Time And The Everyday Adventurer
There is no standardized, consistent, approach to how long it should take to do things in an RPG. It’s time that changed.
A strongly-related question is how long is a skill roll good for, before a new roll is required.
I was musing about what to write for this week’s post when I saw something about changes to the “Detect Traps” spell. After a first reaction to that issue (see below), it triggered a thought process which ultimately yielded just such a standardized approach to the broad question, and that’s principally what today’s article will present.
A couple of key criteria that are worth mentioning before I get too deep into details: this is about enhancing, not supplanting, player agency. It’s about roleplaying, not roll-playing, and how the two can interface to create a result better than either on their own. And that means that it’s also about the player-PC interface, and the PC-Game World interface, with the GM as moderator. The goal is to enable the GM to be a better, more consistent adjudicator of what the PC wants to do, and how that derives from what the player wants the PC to do. In turn, because sauce for the goose is good for the gander, it also applies to NPCs – so it’s a far-reaching and influential change, even though (in the absolute scheme of things) it’s actually a fairly minor rules tweak.
If anything, it’s more about creating a framework for the consistent application of rules, though individual skill descriptions might be impacted.
I think the place to start is by clearing the decks, so let’s get underway by talking very briefly about “Detect Trap”.
Sidebar: “Detect Trap”
I have a deep dislike for this spell. I concede that it’s a logical spell to exist, and that (compared to some of the other spells and their impact on the game world) it’s even appropriate for it to be a relatively low-level spell.
But, at the same time, it takes agency and spotlight-share away from an entire character class, and that’s not right.
There’s a metagame factor to be considered, as well: the use of such a spell can obviate a whole boatload of tedium that derives from some GM interpretations of a thief’s / rogue’s ability to detect traps.
The challenge is to keep the spell useful – arguably, even, make it more useful than it is at the moment – while preserving the agency of that character class (and any related ones with similar abilities).
In particular, I think that Rangers and the like should have a commensurate ability to detect snares and pits and other traps in an outdoors setting, on a game trail for example. Under most game systems, they don’t.
- Rangers and any related character classes have the ability to detect traps, pits, and snares in a natural environment. Simply look up the abilities for a Rogue of the same level and read off their base “Detect Trap” level.
- For the purposes of this ability, a ‘natural environment’ will be one in which the character has an appropriate survival skill.
- If the environment is some variation on the natural, eg an alternate plane of existence that resembles a natural environment, the base chance of success is halved.
- Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
- If there is no more specific game mechanism provided, additional ‘Detect’ rolls may provide those additional details, at the GM’s discretion. If the function is magical in some way, there is either no such opportunity or the chance is halved (at the GM’s discretion).
- Casting a “Detect Trap” is the equivalent of successfully rolling a “Detect Trap” check. If there is anything present that could be construed as a trap, it will glow in some color that contrasts with the natural lighting of the environment.
- This glow is visible to anyone with an optical sense, not just to the mage.
- It is blocked or obscured by any material objects or barriers.
- The glow is undifferentiated and uniform. For example, a trap that fires darts from the walls when certain tiles are trodden upon would lead to both walls and floor glowing.
- Detecting a trap does not imply awareness of how the trap is triggered, how it functions, or how to disarm it. It simply conveys awareness that the trap exists, enabling the character to look for ways of bypassing it.
- Characters are free to impute logical triggering mechanisms and behave accordingly. These assumptions / deductions may or may not be correct, and hence those behaviors may or may not actually prevent activation of the trap.
- Traps detected with the spell do include passive effects like poisoned coatings on a book’s bindings.
- Disarming trapped mechanisms requires (1) access to the mechanism in some form, and in particular to the trigger; and (2) a Rogue or other mechanically-inclined class to intervene in preventing that mechanism or sub-mechanism from being triggered. This may involve making considerable noise, eg hammering pitons / wedges in between tiles.
- If there are multiple traps present within range of the spell, it will only detect the trap that is either most obvious (in the GM’s opinion) or closest – GM’s choice, but be consistent.
Rule Change #1: Traps In Natural Environments
Rule Change #2: “Detect Trap” spells
So, the Spell detects a trap in/on a chest. Taking reasonable care, a character can lever up one edge and look beneath it to ensure that it is not connected to some external mechanism, i.e. that it’s “relatively” safe to pick it up and stow it in some convenient storage location – but actually disarming it needs to be done by a professional, and any ‘mercury switch’ traps could still be activated by this process.
This yields a spell that is inarguably useful, especially at lower character levels, that does in fact actually detect traps, but that does not undercut the specialist character class that deals with such. It does permit (most of the time) small-sized parties to retrieve trapped items to take to an outside specialist (NPC) (for a fee of course).
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s now refocus attention onto the main subject for today.
A Common Misconception
Some players and GMs have the impression that every skill roll operates for one “turn”. It doesn’t take much thought to realize that this is a ridiculous assumption:
“I run across to the tree-line and take cover..”
