Hey. You know what I haven’t talked about in a long time?

That’s right, basi… what? Did you say “crunchy mechanics, rules hacks, and useful content?” Shut up. That s$&%’s coming. Angry Games has had a rough Q1. But one way or another, the quarter’s over. Or it will be soon. Depends on when you read this. And one way or another, I’m done working on that f$&%ing module. Or I will be soon. After next week, I stop putting work into it. If it ain’t published then, I’ll break out the Angry Wallet and pay someone else to stitch the crap together into a published document.

And then—then—I can get back to crunchy, time-consuming design. And start working again on a certain big-a$& project I’ve been talking about for years.

That’s right, SMAF… what? Who said AngryCraft? Did someone yell Megadungeon?

F$&%. This Long, Rambling Introduction’s a trainwreck. Let me start again without rhetorical questions. If I wanted y’all to f$&% up my beautiful, prepared speech, I’d run a game for you.

You know what? I haven’t talked about basic GMing skills in a while. So, I’m going to do that today. In fact, I’m going to talk about the basicest of basic GMing skills ever. How and when to roll the f$&%ing dice. Because that’s a thing that came up last week in my patrons-only Discord. Problem is, I’ve given four different—and not entirely compatible—answers to that particular quandary over the years. Five, if you count the only slightly different one in my book.

Anyway, here’s my article about why the ideal number of times to roll dice is zero.

And don’t worry, this isn’t some bulls$&% about how I ran a great session last week that was “all role-playing” and “no one touched any dice.” All my sessions are great. And even when I do have a session that’s all role-playing, we still touch dice. Because dice are fun and not rolling dice sucks.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Dice

You know what I hate? Dice. Dice suck. They ruin everything. Dice are the worst thing to ever happen to role-playing games. I’d play Amber if it were still in print.

That reference was a shoutout to all you ancient grognards out there who, like me, aren’t shaking the dice so long because we’re nervous about the roll. We just can’t get our hands to stop shaking at our age.

Anyway, dice. I hate ‘em. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Of course, we all know it’s a lie. I love dice. Dice are fun. I love rolling for random encounters and random treasures. I roll to determine the f$&%ing weather sometimes. And I will never, ever run any RPG that takes away the GM’s dice. F$&% you Powered by the Apocalypse. Go to hell, Numanuma. GMs deserve fun too. And dice are fun.

I want to be totally clear about my relationship with dice because I’m about to tell you when you—as a GM—should rely on the dice to determine what happens in your game. The dice. The rules. All of it. Game mechanics. When should you open those overpriced textbooks that claim to be a game and do what they say? And when should you just, you know, decide what happens.

This again? Yes. This again. I’m well aware that, many years ago, I blew your collective f$&%ing minds with my easy-to-remember rules about when to roll dice.

Roll the dice whenever a creature attempts an action that has a reasonable chance of success, a reasonable chance of failure, and failure carries some kind of risk or cost.

Remember that? Of course you do. Even though it’s been a decade. It was that good a rule. Oh, sure, we had to talk about what constitutes a risk or a cost. I had to explain, for example, that missing an attack was costly because actions in combat are a limited resource. And we really had it out when I dared to suggest just letting the rogue pop that lock open without a roll unless there was a ticking time bomb in the room. But, for the most part, that little rule has served us all well.

But that wasn’t the end of the discussion, was it? No. A few years later, I gave you another way to look at the problem. Basically, one that downplayed the importance of uncertainty and instead presented die rolls as gambles. Players proposed bets—gambles—and if they warranted a die roll, you rolled the damned dice.

Last week—or yesterday or whenever the f$&% I published the last article because my timeline is completely borked this month thanks to two solid weeks of dental surgery and reconstruction—last whatever, I put out this article about conflict. And I added a whole new rule that said that you should roll the dice whenever a conflict needs resolving.

And then, in my patrons-only Discord server, I got wrapped up in this discussion about a wizard who wanted to use the mage hand spell to move a magic item into an angry dragon’s gullet, thereby destroying the item. And how I’d resolve the situation. And I said that, assuming the player had a good plan for getting the dragon to present an open mouth, I’d probably just let it work. No die rolls necessary. And then someone called me out on my previous three rules about when to roll dice. And I had to explain that there’s also this other, fourth rule that goes:

If you can find any excuse—however small—not to roll the dice, take it. Try your hardest to never, ever need dice. Ever.

