In short - the d20 mechanic enables you to resolve everything. If everything you encounter becomes something you can interact with mechanically and assign a DC to, a widget, then you are no longer actually roleplaying in a fictious world. You are just interacting with the mechanics of a game with a thin veneer of fiction layered on top.
This is true iff you think that having the ability to interact with mechanically means you must interact with it mechanically.
I’ve played coherent games with flexible, (almost) universally-applicable core mechanisms since the 1980s. This is not a thing that is new to D20. D&D3 didn’t invent having coherent, flexible, universally-applicable core mechanisms. Weirdly enough we didn’t at any point devolve into just interacting with the mechanics of a game because, well, we understood what the point of the game was and just appreciated having a way to adjudicate things neutrally when we needed it.
So first error: assuming that because you can adjudicate almost everything with dice you must.
Old School: “I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner.”
DM considers the scene and factors in the fighter’s 14 charisma and decides that a good impression is made.
Now let me strip the rose glasses from this and give other alternative outcomes that I have actually seen in those sainted “Aulde Skhoole” days:
- DM considers the scene and factors in that the player took the last slice of pizza and gets churlish. Bad impression is made on NPC.
- New DM freezes as something he didn’t prepare for happens and spends a half-hour flipping desperately back and forth between the PH and the DMG to find out what to do next.
- DM makes up a reaction mechanism on the spot without thinking it through, throws 2d6, has them come up snake-eyes and decides the barkeep goes berserk and tries to murder the PC.
And so on. Because, get this, DMs are human too and sometimes have brain farts where ideas belong and stupid things happen. Having rules that offer guidelines, even if you don’t actually roll for a situation (more on this later), can lessen those brain farts and increase reasonable outcomes.
D20: “I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner. Actually a Persuasion roll. I roll 12, +2 from Charisma and +2 from Proficiency, so 16.”
The DM gives another +2 for the handsome tip and decides 18 is good enough to make a good impression.
I have, as I’ve said, been playing with (non-D&D) systems that have consistent, universal game mechanisms since the 1980s. I have never, not even once had any but the newest, greenest, most inexperienced players of any game do what he says is normal here. (And new, green, inexperienced players do stupid things in any system, OSR or modern!)
Here’s a more common outcome in my experience. (YMMV naturally, and if it does, I’m so sorry you have terrible fellow players surrounding you!)
Player: “I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner.”
GM: …
OK, let’s break down the GM actions by things I have seen once again.
- GM checks the player’s stats and skills, realizes that on a Persuasion roll he’ll succeed about 80% of the time anyway on a stressful task and, since this isn’t a stressful task, and since the barkeep earns money by literally being friends with as many people as possible, decides the barkeep reacts well and is open to talk.
- GM insists on some actual in-character interaction and notes that the PC says something that is taboo in town. Asks for a skill role on local lore and, with its failure, decides that the gaffe happens and the barkeep clams up.
- GM insists on some actual in-character interaction and notes that the PC says something that is taboo in town. Asks for a skill role on local lore and, with its success, sidebars the player and lets him know and gives him a chance to undo the action. As a result the barkeep is friendly and aids.
And, naturally, if it turns out that this situation is critical for some reason, I’ve also seen:
- GM asks for a Persuasion roll against a target number.
See how in the first case that’s almost identical to the so-called “Old School” case, and how in that first case having all the tools to do the roll helped make the decision without, you know, the actual roll? See how in the second and third the ability to do task rolls on anything gets some nuance in the RP, even though the actual persuasion attempt wasn’t rolled out?
See how, in a case where it might be needed, the persuasion attempt could actually be rolled out in a way that is understood by everybody around the table instead of some poorly-thought-out ad-hoc thing?
So just to repeat this theme here: the fact that you can roll for almost any situation doesn’t mean you should or will.
And I think any sane person who has read to the end would now agree that the d20 mechanic should die in a fire. It was an interesting experiment. Maybe we are all better off for having tried it. But we are not better off for persisting with it.
I guess I’m insane, because having read to the end the only thing that I think needs to die in a fire is OSR grognards who denigrate other styles of play. Who preach BadWrongFun™ because people are having fun with something other than the games they wear such deeply rose-tinted glasses for.
