Going below Troublesome
For a Troublesome progress track, you mark 3 boxes at a time. Marking progress twice is enough for a good chance of a hit, three times is solid, and four times fills the entire track. But what about tasks where even that short of a track feels too long? Well, how about...
- Bothersome: Mark 5 boxes per progress. Only two progress needed to fill it! If you Fulfill Your Vow or make another progress move that gives Legacy Track progress and score a strong hit with a match, take 1 XP (in Ironsworn) or 1 tick on the appropriate Legacy Track (in Starforged). On any other result, this does not give any XP or Legacy Track progress.
- Nuisance: Don't roll Swear an Iron Vow or any other such Move for this, and don't make a progress track. This task is complete once you score a hit on a single relevant move. Then, you may Reach A Milestone on a related vow or Develop Your Relationship with a relevant contact, if one exists.
- Trivial: Don't make any Move at all for this. Simply narrate how you easily accomplish the task. There are no rewards for completion.
Now, you may be wondering why even bother with Ranks for such low-effort tasks. Well, I feel like giving them names and thinking about how they extend the scale of difficulty is useful, because it helps you make more deliberate choices about difficulty and how much narrative focus to give a task. I've noticed some players seem to treat Troublesome as a sort of minimum difficulty for any new task or complication, especially ones generated by weak hits and misses on Moves like Compel, Gather Information, and Forge A Bond. Yet it is completely valid to deal with something in a single Move (Nuisance difficulty, which is equivalent to moves like Battle for combat and Set A Course for travel) or even no Moves at all!
Filling in the Gaps
From Dangerous up to Epic, each step up or down a rank doubles the amount of progress required. That works well enough, but sometimes you want something that falls in-between. For those situations, I propose the following (listed XP is for Ironsworn, Legacy Track ticks are for Starforged):
- Dangidible: 6 ticks per progress. On a strong hit, gain 2.5 XP or 3 Legacy Track ticks.
- Fortreme: 3 ticks per progress. On a strong hit, gain 3.5 XP or 6 Legacy Track ticks.
- Extic: 1.5 ticks per progress. On a strong hit, gain 4.5 XP or 10 Legacy Track ticks.
How exactly to track half-ticks and half-XP is left as an exercise for the reader.
Going above Epic
If you want a vow that takes longer than the already absurd Epic rank provides, you could simply mark half of a tick per progress. However, a far more interesting and useful technique is to simply say that each Milestone requires completing an entire quest of its own. That can easily triple the amount of effort involved, or more. Plus, you'll earn XP or Legacy Track ticks for each sub-quest along the way!
Disclaimer
The above suggestions are not meant entirely seriously. The author of this blog takes no responsibility for any choice paralysis which may ensue when deciding between so many marginally different ranks, nor for any frustration or pacing issues experienced due to excessive quest-nesting.
