Effort, Binaries, and Timers

[HaveDiceWillTravel]

I love the idea that certain tasks take Effort to accomplish. It makes sense that you keep banging on it until it’s done, just like HP on a monster. However, I’m having some issues creating bright lines between them, and could use a hand working through the concepts.

My first ICRPG game, where I ran Doomvault, I made the mistake of “climbing down the cliffs” being an effort-based challenge. Scaling a wall does sound like it should be a damage-over-time (effort-over-time) kind of thing, but in hindsight, it would have been much better as a binary.

“Joe climbs down freehand on a Hard DC and anchors the rope near the entrance for you, so you can zipline your way down. Make an Easy check to hold on and coast your way to Joe.”

Sounds better, and it’s mechanically better.

Later, in a section my players never got to, there’s an Effort-based translation to break the force barrier before heading down the stairs. And I think it’s a good example of where even something that makes sense for effort… also doesn’t… when you see the same application in Red Sword where hacking a door’s keypad is an Effort challenge.

Why would you have to keep rolling for success and then Effort each turn? You’ve succeeded on cracking the lock, it’s just going to take to open it.

The reason I can see is because it gives the player a thing to do on their turn and feel actively engaged in the game. That’s cool, but it doesn’t make sense. What happens when he’s the only guy who put any points into INT and if he fails, that is literally a dead turn where, say, lake monsters advance on the rest of the party, chipping away at precious resources? It still creates a sort of binary that Effort is supposed to cure, right?

Then follow that up with hacking the door. “You beat the firewall, roll Effort.” The player, of course, throws a 1. Next turn he has to try again. How many times can you firewall him when he’s failing or throwing minimal effort because the dice hate him (as dice are wont to do sometimes)? It stretches believability in that case.

It cuts the other way, though, if you remove the failure mechanic. “Roll for Effort. You know the language, and translating the book is just a matter of seconds. Keep working those vowels, and remember to conjugate to past perfect!” removes the player from taking any substantive action. They stand there and advance the timer. Makes sense, but it’s not cool.

In a sci-fi setting you can do that. “You locked your sequencer in and it’s bypassing the combination. You just have to wait for it to finish.” It wouldn’t translate to Alfheim, where the tech doesn’t exist, meaning I can’t use that for system-wide implementation.

Could a success on an Attempt just turn into an Effort timer? Would that be meaningful to players?

Binary skill checks suck because they don’t increase drama or make failure interesting. They just stop the game. I’m having the hardest time shifting my thinking over to this new (for me) mechanic and understanding how to use it in a way that makes sense to beat the problem it’s designed to beat.

I’m a little tired at this hour and a little rambly, forgive me if I’m not fully coherent, and let me know if you don’t get what I’m getting at.

[Khan]

You have great points there.

First, like you observed, EFFORT is only meaningful when there is something going on (like combat) or there is some time limit to something, or there is a clock ticking down somewhere. If you don’t have any of these, EFFORT is an anticlimactic way to keep players occupied. Basically use EFFORT only when time matters/important, otherwise it is pointless.

Second, and again like you observed, mandating ATTEMPT + EFFORT each round for a task can be brutal due to ATTEMPTS failing and no EFFORT can be done as a result. For this reason, I let a player roll ATTEMPTLESS EFFORT after the successful initial ATTEMPT like your hacking example for some not-so critical tasks.

For critical tasks, rolling ATTEMPT + EFFORT each round is fine and even desirable because it says “don’t let a single person do this, go help him” and “you need some ingenuity to make the ATTEMPT EASY / you need some TOOLS/SPELLS to expedite the process”. This is great. Yes, this sometimes means that a non-INT dude has to help the INT dude to open a door in time for example. This creates tension and is great. If your players don’t think of this themselves, just tell them. “Uh, maybe one of you should help the poor INT dude over there, don’t you think?”

Also going from your example, just having a firewall is a bad approach. The task in hand can be difficult enough that the system being hacked may throw obstacles at every turn so an INT ATTEMPT is warranted each round. This is not hard to imagine and doesn’t hurt believability. Just don’t say “You bypass the firewall”. Say “You bypassed the firewall but you see that file names are encrypted; you need to try to find the right file. Roll INT ATTEMPT again” and keep going. This will increase tension and it will make sense. If you think the task doesn’t progress fast enough with having to roll INT ATTEMPT every single round, don’t create new situations where an ATTEMPT must be rolled. Let the guy roll EFFORT directly once before requiring an INT ATTEMPT again. This will create some tension too.

