This here’s a part of my year-long course in True Game Mastery. You don’t have to read the lessons in order, but that’s how they work best. So, if you’re new here, check out this series index and start at the beginning.
Click here for the True Game Mastery series index.
Ever heard of a Breather Level? It’s a segment of a video game that’s easier than the parts that come before and after it. It’s an important pacing tool because, while challenge and tension must trend upward over time, they can’t actually rise continuously without frustrating or fatiguing players.
I’ve been laying a lot of new habits on you lately. Basically, I’ve forced you to change your game-running technique on a pretty fundamental level. That ain’t easy. And soon, I’ll be demanding you rethink everything you know about encounters. So today, I’m giving you a break. No new habits and no assigned homework. I just want to plant some ideas in your noggin.
So relax. Take a break and break out your dice. You’ve earned it.
Just be ready to work twice as hard next time.
Dice: You Gotta Know When to Roll ‘Em
Like it or not, dice are a thing. They’re an inalienable part of tabletop roleplaying games. Past dalliances with diceless games — and the occasional modern offering — have all failed. And not without reason. Dice — and the randomness they bring — are an essential part of the tabletop roleplaying gameplay and narrative experience.
But, no matter what the rules tell you or what your players whine at you, it’s on you — the True Game Master — to decide when to turn to the dice to determine what happens next. It’s your game and your call. And despite what rulebooks and sexy gaming geniuses like me suggest, no set of rules or guidelines or checkboxes can tell you when you should — and shouldn’t — break out the dice. Any guidelines you’ve seen — any at all — are just approximations designed to keep Game Amateurs and Mere Game Executors from ruining their games through extreme over- or under-reliance on dice.
They need those approximations. You don’t. Not anymore.
What you need is good judgment. And, more importantly, a good, intuitive gut. That’s the only right way for a True Game Master to decide whether to consult the plastic polyhedrals for an answer. But you can’t make intuitive gut calls if you don’t have an intuitive understanding of what your gut is calling sloshing around in your brain somewhere.
So, True Game Masters must get dice. They’ve got to understand what dice are and what they do. And what dice aren’t and what they don’t.
Dice: What Are They Good For?
Dice do one thing and one thing only. They randomize outcomes. Das ist alles. And True Game Masters don’t expect them to do anything else. Anything else True Game Masters do with dice is purely because they like dice. And who doesn’t? Dice are fun.
Randomized outcomes are good for tabletop roleplaying games. Really, really good. They’re good for the Mechanical Gameplay, they’re good for the Narrative Experience, and they’re good for the Feel of Play.
Randomness in Mechanical Gameplay
What Dice Rolls Actually Represent
Every so often, some Mere Game Executor will post an online screed — usually in response to something I’ve said — about what dice represent in the world. “The dice actually represent the quality of the character’s effort” or some bullshit like that.
In the past, I’ve been dumb enough to argue with those idiots. I’ve posted complex, well-thought-out arguments about what the dice do actually represent and what they don’t. I’ve used examples, interviews with game designers, and even cited scientific evidence. And I even adopted a certain quote from Tiamat’s Wrath, the eighth book in James S. A. Corey’s sci-fi masterpiece, The Expanse series, which perfectly captured the essence of what dice represent.
But the real, true, correct answer is this: dice represent nothing. They are random number generators True Game Masters use to choose between outcomes whose probabilities are weighted by in-world conditions. If you can’t handle that answer — if you absolutely must explain dice in the context of the game’s world — you can’t run games. And you sure as hell don’t deserve any other answer.
I’ve noted several times that three elements make a game a game. Games have goals, they have challenges, and they have rules. But that’s kind of like saying bread has flour, yeast, and water. It’s technically true, but it’s an incomplete truth.
Mark Rosewater — head designer of Magic: the Gathering — once listed the ten elements at the heart of good game design in his article Ten Things Every Game Needs. And randomized outcomes — spat out by dice — help provide two of those ten things.
First, random outcomes provide Surprise. The results of the players’ actions must be at least somewhat unpredictable. To the players. GMs don’t need Surprise. They’re not players. Some GMs like to be surprised, but some GMs like chocolate cake, and neither is a vital part of the GMing experience.
Second, randomized outcomes comprise a Catchup Mechanic. That is, they provide a means by which losers can turn things in their favor. In tabletop roleplaying games, players are always favored to win. If there was no way the underdogs could challenge — and even beat — the favorites once in a while, there’d be no point in playing the game. No one wants to play a game the favorites can never lose. Not even the favorites.
