Oh is this your room? Funny how my key worked in your lock…

I have a small solo adventure that I am working on, one day I may finish it as well. It really is a fantasy mix and a spy movie and it got me to thinking as I was laying out secrets and locks to reveal clues how I should handle this during play. Now normally, the time it takes to pick a lock or find a secret door hasn’t been an issue as either there is no one around or they are and depending on whim there is an encounter.

“While Talaras is working on the lock, you hear the sound of footsteps approaching up the corridor”

However, in the adventure the character is required to report in/be seen at various points in time. Also, I started to think about how long do you spend searching a room or picking a lock if you are aware that someone might be in the room next door and how the tension of not knowing and gambling your time against the success of finding an item is actually an important part of the story in the Spy genre.

“Heart pounding, Talaras blinked the sweat from his eyes. He had been struggling with the lock for a minute. Soon the patrol would be returning, dare he continue?”

So I started thinking about the time it would take on average to pick a lock. Thankfully, the internet is full of boasts on how fast different locks can be picked and also, more helpfully, the range of time. In MERP and Rolemaster picking locks is usually handled in a static manouvre roll with success being at 110 and then two partial success categories and one excellent category. In the partial success you roll again and in excellent you do it quicker. Now in roleplay situations this sort of falls down with me as players who make a partial success roll choose if to continue with essentially the same odds as last time even if they nearly had it. This leads to repetitive rolling or not bothering. Really as a GM I want the player to spend as long as they dare on the lock before declaring it unopenable or searching a room before deciding there is nothing to find. After all how long is a piece of string.

Over on the Rolemaster blog there was a post on turning all rolls into 100+ successes and giving percentage success from this. The general thought was that this was not that feasible with the mechanics but there was a suggestion of using the MM table instead. I thought I would explore that option alongside the SM table and compare the results.

Armed with my knowledge of lock pick times and what would be reasonable and what would be difficult I set out on a comparison. I ran into a slight problem with the scaling of the difficulty to a time and so standardised routine to +30 and scaled from there up. This way the difficulty level and time are the same for both. I then went with a roll of 50 plus a nominal skill level to be successful at picking the lock and this would be the base time taken. There is also an argument for the player being able to roll 20 and picking the lock, as this would be statistically relevant in terms of the majority of attempts should be successful if slightly longer. A summary of the results are in the table below. I have left the Excel spreadsheet on the ICE forums for those who want to look at the data.

		SM method				MM method
competence	skill bonus	highest difficulaty lock	time to pick (mins)	time to pick (Routine (+30)	time to pick medium (+0)	highest difficulaty lock	time to pick (mins)	time to pick (Routine (+30)	time to pick medium (+0)
Tyro	-25	Routine (+50)	2	–	–	E Hard	80	0.2	5
Apprentice	15	Light	10	4	–	S Folly	100	0.2	2
Journeyman	50	E hard	80	0.2	2	Absurd	35	0.2	1.1
Master	75	Absurd	140	0.2	1	Absurd	17.5	0.2	1
elite	100	Absurd	7	0.1	1	Absurd	10	0.1	0.8

My assumptions were that locks were picked in best conditions; that the time would be the average time; and that absurd locks represented the peak of Dwarven and Elven technology without magic but these still would be short of the most secure locks. I also didn’t want to be playing a level 20 thief spending an hour picking a lock. As a result, the absurd time was set a 7 mins.

Comparing picking locks by SM and MM tables

At the routine level there was little difference in the times of the experts (Journeymen to Elite) with either method. However, at the Apprentice and Tyro levels MM tables allowed for rapid picking, whereas the SM table made it less likely.

A medium level lock (1 min is about the standard for an average modern lock) again the experts were comparable, although Journeymen had a similar time to Masters in the MM table. The unskilled levels could not pick the lock in the SM but were able to do so given 5 minutes on the MM table .

The maximum level of lock likely to be picked was very different for both methods. SM gave a range from a +50 Routine lock for a Tyro to Absurd for the Expert with a reasonable spread of difficulty versus skill level. In contrast with the MM table everyone could potentially pick a lock from Extremely Hard up given enough time.

It is worth noting the times taken for picking at maximum difficulty though. For unskilled these are the maximum times before a fail. Experts have a slightly different pattern. A Journey man is likely to pick an Exteremely hard lock in 80 mins using SM tables but a Sheer Folly lock in 100 mins using MM tables. At Absurd difficulty the SM method gives times for a Master is 140 mins which drops suddenly to 7 mins for an Expert. In contrast, using the MM method this is gradual moving from 17.5 minutes to 10 minutes.