Summed up example: INT ATTEMPT to bypass firewall + EFFORT in the first round. Then ATTEMPTLESS EFFORT next round. Then INT ATTEMPT to decrypt files + EFFORT. Then ATTEMPTLESS EFFORT.

You say that ATTEMPTLESS EFFORT removes the player from taking any substantive action. It may seem so but that is not correct. Fundamentally there is no difference between trying to hit a goblin in the head each round to kill it vs. trying to hack a door each round to open it. In both cases a character is trying to accomplish the task by eating away the HEARTS. With ATTEMPTLESS EFFORT the task progresses even faster because there is no failure - you just rack up EFFORT.

If some poor player rolls 1 after 1 for his EFFORT (which is truly anticlimactic), make a house rule that says “ATTEMPTLESS EFFORTS get a cumulative +1 bonus each round”. First round it is +1, second round it is +2 etc. Similar to BATTLE FURY.

I think what you mean to say is trying to hit a goblin in the head is somehow more fun (even though you need to roll ATTEMPT each time) than standing in front of a terminal and clacking on the keys to open the door. Indeed it is because the door doesn’t fight back i.e. it is static, so the task doesn’t have an immediate danger and therefore there is less tension in finishing it ASAP unlike a goblin which will attack back or do something else. If this is a problem for your table, make so that these kinds of tasks do something like each time you try to hack the door, it jolts the hacker or someone else, or releases a gas or something which makes everything HARD in the room and whatnot.

Bottom line is, tasks are more fun when they are not static. This has nothing to do with game mechanics.

If you don’t want to deal with rolling EFFORT for certain tasks, you can make the first successful ATTEMPT start an EFFORT TIMER (1d4, 1d6 or whatever is suitable) and can rule that each time a player rolls another successful ATTEMPT, the timer drops 1 immediately (in addition to regular countdown). This has the downside of making EFFORT irrelevant but this can be used occasionally without any harm.

The second bottom line is, you can invent any rule to make your game yours.

Hope this helps.

[Alex]

Here’s my standard spiel on Effort. It’s a great tool, but like any good tool, it’s only the right tool when you need that tool. If you’re trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver, you might be able to do it, but a hammer will be so much more efficient. Likewise, you can’t bust out the hammer for every job.

What folks seem to forget is that Effort is a temporal tool. It’s primary use is elongating time: when you want to force a player to take extra turns accomplishing a task. In the normal course of play, that’s a terrible tool. If nothing is pressing the players, do not use Effort. In fact, if the players aren’t in any danger, maybe you don’t even require a binary check; just let the task succeed. Otherwise, if you require Effort for no reason, that elongation of the game is just going to bog everything down and piss off your players.

On the other hand, if players are stuck between a rock and a hard place, then requiring Effort might be your best tool for heightening danger and drama. The example I always use is the tin man chopping down a door in the witch’s castle. If nothing is pressing him, it would be silly to require Effort; the tin man is a woodsman who can easily chop down a door with his axe under normal circumstances. But if the room is on fire, and he and Dorothy are going to succumb to the flames in D4 rounds, now he has a little time pressure to get the door open, and that’s the perfect time to require effort. If you just have him roll a check, well, it will be anti-climactic if he rolls an 18, and they both pop out into the hallway. Instead, now is the perfect time to force the tin man to have to hack the door down to save their lives. The flames are rising! You will both die in D4 rounds!! The door has one heart of Effort to get through!!! Now, it’s a race, and it’s up to the dice whether Dorothy and the tin man live. When you force him to elongate time with that task, it heightens the drama and makes the game exciting. If adding Effort doesn’t do that, then don’t require it.

Other good examples for when Effort is the right tool include: the hallway is caving in! Use your lockpicks to get the door open or we all die!; the lava is rising!; the ritual is about to complete!; the hostages are being killed; the horde is coming, wave after wave of enemies!; we have to bend these bars and the guards are coming!; etc. See how a lot of these are used in conjunction with a timer and time pressure? Whenever you have a task like that, consider using a temporal tool like Effort to slow your players down and challenge them.

