⏳ Rest & Recovery
Horror is paced in waves — a brush with the dark, then the quiet after. Downtime is that quiet: the space to bind wounds, steady a fraying mind, and become a little more ready for what's next. The activities below are descriptive and sort into three tracks. In RPGAnywhere they line up with recovering Wounds, recovering Stability, and advancement — but no numbers are assumed, so they work in any system.
🩹 Physical Recovery
Mending the body — wounds, exhaustion, and lasting injury
| Activity | Time | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Bed Rest & Care | Days | Steady healing of wounds in safety; faster with a capable carer or proper medicine. |
| Field First Aid | Minutes | Stabilize the worst of an injury on the move — buys time, not a full cure. |
| Professional Treatment | Days–weeks | A clinic or surgeon addresses serious harm; may be the only path back from a grievous wound. |
| Convalescence | Weeks | Long recovery from a major injury; rushing it risks reopening the wound. |
| Recuperative Travel | Variable | Leaving the place that hurt them — distance and routine let the body settle. |
GM note: let geography and resources matter. A wound heals differently in a warm bed than in a damp cellar with the dark still near.
🩶 Mental Recovery
Climbing back up the Dread ladder — composure, not cure-alls
| Activity | Restores | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Genuine Safety | One rung | A stretch of real security — no threat, no signs of the dark. The baseline of recovery. |
| Comfort & Connection | One rung | Time with people who ground them — a meal, a confidant, a familiar place. |
| Catharsis | One rung | Confronting the feeling head-on — grief, rage, or honest fear let out rather than buried. |
| Resolving the Source | One–two rungs | Ending the thing that caused the Dread does more than any rest; the story gives them their footing back. |
| Distraction & Routine | Holds steady | Throwing themselves into ordinary work keeps the slide at bay — but only papers over a deep break. |
| Confiding the Truth | One rung | Being believed by someone — sharing the weight so it isn't carried alone. |
A Fractured character needs more than downtime — they need the story to offer a way back. Lingering effects and lasting fractures fade slowly, if at all; see Dread Reactions.
📈 Self-Improvement
Growing between horrors — traits, skills, and specialities
| Activity | Time | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Training & Practice | Weeks | Deliberate work to sharpen a skill or hone a trait; a teacher or mentor speeds it. |
| Study & Research | Days–weeks | Books, archives, and experts turn ignorance into a new speciality or piece of crucial lore. |
| Apprenticeship | Long-term | Learning a craft or discipline from someone who has mastered it. |
| Networking | Variable | Building contacts, favors, and a reputation — resources that pay off in the next mystery. |
| Acquisition | Variable | Securing gear, a base of operations, or a hard-to-find tool for the work ahead. |
| Hard-Won Insight | — | Surviving a horror teaches what books can't; the GM may grant growth that fits what they endured. |
GM note: tie advancement to the fiction. The skill a character trains in downtime is often exactly the one the last horror proved they lacked.