Handling lockpicking

Which method you would prefer to use will depend entirely on how you wish to control your thieves in play. The SM table really does make it an only thieves environment with unskilled finding it difficult to open all but the most basic of locks. There is not difference between the Experts until you get to the most difficult locks. The MM table method gives a more graded response and does allow any player a reasonable chance of opening a lock, a thing that can be useful if you are in the habit of locking plot devices behind doors.

Looking at the difficulty levels as I have constructed them I can see now that most of my “secure” locks are going to start at medium and work up. Locks that even an unskilled person can pick in less than a minute represent the type found on a childs jewelry box and generally smashing the obstruction would work just as well, if a little more noisy.

When coming to pick a lock I can ask the player how long they intend to spend on the task and then after a roll tell them when they were successful or failed. Which would handle the resolution very quickly and neatly. Alternatively, I could reveal the elapsed time and through dialogue the player determines when to quit.

The dice roll can be handled either completely convertly so that the player’s involvement is only to tell the GM the skill bonus applied or they could do the basic roll and difficulty and penalties can be applied covertyly. The latter would give the player a sense of how successful they are being and might lead to gambling extra time because it might be nearly there.

For me I suspect that MM table method will work best for the solo adventure and certainly would quiten those of my players who tell me they opened a really simple lock using nothing but a paperclip. The only thing to do now is play test it to see if it unbalances the game. Now all the tables are ready I can also have a play with searching rooms and create some sensible times to search a room or look for traps from the obvious it is on the floor in front of you to the scrap of paper in the corner of a book.

Skills and learning

As part of a move away from levels, I want to move my players towards adventuring for the adventure and not a “level up” mentality. That will mean a move away from the EP reward system, which my current players aren’t quite ready for yet. What they are ready for is a way to acquire secondary skills by study and I reckon that is a back door waiting to be opened. So the question now becomes how long does it take to really acquire new skills?

Before beginning on deciding how long it takes to learn a skill it is worth reviewing what the skill ranks in MERP/Rolemaster represent. According to the rulebook, 5 ranks in any skill can be acquired during adolescent development, which suggests apprenticeship skill development but no higher. The Rolemaster blog uses chunks of 10 ranks to define relative levels or lore, vocation or skill.

Skill Ranks	Lore	Vocation	General Skills
1-10	Secondary High school	Apprentice	Basic knowledge and abilities skill and simpler sub-skill.
11-20	Graduate	Journeymen	Broad abilities of skill and sub-skills
21+	PhD/Post Graduate	Master	Advanced skills and sub-abilities
50+	Erudite Master	Guildmaster or similar	Singular mastery of skill and inter-related disciplines

Another consideration here is the level of the character – yes I know the aim is to go levelless but bear with me here. Gaming wisdom would put the average soldier at between level 2-4 and the NCO’s at 5-6 rising up to level 10 for experienced heroic fighters. Beyond this, certainly in the Middle Earth, the characters are getting to be legendary. So if the average competent person is around level 4 in their chosen profession then they will have 8 ranks worth of experience, which is about right for the general population.

Armed with a framework of knowledge and understanding it is time to think about how long it will take to acquire these ranks. Gladwell proposed that very successful people take 10,000 hours to master a skill (possibly by misinterpreting another study on elite athletes which was actually looking for a genetic component). For Gladwell 10,000 hours equates to 20 hours a week practise for 10 years although he does seem to bundle those skills into a domain of learning so they are all focussed on one specialism. The original study, by Tucker and Collins, was really looking to see if deliberate practise was more important than genes and could not find a link either way. In fact, it seemed to suggest that a combination of talent and practise produced excellence.

So much for 10,000 hours but I think it still holds a nugget of truth, even if the time is wrong. If we say a level 20 character is a master then it should take 10 years of deliberate practise to achieve this. However, there are some other factors we should consider in this. It requires someone to support you with food and other necessities to allow you that time (achievable for a single skill on two hours a day). Elite athletes generally don’t have a full time career making demands on training time. Bill Gates wasn’t required to go out and collect the harvest or sow the crops. So only a small group of people in a fantasy setting will be able to achieve this rate of development. Thankfully, adventurers would be such a group with their generally above average aptitude (stats) and focussed learning or as I prefer to call it staying alive.

There is further support for this idea when we look at the modern education system. The primary phase of education, which is mostly general (although Maths and Primary language seem to now dominate) takes around 5 years (5-11). Secondary, still developing a wide set of skills, but beginning to specialise is another 5 years (11-16). Tertiary, a really odd phase of specialisation lasts 2-3 years here in the UK. Whereas the quaternary phase (graduate) is anywhere between 3-4 years. The final Quinary phase (post-graduate/PhD) can last from 3 -5 years depending on field of study or practise.