“Okay, it’s 140′ away, standard movement is 50′, so that will take three turns plus one to take cover, make three ‘Running’ rolls and a Concealment roll.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Or,
“I add up the takings for the year –”
“Okay, that’s 365 numbers, so 364 additions, so make 364 arithmetic rolls…”
“You ARE kidding me!”
Some tasks are bigger than others, and will take longer, no-one can dispute that. The answer isn’t to break those tasks down into sub-tasks of 1 round’s duration, it’s to stretch a single die roll to cover the entirety or a task (or a primary sub-task if the sub-tasks are qualitatively different.)
Basic Definitions
Thinking about that for a bit permits some basic definitions of the way the processes should work.
- A Die Roll applies to the entirety of a task
- Duration of task is defined as a certain number of fixed time intervals called a ‘standard unit’.
- The ‘standard unit’ is skill-specific, but there should be restricted options to select from.
Standard Units
The options that I see as being relevant are:
- 10 years
- 5 years
- 1 year
- 6 months
- 3 months
- 1 month
- 2 weeks
- 1 week
- 3 days
- 1 day
- 6 hours
- 4 hours
- 2 hours
- 1 hour
- 30 minutes
- 15 minutes
- 5 minutes
- 1 minute
- 30 seconds
- 10 seconds
- 1 second
Sizes of Standard Units
In most cases, the GM can simply apply common sense to choose the appropriate standard unit for any application of a particular skill. But, if you need some guidance, try the following:
- Estimate the Typical Total Time for such a task by someone qualified to undertake it.
- Double the estimate.
- Divide by the Basic Skill level that the GM thinks is reasonable to consider someone qualified to undertake it, i,e. the skill that will yield success at least half the time, and more likely 90% of the time.
- Select the entry on the table above that comes closest to the result. If about mid-way between two, choose the lower of the two.
Let’s see how that works for a couple of example values:
- An entire working day = 10 hours.
- Doubled, = 20 hours.
- 15 threshold = 20/15 = one-point-something hours.
- Standard Unit = 1 hour.
- An entire working day = 10 hours.
- Doubled, = 20 hours.
- 8 threshold = 20/8 = two-point-five hours.
- Standard Unit = 2 hours.
- An entire working day = 10 hours.
- Doubled, = 20 hours.
- 6 threshold = 20/6 = three-point-something hours.
- Standard Unit = 4 hours.
- Two hours.
- Doubled = 4 hours
- 10 threshold = 4/10 = 0.4 = 24 minutes.
- This is roughly midway between 30 minutes and 15 minutes (it’s slightly closer to the former but not by very much).
- Standard Unit = 15 minutes.
- 20 minutes.
- Doubled = 40 minutes.
- 8 Threshold = 40/8 = 5 minutes.
- Standard Unit = 5 minutes.
- 5 minutes.
- Doubled = 10 minutes.
- 12 threshold = 10/12 minutes = 50 seconds.
- The official answer is 30 seconds, but this is close enough that the GM should probably consider the 1 minute unit. Which he chooses is up to him – but there are consequences, as will be seen later.
Ideally, you want to end up with a number between 5 and 10 standard units = the Typical Total task time required.
Number Of Standard Units from Task Complexity & Scale
Note that these estimates take no account of unusually complicated forms of the task, or unusually large ones. This is the estimate for the most basic form of the task.
So the next step has to be adjusting the number of standard units required for this specific task, under these specific conditions.
It’s usually better to evaluate each of these factors separately, but that isn’t necessary. The key thing to remember is that they will compound if they are applicable.
I have to also point out that some tasks will be simpler or more straightforward than the ‘Typical Standard’ that you are using, for whatever reason.
Your ultimate number should be somewhere between x 1/2 and double the standard number.
Circumstantial Modifiers
Since you’re already thinking about the difficulties, now is a good time to set any modifiers to the skill roll that reflect these complications.
Now comes the fun part: you tell the player of the PC how long it will normally take and what their chances of success are. They can then decide whether or not that’s unacceptably slow, or if they have more time to spend on the task.
Cutting Corners for a faster result
Let’s deal with doing a faster job, first.
For every standard unit they reduce the time spent, they get a -2 modifier to succeed, until they get down to less than two standard units of the indicated size.
The scale of the modifier – and the scale of the standard unit – should be adjusted if your game system uses anything other than 3d6 or d20 (those are close enough in scale that the -2 works).
- For d% systems, use -10%, for example.
- For 2d6 systems like Traveler, use -2, -1, -1 in sequence, or use -1 1/3 and round off (I know which of those I would prefer).
- d30 systems should use -3.
When they get that far, reduce the size of the standard unit to the next lowest value and increase the number of those units to equal the time. This permits the character to continue to speed up and worsen his chances of success if he chooses to.
Repeat until the player is satisfied with his chances.