Randomness and the Narrative Experience
The Weirdness of Roleplaying Game Narratives
I often bring up the rules and structures that make stories good. They’re important. They separate the good stories from the crappy ones. And tabletop roleplaying games do yield up stories. But you can’t forget that the tabletop roleplaying game is a unique storytelling medium. So not all the storytelling rules apply. And some apply very differently. And there are some kinds of stories roleplaying games can’t tell.
TTRPGs are emergent storytelling media. They can’t be wholly planned or plotted. That means the structures are wobbly and more like loose frameworks, cause-and-effect rules break down occasionally, and stuff sometimes doesn’t make sense.
In TTRPGs, the audience members are also the protagonists of the story. And the story’s author — yes, the GM is the author and the players are the audience and that’s how it is — lacks control over the protagonists. That changes a lot.
True Game Masters spend a lot of time trying to mold their games’ emerging stories into good Narratives, but they know they’ll never be able to pull it off perfectly. They’re okay with that. And they also recognize there are some kinds of Narrative Experiences they can’t capture in a roleplaying game.
In short: stop trying to emulate heist movies in TTRPGs. Heist movies rely heavily on dramatic irony and dramatic irony is something TTRPGs literally can’t do. You can look it up.
I know I talk a lot about story structure and cause-and-effect, so it’s probably weird to hear me say randomness has a play in the Narrative Experience, but randomness plays two important roles in the specific kinds of Narrative Experiences TTRPGs provide.
First, recall that Pacing is a vital Narrative Element. And Pacing ain’t about speed, it’s about Tension. And Tension derives from the audience’s uncertainty about the story’s outcome. Do you see how randomized outcomes might be important there?
Second — and this is a tricky point — randomized outcomes bring a realness to the world and a humanity to the experience. Our world is full of Chaos. Almost everything is beyond our control or even our ability to foresee. We hate that aspect of our lives, but we can’t avoid it.
Stories help us contextualize our life experiences and let us practice dealing with the uncomfortable parts of those experiences. The stories that do both best are the ones that stick with us. The ones that resonate.
The Dice — thematically — stand in for Chaos, the undeniable, elemental force beyond our control that nonetheless rules our lives and screws with our plans daily. And thus, the dice turn our pretend elf game into a resonant, human story in a living, breathing world.
Randomness and the Feel of Play
Randomized outcomes in general — and dice as outcome randomizers specifically — actually have a lot of influence over how roleplaying games feel. Feel to play, mind you, not to run. Remember, you ain’t a player.
First, as crazy and paradoxical as this sounds given my spiel about Chaos, when players roll dice, they feel like they’re in control of the outcome. Unconsciously. People are stupid. Even you’re stupid. I’m less stupid, but I’m still stupid. However well I know intellectually that dice are random number generators, if you let me roll dice, I unconsciously feel like my fate is in my hands.
Want proof? Try this at your next game. Print out a few hundred results from a random number generator, hide them behind your screen, and use them in place of dice. When your players complain, explain that what you’re doing is no different than rolling dice. See if they come back the following week.
Second, as crazy and paradoxical as this sounds, dice feel fair. Dice have no motives, dice have no axes to grind, and dice have no biases. Dice deliver the same random numbers to everyone based purely on objective, impartial probability. You may be the fairest, most kind-hearted GM ever, but if you announce that a PC is dead, your players will piss and moan. Roll a die where they can see it — or better yet, let a player roll it — and they’ll concede it was fair. Usually.
The Dark Side of the Dice
Dice are pretty great, huh? Great for games, great for stories, and great for feelings! Let’s roll dice for everything! Yay dice!
Well, drop the pompoms there, Buffy, because it just ain’t that simple.
True Game Masters know that die rolls aren’t just necessary, they’re good. That is why True Game Masters never brag about running entire sessions without die rolls as some bullshit proof that their game is truly about roleplaying and not rollplaying. True Game Masters know a diceless session is a failure.
But True Game Masters are adults. And adults know that everything good — everything — has a cost. They know everything good — everything — has a downside. And they know unintended consequences lurk everywhere.
The Dark Side of Random Gameplay
The False Dilemma of Rollplaying versus Roleplaying
There’s a subset of Game Masters who think rolling dice is somehow the opposite of roleplaying. They’re the ones who sneeringly deride rollplaying over roleplaying. And in so doing, they prove they’re mouthbreathing idiots who understand neither one.
Roleplaying means making choices based on an assumed role and an imaginary situation. Roleplaying is making the choices you would make if you really were Ardrick the fighter and your hometown really was under attack by savagely evil orcs.
