9-022: Maldemar 732

Sleeping

Good Mer, Oliver; your work ethic would please the Overlord!

  

Research

He can be that insightful, though he’s not actually tired enough for there to be a negative on the roll.

That said, he can attempt the task again, it’s just an opportunity cost in time (about 4 Tasks seems reasonable).  Re-roll if he’d like to do that.

  

GM’s Administration and Process – fyi 

** Warning – Reading the rest of this post may Break Immersion… **

Rather than apply a penalty to the success chance for his work when he’s fatigued, I apply a time inefficiency penalty.  See, I have a tracking spreadsheet marked off in time increments where I track what Oliver is doing and where he is and what is going on around him.  Currently it is tracking:

• Oliver’s location and key activities
• The ship’s progress on its journey
• Local time, if different to Dominion time (ie: whether it’s dark or light outside)
• If watches are operating, who is on watch
• Oliver’s progress on:
  • Reading Argyle’s books
  • Researching Argyle’s data blobs
  • Developing his glasses
  • His study
• Any effects from his Nightmare rolls
• Progress of the messages he sent to his parents and to Felicity
• Other factors that may affect what’s happening in-universe and that take time to propagate

   

As a general rule, I figure it takes him 36 tasks to research one of Argyle’s IT projects (32 tasks of research effort  + 2 Tasks each end to plan and summarise each piece of work.) 

To save time, I roll for him before he starts each one.  If he fails, I use the Taking Extra Time rules in reverse, and extend the time he takes to succeed rather than telling you he’s failed.  So far, he’s only failed once (on #7) and he hasn’t critically failed, which would mean he can’t work it out. Because this is mostly book keeping I thought it was easier to do this way and I can just reveal what he’s found as time rolls on as part of the story.  We can alter this method of resolution if you like (eg if you’d like to do your own rolls), but I think it’s been working pretty well.  Because Oliver can only attend to one thing at a time, and each of the projects he’s working on have a required investment of effort to complete, he has to prioritise where he wants to put that effort.  

When he’s fatigued I make him take longer – when he’s one point down I figure he’s 10% fatigued and so it takes 10% longer for him to do the same amount of work. Your current instructions I interpret as:

• 2 Jobs per Cycle on Argyle’s IT Projects
• 2 Jobs per Cycle on Argyle’s books
  • Because of his Workaholic nature I work him 4 Jobs a Cycle, not 3 like most people, covering the two projects above
• Up to 2 Jobs per Cycle on Study
  • Socialisation usually comes out of this time
  • When the ship is in N-Space and he has to sit Watches in Blue Shift this doesn’t affect the schedule, as he continues to Study and Read Argyle’s books on Watch, but he can’t initiate socialisation, it has to happen at other times unless people come to talk to him in Control 
• No time currently allocated for Glasses development
• A full Shift of sleep (in Red Shift), unless interrupted by nightmares (dealt with on a case-by-case basis)
• I enforce breaks throughout the day at the break times denoted on the Dominion clock and a Break at RB10 so he can have a morning routine

  

Example Excerpt from GM Task Tracking Sheet