And that, naturally, raises the following question:

Okay, Angry, put all the f$&%ing rules and advice aside. Just tell us when you roll the dice How do you decide when dice need rolling at your own f$&%ing table?

And while I understand your frustration and agree that that’s a totally fair question, the plain fact is that that’s exactly what I’ve been telling all along. I use the dice when there’s uncertainty and a risk or cost or when there’s a risky gambit in play or when it’s narratively appropriate. Except when I don’t. Why aren’t you getting this?

I use the dice when using the dice is the right thing to do. Except, I also f$&% up a lot. I use the dice when I shouldn’t a little too often. But that’s because I’m human.

But let me try to explain all this s$&% in a way you’ll maybe understand.

The Burden of Wisdom

The biggest article I ever wrote was called Five Simple Rules for Dating My Teenaged Skill System. And I wrote it so long ago that the reference in the title was actually topical when I posted it. Now, when I say that was the biggest article I ever wrote, I don’t mean that it was the longest or the most popular or the one I’m proudest of. I mean that it was the article that made this site what it is.

At the time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing with the site. I was in the middle of trying to win the equivalent of an Internet bet with another blogger about how you could run perfectly fine mystery adventures with D&D. Because I’d done it. But when I tried to explain how I’d done it, I discovered I was actually adding a bunch of extra s%$& to the process that wasn’t in the rules.

I wasn’t explaining the game. I was sharing wisdom.

Forget the bulls$&% D&D definition of wisdom for the moment. Because it’s wrong and stupid. Always has been. Wisdom is something you gain over time and through experience. It’s not knowledge. You can get knowledge in lots of ways. Read books, take classes, do research, conduct experiments, and so on. But wisdom comes from experience. It’s not common sense. It’s not intuition. Those things help you become wise, but they aren’t wisdom. Wisdom comes from a gradual understanding of how s$&% actually works. Real s$&%. Not fake science and math. Not facts. Not figures. Not statistics. Real, yucky, muddy life stuff. It’s a model of the world you move through that lives in your head that you build one day at a time by actually moving through the world.

After years of running lots of games for lots of people—and because I’m a generally reflective sort and because I’ve worked hard to better myself and because I’m willing to take risks and push the envelope—I’d gained some wisdom about running games. I was a wise GM. I had a good sense of what worked and what didn’t. Intuitively. Instinctively. Without really thinking about it. I just sort of did my thing and it tended to work out.

But then I found myself in this ugly position where I had to figure out what the hell I was actually doing and why? What was it that I knew intuitively? Automatically? Instinctively? In my gut? In my heart? Why did I use the rules the way I did? Why did I reject the rules when I did? And could I explain that to other people?

See, even though wisdom has to come through experience, you can get a big head start if someone points you toward the right experiences. If someone tells you what to try. Or at least saves you some time by telling you what not to try.

So, my approach to writing articles at the time became this:

I know I know how to run a pretty damned good game. Can I figure out how I do that? Can I explain it to others?

Of course, my approach evolved over the years. First, it became:

I know I know how to run a pretty damned good game, but can I figure out how to run a better game? Can I explain it to others?

And now it’s settled on:

I know I know how to run a pretty damned good game, but can I build systems and games that empower others to run good games without needing so much wisdom? Or at least, without doing so much hard work?

And that’s why it’s hard for me to tell you when I rely on dice. Because I’m still not entirely, completely sure when I rely on dice. And when I’m right to. And why.

Subjectivity Makes the Best Games

I’m getting really high concept here. I promise when I’m done, you’ll have a better understanding of when I roll dice. But, more importantly, you’ll have a better understanding of how to decide when you should roll dice. After all, who the f$&% cares how some a$&hole on the internet does things. No matter how wise he says he is. What matters is how you do them.

Thing is, my understanding of the GM’s role has changed a lot over the years. Well, it hasn’t changed so much as deepened. It’s not like I suddenly started thinking one day that Fate was actually a good game or that “always say, ‘yes, and…’” was good advice or that forward failure was actually a good design approach. This ain’t a Lovecraft book. My insights haven’t broken my brain.