Dice determine the outcomes of uncertain actions in roleplaying games. When Ardrick’s player decides that, if he were Ardrick, he’d dive between the marauding orc and the pregnant farmwife, the dice determine whether Ardrick deflects the attack with his shield or whether the best he can do now is avenge the murders of an innocent woman and an unborn human child.
The one has nothing to do with the other. Nothing.
And if you think real humans don’t try to maximize their odds of success in dangerous situations by trying to bring their strengths to bear, then you don’t just suck at roleplaying games, you suck at life. What’s wrong with you?
The best games have an element of Surprise and Catchup Mechanics, right? So hooray for randomized outcomes, right? Not quite.
Unpredictability is good, but too much unpredictability screws with Strategy, another vital game element. Players must be able to affect a game’s outcome. And the better their decisions, the stronger the impact should be. Too much randomness throws strategic planning out the window. And no, I am not saying “the d20 is too swingy.” That’s a dumbass thing only players say. I would never say that.
Catchup mechanics are good too. If the winner is certain before the end of the round or the scene or the game, there’s no tension left and you might as well just stop playing right then and there. But Catchup mechanics let the underdogs rob the favorites of their earned victories by random chance. It’s frustrating to do everything right and have a win stolen away by a few crappy die rolls.
… and Hidden Information
Apart from confounding strategy and stealing away earned victories, dice can also negatively impact gameplay by revealing information the players shouldn’t have and thereby altering their decisions.
A character ransacking a room who finds nothing will never know whether there was anything to find. Thus, they have a decision to make: either keep searching on the assumption they’ve overlooked something — and risk being discovered by a wandering monster — or give up and move on — and risk leaving behind a valuable trinket. That’s an interesting, meaningful, strategic decision based partly on imperfect information.
But…
If the player knows they rolled a 19 on their Search check, they can easily deduce their search was so thorough that it’s extremely unlikely they overlooked anything. Or, at least, that if they searched longer, it’s unlikely they’d do any better.
The same thing happens when failed rolls provide false information. When players can’t see the dice, they’re forced to take the results of their character’s intuition, interrogation, appraisal, and recall at face value. Players who see the dice can guess whether the GM is lying about what they perceive or remember.
The Dark Side of Random Narratives
Unpredictable outcomes create Tension and humanize the game by introducing an element of Chaos, right? Of course they do. Or else I wouldn’t have said it. But that doesn’t mean random outcomes are all beer and skittles vis a vis a roleplaying game’s Narrative.
Stories are at their best when they provide satisfying outcomes. And, to some extent, when they provide comfortable outcomes. Humans like stories that make sense. They like stories that follow the rules of cause and effect. And they like it when characters get what they deserve.
Tension and Chaos are great — and some stories lean hard into both — but the stories that stay with us are the ones that end well and make sense. Simply put, randomness guarantees neither that a story will make sense nor that it will end well.
Randomness, left to its own devices, tells sucky stories no one likes.
The Dark Side of Random Feelings
Cognitive Dissonance and the Poor Twenty-Sider
People’s brains are full of deeply held beliefs and convictions. At least when it comes to pretend elf games, they are. Because that’s all I’m talking about here. When something happens to challenge a deeply held belief, it creates something scientists call Cognitive Dissonance. Basically, that just means there are two mismatched thoughts in the same brain. They can’t both be true. And most people don’t cope well with that. It’s very stressful. Challenging deeply held beliefs creates a sort of existential crisis. So, most people respond by trying to rationalize the mismatch or reject the new idea.
Dice are fair and impartial, right? Deeply held belief.
But Beryllia just broke down a door that Ardrick couldn’t. That’s not right.
I can’t challenge my belief in the fairness of the dice, so I’ll just invent a bullshit claim to explain away the unfair-seeming result. Obviously, the d20 is too swingy.
Dice are impartial dealers of random numbers based on the immutable laws of probability. All are equal before the dice, right?
Well, actually, that is right. And that’s the problem. Dice are fair, but they’re not just.
What’s the difference between fair and just? Well, consider the classic example that’s often used to decry the poor d20 as too swingy. Ardrick, the mighty fighter, tries and fails to break down a door. Then, Beryllia, the petite elven wizard steps up and, with a lucky roll, kicks it open. The odds were fair. The dice were impartial. But the outcome was wrong. Ardrick invested in building strength. He deserves to break down doors. That’s something Ardrick should be able to do. And Beryllia the noodle-armed spell-slinger who skipped gym every day at Warthogs Wizarding Polytechnic? She should not be able to break down any door Ardrick can’t.
