Task Checks - when to do them?

[nats]

The thing that gets me about task checks in MgT is that the referee has to decide how difficult the task is, what skills/characteristics are relevant and how long the task will take. This is actually a very difficult thing to do. I used to do Risk Assessments (in the real world) and the same thing applies to them and I never found doing those very easy either. I mean how on earth do you assess how difficult it would be to see a pouncer animal before it pounces, or to make a jump across a chasm, or work in a tunnel underground? It would take me half an hour of thinking about these things just to decide how difficult each one of those is never mind all the rest of the stuff like time and skills/characteristics required - and you are supposed to do this stuff off the cuff as the game goes on around you!

And then to make it worse there are loads of potential tasks that MgT doesn't even give guidelines for - for example doing a recon check before combat - where does it say this in the book other than it is mentioned in the play example? If I didn't know about rolling for surprise from Classic Traveller combat I wouldn't even think about doing a task check for it using recon vs stealth in MgT. And I am sure there are millions more task checks that, if you don't have all the skills embedded into your subconscious, you couldn't possibly remember to do.

I know MgT is trying to get away from all the rule checking but it must take a heck of a lot of experience before you figure out what you are doing with this kind of task checking!

 

[BP]

Do the risk assessment... what's the harm if you 'screw up' or miss one of the 'millions' of possible task checks?
<I'll give you half an hour... >

Seriously, as an analyst, I could spend hours and come up with all sorts of rationalizations for these aspects, but its a game - use your best judgement and the worst that can happen is your players disagree. Communication is the key to overcoming that (and knowing your players) - you all should be in the game to have fun.

Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't have hurt for the authors to have included a healthy amount of examples to better explain ways of doing this - but the basic concepts are fairly simple and for undocumented task checks the basic idea is to wing it! Personally, I like this way better than CT - which had almost nothing to help with undocumented task checks.

For best results, you do have to be familiar with the skills, though. There is just no getting around that - though you could make up your own and shorten the (not too long, IMO) list.

To address some of your specific examples:
Predicting a pouncer's pounce? - Recon, Int, 1-6 seconds

• Now you might also consider/allow survival or even animals if the emphasis is on 'predicting' an action instead of just a potential action, but to me they are essentially the same ('spot threats').
  You might also use Dex in place of Int (Recon examples show Int, and to me it applies better for detection)

Jump a chasm? - Athletics(Co-or), Dex or Str, 1-6 seconds

• This one is in the book - long jumping.

Work in a tunnel? - that depends on the 'work'...

• You might need to be more specific for this to apply as a task check, Trade(Mining) would be the first thing to mind - with attribute and timing based on what is being checked for - a mostly mental or mostly physical task.

You'll note that I did not include Difficulty. That is more situationally - typically also environmentally - dependent. If one is in a jungle vs. on an open landing pad, the difficulty of spotting a pouncer would surely vary. Likewise, jumping a chasm with a running start could be effected by the surfaces - running on sand and landing on water or the like being harder than say between to rough surfaced rooftops. Also, if folks are shooting at the PCs and the chasm is in a major downdraft between two industrial complexes, difficulty could increase.

For tasks that are pretty standard, like the Long Jumping as 'Average', these complexities could be handled by pre-made DMs (like using a 'slipper surface' DM for each side, high winds, etc.), or one could just change the Difficulty, which is more generic for on the fly calls and requires less effort.

Sure, all of these things are judgement calls requiring familiarity with the skills and knowledge of your setting. The first is addressed to whatever degree you desire - and the later is for you to make up or interpret as part of your game. The mechanics really just make it easier for those who aren't familiar with the roll statistics to avoid thinking specifically in terms of odds. With just six attributes, a small list of skills and general difficulty levels, one can accommodate, on the fly, determining the requirements of any task.

Hope that helps...

BTW: the title of this thread in-accurately reflects your questions - perhaps 'how to do them' would be better than 'when to do them' - though that is another excellent question...