I still love dice and systems and rules—especially simple rules of thumb that I can keep in my brain like “roll dice when there’s a chance of success, a chance of failure, and a risk or cost”—but, much as I love nice, solid rules and clear, bright lines, I also know—now—that they’re the least important parts of the RPG experience. The most important part of it all is the GM’s subjective, arbitrary, flawed human brain. This is pretty f$&%ing ironic given that the sort of people that are attracted to role-playing games are the sort of people who hate subjectivity and see it as a flaw or weakness.

I know. They tell me so. All the f$&%ing time. They just want rules. Systems. They don’t want to make judgment calls. They hate the ideas of rulings and fiat. It’s all murky and unreliable and inconsistent. Even though it’s pretty f$&%ing funny that these so-called rational, objective beings don’t trust their own brains to be consistent. Worse, judgment calls and rulings don’t guarantee balance. They don’t guarantee fairness. Hell, they’re the opposite of fairness and balance. Subjective judgment can be abused by bad actors or be disastrous when used by unskilled brains. Subjectivity requires competence and integrity.

But—and this is a really big BUT—but subjectivity is also literally the best reason to play RPGs. There’s a reason people choose Dungeons & Dragons over, say a private Minecraft server or some co-op dungeon-crawling-looter-shooter-whatever. And the reason’s subjectivity.

Computers—video games—they can only do two things. Follow preprogrammed rules and generate random numbers. Pseudorandom numbers. I know. Don’t comment. I’m making a f$&%ing point. If all you do as a GM is execute the rules in the book and follow the published module and roll dice, you’re no better than a computer. Actually, you’re worse than a computer. Because you’re slower at that sort of s$&% than any computer and you have no graphics card. What you’re better at—what computers can never, ever do—is anything else. You can improvise. You can imagine. You can run hypotheticals and counterfactuals. You can pull new stories out of your a$&. Computers can’t do anything they’re not already programmed to do.

I know that you—as a GM—have at least once used the phrase “you can do anything you can imagine” to sell someone on trying D&D. You’ve used that promise to convince some poor potential victim that the game’s worth all the math and paperwork. Video games can offer only preprogrammed choices or procedurally generated hodgepodges. They’re getting better at the variety of choices they can offer. And getting better at tricking you into thinking those choices matter when they don’t. Procedural generation is getting better at faking pacing and structure. But none of that is on par with what I can at an RPG table with one hour of prep-time and my amazing human brain.

GMing’s an art, not a science. You do it by feel. There’s basic rules and principles, sure. Just like there’s color theory and composition and brushwork techniques. But none of that s$&% makes a painting a painting. By the end of his career, Monet’s cataracts made it impossible for him to even see the colors he was painting, but he produced some of his most amazing work at that time. Sierut not only painted without brushstrokes, but that’s also what he’s f$&%ing famous for. They just did what they did and art happened.

That’s why it’s actually pretty f$&%ing messed up of me to try to give you rules of thumb. I’m making you a worse GM when I do. And every time Perkins and Crawford tell you how you should do things on Twitter, they’re making you a worse GM too. From a certain perspective.

In that article I wrote to introduce my whole narrative theory thing, I made the point that RPGs are the yin and yang of game and story. And that the GM’s role is to be both a storyteller and a game designer. Yes, some of you will no doubt make the clever point that everyone at the table’s telling the story. And thereby prove that you wouldn’t know wisdom if I ripped off your head and stuffed it down your neck. Everyone’s part of the story. The story belongs to everyone. But there’s five people acting as characters and only one person weaving all those actions into an actual f$%&ing narrative.

Lots of GMs these days resist this s$&%. They hate the idea that the GM owns the game. That they’re more responsible for the game than anyone else. And that the GM’s subjectivity is the most important aspect of the game. Because that’s scary s$%& to accept. It puts a pretty heavy burden on the GM. It requires competence and integrity. And it requires GMs—you—to take responsibility for the game. And that means you can fail. Even if you do everything right, you can still end up with a crap game. And it’ll still, somehow, be on you.