How the fuck are my players doing all of this roleplaying then ??? Sorcery I tell you !
The D20 engine didn’t change roleplaying for the worse. If anything, having a universal system opened TTRPG to people who might have otherwise avoided giving it a shot.
If you’re a DM and you let players steamroll you by demanding rolls for everything, that’s on you. If YOU are calling for rolls for everything from (in the author’s example) tying knots to (in mine) kissing your partner, that’s on you. Assuming that you NEED rolls for everything is the issue, not the system.
Mechanics have always been meant to resolve critical conflict, add tension to situations. A commoner should be able to untie a basic knot without issue… but can they do it quickly while a pack of angry gnolls are bearing down on them?
THAT is where DC checks are handy.
I don’t agree with the overall view there.
The example the blog gives is: “I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner.” The mistake in the reasoning is assuming the GM must call for a roll.
From my point of view, players don’t call for rolls, the GM does. Players just say what they are trying to do. While the GM can call for a roll in a situation, they don’t have to. Something might just succeed or not. What if the barkeep likes gossiping with anyone who walks in the door, no matter how persuasive the other person is?
It’s also odd that they state in the d20 version of the example “the roleplaying doesn’t actually affect the outcome” right after suggesting the GM give a +2 modifier to the roll for the roleplaying.
My guess they’re either a bad DM or have played with bad DMs who roll with it too much. Quoting 5e DMG:
A drawback of this approach is that roleplaying can diminish if players feel that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success
You are not meant to resolve “everything” with the die. It’s about striking a balance. If a player roleplays amazingly for the situation, why roll for it? If they’ve tied 1000 knots before, why roll for one more?
Dice are neutral arbiters. They can determine the outcome of an action without assigning any motivation to the DM and without playing favorites. The extent to which you use them is entirely up to you. … Remember that dice don’t run your game-you do.
The biggest mistake I see a lot of DMs make when asking for a roll is not fully understanding what success or failure of the roll really looks like.
For instance, picking a lock. Success is unlocking the door, but what is failure? It not unlocking? So we’re just going to sit here and roll and roll and roll until it’s unlocked. What’s the point? What does failure look like? Breaking the lock so it cannot be picked again? It taking a longer time to pick than if they’d succeeded, and there is a time pressure like a cults summoning ritual is near completion? A guard noticing from the other side of the door? The lock is a decoy or a trap?
You shouldn’t be calling for a roll unless there is a clear reason for it and the universe is at a bifurcation where success and failure lead to totally different outcomes that have meaning and ramifications.
If your rogue, who is crazy good at lockpicking, comes up against a very normal locked door, just let them unlock it unless there’s a meaningful failure for their action.
seems kinda…nonsensical. don’t get me wrong, i prefer other systems, but they don’t really identify actual issues. first and foremost, the system absolutely needs to be able to resolve anything that happens in the world because the dm doesn’t need to take into account the millions of factors that will be influencing a seemingly simple interaction. the whole spiel about rolling under ability scores? adds absolutely nothing imo, if anything it takes away from roleplaying by giving you a set number to always be working with. a simple “this seems easy” or “this would be difficult in even ideal circumstances” or “the vampire is dancing around even in thick plate armor” and the like is all a player needs when questioning the difficulty of rolls. the only example i’ve been in where knowing a hard number for difficulty doesn’t seem to detract is when you have already committed to a spell in mage the ascension, because you might need to make a lot of rolls and get a lot of successes (i had to get 10+ successes with a dice pool of 4 once to do something awesome in the traditional meaning of the word) and it’s just annoying asking the dm every single time you get a success if it goes off.
Why am I getting the urge to post the “old man shouts at clouds” thing?
The interesting thing is that this was posted 14 hours now and the user haven’t posted any comments but Ukraine and Russia war ones 2 days ago.
Feels like a post written by someone who’s only really played D&D and close relatives.
It is helpful to have a shared understanding of the world and how difficult things are. In real life I can look at a fence and judge if I think I can scale it. In some RPGs, I can’t. Typically bad things happen when the DM’s imagination diverges from the players’. Having consistent rules can help keep things unified.
Also, as others have said, don’t roll for things that aren’t interesting.
D&D and most of its relatives are lacking fail-forward and good succeed-at-cost mechanics.
