Mechanics have feelings too: Dice, part 1

There are a numerous and varied amount of core conflict resolution mechanics in tabletop roleplaying games and each has a unique effect on its game. Let’s start with the most common resolution mechanic, dice, by comparing two of the ttrpg industry giants: the 2d6 and the d20.

Dice are a big topic with a lot of supporting mechanics that impact how they are perceived in the game. In this article we will solely focus on the feelings provoked by the act of rolling dice. We are going to work with a few assumptions for this article. 

1. Dice are used to resolve a conflict in the narrative where the results are unknown.

2. The dice results have a narrative significance to everyone in the game.

3. The cause of the conflict is summed into one number, the target number.

4. To resolve the conflict in a way favorable to the player, the result on the rolled dice must be greater than the target number.

We should start with, “When and why do dice provoke feelings in games?” Before we roll a die, there is an anticipation for the result. This anticipation is created by the stakes from the narrative. We cannot control this with different dice types and configurations.

While we are rolling the die, there is the effort we put forth in the act. This effort is mildly dependent on the number of dice rolled—but for this article we will consider that difference insignificant. (We will come back to it in a later article.)

Then, the appearance of the die result brings the predefined stakes to life. This we can emotionally manipulate by shifting the target number and dice results meaning, which is influenced by our choice of standard dice.

Before all of this there is the choice to roll, which usually involves both the motivation to act, and an assessment of the risk.

All of these pieces together create an emotional adventure every time a dice is rolled. It is a simple process to tie the random result to a narrative meaning, and that’s what makes dice work so well at provoking feelings in our ttrpg games.

The two things we can control most in the design process with our choice of dice is risk assessment, and the appearance of the result. We control the challenges we face by weighing the expected difficulty (target number), the expected dice results, and the stakes (narrative and mechanical benefits, and consequences). This is our risk assessment. The appearance of the result is where we make real the stakes based on the chance of success (expected dice results vs. expected difficulty). In both cases, our choice of dice and the target number—in this analysis we’re going over the d20 and 2d6 as the most common types—evoke different feelings in games.

To look at this more in-depth, we need a way to convert the expected dice results vs. the target number to in-game feelings. For simplicity, I will focus on these five feelings:

1. I expect to succeed

2. I will probably succeed

3. I hope I succeed

4. I will probably fail

5. I expect to fail.

Then, during the second aspect, we need to convert actual dice results compared against a target number, to in-game feelings. I will focus on four feelings for simplicity’s sake:

1. I greatly succeeded

2. I barely succeeded

3. I barely failed

4. I greatly failed

Then, we will take both sets of these feelings, see when we experience them with each die, and why that matters.

d20 Basics

From a math perspective this die is a simple 5% chance for each number. So, to create our five target emotional states for expected results we would need to roll against the following target numbers. 

• Target 2 is a 90% success chance; our “I expect to succeed.”

• Target 6 is a 70% success chance; our “I will probably succeed.”

• Target 10 is a 50% success chance; our “I hope I succeed.”

•  Target 14 is a 30% success chance; our “I will probably fail.”

• Target 18 is a 10% success chance; our “I expect to fail.”

2d6 Basics

Math is less simple here because with two dice the middle numbers (6,7,8) of the range show up a lot more than the ends (2, 12). With 7, our most common number, appearing 17% of the time and the 6 and 8 both appearing 14%, nearly half of the time you roll you will see one of those 3 numbers. For our target states, we can see how that differs from the d20 as well.

• Target 3 is a 91.5%; our “I expect to succeed.”

• Target 5 is an 72.5%; our “I will probably succeed.”

• Target 6 is an 55.5%; our “I hope I succeed.”

• Target 8 is an 27.5%; our “I will probably fail.”

• Target 10 is an 8.5%; our “I expect to fail.”

Simply, our chances of getting each number are the following: 2, 12 - 3%, 3, 11 - 5.5%, 4,10 - 8%, 5, 9 - 11%, 6, 8 - 14%, 7 - 17%.

