Effort-Based Systems in TTRPGs

Hey folks, been a bit since I've done an info dump, but for the last several months I've run a homebrew TTRPG designed by a good friend which makes heavy use of "effort" in skill resolution. Effort is a pretty cool topic, and it's been on my mind a lot, so I thought I'd spend some time discussing it.

What is an Effort-Based Mechanic?

For the purposes of this post, "Effort-Based" describes any mechanic where the Player Character (PC) has a resource or pool that they can draw from to augment / succeed on a dice roll. One system where this is prevalent is the Cypher System (the underlying rule system that powers Numenera).

In Cypher, your characters have various "pools" from which you can spend points in order to make a task less difficult. The mechanic works like this:

1. The GM determines a difficulty on a sliding scale (each level adds 3 to the target number on a d20). As an example, we'll set the difficulty at 4 - a difficult task with a target number of 12.
2. The PC can either use Skills, Assets, or Effort to make the task easier. We're going to skip those first two and focus on effort.
3. Effort costs 3 points from a pool +2 more points for each additional level of effort. For our example, our PC will spend 2 levels of effort (5 points) from their "Might Pool" in order to decrease the difficulty by 2 levels, to 2 - with a TN of 6.
4. The player rolls a d20 and tries to get equal to or over that number (so in this case a 75% chance of success). You can spend enough effort to succeed automatically.

Now, of course, there are other resources in TTRPGs. D&D's key resources are hit points, spells per day, consumables, and other equipment. Part of its overall leveling strategy (in most editions) is that as you get more powerful, you'll have gear that always gives you static bonuses. These things do not (usually) change the difficulty of a task, outside of the occasional spell that gives a buff for a duration (or a potion to replenish hit points or whatnot).

So the key differentiators (I believe) for an effort system are:

• Having a renewable pool of "effort" that your character can expend to succeed.
• That expenditure changes the odds of success or allows it automatically.
• Managing that resource is intrinsic to the core adventure design.

Why is it cool?

I like effort systems because they change part of the game from pure statistics to resource management. Now you have another resource to manage that can help you succeed (or automatically succeed) on a roll. When to use that effort is up to the player, they might not use it until a critical moment, or they might use it often and not have access to it later. In other words, it makes gameplay more dynamic.

It also encourages GMs and adventure designers to take that into account when planning for things. For example, if you're predictably going to have a "big bad" near the end of a climactic climb of a tower (or something), the players will likely see this coming and save their resources in order to make things easier on themselves. However, if there are other challenges that they weren't predicting, they may be forced to make a choice between saving and expending that effort, plus their other resources, to get through the challenge.

The flow of an adventure / narrative arc / dungeon delve / whatever takes on a different tone when that resource management is core to the challenge mechanism.

That has some interesting implications for the rest of the game design - if a PC can succeed on most things by expending effort, then designing challenges needs to incorporate that resource (and when that resource can be replenished) into the overall game.

Which brings me to another point.

What are the downsides?

The same system that adds dynamism to player choice also adds work to keep the GM on their toes to vary up the difficulty of challenges (at least those challenges that are adjudicated by dice rolls) and ensure that the players are spending their effort during interesting moments and that they feel like their decision on when to spend their effort feels meaningful.

You can't just throw challenge after challenge at them, D&D "adventuring day" style until they break. That's boring. Sometimes, their ability to tilt the dice in their favor on demand is awesome. Embrace that sometimes combat or breaking down a door is going to be incredibly easy and move on with your day.

In some games, like Cypher, this is just one additional system on top of many others that you might need to account for to balance encounters (if you want to care about that kind of thing - and in a lot of these, you kinda do need to care about this kind of thing).

In short, it can be more work than other systems where the dice statistics are relatively fixed (outside of things like luck tokens).

How I run games with Effort Systems

I'm currently running a game with an effort system where the effort pools are relatively "plentiful". This means that the players can regularly succeed on their rolls (and making rolls is part of the advancement system, so they make a lot of rolls). Likewise, they can replenish their full pools once per session, provided they can find a place to rest for a few hours in the fiction.

As a result, this means I'll frequently give them a good mix of challenges of varying difficulties. Sometimes they'll need to spend effort to succeed, sometimes they won't at all.

Sometimes the challenge is so high they must spend effort to succeed, multiple times in a row. Typically, during a session, these high-difficulty challenges occur naturally during play and are driven by player motivation. It's rare that they'll walk into a situation they're not prepared for unless they're on an exploratory mission.

By way of example, a few sessions ago the PCs were exploring a series of caves inside of a mountain and they went looking for "something" an invading army was attempting to find. They went there, not knowing what it was they were looking for. So they went everywhere. First, they found a tomb deep in the bowels of the mountain, and encountered several multi-armed skeletons. They made quick work of them, spending a moderate amount of effort in the process (typically a couple of points per exchange).

A bit later (and without using their rest since it would have been a waste) they encountered a high-conjurer from the enemy army and several difficult minions. They had to push themselves right to the brink to take him out right then and there.

Immediately after this challenge, they descended a big, long elevator trip deep underground into a mostly empty and threatening city. Now, I could have put them into more immediate danger, but it wasn't thematically appropriate - there are automatons patrolling, but they're scarce - they should have a chance to rest. So they found a building and tended to their wounds. Everyone wins. Especially me.

Now, I don't do a lot of planning for sessions. My notes are about the "what's happening in various locations" and some vibes about what could happen if the players do {x}, but it's a lot of riffing off of what the players want to do that day in the narrative. It's been difficult to on the fly understand just how big a challenge a thing is going to be - but that's okay, it's been fine so far.

Wrap Up

I don't have a punchy closing statement from this one. If you weren't aware of effort systems before, go give Cypher or Numinera a look and think about how it might affect how you play and approach challenge. Lemme know how it goes!

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