The dice don’t give a crap about what’s deserved or what should be. Dice just spit out random numbers. And while that’s technically fair and egalitarian, it’s rarely just. And when it isn’t, people get mad at the dice instead of themselves.
… and Game Flow
Apart from revealing themselves as unjust, heartless bastards instead of fair-and-objective deciders of honest outcomes, dice can also negatively impact the feel of the game by breaking the game’s flow.
It’s like this: every time you stop the gameplay action to roll dice, you’re stopping the gameplay action to roll dice. Considering how hard you’ve got to work to keep your game running smoothly and considering that, all else being equal, smooth games are good games and herky-jerky games are bad games, that ain’t great.
In fact, breaking flow is the single worst downside to rolling dice.
Of course, some in-game situations can handle the flow break better than others. Combat? It’s supposed to ping-pong between Narrative Mode and Mechanics Mode. And slow-and-methodical dungeon exploration can tolerate stops for Perception checks and random monster rolls and crap like that. But you can’t keep hitting the brakes in a social interaction scene and expect anything like a natural conversation. And if a scene’s already flowing well without dice, suddenly injecting a few is like downshifting from third gear to first gear without going through second in between.
A Dicey Summary
I know y’all love my checklists and summations a huggy-buggy bunch, so let me summarize the good and bad that dice have to offer for you in convenient bullet form before I try to tie this shit up with some useful advice.
- Dice help a GM select between uncertain outcomes.
- Dice invest gameplay with an element of surprise.
- Dice facilitate reversals of fortune in gameplay.
- Dice invest a narrative with tension.
- Dice humanize and ground the game by thematically representing Chaos.
- Dice give players a sense of control over their fates.
- Dice lend a game a sense of fairness and objectivity.
- Dice can sabotage gameplay strategy.
- Dice can steal earned victories.
- Dice can reveal information better left hidden.
- Dice can deliver unsatisfying or unjust outcomes.
- Dice break the game’s flow.
What’s a GM to Do with Dice?
That fancy bullet list? That’s what dice do. And that’s all they do. True Game Masters accept that list as is. They don’t pretend the pros aren’t pros and the cons aren’t cons. And they don’t try to ascribe dice any further meaning or purpose. True Game Masters don’t consider realism or simulationism or anything like that. And once True Game Masters decide to consult the dice, they do so knowing what’s at stake, and they accept it.
True Game Masters don’t rely on checklists or written rules to tell them when to roll the dice. They understand dice, they trust their judgment, and they own their games so they’re willing to make a call every time and live with the results.
Weighing it All
The Courage of Playing D&D
In the 1999 film Dogma Jason “Jay” Derris surprised his fellow protagonists by accompanying them on an apparently doomed attempt to save the world from a psychotic fallen angel. When challenged, he replied, “I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons & Dragons without learning a thing or two about courage.”
It takes courage to run roleplaying games. You put yourself in the spotlight and take personal responsibility for everyone’s fun. You expose your artistic creations to ridicule, you expose yourself to judgment, and you know that every choice you make can ruin someone’s fun or even ruin a friendship.
It also takes courage to play roleplaying games. You create a character and invest yourself in their adventures knowing full well that a few bad decisions or some crappy die rolls can destroy them.
Courage is a virtue and it’s in short supply these days. All else being equal, people prefer safety to freedom. But True Game Masters can’t play it safe. You can’t run your best games if you don’t take risks. That’s what’s at the heart of the Doctrine of Ownership. Whatever happens, it’s on you.
True Game Masters don’t tolerate cowards at their tables. Players who are not willing to throw themselves into the game knowing full well they have no control over the outcome aren’t truly invested in the game. It’s the risks, costs, and dangers that make the experience meaningful.
Courage lies at the heart of every debate over whether GMs should use mind control or whether death should be possible without the player’s explicit permission.
Every time there’s an action to resolve — every time you hit the Determine part of the Declare-Determine-Describe Cycle — you’ve got to decide whether to ask the dice what they think. And with every action and every moment, the calculus changes. Worse yet, you’re equally likely to end up with disinvested players by over-relying as by under-relying on the dice. And even if you make the right call every time, a bad run of dice outcomes can frustrate players and kill their investment.
Fortunately, there’s an easy default answer. More fortunately, it’s not as easy to mess this up as it seems. And best of all, if you do mess this up, it’s easy to fix.
First, remember that the pros outweigh the cons most of the time. That’s why the dice even exist. If you overuse the dice a little, you won’t break things. Hell, you’re less likely to break your game by overusing the dice than you are by underusing them, though I know lots of folks will scream otherwise.
