Extended tasks can be used to represent larger or more complex problems which the player characters must face while under some other pressure or facing some kind of peril. Extended tasks represent the kinds of activity that, if there were no pressure or peril, would be an ordinary task, and may not even require a roll, but they’re just difficult enough that completing them in a hurry, or during a dangerous situation (or both) requires tasks.
Extended tasks have a progress track, which are measures of how much effort they will take to overcome. To complete an extended task, player characters attempt individual tasks; each successful task allows you to mark off one or more spaces in the progress track.
Guidance on how the gamemaster can create and use extended tasks is in GAMEMASTERING on page 329. Extended tasks include the following elements:
PROGRESS TRACK: Each extended task has a progress track, which shows how much effort is involved. The extended task is completed when the progress track is full.
IMPACT: When you succeed at a task, mark off spaces on the progress track equal to your Impact. Your Impact is typically equal to the department you used for the task—that is, if you used Engineering for the task, your Impact is equal to your Engineering rating. This may be modified further, by the extended task’s resistance, talents, and other circumstances.
DIFFICULTY: An extended task will state a specific Difficulty. This is the Difficulty of any tasks attempted against that extended task. Other factors, such as traits present in the scene, can affect this Difficulty.
RESISTANCE: Some extended tasks are particularly arduous to overcome, and making any progress is slow. Your Impact is reduced by an amount equal to the extended task’s Resistance.
Attempting an Extended Task
Whenever you work towards an extended task, you attempt a task. If you succeed at this task (or are allowed to Succeed at Cost), follow additional steps to see how you progress.
MAKE A TASK ROLL: Resolve a task, as normal (described on page 257), against the extended task’s Difficulty.
DETERMINE IMPACT: Your Impact is equal to the department used in your task roll, which may be modified further by talents or other factors. If your task roll was assisted by the ship, then you may use the ship’s department instead.
RESISTANCE: If the extended task has any Resistance, reduce your Impact by 1 for each point of Resistance, to a minimum of 1.
APPLY IMPACT: Mark spaces on the progress track equal to your Impact. If the progress track is filled by this, then the extended task is completed.
Momentum generated on tasks can be used in all the normal ways, but there is a Momentum spend specific to extended tasks:
ADDITIONAL PROGRESS (Repeatable): During an extended task, add 1 to your Impact for 2 Momentum.
Similarly, a complication on an extended task may reduce your Impact by 1 for each complication suffered.
Breakthroughs
Normally, an extended task doesn’t change when you mark off spaces on the progress track. At the gamemaster’s discretion, however, a progress track can include breakthroughs. These are points along the progress track which alter the nature of the extended task.
An extended task has two breakthrough spaces. The first will be halfway along the track (on the 6th space if the progress track is 12 spaces long, for example), and if the track is an odd number of spaces, round up (so a progress track of 9 has the first breakthrough on the fifth space). The second breakthrough is three-quarters of the way along the track: take the spaces left after the first breakthrough, and the breakthrough will be halfway along that remaining section (again, rounding up as needed).
When you mark off a breakthrough space, the situation changes in some way. The gamemaster determines if this change is good for you, bad for you, or merely different. See page 330 for examples of breakthrough effects.
Extended Consequences
Just as an extended task represents a problem that needs to be overcome, the gamemaster can use a modified form of the rules to represent a growing problem that needs to be avoided.
An extended consequence is structured similarly to an extended task, but “in reverse”—failed actions and complications cause setbacks instead of breakthroughs. These are described fully in GAMEMASTERING on page 331.