No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Bacon Bits]

I love love love the advice Monte Cook gave when 3e was released.

Paraphrased:

• If you attempt something, start by rolling the dice. If the result is ambigous, look up the rule.
• If you need a modifier and don't know it right away, use +2 or -2.
• This will keep the game going without sacrificing too much of rules fidelity.

That definitely feels like 3e era advice. However, I'm come to find that die rolls slow the game or distract from the play I want to focus on. Yeah, rolling a die is faster than stopping the game to look up a rule. But rolling a die is still kinda slow.

Today, I think I prefer this advice from Shadowdark:

WHEN TO ROLL?

Usually, you succeed at what you're trained to do without needing to roll a check. For example, a wizard is always able to read magical runes, and a thief always finds a trap if searching in the right area. If you take the time to scan the sky for threats or examine a stretch of wall for a secret door, you simply succeed.

Social encounters usually rely on what you say rather than Charisma checks. Narrating a moving speech or using secret information you gathered to influence an NPC does not require a check to succeed.

The GM asks for a check when the following is true:

• The action has a negative consequence for failure
• The action requires skill
• There is time pressure

I read the last one as generally requiring all three. Especially with Shadowdark, the game is already lethal enough that you don't need to introduce more opportunities for the PCs to fail randomly.

I'm reminded of something Matt Colville says in his video on when to roll: "Not every advantage needs to be earned through die rolling. Having a good idea is enough."

Not everyone agrees, but I don't think TTRPGs are dice-rolling games. I think TTRPGs use dice when there is no better alternative. You're not playing the game more purely or more virtuously simply because you've got polyhedrons involved. The dice provide equitable uncertainty; the game is not about maximizing equitable uncertainty.

Dice are not the first alternative. They're the last alternative.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Traditional RPGs feel like a bad choice of entertainment for someone that doesn't trust GMs.

Again, "doesn't trust GM's judgment absolutely" /= "does not trust GMs". I know its a common habit of people to want to lump them together but they're not the same.

At best it sets up a situation where you are second guessing and rules lawyering everything the GM does. At worst it makes you an adversary to the GM and game itself. If a player doesn't trust me to run the game, they should leave my table for everyone's benefit, including their own.

Somehow I've still managed to play and GM for 40 years. And yes, I don't expect anything different from my players than my GMs.

 

[Pedantic]

Doesn't everything land in that vicinity? The GM sets the difficulty, handles the consequenses of the roll, sets the circumstances.

I am not blind to the problem of playing a game of "guess what the GM accepts", but to me it's a GM problem and not a rules problem.

I just don't fundamentally find this to be a very fun game. It skates by on all the other qualities that make RPGs good, the storytelling and exploration of a fictional world and all that, but it isn't essential to cause them. As soon as you start stripping that stuff back, the game is pretty empty, and even once you put it all back in, you can still see that.

I really like playing games, and it's really hard to make a TTRPG into a good one without writing a lot of rules.

 

[schneeland]

Doesn't everything land in that vicinity? The GM sets the difficulty, handles the consequenses of the roll, sets the circumstances.

I am not blind to the problem of playing a game of "guess what the GM accepts", but to me it's a GM problem and not a rules problem.

I'm not sure about that. Just going with "what's plausible in the fiction" requires that the whole group has a pretty good consensus about the game world and the type of story that will be created during a session. This might require quite a bit of negotiation/consensus building, otherwise e.g. I, as a player, think running over it with a car is a solid idea to deal with a Mythos creature, and you, as the GM, think I should die in the process when my head smashes on the steering wheel. Rules can simplify this quite a bit because they establish a sort of ground truth about what we are playing.
Now I do think you can get away with a pretty slim set of rules, but I think they still serve a purpose even in a group where there's generally a lot of trust between people.

 

[Maggan]

There are any number of rolls in any number of games where I only need to get the GMs attention to A) Let him know I'm doing it, and B) allow him to note the results. They have standardized target numbers or other resolution for common results, and the only time he has to address that is uncommon results, and even some of those are clear-cut. If I need to make a running jump to cover 10' I can name any number of games I don't need for the GM to tell me what I need to do. In Runequest I rarely need the GM to tell me what I need to make an attack or parry roll.

Yeah, and all the rules light systems I've played adress that.

Well, except my own Miami Vice rip off game where the players say if they have a personal characteristic that stands out, lists three things they're good at and get a gun and then when they do things they roll a d6 for resolution, high is good. How high? Depends on the fiction.

A horrible set of rules for most people, a refreshing injection of energy and freedom when we played it at my local gaming club.

 

[Maggan]

I really like playing games, and it's really hard to make a TTRPG into a good one without writing a lot of rules.

Well, there we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, and all the rules light systems I've played adress that.

And when they do so enough I can avoid having to consult with the GM often, they'll supply my needs on that grounds. As I noted, that isn't the only grounds I have, however.

 

[Maggan]

I'm reminded of something Matt Colville says in his video on when to roll: "Not every advantage needs to be earned through die rolling. Having a good idea is enough."

That's a core belief at Free League, at least for their Year Zero games.

"Only roll dice when something important is is at stake and where failure has a meaningful consequence."

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's a core belief at Free League, at least for their Year Zero games.

"Only roll dice when something important is is at stake and where failure has a meaningful consequence."

At least with the construct "Only roll when failure or success matters" I think it is with most games. Occasionally the devil can be when there's disagreement about whether that's the case, but when everyone agrees it doesn't, its usually just pointless die rolling.

 

[Reynard]

There's also a number of moving parts about what you're willing to sacrifice to have shorter rules; as I've noted, at least three of them are "covers the necessary ground" which as noted can to some extent be bridged by having a sound basic resolution system, "provides sufficient mechanical character definition" and "is engaging enough on a game level" which are both in the eye of the beholder (and which I've rarely found with compact rules sets).

There are any number of rolls in any number of games where I only need to get the GMs attention to A) Let him know I'm doing it, and B) allow him to note the results. They have standardized target numbers or other resolution for common results, and the only time he has to address that is uncommon results, and even some of those are clear-cut. If I need to make a running jump to cover 10' I can name any number of games I don't need for the GM to tell me what I need to do. In Runequest I rarely need the GM to tell me what I need to make an attack or parry roll.



I don't think they can be entirely decoupled that way.

These two statements help me get a better handle on what you are saying regarding "trust." I apologize for taking the extreme interpretation earlier.

I like systems that have strong core mechanics, too, and ones that provide concrete examples of DCs (or whatever, as appropriate to the system) for actions you are likely to engage with. The presence of those things provides a strong foundation on which to adjudicate things that aren't explicitly governed by the rules, or may be but the pace and tenor of the table at the moment says "just roll" to keep the game moving or maintain a mood. I am not arguing against system in any way. the only thing I am arguing against in this thread, really, is prose bloat and maybe too many granular subsystems that can be handled with broader applicable systems (a general Athletic Contest system of opposed rolls, say, rather than a different system for every sport).

Another thing I like about Dragonbane that started this whole thread, and is found in other games including saving throws and NWP from TSR era D&D among other things, is that the difficulty for tasks is inherent to the character. The GM does not need to come up with modifiers, instead just asks for the roll undermost circumstances. (I like the advice of not to use modifiers for difficulty at all; if it isn't difficult in the first place, just don't ask for a roll).

So I don't think I am far from your perspective as I may have interpreted earlier.