you can get a lot better information. What you're looking for is important. So is why you're looking for that thing. You can accumulate facts without a reason, but in the more common case that you're researching to a purpose, it helps us help you if that purpose is outlined.

Legwork

Legwork shares a lot of issues with Research. Legwork is going to do something, rather than learn something, and it's easier to compute the results of an action than it is to divine the purpose behind a question. It's still easier for us to match up your actions with your intent if we know what that intent it. If you file "Legwork - snooping around Watch HQ", we can tell you who comes and goes publicly, maybe who works the front desk, maybe or maybe not anything you cared to know. "Legwork - sniffing out corrupt cops" is better, "Legwork - tailing Watchman Dane to see if he's doing something shady on the side" is great. Intelligence actions are frequently opposed by counterintelligence measures, and that alone makes Legwork harder than Research. Some shops have world-class counterintelligence shops and it is very, very hard to dig out anything they don't want you to know. Some aren't fantastic at counterintel but known to be very harsh on spies when they do catch them. Sometimes it's worth a Research action to study the feasibility of a Legwork action - "Research - checking with local snitches to see how past intelligence incursions against Trust-A-Bro Moving have gone" can get you a better starting point or maybe convince you that that isn't a great idea after all.

Danger

Plot won't kill your character via BGA (we might make exceptions for things like "Legwork - yelling YOLO and jumping into an active volcano" but I've been told even then we should set up the encounter and kill your character at an event). That's not to say that your BGA's are free of consequences. You can be detected, subjected to someone else's investigation, or cornered and frozen until an event happens, or receive any number of other unpleasant consequences. Some legwork actions can be insanely dangerous and this is worth considering before sending them. BGA's like "breaking into Watch HQ" are very likely to get "see us at the start of next event", at which point you're probably going to be detained and interrogated (unless you're a better infiltrator than most).

Cooperating

We love teamwork and we're happy to have people coordinate on tasks. That said, we have to have it from all the involved participants. If we get "Legwork - taking butcher shop leftovers to the graveyard with Larry, Curly, and Moe", that's great but we have to see BGA's from Larry, Curly, and Moe that corroborate that. That's not us being pedantic, although I know it feels that way if you're leading a team and dragging your teammates out for some late night worm feeding. It's the only stopgap we have against you filing "Legwork - taking Larry, Curly, and Moe to break into the Tower of Eternal Darkness" without telling them you're doing that. They'll all be upset when lay-on happens and the three of them are alone against a necromancer's stronghold and probably about to die.