TSS

From Sagataflwiki

Latest revision as of 02:39, 9 October 2010

This article defines the Time Step Scale, an important core element in Sagatafl, that is used extensively throughout the system.

About the scale

The scale is simply a list of time increments, that one can move up or down, from a starting position, e.g. to perform an activity (or a Task cycle, or a Spellcasting cycle) more slowly than usual in exchange for an RD bonus, or faster in exchange for an RD penalty.

The scale

The Step column is simply there for ease of reference, i.e. if you are at 6 Minutes and need to do something 5 steps slower (which would be very drastic, game-mechanically), you simply look up the Step number for 6 Minutes (which is 2), add 5, and reference that row (the row for 7), to see that the new Time Increment is 1 Moon.

Understanding the scale

The scale is intended to function as usable activity length steps and duration steps that can be assigned by designers and GM, and is also intended to be moved up and down on, i.e. if the default length of an activity, or duration of an effect, is 3 Years, then doing it significantly faster is 1 step faster, thus 6 Moons.

Normally mundane effects should never move more than 2 steps up or down, e.g. if the default time per Lockpicking cycle is 1 Round, then doing it really fast is 2 steps faster at 1/10 second per cycle. That is game-mechancally legal, but carries a very harsh RD penalty, so only the very most skilled should even consider it.

Note that the scale is deliberately coarsegrained. In-between steps need to be improvised in some cases, for instance the RD penalty for doing something (an activity, or a cycle of a Task or Spellcasting) 1 step faster is +2 RD, so there is need of an in-between level. That's twice as fast (note that all TSS steps are at least 4 times faster/slower than the previous) in exchange for a +1 RD penalty. Generally this can be used for minimal-size in-between movements from the default time: half a step faster or slower means twice as fast or twice as slow. Note, though, that his is not always legal, for instance it isn't legal in the magic rules, except where explicitly noted, and that there is probably never any legitimate need for one-and-a-half-steps.

The scale becomes simple below TSS -4, and above TSS 16, which will rarely be used anyway in anything resembling normal play.

Also note that the scale only very recently became firmly defined for TSS 15+. Up until recently (late 2010), the highest defined TSS was 14 at 6000 Years, and anything above may be inconsistent in old documents.

Also please note that the scale does not use uniform jumps (in spite of the number 168 occuring a few times). The smallest jump is a factor of 4, and the largest jump a factor if 10 (which is even used once near the "middle" of the scale, i.e. not just at rarer steps), and also the factors of multiplication aren't always integers. Rather, the design purpose was to create easily memorized (eventually internalized) values, without having jumps that are ever too stark, e.g. jumping directly from 1 Hour to 24 Hours, or 1 Minute to 1 Hour, as seen in a few unfortunately designed RPG systems.

The need for sleep

When changing the time increment of an activity, and touching or crossing the 1 Day-barrier, something important happens. Consider an activity that has a default time increment of 4 Hours. That's fine, do it twice in a day, that's 8 Hours. That's perfectly reasonable. Do it faster, it drops to 1 Hour, and you can do it 8, even 10 or 12, times in a single day. Do it more slowly, however, and you touch the 24 Hour-barrier. 1 TS step more slowly means the activity now takes 24 Hours instead of 4 Hours, and most characters need to sleep for a substantial period of time per day (or meditate, or recharge their electrical batteries, or undergo maintenance).

This means that the activity, with a default increment of 4 Hours, cannot be performed seven times in a Week 1 step slower than normal, unless the character is a Lich or similar. He'll need to sleep (and probably also need to take a few additional breaks for the sake of Sanity). Most likely the character can actually only perform that activity once per 2.5 or 3 Days, at that speed (1 step slower), if he's Human and relativly normal. Not once per Day.

Instead, when moving an activity that takes under 1 Day up on the scale, i.e. in the direction of slowness, keep track of the number of Hours, and then determine how many Hours per Day the character can actually dedicate to the activity, taking his individual traits into account (i.e. he's robotic, she's a lich, he's madly obsessed with finishing the project, she's a felinoid and they need 12 Hours of sleep per Day, or he has an extremely high Will attribute) for the sake of realism.

The same goes for activities that has a default increment of 1 Week or longer but which is performed faster (thus moving down on the scale) so that it move to touch or go under the 1 Day-barrier. Since this means that the activity can quite possibly be completed in one stretch (with minimal bio-breaks for bathroom, food, cigarette smoking, hydration and stretching), the activity can often then be performed rather faster than one would assume. Again, the solution is to calculate the number of Hours, and see what the character, analyzed as an individual, can realistically accomplish.

