Conflict is one of the driving forces in the games we play. It can range from physical to political or interpersonal conflict. But how do we get to these conflicts? Conflict shouldn't just pop out from nothing.

A solution I came up with, is Pressure (a concept that I share with this youtube video). There are external forces, that make conflict inevitable if left unchecked. It's not the GM giving an arbitrary goal, but the environment pushing the characters to take a decision. A decision that is in conflict with that external force.

Clocks

The simplest form of such a pressure, you might already have come across, are clocks. Something is happening in a set amount of time. This can be rounds, days or something more abstract like scenes. Then at the end, something happens.

A clock is therefore a simple pressure system. You know something is going to happen, for example a bomb going off. So everything you do is trying to oppose that pressure. This creates a conflict. In this case, the bomb actually going off. The opposition is trying everything to make it still happen. The bomb having a complicated mechanism for example.

The beauty of pressure is in general, that you can choose to ignore it. Instead of defusing the bomb you can just flee, ignoring it in the process. You can also choose on how to approach that pressure. Evacuating people instead of defusing it. Each decision creates its own conflict. And by letting the pressure resolve without you interacting with it, still has consequences.

Progress Track

Clocks however have the disadvantage that each step on the clock has that set amount of time. But there might be pressure for which we don't have such a timeframe. They sometimes happen fast, and sometimes a bit slower. Triggers for advancing them can be different. I've talked in the past about such a system: The Progress Track.

But a progress track alone, doesn't make a pressure. A core change is, that the players know of the track at all times. It is public knowledge to them: What the track represents (the exact detail might be still secret, like the goal for a faction), the difficulty and the current progress. Similarly to the clock they can then gauge the risk if they want to interact with that or not. In contrast however, advancement (in the case of dynamic tracks) is random. There can be big leaps or small steps. So this opens up another dimension on when they want to start accepting the pressure, since even waiting for a little bit, can advance it in big steps.

Milestones

What makes progress track to a real pressure system is another small addition: milestones. We already have a milestone. The end itself is a milestone. The big thing that happens. But big things don't just happen out from nothing. Pressure can be felt before.

So we can add additional milestones. For example at 5, 10 and 15 progress. These milestones can be open as well, or just looming over the player and be revealed once they are reached. Think of them like different phases of a boss fight. By the nature of the system, it can be, that several milestones are reached at the same time. Then each of them will take effect.

These milestones might also reveal some of the end-goal of the track to the players, if it was secret before. So they can start to think if they want to act on that pressure or not.

You can set the milestones wherever you want on the track. They key thing is (same as with the track itself), the players have to know where they are. Not necessarily what they represent, but they know that something is going to happen.

Example

Consider a small kingdom, where the people are very unhappy against the ruler. A pressure is forming, that they want to rebel and forcefully dethrone the ruler.

A progress track gets started. Let's call it "Civil Unrest". It has 4 milestones

1. (0) Farmers openly renounce their ruler
2. (7) Farms start to get sabotages or destroyed
3. (13) People start to attack the king's men, hurting or even killing them
4. (20) Full rebellion erupts

This example also shows, that pressure doesn't have to be directly antagonistic towards the players. They could even help the people and thus the track will advance faster. But the king will hear about this (and others as well) and conflict arises from that.

Or they help the king to stop these unrests. Trying to slow down the progress towards the end.

Use

A full-fledged progress track is not always needed. If something has a defined timerange and there's an urgency behind it, use a clock. Progress tracks with milestones should be only used for things that have a longer timeframe, that is undefined and where progress is uncertain and can be stopped. Clocks always tick forward, even on "success" of the players. Tracks don't.

The key to pressure is, that it is known information to the players. Show them. Suspense over Surprise.