Significance: I want to highlight the significance of this process – there is an inherent limit to how much faster the character can be than normal. If the standard units are too big, this will automatically correct for that. The smaller the standard unit, the harder it is to reduce the time required by a significant amount.
Read that last line again.
While the system offers some protection against incorrect standard units, that’s just a lucky accident; don’t rely on it. Getting the standard unit right defines how many of them are needed for the task at hand, and that determines how much capacity the character has for cutting corners in a pinch.
Failed Checks
If the character fails his check as a result of these modifiers, the GM MAY permit the character to make a second roll at the same chance in order to complete the task in the normal estimated time, indicating that whatever went wrong resulted in a salvageable situation.
This option is purely at the GM’s discretion and will be dependent on the actual skill concerned and the task to which it is being applied. If you’re making a horseshoe and mess it up, it’s usually a salvageable situation; if you’re cooking a fancy meal and make a meal of it, the only answer is usually to throw the failed disk away and start again.
There can also be positions in between, for example painting a fence or a wall – exercising too much haste produces spotty coverage, but you might be lucky and there are only a couple of spots that need retouching.
To determine this, progressively add back the reductions in time until the roll actually succeeds; the result is how long the task takes this character under these circumstances including his attempt at breakneck speed.
Taking Extra Time to get it right
When they have the luxury, a lot of characters will invest extra time to increase their certainty of success.
- Increasing the chance of success by 1 adds 1 standard unit.
- Increasing the chance of success by 2 adds 1+2 standard units of time.
- Increasing the chance of success by 3 adds 1+2+3 standard units of time.
…and so on.
Maximum Time
Characters cannot spend longer on a task than would prevent them from failure. So there is a cap on how much extra time can be invested.
Beyond that cap, the time required doubles for each +1 to the chance of success because this is actually applying the principle of “do it over until the results agree”, or “testing the result for validity”. This sort of practice happens all the time in accounting, and is the reason why double-entry bookkeeping is considered the only way to go, even though it takes at least twice as long.
It’s even more critical in IT / software development. No computer program more complicated than “See Spot Run” is sure to be without bugs, and (if anything) the certainty runs in the other direction. Only in the most dire of circumstances would any competent analyst / programmer / developer release an update without testing it – and, in such circumstances, they would be even more hesitant to do so because there would be less scope for recovery from an error. At least, this used to be the case; sadly, some corporations no longer want to spend the development time to do more than weed out the most critical of errors (everything else can wait until the next release / patch – effectively doing their testing in public on real people and real data).
(Fighting to not get sidetracked here).
The additional time does not improve the chances of first-time success – they have already reached maximum. Instead, it buys insurance against failure.
Insurance Against Failure
Let’s say that, despite taking the maximum permitted time, the character fails his skill check. If he has invested in Insurance Against Failure, it’s not yet the end of the world.
The character can make a second attempt, using the original chance of success, plus two for each level of Insurance. if this second roll succeeds, then the extra time has been well-spent, detecting, identifying, locating, and correcting the flaw.
What form this takes at the game table in terms of what the character is doing will vary from one skill to another. It might be making a second pot of stew, or casting extra pieces of pottery so that one is more likely to survive the firing process, or verifying totals with double-entry bookkeeping, or testing software, or any number of other things.
Insurance Against Failure is totally at the discretion of the GM, and is dependent upon his having some appropriate description of the activity (as per the previous paragraph).
Some tasks are more variable
For the most part, most skills are relatively straightforward in assessment. But there are a few in which there are important sub-options of style. making the task more variable than is usually the case.
A great example is painting a portrait. You have the classical styles, in which great time and care is required; you have styles like Impressionism, in which speed is emphasized by the style; it might turn out three or four paintings in the normal span of time, from which the artist then selects the best one. The same is true to some extent of things like architecture and music and, well, anything creative. Including cooking, I should add!
The problem is that most skill systems don’t drill down to this level of detail. You take a skill in “cooking”, not a skill in “French Cooking” or “German Cooking” or “International Cuisine”.
If your game mechanics don’t afford you this level of detail, then a few assumptions are necessary whenever a particular style or school of creation becomes important.
- There is a basic commonality that the skill represents, eg “Home Cooking”.
- The GM should evaluate specialist subtypes with reference to how difficult they are relative to this basic style, and how much longer they take.
- The difficulty applies as a modifier until the character has successfully executed examples in the required style equal to the skill level (excluding any stat contribution). So if a character has +3 in painting, they incur the penalty until they have three successes in that particular style under their belt.
- It is recommended that the most difficult styles get a -6 modifier (d20/3d6 scale), while the most common modifiers would be -2 or -3.
It Only Looks Unfair
At first glance, it may appear that this discriminates against characters with higher skill levels, but that’s not actually the case, because these are works in the nominated style that are successfully executed to the skill level of the individual.
Characters can always choose to spend the extra time to compensate for the penalty – which means that, with a higher skill level, the odds are that they will “master” that style before a character with less skill, even though they have a higher standard of achievement.