Taking education and as knowledge based skill basic maths skills which are generally above the level required for basic mercantile skills are achieved by the age of 11 (in fact in modern society well above), a total of about 5 years (bear in mind developmental factors will probably have slowed learning in children). The table below extrapolates taught time for courses in UK in 5 rank chunks (for reasons outlined below). The number of hours spent learning to this basic level would be around 43 hours with a teacher present. So with good instruction a basic level of skill can be mastered in just over two weeks at the 20 hours per week level. What the table also demonstrates is that higher levels of knowledge take increasingly longer to gain. Referring back to the table from the Rolemaster Blog, I would suggest that this should be for levels 1-5. A basic addition subtraction activity is unlikely to be tested by a roll. This would make ranks 5-10 take nearly twice as long. There is a nice mathematical progression forming, but it is also perhaps worth remembering that quaternary students spend as much time reviewing and rehearsing learning as they do being taught. So any player expecting to do a job in between might find a penalty for the learning time.

	hours/ week	number of weeks	total h/ year	total years	total h per subject	hours per rank
Primary	1	36	36	6	216	43.2
Secondary	2	36	72	5	360	72
Tertiary	10	36	360	2	720	144
Quaternary	15	30	450	3	1350	270
Quinary	60	50	3000	3	9000	1800

Overall the thesis of ten years to achieve mastery in a field of study still stands with most specialists taking around 10 years to achieve an expert status after the age of 13-15. This even applies to sportsman with premiership footballers achieving first team debuts early but becoming regulars only at around 23. A similar pattern is seen in athletics although I can’t find a study to back this up.

The next part will consider how to balance vocations and individual skills so that the game remains playable without players power gaming every aspect.

It’s possible to fly

I have been meaning to write a blog post on skills as part of getting my thoughts down on building the levelless mechanism for characters in using MERP/Rolemaster. As always, life has more urgent priorities and I have thought a lot without coming to any firm conclusions. In the meantime, the debate has moved on with some useful thought on other blogs and forums. Yet I am still not satisfied.

Let me clarify, we bandy the phrase “skill” around in RPG and to each of us, it means a different thing. Regardless of the roleplay mechanics used to provide a measure of success, our use of the word skill is a very personal thing and depending on GM mindset can be a contentious issue at the table.

In general, most games divide the skills into weapons/armour skills; adventuring/class skills and the rest. Now the big question that comes out of this is what actually counts as a skill? Is it only the practical/physical aspects, knowledge/theory, or a combination of both. Perhaps using a dictionary definition will help define some terms of reference.

skill

---

noun

the ability, coming from one’s knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well:
Carpentry was one of his many skills.
competent excellence in performance; expertness; dexterity:
The dancers performed with skill.
a craft, trade, or job requiring manual dexterity or special training in which a person has competence and experience:
the skill of cabinetmaking.
Obsolete . understanding; discernment.
Obsolete . reason; cause.

Reading all three definitions you can see a flavour of what for me will be the flavour of my handling of skills moving towards playing without levels. The first two, definitions could be argued to overlap considerably but the third sits off on its own. However, it does rather sit with the MERP secondary skills with the idea that these are pre-adventuring professions.

From my point of view, it makes sense to use the meta-skill idea suggested by the first two definitions. It is easier for the players to handle in terms of recalling their character’s abilities and thus playing more to type. Also, it avoids the gaming the system of having 20 ranks in the Quick-draw skill purely to become fire every nanosecond. Yet having addressed the definition of skill there are a few points to consider.

When you start to think about a meta-skill you realise there are a number of learnt factors that influence your ability to perform. Namely, pragmatic knowledge; physical actions; and theory. To take the carpentry skill this could be types of wood and how to handle them (responding to the knot and grain in the wood); use of measuring and cutting tools; and a theory of all woodworking methods and skills which would allow you to adapt what you know to new situations. In every domain, there are myriad mini-skills which is where the dread RM skill bloat started. Meshing this together, this means that it is possible to be an expert in one of the three domains without being anymore skillful than a rank tyro. This begs the question of how to resolve this potential dissonance without resorting to the fearful skill bloat (an idea I will return to in my thoughts on training time).

Another point to think about is specialisation, which might be less of an issue in a low tech setting, but in a high-tech setting is going to be more important. Keeping to carpenter skill idea. What is the difference between a furniture maker and a structural carpenter? They both have an overlap is some skills and I’m pretty sure (based on my grandfather’s abilities) can make a good job moving from one to the other but perhaps with not the same speed and assuredness. I think this is where the theory domain plays a large role in adapting from one setting to another.

These issues to do with skill are part of my considering how to deal with the time needed to secure additional knowledge and practice in allowing players to create rounded characters who don’t spring miraculously from one state to another overnight. Moreover, they also raise into question how to handling those core primary skills that all adventurers need. Perhaps in a true reductionist sense weapons and armour are all one skill.