Second, realize that the middle ground between over-relying and under-relying on the dice is really big. If you’re even a little thoughtful and attentive, you won’t up in the over-weeds or the under-weeds. You have a hell of a lot of wiggle room.
Third, recognize you can tweak your reliance on the dice just by calling for more or fewer die rolls. It’s an easy knob to turn. And it’s a knob the players are really sensitive to. That’s why you can perk up bored players just by rolling some dice or cheer up frustrated players by letting their dice cool down.
In fact, if your players seem grumpy or disinvested and you’re pretty sure your flow is on point, try fiddling with your dice-reliance knob. Use dice more liberally if your players are bored, cocky, or murderhoboey; and use them more conservatively if your players seem frustrated or pessimistic.
Some Parting Advice
I’m not leaving you with a checklist of criteria that’ll tell you when to consult the dice and when not to. I’d be doing you a terrible disservice. And if you’ve got a notecard with my Four Simple Rules on it, throw it away. It’s time to grow up.
That said, here are a few vague bits of advice to read over and then move beyond. Do not write these down and stick them to your screen. Be a True Game Master. Read my advice, then let it fade into your unconscious, then trust your gut.
Never use the dice to resolve something if you’re already certain of the outcome. That’s not what they’re for.
Don’t let your game go too long without a die roll. If you find yourself thinking, “gosh, it’s been a while since we touched some dice,” let the dice decide the next remotely uncertain thing.
Don’t be afraid to roll some checks yourself behind the screen. Do so to keep information hidden or to resolve actions without breaking flow. I roll almost all social interaction checks at my table behind the screen myself for just that reason. Almost all, but not absolutely all.
And make sure you have the information you need to quickly and quietly resolve character actions in secret.
Don’t ask the dice for more than a yes or no. Sorry narrative dice lovers; you’re wrong. Dice exist to randomly select from several uncertain outcomes. By the time you touch the dice, you should know all the outcomes that might come out. Consequences, risks, and costs are for you to work out. Your dice should only speak four phrases tops: yes, no, very yes, and very no.
Once you decide to consult the dice, stick with the result. Don’t veto or fudge outcomes. If you ain’t comfortable with what the dice might say, don’t roll the dice at all. If you do roll the dice, have the stones to accept the result and force your players to do the same.
Finally, don’t ask the dice about anything that shouldn’t be random. If the strongest character fails to smash down the door or the most alert character fails to find the secret door, don’t let the dice say someone can do them better. You and I — and your players — know that if the cleric can’t identify the holy symbol, no one else should be able to. Don’t let the dice say otherwise.
Don’t give your players an excuse to spout nonsense about swinginess lest you start believing that bullshit yourself.
The first time you talk about catchup mechanics, I legit thought you were going to say that they can give flavour to otherwise bland gameplay. But that’s spelled differently.
I know my brain is stupid, especially when it comes to randomness, but I swear every player has that one set of dice that is not fair or unbiased. It hates us and gleefully loves to mess with us. Need a high roll? “Nope 1’s forever.” “Ha! I trick you you stupid die, I really needed 1’s!” “Yup, I know that’s why you now get high rolls for the foreseeable future”
As stupid as that thought process is, it’s even dumber that we almost all love those dice as much as we hate them, as if we can will them into submission, either through persuasion or intimidation.
I know exactly what you mean. I have a player that prays to “RNJesus” everytime he tosses his dice. I even once had a player that would threaten to melt his dice if they didn’t “serve [their] dark master” lol.
You seem to deride “swinginess” but it’s something my (stupid) brain just can’t seem to get away from. An equal chance between an average result and an extreme result just seems off to me. Even a tiny bell curve seems 10x more satisfying to me, plus rolling even 2 dice gives extra levels of randomness that I’ve come to enjoy interpreting, such as pairs implying an extra feature.
I think the issues stems from both cognitive dissonance, I think I’m just more susceptible to disbelief of extreme results, and also team “clickety clack goblin brain loves shiny pebbles.” Rolling more dice seems more fun.
That being said, I also love trying new mechanics and don’t have a steady game of the most popular ttrpg that exclusively uses 1d20. When I have played, 1d20 did not seem out of place and the so called swinginess never seemed to be a problem. Different games have different mechanics and each are fine if you intuitively understand the role of dice, and trust your gut to use them.
While it’s very natural to think about interpreting a natural 19 as “more extreme” than a natural 11 (even though both are equally probable), most rules don’t* distinguish between the meaning of specific numbers that way. Instead, with D&D/PF, checks are a threshold matter.