Or they can lower their standards – that’s the underpinning foundation of the “cutting corners” subsystem – getting a successful result of a lower standard – which is why it won’t count against their target.
Dealing with Interruptions, Delays, etc
One of the examples that I’m going to present a little later is “Riding from A to B”. At the start of the trip, the character rolls his Riding Mount skill (or whatever its equivalent is). Ignoring for the moment all other considerations, what happens if, half-way through the trip, there’s an encounter with a Wandering Monster (or a Wandering Mendicant, for that matter?)
Once the encounter is resolved, the question arises: A new riding roll, or not?
Or, how about the situation in which the character is building a birdhouse and runs out of nails. No problem, he just nips off to the nearest blacksmith and orders a gross of them. “Fine,” says the Blacksmith after demanding (and accepting) payment, “Come back Wednesday.” So, days later, the craftsman collects the nails, but other things have happened in the meantime that are demanding his attention, so it turns out to be another two weeks before he can get back to working on his birdhouse. A new roll? Even though he succeeded on the first?
A lot of people would say, “The circumstances have changed. That demands a new roll.” The character may have been wounded in the wandering monster encounter, for example, or the mount. Or maybe it’s just been spooked.
Demanding a new role is punishing the PC for the GM’s introducing story to the task. They rolled once, they succeeded, the GM is fully entitled to tell the story of the task including any setbacks along the way, but because the character succeeded the first time, they should be reasonably able to expect to succeed despite such setbacks; requiring a new roll provides an additional risk of failure.
None of these interruptions were the player’s fault (unless the GM requires micromanagement to the point of keeping track of how many nails the character has left, which seems ridiculous). Nor was the player responsible for the “other things coming up” – that’s the GM’s doing again, he is responsible for plot and story.
Therefore, the same roll should resume as if there were no interruption or delay, though if the circumstances have changed, the GM is entitled to say that it takes longer because of the change. In essence, he determines a modifier to the original roll that accounts for the change in circumstances and then compensates for that modifier using the ‘extra time’ subsystem above.
Where I would draw the line is if the player decides to interrupt the journey without prompting from the GM – and even then, the scale of the interruption relative to the journey should be taken into account.
When I’m writing an article, pausing long enough to make a cup of coffee doesn’t invalidate the progress made or the expectations of continued success at the task of completing that article. Nor does interrupting long enough to go shopping, or do laundry, or cook a meal, or even play a few minutes of a video game.
If the interruption extends too far, however, I make completing the article more difficult; I risk losing contact with the thread of the narrative, forgetting things that I meant to say, and so on. That’s when a second die roll may be required. (\Note that it can also go the other way – if I return to an article refreshed and alert, and have left myself a ‘road map’ to the content, then the outcome may be better than that originally indicated).
Phased Outcomes
“I search the room.”
“Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“I don’t know WHAT I’m looking for, so just anything that doesn’t quite fit.”
“Okay, make your roll….”
I run search rolls as follows:
- Get the chance of this character closing his or her eyes and groping at random to find the subject of the search. That’s basically the relevant skill plus an absolutely huge negative modifier.
- The controller of the character searching makes their roll. Because of the negative modifier, they can be and should expect to fail.
- Every time the PC or NPC are able to refine the parameters of the search, they get +2 to their chance of success.
- “I’m looking for documents that have been altered.” — plus 2.
- “I’m focusing on the desk and the filing cabinet.” — plus 2 more.
- “Checking for false backs, false floors, and other hidden compartments. — plus 2 more, even if there aren’t any.
- “Checking under blotters and the like.” — plus another 2, even if there’s nothing of note hidden there.
- “Some of the files will be larger and older than others. I’m going to look for ones that have newer papers mixed in with those that are a little yellowed with age.” — plus another 2 for more precise targeting of the search, and 2 more again for a plausible method of recognizing something suspicious. So far, that’s +12 to the chances of success.
- That sort of adjustment will only take you so far. The rest gets handled as “extra time spent” – further increasing the time spent searching until the character either gives up, or achieves success. The amount of extra time is a function of their skill and the size of the negative modifier that represents how well hidden the subject of the search is.
This is an example of a phased outcome, in which the results of the skill check are dynamically varied by in-game interaction between the character and the environment / process. The approach can be applied to everything from Search rolls to Deduction rolls to scientific analysis rolls – or Detect Trap rolls, for that matter.
Layered Outcomes
A Layered Outcome is something similar, but that doesn’t have an absolute success or failure. A good example that’s already been mentioned is executing a painting. There are so many ways in which it can be made better or worse – color, lighting, positioning, ‘cosmetic flattery’, symbolism, background. action, dynamism, appropriateness of style, recognizability of the subject(s) – that a successful artwork doesn’t even need to get all of them right. The more you get right, the higher the quality of the resulting artwork; the more regularly and routinely you get such things right, the more reputation you can accrue in terms of mastery of the art form.