Also 1d20+stuff means every result is equally likely. You’re just as likely to roll a 1 as a 10 as a 20. I think that kind of sucks, and that’s a bigger gripe I have with the popularity of 1d20 mechanics.
There was a tragic time in the mid-to-late '80s when the FLGS would put some books on the shelf where the author breathlessly claimed a “revolution” or “rennaissance” in gaming; claiming in effect, to have “solved the problems of role-playing games”.
And the “solutions” were invariably some combination of these:
- adding many, many, many, many, many more classes
- dropping class/race restrictions
- dropping weapons/armour/whatever restrictions based on classes
- support for genres other than D&D-style fantasy
- …
And so on ad nauseum. Because when they said “problems of role-playing games” they meant, really, problems of the only RPG they’d ever played: AD&D.
Even by the mid-80s we had games that were far more radical in solving the problems of D&D. Chaosium had published several games in a bewildering variety of genres that didn’t even have classes, so there were no need for more classes, for removing class restrictions, etc. Traveller existed as well. Games like Rolemaster had classes, but no hard limits based on them: classes expressed preferences and adjusted costs for skills (with the exception of magic; that was still somewhat class-constrained, though literally every class could learn some magic at least). Even TSR had published games that weren’t D&D-like in most respects: Boot Hill, Gangbusters, Dawn Patrol, etc. (And do I even need to delve into the wild, wacky, weird world of FGU? Bunnies & Burrows, Chivalry & Sorcery, Space Opera, Villains & Vigilantes, …)
So it was always tragicomic to see people with such limited experience express such hubris in “solving” problems that had long since been solved in a head-spinning number of different ways and approaches that were far more radical, far broader, and far more intriguing a way than just adding classes and removing some class restrictions.
That’s the vibe I get from this article.
This guy seems to have experience with the Moldvay/Mentzner line of the old school games, with perhaps a bit of a smattering of AD&D before encountering D&D3 and its offshoots. I see no evidence in his rant that he’s ever experienced a game system that was actually revolutionary in its movement away from the D&D roots. I suspect if I sat him down at a FATE game (or even an middle-aged-school game like Castle Falkenstein) he’d die of anaphylaxis.
Yep. Agreed. Sometimes the phenomenon you’re describing was called a “fantasy heartbreaker”. Clearly they were passionate but didn’t have the breadth of experience to really go somewhere new and exciting.
Yep. And sometimes that lack of breadth was deliberate. They wouldn’t look at alternatives. They just wanted to “fix” the game they played.
Proper shit assumptions here, the writer is doing the exact opposite of the D&D nerds who pick up pbta and say “well how am I supposed to do anything?”
Probably most egregious though is how they’re arguing against them self: they claim that the mechanic driven exchange isn’t influenced by the roleplay, but had the DM give an explicit bonus for their roleplay. Likewise, they think the means to roll mean you have to roll, and presumably hasn’t understood commoner’s get Use Rope as a class skill, which is what the “who should be able to complete a task” is based on.
I don’t even play D&D (and haven’t since before AD&D had a second edition) and I’m still baffled by what PbtA brings to the table.
PbtA is artschool D&D. Its a very different approach to the same concept that brings different aspects of the idea to the forefront. Its really good for groups that are good at acting and improvisation, but want a random element to help drive the more personal and less combat oriented stories they’re telling.
Personally it’s not my cup of tea, as I am absolutely into the fantasy and tactical combat side of D&D (well, Pathfinder), but it definitely has its place for groups that are just an excuse to hang out.
I understand the intent. (I’ve been playing “story games” since the 1980s…) For me the problem is that I just don’t understand the mechanisms. When I try to read PbtA-based games I get Nigel Tufnel in my head saying “these go to eleven” only instead he’s saying “these dice rolls go backward”.
And all the explanations people point me at presume I’m a D&D player (I’m not) who’s never seen a story game before (when, as I’ve said, I’ve been playing them since the '80s). I’m just at the point now where I presume I will never grok a PbtA game and pass them over automatically now.
I mean… That’s it. You might be overthinking things, because the mechanics are just roll 2d6, these dice go backwards - apart from rolling under the target it’s otherwise your standard roll dice, add mods.
