Why limit the Three Action Economy to just combat? The same “you can do three things on your turn” system be applied to each mode of TTRPG play.
Gameplay happens in different modes, each with a different timescale:
- Combat: measured in seconds
- Exploration: measured in minutes
- Project: measured in hours
- Downtime: measured in days
Within each scale, you have:
- Action: The shortest trackable action you could make at this scale
- Turn: The max amount a player could do on their turn. Enough time to take Three Actions.
- Encounter: The absolute maximum length of time that we should spend at this scale before shifting up/down to a different scale. An entire encounter is the length of a single action at the next scale. (So: one Exploration Action is the length of an entire Combat encounter)
This creates gameplay consistency: no matter the timescale, I know how many things I can do and how to play it.
- Action ◈ a few scale (1-4 scale)
- Two Actions ◈◈ several scale (4-7 scale)
- A Turn ◈◈◈ 10 scale
- An Encounter ❖ a few next biggest scale
Scale-Action Mapping Table
Combat Exploration Project Downtime a few seconds
(1-4 seconds)Action
◈10 seconds Turn
◈◈◈a few minutes
(1-4 minutes)Encounter
❖Action
◈10 minutes Turn
◈◈◈a few hours
(1-4 hours)Encounter
❖Action
◈10 hours (workday) Turn
◈◈◈a few workdays
(1-4 workdays)Encounter
❖Action
◈10 workdays
(2 weeks with weekends off)Turn
◈◈◈a few months (1-4 months) (a quarter, a season) Encounter
❖
Most of the gameplay will take place at the Combat and Exploration levels. The larger scales act as a “montage sequence” used to jump ahead in the story as far as needed. (Such as recovering from battle, building a house, training, a semester of school, etc.)
If you need to skip ahead a long time, you can go one level even further up. Long-Term: measured in months (1 turn = 1 year).
- ◈a few months (1-4 months) (a quarter, a season)
- ◈◈◈ 10 working months (a year with 8 weeks off)
- ❖ a few years (1-4)