Maybe it shouldn’t be that way. Maybe being a GM should be easier. Maybe the players should carry more of the responsibility. Maybe everyone should just vote on everything. But it isn’t that way. And I’ve participated in enough group projects—creative and otherwise—to know that the way it is is probably for the best. Most groups are utterly f$&%ing dysfunctional. And most projects only suffer when the responsibility and the ownership are shared around. The best stuff comes when someone—anyone—actually takes responsibility for something. That’s just the way it is.

GMing takes guts and hard work. You can wish it didn’t, you can say it shouldn’t, but you can’t change that it does. And if it didn’t take guts and hard work, it wouldn’t actually feel meaningful.

But yin and yang. Juxtaposition. In RPGs, there’s all these conflicting forces. Competing ideas. The game’s needs versus the story’s. The players’ momentary desires versus a satisfying long-term experience. Planning versus flexibility. Random surprise versus story structure. Agency versus story structure. Approachability versus depth. Satisfying challenges lie somewhere between easy victories and frustrating slogs. Balance versus railroading. Inertia versus uncertainty. I could list a hundred of these f$&%ing pairings. A thousand.

As a GM, it’s your job to resolve every last one of those conflicts. To balance all the conflicting needs. And before you can do that, you have to understand the basic f$&%ing nature of balance. You have to understand that balance is an active thing. You’re never in balance when you’re still. When you stand on one foot, you can feel all your muscles constantly tweaking and jerking and adjusting. Actively keeping you in balance. That’s because balance is inherently unstable. Balance a pencil on its point and see how long it takes it to fall over. Balance is sensitive to very tiny forces and very precise conditions. And the conditions of a group gameplay and story experience are constantly f$%&ing changing. That’s why it’s called a group dynamic and not a group static.

You also have to understand that balance ain’t always a one-to-one thing. Balance isn’t found in the dead center every time. If one side’s heavier than the other, the balance point shifts. Hold a heavy book in one hand, then balance on one foot. Where’s your center of mass? Moving away from the book. Every force in your game isn’t created equal. And the weights are changing every day. People have preferences and moods and desires and needs and they change every f$&%ing day.

Look, games have action scenes and slow scenes, right? Tense scenes and calm scenes. You could balance your game by making sure that every adventure, encounter, and session has exactly the same mix of tense and calm, action and slow. But that’d be f$&%ing nuts. It’d be contrived. Inflexible. What most GMs do instead is recognize that they’ve sure had a lot of action scenes lately and that it’s time to maybe slow things down with some NPC interactions in a safe environment like a town. Or to notice that there’s been a lot of interaction-heavy character drama, so the next session needs a fight with some kobolds in a mine or something. And if the GM knows the group likes the character drama more, then they’ll make sure the kobold mine still includes a few NPCs to interact with.

See what I’m saying? Balance is an active, ongoing thing. And there’s no one, right balance point for every group that works every session. It’s about pushing and pulling, this way and that, moving your game one jolt at a time toward some hypothetical perfect spot. Except the perfect spot’s impossible to find, impossible to stay on, and it keeps moving.

And this is where style comes in. GMing style. Playstyle. Campaign style. Style’s just the weightings and preferences a GM or player has in his head about which forces are more important and which ones aren’t big deals. And the campaign style’s the compromise the GM and the players made between them. It’s a sort of middle ground everyone settled on based on their styles. And when a player doesn’t like the way a game is going, it’s because their personal playstyle’s too far from that compromise.

It’s like this. If you take all the different things that add up to all the different ways to play an RPG—all the different opposing forces—you could map out this multidimensional hyperspace based on all these different axes. It’s crazy to imagine, I know, but stick with me. Just imagine this massive hyperspace where all possible games could be mapped.

The art of GMing comes down to recognizing, from one moment to the next, where the game is in that hyperspace and recognizing where it should be and knowing exactly how hard to pull in which direction to bring the one to the other. Every decision you make as a GM gives your game a shove in RPG-space. And you’re trying to keep the game a tolerable distance from the hypothetical point of perfect game for you and your friends.

That’s why it’s crazy for me to suggest there’s any one rule you can always follow that’ll make your game work. The best thing I can do is try to draw a big ole line around some middle-ish region of RPG-space and say, “that’s where most good games live; now, here’s how to push and pull so you can get your game in there.” And that pushing and pulling thing is why I seem to give so much contradictory advice. I’m trying to show you all the different directions you can push or pull in so that you can hopefully yank your game in the right directions to get you into the middle-space.