You can apply this principle to almost any skill check not dealt with as a Phased Outcome.
Consider a day’s Ride from A to B, for example. Some terrain will be easier, some more challenging. It’s normal to slow down somewhat on the latter ground, and make up the time by riding harder on the easier ground. At some point in proceedings, rider or mount may be wounded (as discussed earlier), making all terrain that little bit more challenging. Fording a broad lowlands river and fording a small but fast-moving stream can be quite different challenges. Put all these together, rank them from easiest to hardest, apply -2 for each, and the principles of the phased approach tell you exactly when the character’s skill is no longer enough without slowing down, i.e. taking extra time.
GM: “You lose more time fording Hollandaize Stream than you expected because it is deeper and the terrain more rocky than you thought it would be. You were able to make up some of the lost time on the downhill slopes that afternoon, but you are still (1 or 2 standard time units) behind expectations when the sub begins to dip below the treeline. You can either make camp early or press on in gathering twilight.”
Two sentences and a decision to be made bring the entire day’s travel to life, assuming that maps are consulted regarding terrain before setting out each morning (so there’s no need to describe it en route).
Many Hands
How much help will an assistant be? How about a team of them? At what point does an action stop being about how much relevant skill you have and how well you are able to direct and manage others who are doing the work for you? When do you stop being an expert and become (shudder) an Administrator?
I’ve seen many attempts at describing the application of “many hands” to a problem. I’ve even written a few, myself! None of them have been able to provide satisfactory answers to all the questions posed above. In particular, when it comes to research teams and work gangs, things tend to get very complicated, very quickly.
I guess it’s time to take another swing at it. What I propose below is going to be some resemblance to the techniques given above, and to approaches employed to solving this problem that I’ve offered in the past – I’m going to be building from both foundations and employing stepwise refinement to the old answers in hopes of getting better, simpler, and more comprehensive answers.
- If the assistant’s skill level is within 4 of the team leader’s skill level, allowing for stat contributions, they reduce the number of standard units to 1/2, +1, and they effectively add +2 to the chances of success.
- If the assistant’s skill level is less than this, they reduce the number of standard time units by 1 and they effectively add +1 to the overall chance of success.
- The project leader makes the (adjusted) roll to determine the overall success or failure of the project.
- If they fail, the assistant then rolls with the same modifiers to chance of success to determine whether or not they made the mistake that doomed the project.
- Only then can extra time be applied to turn failure into success – GM permitting.
- If the weakest skilled character is within 2 skill levels, allowing for stat contributions, of the next weakest-skilled character, they add 3 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
- If the weakest skilled character is within 4 skill levels, they add 2 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character.
- In both the above cases, the presence of a second assistant ‘reduces’ the time requirement to 2/3, +2. Note that if the number of standard units involved is low, this can end up higher than if the second assistant wasn’t involved.
- If the weakest skilled character is more than 4 skill levels removed, they add 1 to the effective skill level of that next-weakest-skilled character, and they add 1 to the time units required to complete the task.
- If the project fails, the most inept assistant makes a skill check with all the applicable modifiers to see whether or not they are the ones who messed it up. If they succeed, the next most inept assistant checks, and so on.
- Let’s say that there’s a group of eight characters working on a project. They have skills of 15, 13, 11, 5, 2, 1, 0, and 0, respectively. The project is based on 8 units of 15 minutes each, or a base time-span of 2 hours.
- Start at the top to define the ‘buckets’: 15-4=11. Two characters fit into this top ‘bucket’ – one will be the leading assistant and the other will be the second assistant.
- 11-4=7. There’s no-one who’s just one band below. 7-4=3. There’s one character in this tier.
- The remaining 4 characters occupy the bottom tier, with skills of 2, 1, 0, and 0 respectively. That gives a work party configuration as shown to the right.
- We start by assessing the group of relatively-unskilled workers relative to the 3rd assistant. If there were two individuals in that tier, it would be relative to the one with the highest total skill).
- 2 is 3 less than 5. That’s more than 2 but less than 4, so that adds +2 to the 3rd assistant, taking his skill to 7.
- 1 is 4 less than 5, so same deal, taking the 3rd assistant to skill 9.
- The two characters with skill 0 each add +1 to the 3rd assistant, taking him to effective skill 11.
- The two characters with skill 0 add 1 time unit each to the total, which becomes 10 units of 15 minutes.
- The other two characters reduce the time requires to 2/3 and add 2, so: 10×2/3=6.666=7; +2 = 9. 9×2/3=6, +2=8.
- The third assistant is effectively equal to the 2nd assistant thanks to the unskilled workforce. That’s “within 2 skill levels” so the adds 3 to the second assistant’s value, raising it to 14. His contributions also change the time requirements: 8×2/3=5.333=6,+2=8.
