Guidelines: Setting Up Tasks

[Matt_E]

Guidelines:  Setting Up Tasks

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/207768/Guidelines-Setting-Up-Tasks

This game aid presents advice for using the Task mechanic in the MYTHRAS gaming system. Although the rules as written are clear, some of the statistical ramifications for multiple skill checks are subtle, and deserve close consideration. Spurred by a discussion at The Design Mechanism’s online forum, Setting Up Tasks is meant to be a handy reference for constructing meaningful Task challenges in scenarios. A suitably defined Task speeds play and promotes drama by presenting well-defined outcomes—without unintended consequences. The discussion herein is offered to help the Games Master avoid pitfalls and bring an imagined scene to life, with minimal guesswork.

To be clear, Setting Up Tasks has been crafted specifically for the MYTHRAS gaming system. Any compatibility with other systems is fortuitous. You may find some inspiration here, though.

You are free to use this material in your personal gaming pursuits, for fun. If you use it to build a scenario or other product for publication, please consider giving due credit. You are welcome to write to old.bones.publishing@gmail.com concerning the best form of attribution for your purpose.

Guidelines: Setting Up Tasks is offered as Pay What You Want. If you like it, please consider leaving a tip, but in any case it's yours for the taking. Happy gaming!

OLD BONES PUBLISHING strives to provide high-quality writing in a stylish, minimalistic presentation. Thanks for your interest! Please direct any question or feedback to old.bones.publishing@gmail.com.

[Alex Greene]

Done and bought. Very nice it is, too.

Chances are, I'll find a way of including a few Tasks in future supplements, including:-

- Group Climb (Athletics-based Task);

- Follow The Money (Bureaucracy);

- Who's Foolin' Who? (Deceit);

- Summoning Something (Or Sending It Back) (Invocation).

[Raleel]

Picked this up. I likes me the graphs  

 

I would recommend a change in the font. That particular one is not easy to read on my iPad in PDF expert. I happen to have Mythras and Monster Island open as well and it is definitely the hardest to read of the three. 

[Matt_E]

Thanks for that, Doug.  You are not to first to criticize that font, and, in retrospect, it's even more troublesome for math.

It's a shame.  I wanted something old-timey that looks well kerned and would stand out from other publishers as part of brand identity.  In recent days I have been searching--a lot--for a replacement, but have not come up with a good one yet.  Something like Palatino, Garamond, or Times Roman is certainly easier to read, but seems really flavorless, to me.  Any suggestions, folks?

Meanwhile, I wonder if you could tweak the rendering settings for the OS, or the viewer--play with "smoothing at all sizes" or whatever.  I use (on a Mac) Preview and Acrobat, but mostly Foxit, and it looks good (to me) at every level of zooming, even 400% or 50%, so I must have something set right. ;-)

 

[Raleel]

Unfortunately not an option on the iPad in either acrobat reader or PDF expert. 

I think the problem here is less about zooming and more that the font is "dirty" for lack of better words. The letters have deliberately rough edges, they are not perfectly regular thickness. This isn't a problem if you are looking at it above a certain size (likely reader and conditions dependent), but once you go below that, things become quite indistinct. They are rendering correctly, but that font is designed for larger print. 

You mention the math, for example. The subscripts are particularly hard to distinguish at small size, but are perfectly acceptable when I zoom to the point where the document is single column size. Truthfully, the length of the subscript is more of an indicator that it is different and one should focus in - the letters are not very distinct at all.

[Alex Greene]

I love Roman Antique for headings and captions. Main body text, not so much.

Garamond's a bit small - smaller than Times New Roman characters at the same font size.

I use Gentium, when I'm not using Times New Roman. If I'm writing a document that someone else will be editing, plain Times New Roman all the way, nothing else.

As for displaying numbers, when I'm working on mathematical and numerical displays, would you believe SimSun does the most mathematical-looking number displays? It's for Chinese characters, but it really works for numbers.

[Raleel]

1 hour ago, Doug nordwall said:

Unfortunately not an option on the iPad in either acrobat reader or PDF expert. 

I think the problem here is less about zooming and more that the font is "dirty" for lack of better words. The letters have deliberately rough edges, they are not perfectly regular thickness. This isn't a problem if you are looking at it above a certain size (likely reader and conditions dependent), but once you go below that, things become quite indistinct. They are rendering correctly, but that font is designed for larger print. 

You mention the math, for example. The subscripts are particularly hard to distinguish at small size, but are perfectly acceptable when I zoom to the point where the document is single column size. Truthfully, the length of the subscript is more of an indicator that it is different and one should focus in - the letters are not very distinct at all.

I wonder why my font size was inconsistent here. I don't even think there is a font size adjusting option!

[Alex Greene]

1 minute ago, Doug nordwall said:

I wonder why my font size was inconsistent here. I don't even think there is a font size adjusting option!

Yeah, there is a font size adjusting option. Did you cut and paste the odd text?

[Raleel]

I did actually. How odd. 

[Matt_E]

Yeah, that sort of stuff happens occasionally.  You must have picked up some invisible formatting codes, too.  You can generally avoid that by using Paste Special (shift+option+command+v on a Mac) to insert unformatted text. ;-)

[Runeblogger]

I bought it yesterday. Overall I get lost in the maths, but I enjoyed the examples very much. I might even write a review in my runeblog.

I think the task mechanics deserves more love, so if anyone else would like to share his/hr examples of that mechanic in play, just as Matt has done, I'd be really thankful.

So far, in my samurai campaign, I have used it around six times. The first time was for some long alliance negotiations with the neighbouring daimyo. Then I used it twice for a quick chase on horse. I used it for research in Buddhist libraries with little time. Last session, I used it for the player to get the help of a sceptical shinto priest. I find it's always more amusing if the other party is trying to get to 100 as well.

[Runeblogger]

I just wrote a post about non-violent conflicts in RuneQuest/Mythras and other D100 systems. And of course I had to include a mention to Guidelines: Setting Up Tasks. 

https://elruneblog.blogspot.com.es/2017/03/conflictos-no-violentos-en-runequest-y.html

Remember you can choose your language to read on the Translator Gadget on the right margin!  
(English and French produce the best translation, though)

Edited March 26, 2017 by Runeblogger
Specify the best languages for translation. If you know English or French, better use those

[rust]

1 hour ago, Runeblogger said:

Remember you can choose your language to read on the Translator Gadget on the right margin! 

Well, the result of the translation into German is ... interesting ... 

[Alex Greene]

3 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Remember you can choose your language to read on the Translator Gadget on the right margin!  

(English and French produce the best translation, though)

Or we could just learn Spanish ...

[Matt_E]

Thanks very much for that, Runeblogger!