Tasks v2

In this post, I give a unified procedure for resolving tasks in games. This procedure has a low handling time, but it is extensible and flexible enough to model tasks at many different scales of abstraction. It has been extensively play-tested, by myself and others, used without much difficulty in over 200 sessions.

Basic procedure

Use the following procedure to model a simple, isolated task, with a binary outcome.

1. Define the task. Assign the task a base difficulty as a score TN/D. "D" is the die size you're going to use (for instance, 6, 10, 20), and "TN" is the target number; you want to roll TN or lower on the die. Also assign the task a period, the time required to complete it.
   
2. Adjust for situational factors. Count up situational advantages and disadvantages. Cancel one advantage for one disadvantage until only one type remains or neither applies. Assign bonus dice for remaining advantages and penalty dice for remaining disadvantages, 1 die each.
3. Roll the pool. Roll 1 base die, plus any bonus or penalty dice. Any roll of TN or lower counts as a hit (success); otherwise, it's a miss (failure).
4. Determine success or failure. If you have any penalty dice and any misses, you fail the task. If you have any penalty dice and all hits, you succeed. If you have no penalty dice and all misses, you fail the task. If you have no penalty dice and any hits, you succeed.

Consequences for future tasks:

• Retrying tasks. If you retry a failed task with bonus dice, only count new advantages, don't reuse old ones; only take bonus dice for new advantages. If you retry a failed task with penalty dice, keep all your old penalty dice, in addition to any new disadvantages.

Advanced procedure: degrees of success or failure

Use this procedure for complex tasks, or to formally model the relationship between related tasks.

1. Define the task. Same as above, but also assign a required number of successes for task completion.
   
2. Adjust for situational factors. Same as above.
   
3. Roll the pool. Same as above.
4. Determine degrees of success or failure. If you have any penalty dice and any misses, your degree of failure is equal to your number of misses. If you have any penalty dice and all hits, your degree of success is 1. If you have no penalty dice and all misses, your degree of failure is 1. If you have no penalty dice and any hits, your degree of success is your number of hits.
5. Explosion. If you rolled all hits or all misses, your degree of success/failure "explodes". Roll 1d6. On a 1, increase your degree by 1 and repeat this step.
6. Outcome. If your degrees of success are greater than or equal to the required amount, you complete the task successfully; otherwise, you do not. If you have more than 1 degree of failure, prepare for extra trouble.

Consequences for future tasks:

• Retrying tasks. As above. 
• Rollover successes. If you have any extra degrees of success (degrees over the amount required for success), use each extra degree as a bonus die on a future related task.
  
• Incomplete tasks. If you have some degrees of success, but not enough, you have partially completed the task. Maybe it's possible to keep trying the task, and add up all your degrees of success.
  

Discussions of advanced matters

The following is an exploration of some subtle details within the modeling procedure. It is not an instruction. The best ways to learn to model tasks are, first, to model a bunch of tasks in play, explaining your choices and asking for feedback; and, second, to watch others model and ask them about their choices.

You should not use every consideration below for every task. Save the real nitty-gritty for complex tasks which you can genuinely model.

How to set the base difficulty

What are the odds that you will succeed at the task, conceived of in the abstract, absent all situational factors? Use a table like the one below to assign the task a numerical difficulty.

I mostly use 1/6 to 5/6. If anything is less likely than 1/6, I just keep bumping up a die size: 1/8, 1/10, 1/12, 1/20, 1/100. If anything is more likely than 5/6, I bump up a die size and the target number, so the target number is 1 less than the die size: 7/8, 9/10, 11/12, 19/20, 99/100. I think of d6 as my basic die size, and I never bother with numbers like "13/20".

I don't recommend using a base difficulty worse than 1/100 or higher than 99/100 in the heightened reality of D&D. Anything less likely than that, you're better off either rounding to 1/100 or 99/100, or just saying, "No, it doesn't happen" or "Yes, it works".

If you're adapting this task resolution process from another system, particularly one that calls for "ability checks" (roll 1d20 under your ability score) I recommend using a base difficulty of 3/6 and giving bonus/penalty dice for ability modifiers. That approximates the right odds.

"In the abstract" is a funny term -- what gets abstracted away? The skill of the agent? Their use of tools? A specific technique? Their speed? There's no hard and fast universal answer. You can always go back and refactor the base difficulty of the task. As we get more practice modeling tasks, we'll figure out which factors count "in the abstract" and which are situational for a given task.

See below for more on situational dis/advantages.

How long to complete the task

Sometimes there's no natural limit to the amount of time you would take to complete a task. You could spend as much time as you please picking a lock or reading a book until you've finished. In that case, we have to set the period at any somewhat reasonable value, rather than hunt for the "right" period. Usually you're going to want to choose a multiple of the length of a maneuver in the scenario. Thus tasks in the dungeon usually have a period of 1 or 10 minutes while tasks in the overworld take half a day, a day, or more.