- Because these sundry contributions have elevated the 2nd assistant to a higher total than the first assistant, we evaluate the latter next. 13 is within 4 of the 2nd assistant’s adjusted score, so we add +2 to that total to get 16, and adjust the time factor 8×2/3=5.333=6, +2=8.
- That leaves us with a project leader of skill 15 and a collective effort of skill 16. Which means the project leader contributes to the collective effort and not the other way around. Since this is the top two tiers, we’re into “one assistant” territory. 15 is well within 4 of 16, so this gives +2 to the total chance of success (16+2=18), and reduce the time requirement: 8×1/2=4, +1=5.
- So the grand total is effective skill 18 for 5 units of 15 minutes each, to do the work of skill 15 for 8 units of 15 minutes each. 45 minutes faster and +3 to the likelihood of success (or -3 to the chances of failure, if you prefer.
- The project leader might decide to invest extra time – an extra 15 minutes (1 time unit) still brings the project in a half-hour ahead of schedule, and takes the effective skill level from 18-20.
- Still more certainty of success is possible. An additional 2 time units takes the project back to the expected completion time of 4 hours and raises the effective skill level to 20.
- Alternately, if time is a factor, the project leader might decide to cut corners. -1 time unit (=4 total) for -2 effective skill results in skill 16 (still one better than him on his own) and completion a full hour ahead of schedule.
- He could press further ahead. – another time unit completes the effort in 45 minutes and brings the effective skill to 14. a third time unit completes the work in just 30 minutes (2 time units) and takes the effective skill to 12. To further shorten the time, he has to change time units – instead of 2 at 15, he has to use 6 at 5. Which means that shortening the time proceeds in 5-minute jumps from this point, each of which earns another -2. This may or may not be worth it, it depends on just how tight time is actually perceived to be.
- Maximum Tier Size = 12/4=3, +1=4. No problem.
- Maximum number of Tiers = 12/4=3, -1, =2. Oops.
One assistant
This is the simplest possible example.
Even an inept assistant or apprentice can take some of the ‘heavy lifting’ out of a project or task. But supervising them takes some time and attention from the overall execution of the task. This is the simplest approach to simulating both phenomena that I can come up with.
It could be refined – the “within 4” is a very blunt, black-and-white all-or-nothing measurement – but every variation that’s more specific that I have been able to come up with adds massively to the complexity and I don’t think it’s worth the added complication.
Two assistants
The impact of multiple assistants is determined from lowest skill level to highest (you’ll see why, in a moment).
This folds the most inept assistant’s contribution into the effective contribution of the less-inept assistant. At which point, the problem can be treated as a “single-assistant” problem.
Importantly, this shows that even completely unskilled characters can make a contribution to a project, even if it’s only supplying manual labor.
A team of assistants
The approach outlined above becomes unwieldy when there are more than two assistants; it needs to get simplified and slimmed down. The solution is to group assistants into “buckets” of like skill level. The contributions of those in the lowest tier all accumulate and feed into the best-skilled character of the next tier up (which may elevate that character entirely out of the ‘bucket’ to which they were initially consigned. If that happens, then the remaining members of that tier have their contributions accumulate and feed to the overall team leader (the character with the highest skill), and so on, until you end up with a single character focal point and one or two assistants whose contributions are supported and enhanced by everyone else participating.
The above sounds good, but it’s easy to miss something or misunderstand something, so let’s illustrate with an example:
Project Management
Using the above principles, you could have a workforce of thousands building a Great Pyramid over a period of several years, at least in theory. Which means that there needs to be a further refinement in the form of rules for large-scale project management.
There is a maximum size of each tier, equal to one more than the project leader’s management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.
There is also a maximum number of tiers, equal to one less than the project leaders management skill (or equivalent) divided by 4.
In the case of our 8-person project, if the project leader only had management 12:
Subordinates can contribute to management skill in the same way that they contribute to a projects chances of success, or they can contribute to the project’s chances of success, but they can’t do both.
The only person with a foot in both camps is the project leader.
Furthermore, the GM can require the project leadership to be determined by effective management skill and not technical ability.
Total Subordinates
Ignoring for the moment any contributions to management by subordinates, it’s easy to calculate the total number of subordinates permitted: (X+1) x (X-1) = X^2-1, round up, where X is Management / 3.
Management Skill vs Subordinates:
1: 0 |
4: 1 |
7: 5 |
10: 11 |
13: 18 |
16: 28 |
19: 40 |
22: 53 |
25: 69 |
28: 87 |
31: 106 |
34: 128 |
37: 152 |
40: 177 |
43: 205 |
46: 235 |
49: 266 |
52: 300 |
55: 336 |
58: 373 |
61: 413 |
64: 455 |
67: 498 |
70: 544 |
73: 592 |
76: 641 |
79: 693 |
82: 747 |
85: 802 |
88: 860 |
Of course, the only way you are going to get to an effective management skill of 90 (or scores a lot lower than that) is by having an army of assistants boosting it.