But there’s also gravity in RPG-space. Sometimes, things tend to just slide in one direction if you leave them alone. Sometimes, some directions are so alluring, so attractive, that everyone just heads in that direction no matter what. And that’s when the best thing I can give you is an aspirational ideal.

Now, people hate aspirational ideals. Those are rules that are either impossible to follow perfectly every time or that represent an attempt to reach an unattainable, theoretical state. It’s where moral rules and dietary restrictions live. Most gamers—most people—hate aspirational ideals. What’s the point of a rule that can’t be followed perfectly? What’s the point of striving for the unattainable? All that does is remind you what a failure you are every day.

Well, look, I’m not here to give you life advice. But I will say that, if you can’t see the value in striving toward the good and find the victory in getting even a tiny bit closer to it every day, maybe it ain’t gaming advice you need. Meanwhile, though, I don’t want to upset anyone by talking about anything as controversial as morality and self-improvement. So, I’m going to talk about fat and sugar.

I love fatty, sugary foods. I’m a human. We’re biologically wired to seek out fatty, sugary foods because those used to be the hardest things to find in the wild. Millions of years ago. I love fatty and sugary foods so much that after thirty-some-odd years of indulgence, I ended up terribly fat. And in the hospital. And with all the standard health complications that almost inevitably accompany terrible fatness.

No one needs to tell me that sugary, fatty foods are wonderful. I know that. Everyone does. And fats and sugars are necessary nutrients. But, at this point in my life, they’ll pretty much lead to me having my feet cut off. And then I’ll go blind. And then I’ll die. So, I need to stay the hell away from them as much as I can. That’s an aspirational ideal. Stay the hell away from fat and sugar and high-calorie foods. I can’t avoid them completely. I need a certain amount of them. And I still really want them. I’m going to indulge now and then. I have to indulge as little as possible. I have to do everything I can to steer away from them as much as possible without actually crashing the car.

This isn’t health advice either. I’m just using my own, personal experience and choices to set up a metaphor.

Hating Dice and Rolling them Anyway

Dice are fatty, sugary, high-calorie RPG foods. Dice are fun. No one needs to be told how exciting it is to roll dice. And dice are fair. They’re random, but they’re not arbitrary. Not subjective. There’s nothing more even-handed than knowing the odds and rolling the dice. And you sure as hell can’t blame the dice for making a bad call or doing something out of spite like you can a GM. That’s why most GMs—and most gamers—overindulge on dice given half a chance. And that’s why I hate dice. That’s why I tell myself how awful they are. Because my instinct will always be to grab for the dice. I need an ideal. An unattainable, aspirational rule that helps me steer away from the dice.

And please see the postscript at the end before you tell me how you—or your players—hate dice. I know people like you exist and I added a special note just for you.

See, it’s my judgment that makes my game the best it can possibly be. What makes it better than any computer game. The dice can never, ever give an answer that’s better than the one my brain can come up with. In the long run, educated guesses from even the most average of people will win more often than random guesses. And you’re in RPGs for the long haul. Once in a while? Sure, the dice might give you a result that’s better or more interesting or more fun than you might have just pulled out of your own a$&. But considered over your entire gaming career, your brain’s gonna come out ahead.

I’m not saying dice don’t bring something to the game. Of course they do. Tension, excitement, and perceived fairness are all good things. And sugars and fats are necessary nutrients. Your body needs them to live. And you need pleasure in your life or it’s not worth keeping your body alive anyway. But sugar and fat aren’t the only things to eat. And dice aren’t the only way to add tension and excitement and fairness. And a small amount of die-rolling goes a long way.

My approach comes down to this: the rules, the dice, and the game’s mechanics are all things any stupid computer can handle. They’re s$&% you’d get from a board game or a video game. So, they should be my last resort. Using them’s always going to diminish my game. To move it away from RPG toward boring, bulls$&% video game. Rules add cognitive load. They’re rigid and inflexible. They take time to reference. They can’t adapt and adjust. They can’t do corner cases. And dice are random number generators. They can answer questions, but they do so without thought. They’re just as likely to give a crappy answer as a good one. That’s why I always tell people to use their f$&%ing brains before they use the rules.