If you can intentionally do the task faster or slower, I recommend you model speed (or multiple attempts) at a task by adding bonus/penalty dice; see below.

For some tasks (baking a cake, say) you won't know if you've succeeded or failed until the end of the task, (when you pull the cake out of the oven). That's not always the case though. Sometimes you find out that you failed long before you would find out that you succeeded, and sometimes success comes far faster than failure.

If failure comes quicker than success, I recommend you set the period of the task as the time to failure, and require multiple degrees of success to complete the task. EX: If you are trying to sketch someone, we'll usually know within 30 seconds if you are going to get their silhouette right, but we won't know for 5 minutes or more if you are going to make a good picture overall. Thus we might ask for 10 total degrees of success to complete the sketch.

If success comes quicker than failure, I still recommend you set the period of the task as the time to failure, but divide the actual time spend on the task by the degree of success. EX: If you are picking a lock, if you succeed you'll probably get it done quick, but if you fail, you'll flail around for ages. So let's set the period of the task at 10 minutes (1 dungeon turn, for convenience). If you complete the task with 10 degrees of success, you might finish in only 1 minute.

Situational dis/advantages

Here we'll discuss the circumstantial advantages and disadvantages which grant bonus and penalty dice in the task roll.

Don't try to figure out generic situational advantages before you've read the discussions below about trying multiple times, taking longer or shorter, and getting help or losing it. If a situational dis/advantage is not at least as decisive as trying multiple times, taking longer or shorter or getting help, do not bother to model it on its own! We'll also talk about abilities and skills, and finally generic dis/advantages.

Try again

If you can simply give the task another shot after a failure, and you commit to doing so in advance, add a bonus die to the pool and double the period of the task. You can just keep doing this too. Commit to trying 20 times to shoot a free-throw and you get 19 bonus dice, and a total period of 200 seconds.

This is mathematically identical to the "don't double-count advantages" rule above.

Go fast or slow

If the task would be easier if you intentionally spent longer doing it, or harder if you intentionally sped up, we can model that as follows.

If a task would normally have a period of T, get B bonus dice by committing to taking (B+1)*T instead.

This is exactly the same, mathematically, as trying again; I only split them up for clarity.

On the other hand, if the task would normally have a period of T, get P penalty dice by trying to complete it in T/(B+1) instead.

The exact numbers here need to be changed for some tasks; sometimes completing a task 5% faster makes it twice as difficult, in which case the penalty die would cover a 5% increase in speed. Similarly, sometimes a 5% slowdown will make a task twice as easy, in which case a bonus die would cover a 5% increase in the period.

Naturally we'll stop granting bonus and/or penalty dice when further increases are no longer beneficial, or when further decreases are no longer possible.

Assistance and teamwork

Some tasks are normally performed solo, but a worker can benefit from assistance. Other tasks are genuinely shared by a whole group.

If the task is a solo task with assistants, we'll add 1 bonus die for every assistant. This is, again, exactly the same as trying again; the assistant is an extra shot at success. You're going to want the very best guy for the job to be the main agent, and have everybody less skilled work as an assistant. If you are using any ability/skill modifiers or miscellaneous advantages (see below) on the task, use them for the main agent, but don't worry about them for the assistants.

Some tasks are full group efforts. Carrying a heavy load between multiple people, for instance. In that case, you'll want to apply all the ability, skill, and miscellaneous modifiers to every participant. You might even change the base difficulty per participant! Add up the degrees of success from every participant, and subtract every degree of failure, to get a total group task score.

Combat in my formalism is a full group effort. (But there's probably a martial art out there that lets you treat combat as a solo task with assistants, something where you're focusing all the attention on yourself. Appropriate for heroes and gladiators.)

If lots and lots of people are working on the task, either as assistants or full participants, we should probably decrease their marginal utility the more of them there are. Maybe the first 5 workers each give a bonus die, but the second 5 workers only give 3 dice. But how often is this going to come up?

Now, losing help. It's generally not a good idea to model "missing" group members with a penalty die. Far better to use all the present workers for bonus dice, and require more degrees of success than there are workers.

Applying abilities and skills

If the task is affected by any of your (few, relatively fixed, natural) abilities or (many, fluid, improving, practiced) skills, we can model that as follows. We only care about them if they are individually as important as one of the main three situational advantages above.

First, let's be sure that the task doesn't require those abilities or skills. Somebody with a low Body score has no hope of lifting a heavy rock, and somebody with no coding experience has no hope of making a C compiler. It makes more sense to just say "I'm afraid you can't do that" than to bother stacking on penalty dice.