But there’s a limit to how many you can have. If your skill is 12, you can have a maximum of 15 assistants pushing your management skill, at no more than +3 each. 15×3=45,+12 skill=57; less the 15 management assistants = 42. So the 12 management assistants permit you to have 42 workers contributing to the project. If your skill is improved to 13, you can have 18 assistants; 18×3=54;+12=66; less 18=46. So that gets you another 4 workers.
The one exception to all of the above restriction is in the “relatively unskilled” category at the bottom, which can have one member for each point of relevant skill in their supervisor, with stat bonuses, to a maximum of 10 per person in the next tier up.
Bureaucrats and laborers make a massive difference. Even if they are only contributing +1 each, and with a cap of 10 for each person in the second-lowest tier, that can easily run to +50 on its own. Pf course, they will expect to get paid….
With that exception taken into account, our Project Leader with a management skill of 12 is still in trouble – he needs one more tier, which he can only get at skill level 15. In order to properly handle the crew of 8, he needs a pair of subordinates assisting him to supervise. Or he could detail the first assistant to that role (so that he is no longer contributing directly to the success of the project), but reducing the tiers to be managed by 1. At which point, he no longer needs that support, but that’s the way of management, isn’t it? Someone always seems to be superfluous and contributing nothing!
Or is that being too cynical?
One final note
Don’t look at this subsystem too hard when it comes to military units. While the general principles would still apply, the numbers could be and would be vastly different, depending on the way the military think and are structured in the era in question. Do NOT presume that what we consider best practice today is in any way applicable to other time periods; the number of supporting non-combatants varies enormously with communications and information technology.
Ten Examples
I’m going to close out this article with 10 examples. These will be very brief, concentrating on the size and number of standard time units that makes the most sense, but highlighting how those units play into questions of extra time, shortcuts, and so on. They are not intended to be comprehensive.
- 1 week of 24-hour days: 7 @ 1 day.
- 24-hr days: 6 @ 4 hours.
- 12-hr half-days: 6 @ 2 hours.
- 1 week of Daylight travel: 7 @ 1 day, reduce distance covered.
- 1 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 1 hour.
- 1/2 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 30 minutes.
- 1/4 day of Daylight: 6-8 @ 15 minutes.
- Much more permanent: 24×4=96 man-weeks, generally /10 people so 10 weeks, so 1-5 @ 2 weeks or 1-10 @ 1 week.
- More permanent: 24×2=48 man-weeks, generally /8-to-10, so 4-6 @ 1 week.
- More permanent II: Still 48 man-weeks, but /20-to-40 workers: 8-16 @ 3 days.
- Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 8-16 workers = 3-7 @ 3 days.
- Basic standard: 24 man-weeks, 24-32 workers = 5-7 @ 1 day
- Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 5-10 workers = 3-6 @ 3 days
- Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 10-20 workers = 4-8 @ 1 day
- Temporary structure: 12 man-weeks, 20-40 workers = 4-8 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction
- Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 2-3 workers = 4-9 @ 3 days
- Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 4-6 workers = 2-4 @ 3 days or 3-7 @ 2 days (yes, I know that’s not on the chart)
- Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 6-12 workers = 3-7 @ 1 day
- Extremely flimsy structure: 6 man-weeks, 12-36 workers = 2 – 7 @ 6 hours, halved for 24-hour construction
Example #1: Constructing a Castle
The construction of a full-blown castle, including interiors, furniture, etc, can easily run into man-centuries – but a large labor force is used to knock that back into a more reasonable number.
Depending on scale and location, the right choice could be 3-4 units @ 10 years, or more, but it’s more likely to be 6-8 units @ 5 years each.
Natural advantages or a large workforce could reduce this to 5-10 units @ 1 year each, but this is about as unlikely as the ten-year interval. Recruiting an army of mages with Levitate wands would definitely put you into the shorter time-frame, however!
Example #2: Constructing a Fortification
Fortifications tend to come in two distinct varieties: “Permanent” structures like Forts, Towers, Strongholds, Great Walls, etc, and “temporary” Field Fortifications that will be abandoned or taken down the next morning (no-one bothers removing Earthworks, though)
Permanent fixtures are simpler than castles, but otherwise employ the same basic engineering and management approaches. That “simpler than” reduces the size of time units by one step, as a general rule of thumb – so instead of units of 5 years, you’re talking basic units of a year, and throwing lots of manpower at the problem might just get you down to 6-monthly or even 3-monthly intervals. 10 x 6-monthly units is still 5 full calendar years, remember.
Field fortifications also tend to use numbers to speed the process, but those numbers tend to be ‘whoever’s at hand’. Sometimes, a force will be split – one third defend the workers while the other 2/3 create the fortification.
Most field fortifications are constructed in less than a calendar day, a few might be a full week of ‘real time’. But numbers are used to compress those a full time unit – so 4-hour units, and occasionally 1-day units are the general answer, respectively.
