Each week, you have the opportunity to submit a turnsheet. The turnsheet represents what your character does in period of time between meetings (this is sometimes referred to as downtime). In character, this period is six months long.
Turnsheets can be found on your user page. If you're new to the wiki, you may want to read the wiki guide to get started.
In each turnsheet, you may take up to three major actions, in which you can put your plans into action. They can be anything you can think of that your character might reasonably do — from a cooperative action with other PCs to head to the highest reaches of the Heights to spy on these strange newcomers, to outmaneuvering your political adversary at every turn while they attempt to gain support from the Houses. You don't need to put in an action to do any job you may possess unless you're doing something out of the ordinary - the rest of the time outside your actions, you are assumed to be getting on with your regular life and subsistence.
We will try to interpret your plan, along with any external factors involved, when adjudicating what happened in your turnsheet response. Telling us what outcome you want is often a good way to be clear about what you're trying to achieve.
Generally, anything that hangs together coherently as a single subject can be counted as one major action; even if the plans are vaguely related, two plans may be better turnsheeted as two actions if their scope is widely different - trying to fit in too much in a single action may not give you the results you want. Concise plans that are easier for the GMs to understand and keep in mind when resolving turnsheets are preferable to multi-paragraph epics. We have a lot of players, and only a limited amount of time! If possible, keep plans brief, and remember that longer plans are not the same as better plans.
If you want to ask any questions about actions, please contact the GM team and we'll do our best to help.
The most important part of any plan is having the skills to pull it off. In Firmament, having a skill enables you to rely on a certain range of abilities as part of your plan, representing your expertise and training in the area. Simply having a skill is not helpful unless you can exploit it as part of an action. “Throw my Combat skill at X problem” is not a plan and won't get you very far, especially if X still needs to be alive at the end of the matter. “Use my Combat skill to eliminate his bodyguards one at a time until he has no choice but to agree with my ultimatum” is much better.
Resources are things that you may have started with or picked up in play that aren't represented by your skills. This might include, for example, an ancient text, an unsual urn from faraway places, or an army. Your Standing (see character creation) will almost always help provide you with some resources, though they may not always be relevant to the problem at hand.
Other people are going to be crucial to your actions. They may help you or hinder you. If you are relying on another character to help you, make sure to note their assistance on your turnsheet. If an NPC has agreed in session to do something for you, note that down as well - we play a lot of different people and may forget. It can also help if you tell us how you think the other characters are likely to respond - this helps us judge your actions and responses in kind.
I am going to try and recover the deed of ownership to a very lucrative mine from one of my family's very old rivals. It should be mine by right, and I am sick and tired of trying to do this the official way . I will be sneaking into their house under cover of night to snatch it out of the basement vault where I know it's kept. I've spent the last year befriending one of the house guards, so I now have a pretty good understanding of their patrols and should be able to get past them with ease. If everything goes wrong I will be carrying a bottle of alcohol and a torch to create quite the distraction while I make my escape.
This action takes into account skills you have (you'd need Investigation to have any chance of success of sifting through the gossip for something actually useful), resources you control (your orphans might be something you started with or developed in play), gives a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve, and hangs together as a single coherent whole.
In addition, you have minor actions. Your character may get invited to parties, marriages, clandestine meetings and so on. Perhaps they need to pass on an item in their possession to someone else. To register that your character is doing this, but without putting in the effort that a Major Action would imply, you can use a Minor Action. There's no limit to these, but we'd prefer it if you kept them to 1 or 2 sentences. If we find people are abusing minor actions, we may have to impose limits, so in general, please don't take the piss.
The deadline for turnsheets is 12:01am on Friday Morning, to avoid the confusion about which midnight we're talking about.
Ideally it would be best if you could resolve your plans for the turn in session, but you can use the period between the end of session and the deadline to correspond with other players via email.
The deadline is strict, for your own benefit as well as ours. Being forced to wait up until 3am so you can finish your turnsheet because some unreliable person didn't email you is not fair. We're planning on having GM meetings at the weekend and need time in advance to prepare, so late turnsheets cut into our time as well.
Please contact the GM team if you believe you have extenuating circumstances (we understand if real life gets in the way sometimes), but please don't expect to be able to hand in your turnsheet late on a regular basis.
We will aim to get a response to your turnsheet to you before session begins each week. These responses will be added to the end of your submitted turnsheet on the wiki. Your GM will email you when they have completed your turnsheet response, but it's worth checking your user page to be sure.
If you have any questions about your turnsheet response, contact your GM before the start of the session and we'll try to clear everything up.
See an Example Turnsheet.