Second, let's be sure that the ability or skill (probably skill) doesn't fundamentally change the difficulty of the task. An experienced archer will have no trouble hitting a human-sized target at 40 yards. Someone brand new to the bow will probably have trouble just making sure the arrow comes out pointing in the right direction. Qualitatively the tasks are totally different.

If abilities are important but points 1, 2, and 3 aren't relevant, you can usually use your ability modifier as a source of bonus or penalty dice directly -- in Coup Étrange anyway, as its modifiers are usually +/- 1. If you're using B/X or AD&D modifiers, you probably want to cap their influence at +/-1 unless you're representing truly superheroic abilities. Otherwise a +3 modifier would mean your character is as effective at the task as 4 normal humans!

If skills are important but points 1, 2, and 3 aren't relevant, you can usually get one or two bonus dice if you are skilled enough, usually at basic competence or proficiency, depending on the task and skill. Or maybe you get penalty dice if your skill is too low.

Other situational modifiers

We only care about miscellaneous factors if they are individually or in conjunction as important as one of the main three situational advantages above.

Again, we should first see if any of these factors change the base difficulty of the task. For instance, picking a lock in freefall is probably not difficult in the same way as trying to pick a lock in half the time. It's a totally different task. Similarly, trying to pick a lock with the right tools is totally different from trying to pick a lock with two sharpened bone slivers.

Otherwise, miscellaneous factors are the sort of thing that immediately come to mind as "situational modifiers": acting while under fire, in a loud or chaotic space, with bad tools, on bad ground, in a half-understood language, while ill, without making a sound, in the dark, in the cold, while drunk, with a masterclass cello, at an unfamiliar fishing hole, etc.

If an individual factor isn't enough for a bonus die, feel free to add a few factors together into one die.

Degrees of success and failure

Most tasks just require 1 degree of success; you do it right or you fail. Some tasks are better modeled as long-term processes with cumulative successes required for a total success. Things like researching a topic or building a house. You don't just succeed or failure, you take a long time to make a bit of headway. Sometimes you get a setback, sometimes you don't.

Note that if you have penalty dice, you usually won't have more than 1 degree of success, and if you have bonus dice, you usually won't have more than 1 degree of failure (though see below for exploding success/failures). I have heard a different suggestion, where your degree of success/failure is simply the number of hits/misses you roll. In that case, any success on a roll with penalty dice will give multiple degrees of success, and vice versa for failure on a roll with bonus dice. I'm not coked about this; I think it's strange. It would be very dramatic though!

When you fail a task, usually the degree of failure is not relevant. You simply didn't get it done right or on time. Nothing "happens".

Sometimes we'll get inspired by a large degree of failure to add on some extra penalty. You've broken your tools or dropped a hammer on someone's toes. The negotiations went so bad you've insulted somebody and now they want to fight you. There's no hard-and-fast rules here, it's up to spur-of-the-moment inspiration.

Sometimes we might say you have a maximum of X degrees of failure before you lose the ability to retry the task. This is particularly useful for a negotiation; you need 2 successes before 3 failures or the Duke will throw you out of his house.

Sometimes we'll make opposed tasks, where your goal is to add up more degrees of success than your opponent. Combat is a key example; in my formalism, if you have more degrees of success than the enemy, you deal full damage to them.

Exploding successes/failures

If you get all hits, you've got a 1/6 exploding chance of getting more successes. (In other words, roll a 1 on 1d6 and increase your degree of success by 1, then do it again, as infinitum.) The same is true for degrees of failure on a roll of all misses.

I'm a little uncertain about this mechanism, because I don't like adding an extra step to the proceedings. On the other hand, the number of bonus/penalty dice you get is ultimately somewhat ephemeral, and I don't want to limit your success (or failure) simply because you had more penalty dice than normal. You still have a chance to do great.

And this solves the problem (?) of limiting degrees of failure with bonus dice, or degrees of success with penalty dice.

Rollover successes/failures

If you have more degrees of success on a task than required to succeed, you can roll over the extra degrees of success as bonus dice on future related tasks. How far in the future, and how related, must be left up to the individual task.

The same might be true for degrees of failure, though less often.

My original use for this rule was the new morale rules in which successes and failure carry over to future rolls. The same general principle is true in Sorcerer, so I thought, why not add it everywhere.

Here's an example of the rule in use. If you roll 3 extra degrees of success on a streetwise check to find somebody, you might get 3 bonus dice on your negotiation with them, representing your increased knowledge of their position. Meanwhile, if you fail the check with an extra 3 degrees of failure (woof!) you might take 3 penalty dice on your next streetwise check in the same city; you have exhausted all your contacts, nobody will deal with you right now.