Duration of a round
Duration of a round
How long does a combat round last?
As long as the GM needs it to be. I know that doesn’t sound like an answer, but it is the most accurate. It is one of those obscure rules left up to the GM’s discretion. A round to two gunslingers drawing pistols on each other might be a second long, but to a bunch of race car drivers going around a track it might be a minute lap. That’s why a round is based on actions and not on time.
From the Revised Edition:
The Round
Much of the time when you are playing, the passage of time is not important. Waiting till the bus arrives at 3 o’clock can take as long as saying so many words. However, in situations of excitement and danger, it starts to matter. You need to know how much you can accomplish and how fast.
In these cases, time is split up into dramatic units called a “Round.” This is not specific segment of time. A round may represent mere seconds between a furious exchange of blows. Or instead, it can encompass minutes of heroic dialogue, exposition of evil plans, and other posturing. All a Round represents is enough time for everyone to perform an action.
Say there's a scenario where the players have broken into a top-secret research facility to gather some restricted data and they reach the mainframe room. One of the players in the group is a tech-savvy genius, but just as he just got into the login screen to work his hacking magic, a squad of security guards bust in and initiate combat. The rest of the players must help the tech-savvy guy buy enough time to hack into the system, find the file, download it unto his flash drive, and extract it without interruption.
In said scenario, the hacker's job will certainly take more than one action to complete. Perhaps each of these tasks is broken down into actions, but what about things that could take a while? Perhaps a staged Hobby: Computer Hacking roll is in order, where the higher the number they achieve, the less time it takes to find the necessary files?
Will tasks that take quite a while to perform set the bar for the duration of the round? Common sense tells me that some tasks just take too long to perform in a round and that those tasks will require multiple rounds to complete.
I suppose this is where calibur1's answer comes to mind. A round is as long as the GM needs it to be.
In said scenario, the hacker's job will certainly take more than one action to complete. Perhaps each of these tasks is broken down into actions, but what about things that could take a while? Perhaps a staged Hobby: Computer Hacking roll is in order, where the higher the number they achieve, the less time it takes to find the necessary files?
Will tasks that take quite a while to perform set the bar for the duration of the round? Common sense tells me that some tasks just take too long to perform in a round and that those tasks will require multiple rounds to complete.
I suppose this is where calibur1's answer comes to mind. A round is as long as the GM needs it to be.
Your example brings to mind many TV shows and movies that I’ve seen where the bad guys must be fended off or delayed while the computer uploads/downloads/erases whatever. My answer is that each round will take as long as the computer (or hacker) needs to complete each stage since it is the plot device of that scene.
What I would do as the GM is give the task a minimum of actions needed to be complete. For sake of argument I’m going to say that this remote terminal is decently sophisticated with good security, so a minimum of four actions are required to hack it. That is a completely arbitrary number I pulled out of the air for this example. Every round the hacker must attempt some kind of roll while his companions fend off the security guards. I set the DN at 6 (because I’m that kind of guy). If the hacker succeeds that round, he has completed one stage of the process. If he fails, he must take another round until he passes. If left alone the hacker will eventually succeed, but will he do it before his companions are overwhelmed? As more and more guards are called to the terminal will he use Drama Dice to hurry along the process? Or just as his last companion drops, and is taken prisoner, will he pull off a Miracle and upload the virus into the villain’s mainframe? We’ll have to tune in next week to find out.
What I would do as the GM is give the task a minimum of actions needed to be complete. For sake of argument I’m going to say that this remote terminal is decently sophisticated with good security, so a minimum of four actions are required to hack it. That is a completely arbitrary number I pulled out of the air for this example. Every round the hacker must attempt some kind of roll while his companions fend off the security guards. I set the DN at 6 (because I’m that kind of guy). If the hacker succeeds that round, he has completed one stage of the process. If he fails, he must take another round until he passes. If left alone the hacker will eventually succeed, but will he do it before his companions are overwhelmed? As more and more guards are called to the terminal will he use Drama Dice to hurry along the process? Or just as his last companion drops, and is taken prisoner, will he pull off a Miracle and upload the virus into the villain’s mainframe? We’ll have to tune in next week to find out.
That's actually a really good way to handle tasks that take a long time, calibur1. Perhaps there could be a section in OVA Revised for extended tasks that follow the same guidelines. Actually, the way you described how to handle such a task sounds similar to Skill Challenges in D&D 4th Edition: acquire a certain number of successes before a certain number of failures.