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 three 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. 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 abilities to pull it off. In Aftermath, 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 an ability 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 their 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, a book of questionable origin and dark secrets, some wood for constructing a simple building, or perhaps simply a nice knife.
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.
In addition, you have minor actions. Perhaps you need to pass on an item in your possession to someone else, or drop in on an apocalyptic picnic. 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. A minor action should be possible for the GMs to completely answer with no more than a sentence (and preferably just “you do this”), and should not normally be more than 1 or 2 sentences. Your qualities are not relevant during minor actions (unless you are passing an item quality to someone else)—if it's something hard enough that you need to use your qualities, it should be a major action (or a part of a major action).
The deadline for turnsheets is 23:59 on Thursday nights—i.e. the midnight between Thursday and Friday.
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 on Fridays 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.