Sometimes, when you require Effort, you can have players make the initial Attempt roll and roll their Effort, but then on successive turns, you can have the players skip the Attempt roll and go straight to rolling Effort. I use this mechanic sometimes when I have required Effort for a task, but miraculously, the players have somehow negated the time pressure, so it’s time to move on, OR sometimes when I only want to slow the players a little (maybe to give time for a wave of enemies to crash into them), then I’ll require an Attempt but no successive Attempt rolls — only the straight Effort each turn. In these scenarios, part of when to use the tool and when to use the stripped down tool comes with a little DM experience. Usually, I’ll let the events and the moment in the fiction decide which tool is right.

On this last point, don’t be afraid to experiment. I have used Effort in the wrong spot and had play slow down for no reason. I think that’s a bit of a DM’s badge you earn, but the key is to learn from that mistake and try to remember to use Effort only when it’s necessary.

In any event, I hope that helps.

[orkcol]

Pretty much what people above me said. Roll once, let them add effort each turn after when it makes sense

[Looten]

My rule of thumb is to only use it when they are doing something under pressure. Unlocking your door, putting the keys in the ignition and reversing are all easy on a normal day but people fall to pieces trying to do those same tasks when a 7ft masked killer is hot on their tracks. It’s effort to concentrate and to do things right, each time you fail you know whatever is chasing you is getting closer.

I had/have the same problem as you when it comes to rolling effort to make spells. Outside of combat or action it just didn’t make sense to use it and I have no earthly idea why they would try to work on spells during combat. (Unless they need to learn that new spell FAST to defeat the monster while the others hold it off…that could be cool). Like if you’re just going to keep rolling till you succeed the only sense it makes is that for each failure or the longer it takes the weaker the spell is? I guess? The way I’ve worked that in is during down time or rests I ask each person what they plan to do during that time and have them take a few turns rolling effort to chop wood, sharpen weapons and work on spells. Depending on how much effort/how successful they are in those few turns I reward them with SUPPLIES (wood, gathered food,fishing etc), or shortened time on creating a spell. Otherwise I just say it will take you X in game days to finish that spell and leave that as background fluff, figuring we don’t need to say they spent their downtime studying since it just makes sense that they’d do so.

[Paxx]

As all above! Effort is a tool to use, add pressure, use up resources like hero coins and surge.

I use effort as an analog version for perception (how much they notice at a peek, what they identify.
Often I just have them roll effort to see how slowly they get something done.

In the climbing situation, I’d have them use weapon/tool effort if using ropes, or basic effort if no tools. No ability checks needed unless they are to move faster…risking damage.

Quickly, securely, stealthy…you get 1 for free, 2 with successful effort or ability rolls, all 3 with effort and ability rolls…

Use as needed.

[Anthony_C]

One rather odd time that I use Effort is when the PCs are struggling. They refused to take advantage of an opportunity to Rest, because they knew time was of the essence. They’re exhausted, and things that they could normally do in a single roll now require a few (ie: Attempt --> Effort).

It can also be used when PCs have a debilitating effect, like an injury, illness, curse, and so on.

And yes, it sucks! But sometimes, it’s a great narrative tool to make the players feel that “suck”, and every time I’ve used it, the players remembered those as very tense scenes (in a good way)!

[glocke]

Here’re my two cents:

I started using effort for chase-scenes.

• In D4 rounds, the city guards will catch up (or the bandits will escape)
• For the PCs: escaping (or catching up) is a challenge (either a multi- for the entire group or a single per PC)

I use this in combination with a biome-specific event table (like “suddenly, a group of people crosses, blocking your way. what will you do?” or “you encounter a deep chasm cracking in front of your path. what will you do?”) to spice up the scene. Each successful roll against the obstacle is combined with an effort roll to figure out “how well” he/she is handling it.

[Cooksadventures]

This intrigues me. Do you have a specific example of “things that they could normally do in a single roll” that you would then make effortful?

[Frey]

It wouldn’t translate to Alfheim, where the tech doesn’t exist, meaning I can’t use that for system-wide implementation.

I agree with the majority of what the other guys said. At this point I have to disagree though. I think it translates perfectly to Alfheim (or fantasy overall). Why? Well, just because you know the language does not mean you immediately understand it. Consider the complexity of a text, the wording, the state of the text (i.e. is it so old and damaged that it is almost undreadable?), etc. Look at our world: historians translate old texts from tablets all the time but at some point they suddenly start struggling since ONE word could have several meanings.
I hope that helps.

cheers!