If you call for a Disable Device roll with a DC 17, anything 1-16 is treated as a failure, anything 17+ is treated as a success. You could even envision that as saying “there’s a 20% baseline chance of success, +5% for each point of character investment (ability mod, ranks, proficiency, etc.)”.
It’s *really* handy to have a uniform distribution for these things, in my opinion. In contrast, with a 2d10 system, you’d have a 10% baseline chance of success, but the value of one more point to the ability or skill is very hard to describe or intuit.
The binary nature of the dice outcome is sorta the backbone of the “Determine” step of the “Declare-Determine-Describe” cycle, as far as I understand what Angry has written. All you’re doing is asking the dice “Does the character succeed at disabling the chest trap or not?” Whether they rolled an 11+6 = 17 or a 19+6 = 25 doesn’t really matter, they both succeed. Neither is inherently ‘better’ or ‘worse’ in terms of disabling the device, despite how it might be narrated.
*Except for natural 1s and 20s, in some circumstances.
I agree with the interpretation of the dice results, it doesn’t really matter, the standard spread and binary nature makes it easier to parse and to determine. In all regards 1d20 should be just fine, it’s definitely been playtested to death and not many seem to have the same issue. Still, some dumb part of my brain has trouble getting over it, it’s definitely a me problem, not a game problem. I know I should let it go for the sake of a great game.
Perhaps it’s the ratio between character skill and the random nature of the dice that breaks it down for me. A character with 20 strength is amongst the strongest (non-magically augmented) humans in the world, this gives +5 bonus to STR checks. The d20 has much more impact on the result than being as strong as possible in game terms. That’s not satisfying to me. Being 10x more likely to roll an 11 over a 1 or 20 seems to put more onus on the character’s ability over the dice.
The sweet spot for me is 3d6, and the only thing I don’t like about it is that they’re boring ol’ cubes instead of the fancy dice I prefer to collect. I really do also enjoy interpreting pairs and triples, and also like determining degree of success/failure via die rolls, and in this case “swinginess” does matter.
Of course I’m just as likely to play GURPS over D&D so it’s a non-issue either way. d20 is far more popular and I do enjoy it as well. But the dice thing always bothers me deep down inside.
I’m going to go over this article a few times, let the ol’ noggin absorb it, and try to let intuition take over.
I think Angry mentioned in an older article that d20+mod and dice pools are for different kinds of games, the former fitting high fantasy better and the latter for grittier games.
Hi! I think that you actually have a bell curve hidden in the rules, because usually abilities are determined by 3d6, which have a bell shaped density curve. In roll-under game rules, your threshold is provided by that curve. In reach-target game rules, they determine the threshold displacement and thus the increment/decrement in probability. As an aside, the more dice you roll to determine an event, you have the obvious increase in average number, but you also have less dispersion around that average, so you could use the average and it wouldn’t change much against the roll (for determining high HD monster’s hit points, for example).
I’m sorry. I missed to say “proportionally” (curves get wider, but proportional to the average they don’t, they vary proportionally less).
“You and I — and your players — know that if the cleric can’t identify the holy symbol, no one else should be able to. Don’t let the dice say otherwise.”
I’m glad I stuck around ’til the end because I think this is advice I need to hear. A lot of times, my party’s “best” character will whiff their roll to navigate the forest, translate the text, or forage for food, and then someone else will jump in with, “I’m not very good at this task, but can I try instead?” And it never feels quite right; it feels like the party is just cranking the arm of a slot machine until the quarters pour out.
Angry, is this connected to “inviting the principal character to act?”
And of course there’s the option that Ardrick did break down the door. But it took a couple of slams so it wasn’t quick, and the noise warned everything on the other side, and maybe when it finally broke Ardrick was a little off balance and needed a beat to recover ( penalty to initiative).
I’ve come to like so called “yes but” (still fail, but a different consequence of failing) responses to bad rolls because they sidestep the cognitive dissonance of Beryllia’s muscle play.
You can just call a reroll, though. In fact for that specific case, a reroll seems like both the RAW and the best option. Tell them the noise echoes through the dungeon, and ask them if they’re going to keep trying to smash it. Roll an encounter table every time he does or something, or use the tension pool, or whatever.
“Yes, but” doesn’t make sense here. He failed to smash the door, it’s stuck. Ask if he wants to try again.
Maybe the check is to smash the door down quickly.
Something like… “Ardrick fails to smash the door down. It’s stuck. Do you want to keep smashing at it, taking a lot of time and making a lot of noise, or do you want to try something else?”
RAW depends on the ruleset you’re using. But yes that’s also an option. My point is that there are alternative choices to letting the cognitive dissonance event happen, whether it’s breaking the door (quickly) or identifying the holy symbol for to simple and absolute failure.