I know that, when a player attempts an action, I’m supposed to roll the dice. I want to roll the dice. The player wants to roll the dice. The dice want to be rolled. So, I’m always looking for an excuse to not roll the dice. Like, for example, the fact that the players are using their brains and engaging with the world beyond the rules and mechanics on their character sheets. If they’re doing that s$&%, they deserve me using my brain instead of just scurrying away to the rules and the random number generator.

That’s how this started, right? With me saying I’d let some player use a mage hand spell to destroy a magic item by ferrying it down a dragon’s gullet. And that I probably wouldn’t use any dice to resolve the situation. Provided, that is, they had a good plan for getting the dragon to open its mouth in the first place.

And I can justify that call by first pointing to the rules on initiative and readied actions and then to the description of the mage hand spell. But that’s not the point. The fact that the justification backs me up just strengthens my resolve to not roll dice. The fact is, I went looking for that justification only because someone dared to question my gut instinct to not roll dice at all.

Any GM can find uncertainty in any situation. Any GM can find certainty. Any GM worthy of their screen can argue that any f$&%ing action has a reasonable chance of success. Or doesn’t. Or a reasonable chance of failure. Or doesn’t. I can do it myself. It’s a parlor trick. The problem’s not that GMs can find certainty or uncertainty in everything, it’s that they’re inclined to look for the uncertainty. Because they’re looking for the reason to roll the dice. Because they want to roll the dice. But wise GMs eventually learn to look for the reasons not to roll the dice.

So when do I roll dice? I roll dice whenever I can’t find any good, solid reason not to. I roll the dice when the players don’t give me an excuse to not roll the dice. I roll the dice when the rules don’t give me an excuse not to. I roll the dice when the situation doesn’t give me an excuse not to. If I can find any excuse not to roll the dice, then I don’t. I roll the dice when I can’t argue that the odds of success are high enough that failure’s implausibly unlikely. I roll the dice when I can’t argue that the odds of success are so vanishingly small that failure’s practically guaranteed. I roll the dice when I don’t feel like one outcome or the other would feel like a gimmee or a gift or a deus ex machina or a screwjob or a robbery.

That’s why, by the way, I don’t let players roll dice against impossible odds on the off chance they’ll roll a reality-altering natural twenty and force me to invent a ridiculous contrivance that everyone knows is just a load of bulls$&% I pulled out of my a$& because the dice told me to. Players can’t seduce dragons with dice in my game. Not ever.

I follow all the rules I’ve ever written. Without uncertainty, tension, conflict, and a good gamble, I won’t resort to a die roll. But there’s also times when there’s uncertainty, tension, conflict, and a good gamble that totally warrant a die roll and I ignore them all and go with my own judgment instead. Times when I have the willpower to resist the siren song of the plastic polyhedrals. When I have the balls to make the call and own it. The way a GM should.

And I still use the dice too damned much. Because it’s fun.

Postscript: Yes, Some People Hate Dice

I’m adding this in after the rewrite and saving you the trouble of pointing it out. Everyone doesn’t actually love dice. Some players and some GMs hate the dice. They feel like the dice hold them back. Like the dice prevent them from just doing the s$&% they want to do. Like they get in the way. Every group has at least one player who just dreads having to roll ability checks. They hate having their clever plans wrecked by arbitrary randomness. Or they feel like they always roll badly. Whatever.

Now, that’s fine for players. Players can love the dice or they can hate the dice. As a GM, you can’t give a s$&%. The best thing you can do as a GM is to use the dice when the dice are the right tool for the job. Sometimes, that means the players who hate dice will have to roll them. Sometimes, it means the players who love the dice won’t get to roll them. That’s gaming. You can’t just hand the players everything they want. You have to understand the tool and use it right.

But if you’re one of those GMs who hates the dice? Your attitude ain’t healthy either. And you need to find your own aspirational rule. One that leads you to look for the excuse to roll the dice in every situation. You still won’t use the dice enough, but you’ll get a lot closer to the healthy middle ground that way.

But I expect this is something you’ll have to figure out for yourself someday when you’re ready. That’s how wisdom works.