Note that this goes only for activities, not for effects, such as the duration of a chemical or magical phenomenon. Also, step changes that do not touch nor cross the 1 Day mark are unaffected. If something has a cycle time of 1 Moon, and you do it two steps more slowly, the cycle time becomes 3 Years.

Example: The need for sleep

Normally the Task of Inventing the deNazification Serum has a Time Increment of 1 Week per cycle, so that Professor Wild would be able to roll 4 such Cycles in a Moon or 24 such cycles in 6 Moons. However, Professor Wild is a man of remarkable genius (and he has also found some leads that lowers the RD by 2, and receives assistance by the very skilled Reginald L. Abbott, Nobel laureate in chemistry, further lowering the RD by 1), and so his player decides that Wild would realistically decide to use the Working Much Faster option, speeding the process up by two Time Scale Steps in exchange for a +5 RD penalty (which of course is cumulative with the -2 RD bonus from the research leads he has found, and the -1 RD from expert assistance, and any Talent with the rolled-for-skill that Wild may have). This means that each cycle would take only 4 Hours, if one follows the TS Scale blindly, but actually the cycle time of 1 Week includes spending 2/3 of the time on other things, such as sleeping, eating, socializing and recreation (to avoid Sanity loss). Thus the actual time per cycle was never 1 Week, in a "true" sense", but rather 1/3 Week. Performing that 2 steps faster means that each cycle takes 4/3 Hours, or 1 Hour and 20 Minutes, and the question is how many such cycles the individual character can squeeze into a single Day.

If Professor Wild follows a normal work day schedule, he can put in 6 such cycles per Day, and still have 8 Hours for eating, recrating, sleeping, and his strenous regime of physical and intellectual exercise, but Wild is a dedicated hero, and the situation is urgent, and looking over the Professor's traits (including a Will of 9!) the GM concludes that Wild can spend 12 Hours a Day working on the project, and still have time for a couple of hours of exercise regime, and eating and 8 Hours of sleep per day. At least for a few Weeks, and presumably Wild can finish the project before then.

Thus, instead of 4 cycles per Moon, in half a Moon Wild can put in 168 cycles (working 7 Days a Week), which is probably enough to Invent the Serum.

Note that this does not mean that Professor wild can only keep up this for a few Weeks. The example GM has determined that he can do this, but has not made any ruling that a character having a Will attribute as extreme as 9 cannot follow a workaholic schedule for longer.

Also note that Wild has to decidate around 2 Hours per Day to his rigorous regime of intellectual and physical exercises; that's a central aspect of his character and serves as partial justification for his extreme stats. If Wild was willing to forego those routines for the duration of the Invention project, he could put in another cycle-and-a-half per Day, but he'd then suffer the long-term consequences of skipping the regimen.

Finally, note that Professor Wild is an exceptional character (in terms of both stats and skills), and receives assistance from another character who is nearly as prodigously skilled in chemistry as Wild himself is, and has an RD bonus from some research leads he found while adventuring (specifically, he found one lead in the Antarctic Nazi Base, good for a -1 RD bonus, and another lead in Argentina when he apprehended and then hypnotiocally questioned Joseph Mengele, and then a third lead on Sicily where he found an Arabic translations of a lost treatise by Hypathia of Alexandria, with the last two leads being good enough to boost the RD bonus from -1 to -2).

He can swallow an +5 RD bonus and keep in trucking, whereas an average character trying to do that is just begging to be hit - hard - by the Fumble hammer.

Elaborating

For all purposes, it is safe to assume that 3 Years is the exact same as 6.5 intervals of 6 Moons, and as 39 Moons. Since 12 Moons is actually 364 Days (12 Moons x 28 Days/Moon = 364 Days) and a real terrestrial year is slightly more than 365.25 days, so the error is only around 0.3%.

Note, though, that the Lunar Cycle is specifically defined in Sagatafl as not being 28 Days. This is so that lunar phenomena, such as the Full Moon, won't always coincide with the same Christian week days, e.g. that Full Moon always falls 2 days before the Sunday. For more information, see the Lunar Cycle article.

What you need to memorize

Sagatafl's TSS scale can be daunting in its scope, but it is important to understand that for almost all campaigns, only a part of it will be used, usually only everything between 1 Second (or slightly more rarely 1/10s) and 6 Moons (or at most 3 Years). The rest is for extreme cases only, and so can be looked up on an as-needed basis.

• From 1 second to 1 Minute is 2 steps.
• From 1 Minute to 1 Hour is 2 more steps.
• From 1 Hour to 1 Day is 2 additional steps.
• From 1 Day to 1 Moon is 2 steps.
• Each combat Round is 6 Seconds.