I use this method at times. Although I try to do it in a way where I explain to the players what the stakes are.
I would most likely have said: You can ram down the door, but it’s nosy so I will roll the tension pool. Roll an strength check to see if you can knock it down instantly, or if it takes you a dungeon turn to do so.
The outcome of the dice roll isn’t “if he manages.”
I use the same for lockpicking and other things where you want to avoid players just say “I do it again.” Although games where you track time more you have a lot more play. The issue I have with 5E is that the time it takes to pick a lock isn’t described well. (Not everyone is the Lockpicking Lawyer after all, and even he get’s lucky)
I get the impression that the alleged swingyness if a byproduct of dice abuse. An excess of inappropriate dice rolling can create undue failures and successes that contradict the sensible outcome. A 1 in 20 chance of something going catastrophically wrong while crossing the street is ridiculous, but the same 1 in 20 chance of a premature detonation even for an expert diffusing an IED feels appropriate. Everything else is window dressing, for a skill check could just as easily be a 1d10 versus DC-1d10. When the randomness is plugged in solely on the character side of the equation the “stupid monkey brain” treats it as character uncertainty instead of world or challenge uncertainty.
d20s are inherently swingy, because they have a flat distribution of results. Each result on the dice has a 5% chance of coming up. As opposed to rolling two dice and adding up the results, here the results form a bell curve around the dice sizes used +1. (For similar dice. 2d6 forms the bell curve around 7. 2d20 around 21)
This is why a Great Sword and Great Axe in DnD are different, even though they both have a max damage of 12, the Axe is more “swingy” and the sword is more reliable.
On top of that D&Ds modifiers adds a sense of “ability” for a players reading of his character sheet. At 1st level a character can differ in skill bonuses from -1 to +5, assuming standard array and no feats that give bonuses.
Which makes the one playing with the character that has a +5 feel like he should be able to do things the one with the -1 can’t. The numbers tells us he’s “6 points better!”
And statistically over the course of the campaign that player will have his character pull off those feats more often, but in that one situation? The lowest the player can roll is a 6, which is lower than most DCs you’d ever ask for a roll on.
Of course, this is where we as GMs need to know when to ask for rolls. If it’s something the warrior obviously should be better at, I wouldn’t ask for a roll to see if he manages to do it. A roll might be needed to see if he succeeds with finesse or alerts the whole dungeon to the fact that there’s noisy barbarians around.
While reading over “Dice reveal Information best kept hidden” I had a mad inspiration for a game mechanic- if after a failed search, a player decides to continue searching a room, then instead of re-rolling the die, the original roll stands but with an added bonus (+2 or +3 for example) and with the cost being a tension die;
It might play like this:
Player: I’ll search the room high and low for treasure;
GM: Ok, roll for perception;
Player: I rolled a 10;
GM: Your search turns up nothing; You can continue searching to gain the equivalent of a ‘13’ perception check, but it will cost you a tension die;
Player: Ok, I’ll keep searching
GM: Your search still turns up nothing; You can continue searching to gain a ‘16’ perception check, but it will cost you another tension die…
At least this mechanic would build on the previous result, and it would require a real trade-off decision by the player…
If I understood correctly, systems with narrative dice, like FFG’s Star Wars, would be more difficult to adjudicate. As you should know all the outcomes, that means you should have various positive and negative consequences prepared in advance.
You cannot use my advice to adjudicate something like FFG Star Wars. It’s totally incompatible with my (correct) approach.
After thinking about it, you’re right. Thanks for the reply
When it comes to the psychology of dice, I have sure notices I prefer to roll myself than have the DM roll in many situations.
I don’t like save spells that are “save or suck.” Like Sacred Flame in 5E. It’s mainly because unless the spoken interaction on what happens is good, the spell can end up being:
Me: “I cast sacred flame”
DM: “You miss”
With an attack roll, at least I roll the dice, I see if I rolled high or low, and then the DM can tell me if I missed or not. With that I get information. “A 15 missed, that means the AC is at least 16”
Of course a save based spell interaction can be:
Me: “I cast spell
GM: “I rolled a 17”
Me: “Okay that’s a miss”
At least then the attack feels fair. I know a 17 is a high number. Even if the GM said “oh I keep rolling high!” the feeling isn’t going to be “oh yeah.” You need to feel those high numbers.
In a way it’s the reverse of the sneak roll. Where not feeling the high numbers actually matter more. Where the tension of not knowing is important, or the search result when you need to make decisions based on other things than knowing the dice result.