Example #3: Riding from A to B
Depending on the GM’s tastes, this either encompasses a full day’s travel, a half-day’s travel, or maybe a full week’s travel.
But a ‘day’ in this sense (absent modern technology) means daylight hours – 8-10 hours.
So that gives a range of possible correct answers:
Example #4; Building a temporary bridge
Unless you’re talking about two rope-lines spanning a river or a ravine, you’re generally speaking of 24 man-weeks. You can go longer to represent something more permanent, or shorter to represent something more transitory – but strong enough for armies and/or vehicles to cross.
These are very sensitive to the number of workers pressed into duty.
Note that technology can also be a time divisor. It’s possible to accomplish in minutes or seconds what would have taken a week in more primitive times.
Example #5: Painting a Portrait
Traditional styles can take a man-month to execute, but will more commonly take 1/2 that. So the correct unit is 3-day intervals.
Plainer, simpler styles can take half that much, so 2-day or 1-day intervals.
Speedy styles can take 1/4 that, so 6- or 2-hour intervals.
Preliminary / design sketches can take 1/16 of that, or less,so 1-5 minute intervals.
Example #6: Breaking a Bronco
The total time, from what I’ve read / heard, is 20 minutes to an hour. So 2-6 ten minute intervals or 4-12 5-minute intervals.
Example #7: Writing a Computer Program
It can take more than 1,000 hours to write a good program, tested and debugged. More sophisticated programs like web browsers can be 10-100 times this much, but they have programming teams focusing on different aspects of the development.
When I wrote a relational-database app for the commodore-128, it took me around 900 hours, and I knew exactly what I was doing – creating something with a similar look-and-feel (but restricted functions) to something that I had used professionally..
As a typical rule of thumb, 1/2 to 2/3 of the time is spend finding and fixing bugs.
At the other end of the scale, 10 minutes is enough time to do something of extremely limited application – what I call “See Spot Run” programming. Most useful apps, at the smallest end, are 120 minutes of work, minimum.
This sets up a table of exponential factors:
Difficulty |
Complexity |
Time |
Time Units |
+8 |
1 see-spot run |
= 10 mins |
1 minute |
+2 -1 |
8 see-spot run |
= 80 mins = 4 hrs |
10 minutes 30 minutes |
-2 |
4 x complexity |
= 8 hrs |
1 hour |
-6 |
64 x complexity |
= 64 hrs = 6 days |
1 day |
-12 -16 |
512 x complexity |
= 512 hrs = 8 weeks |
1 week 2 weeks 1 month |
-19 -22 -25 |
4 x complexity 8 x complexity |
= 64 weeks |
3 months 6 months |
-30 -45 |
32 x complexity |
= 10 man-years = 40 man-years |
1 year 5 years |
Notes: |
Example #8: Checking For Traps
Total time is generally going to be 10, 5, or 1 minute, depending on the GM’s inclinations.
I would actually take those inclinations out of the picture and instead base it on the difficulty of accessing a tell-tale – any telltale.
If the mechanism is hidden within a thick stone statue – one that takes a combined strength of 20-something to shift and 30-odd to lift, for example, it’s incredibly hard to examine the mechanism, or even to know that it’s there, to say nothing of disarming it. So that’s a 10-minute total and a 1-minute interval.
On the other hand, if there’s an obvious tell – gears on display (intimidating) but behind glass, with some sort of yellowish gas wafting around within the enclosure, things are fairly obvious, wouldn’t you say? So that’s a 1-minute total and a 10-second interval.
And, in between, we have the standard – at 5 minutes total time, and a 30 second interval.
Example #9: Picking a Lock
Picking a lock is in line with the “obvious trap” example above. But trained escapologists can do it in 1-tenth the time (seriously) – so that would be 1-second intervals.
Example #10: Surveying a scene
The final example to throw you way is simply looking out at the horizon, or the walls, from left to right, and making whatever sense you can of what you see there.
This is primed for the Phased approach, in which things are presented (or not) in order of obviousness, from most to least, until the perception roll made on behalf of the entire party runs out.
Broader Application: Skill-like abilities
I want to wrap this article up by pointing out that some game systems give selected characters specific abilities that can be considered “skill-like” – though this often varies by edition.
Everything from a Ranger’s tracking abilities to a rogue’s Pick-pocketing capacity can be seen in this way – and that permits them to be subjected to this set of rules.
There are lots of benefits to doing so, but especially the interplay between difficulty, ability, taking extra time or cutting corners, and phased or layered outcomes.
These abilities are transformed from “all or nothing” to nuanced, and responsive to the controlling players’ will and intentions.
That can only be a good thing.
Looking for more tips on skills?
The Blogdex is the place to go. Start with the page devoted to Rules & Mechanics.
After that, RPG Theory and House Rules Theory and Game Physics are all covered on the Metagame page.
Puzzles & Mysteries are dealt with on the Adventures page.
And, of course, huge amounts of the Characters page is likely to be relevant.
Have fun!