For me though, when I am a player, hidden rolls don’t need to be rolled. It’s really just there as a GM information tool.
Saves are weird. They’re they only place in the game wherein the actor doesn’t roll to make something happen but instead the victim rolls to un-happen the thing. And it’s wholly unintuitive. You don’t like them “save” spells for lots of reasons. That’s why smarter, better designers than the current crop removed them from D&D 4E. “If you’re trying to make a thing happen,” said they, “you roll the dice. It’s that simple.”
I’ve always wondered if it would be better to replace saves with contested rolls. For example, trap attack vs dodge attempt, highest roll determining the final outcome.
Or you could use the 4e approuch of fixed save values, like will or reflex.
That’s where I put the smart money.
Also: What exactly is the thematic difference between a Dexterity Save, and Armor Class when not wearing armor? And why wouldn’t my armor aid me against some forms of magic? Like a fireball.
Likewise, I’d much rather just have a “Mental Class,” for all the “screw with people’s brain” type spells. Because why do we really need three different mental defense saves? I do like the systems that only have three different saves, but I prefer saves to only be used when something happens to a player outside of combat, where their character reacts to a situation. That’s where it’s more intuitive in my opinion.
And even in such cases, it’s equally fine to just have the thing that’s happening roll a check. E.g.: a trap rolls an attack with surprise; a glamer on a faerie forest rolls a check against Mental Defense; etc.
I’m a big fan of very simple rules a GM can keep in their head. Such as, “the creature, force, object, or thing taking action ALWAYS rolls the dice.”
One house rule my group is in confort using is “A player can’t roll for a check an ally failed if the bonus of the check is lower then the one used for the failed roll”
Party stretegies on who make the check first, and sometimes they prefer the best character go first to minimize risks, sometimes the worst or middle go first to maximize chance of success
“Well hey, I didn’t spend all those years playing Dungeons & Dragons and not learn a little something about courage.”
I haven’t seen Dogma, but this is one of my favorite lines in television. I heard it first in X-Files (s3 e20) “Jose Chung From Outer Space” April 11, 1996. Great, comedic episode with Charles Nelson Reilly as the author Jose Chung interviewing Scully and other witnesses about an alien sighting.
While interviewing nerdy Brian Falkner (who, as an inside joke, is wearing a Space: Above And Beyond t-shirt), Jose asks, “Aren’t you nervous telling me all this after receiving all those death threats?” Brian responds as quoted.
I find that theatrics also play a big role in modulating tension when rolling important die rolls:
for instance, I roll life or death, game-changing d20 checks in the open, using a fist-sized, 1-pound metal d100 (divide by 5 and round). The die rolls slowly, loudly, and it almost shakes the table. Its numbers are small, so everyone needs to lean forward and huddle together to read the fateful result…and rebeound from the huddle with joy or despair. The tension increase over a normal plastic D20 is palpable.
When death saving throws are necessary, I ask the players to stand up, come by me, and roll the death saving throws behind my screen*. Then, after I acknowledge the result, the player goes back to their seat with a poker face, and combat resumes. The result of this ritual is that all the other players’ tension rises as they try to divine the unknown result and read the poker face attempts.
Do these rituals disrupt the flow of the game? Absolutely. But they also palpably increase the sphyncter clenching of the players, so they are a plus in my book…
*My monsters confirm kills if it is in their nature, so one failed death saving throw is often a death sentence.
Can’t you just say “Ardick clearly weakened the door, which allowed Berilya to open it” or something like that?
It doesn’t take away the feeling. And that’s what this is all about. How a thing feels at the table in the minds of the actual players, not just how it’s described or justified.
So it would be better in general, to make hidden rolls whenever the roll could give away Information the player are not supposed to have like searching for traps or determining if somebody lies, even though it takes away the roll from the player? Because the player, even if he doesn’t act on the revealed Information, (subconsciously) feels, that with a low perception check they may have missed the clue?
That is what I am saying. It’s not like players don’t get to roll plenty of dice. It’s fine for the GM to keep a few rolls for themselves.
I will try that and all the other Tipps from the DM Master Series. My next Session is on sunday.
It is very helpful, because before I read the article, I was üondering the question of the rolls that give away metagame information and If I should make them hidden and here the article comes and answers it for me :).
We DO love your checklists. I like this article, though it presented me with a bit of a dilemma: see, because of IRL circumstances I’ve not yet managed to run a game. Now, the first articles are about habits you can try using from the 1st… let’s say the 2nd session. But this one definitely got me thinking “This is all great, but a noobie like me probably ought to stick to the 4 point checklist for a bit”.