A d20’s Feelings

The d20, like all single dice, is mathematically easy to understand due to the linearity of the results. The incremental increase is the same for each mechanical step, but each step feels noticeable enough to feel some type of narrative progress with numerical increase. While I have provided some general numbers and feelings, due to the granularity of the d20, the feelings exist more in bands of numbers than just single points. In other words, the “I hope I succeed” feeling exists from 7/8 to 12/13 depending on a player’s optimism.

What a 2d6 feels like

The bell curve has a cool effect on our probability where each number in the center translates to an amount we can feel and imagine. Moreover, each number further from the center provides less and less gains when we improve our characters. In a way the dice naturally transition between hope tiers.

What that means for the narrative

A lot of what I have said so far is not unique to ttrpgs, but all games that use these dice. The unique aspect of ttrpgs are the narrative stakes that are attached to the dice’s results. Focusing on how the results inform the narrative, we need to see how both phases we outlined earlier impact the narrative. In the narrative we are controlling characters that encounter obstacles that must be resolved to advance the narrative. In dice terms, the expected results are a comparison of the character’s perceived chance (expected dice result) to resolve an obstacle (target number). Once the results are cast, the characters actions (actual result) are used to resolve the obstacle (target number) to advance the narrative to either a pass, fail, or any other narrative progressing state. So in short, the dice result is directly how our characters perform. The target number is how difficult the obstacle is. 

When we check the values above, encountering an obstacle in a game with a target number of 14 in a d20 system we as characters, expect to fail. The narrative is informing us this is something difficult for us to do. We then weigh the rewards against the consequences and decide what to do from there. If the consequence of not opening the locked door is to be eaten by a Grue, then 30% chance seems pretty good and we try to open the door.

The actual results then inform the narrative of what actually occurred. Using the 2d6 as an example, we roll a 9 against the target number of 8, our “I expect to fail” obstacle, and successfully open the door. Our characters look competent and we feel like we accomplished the task well. On the other side, we roll a 7, a perfectly common and acceptable result, but the door is just too tough and we do not have enough time. Our character proves to be inadequate and we feel like we failed even if only barely and given the difficulty, we come out a bit optimistic since we did so well in face of such a difficult challenge.

We can see from the example above, that both dice can similarly evoke feelings of anticipation for expected results, and GMs can control those feelings with the actual narrative consequences. In this situation these two dice systems are similar in many ways, but mathematically the key differences are in the consistency and the granularity. 

The d20’s linear scale and wider range gives it more granularity, allowing the GM to express a wider range of obstacles. This comes at the cost of two things: less impact per number since we need a number difference of 4 to move between expectation changes, and more inconsistencies in expected character performance and actual (the further the number is away from the target number, the worse the result).

The 2d6’s bell curve and smaller number ranges do not have the same issues. These two effects combined create a system that means each number increase is an impactful change to narrative obstacle difficulty. The cost is that mathematically, the exact change and value of each number is harder to understand, see the percentages above for more details.

This discussion is far from over, and the details listed above are only the start of fully understanding how the choice of dice affects a game. So far we have only covered the anticipation and actualization of the dice results to some dice systems we know. Next time, we need to see how modifiers affect the feelings our dice evoke.

This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Brandon Gutowski of the C22 System. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached on Twitter at @c22system, on Facebook @PagodaGamesLLC, or visit their website at www.c22system.com.

Mechanics Have Feelings Too: Bennies

Bennies, tokens, freebies, hero cookies—or whatever you call them—they're one of the most homebrewed mechanics in rpgs. Some systems have these in their rules in one form or another. Some GMs add them to every game, regardless of the rules, while others remove them from every game. At their very essence, they are a player-facing token you trade for in-game value. So, why do simple tokens warrant their own post? Because there are a lot of feelings wrapped up in these simple tokens. How they are implemented changes the game drastically.

Mechanically, what are bennies?

A benny mechanic is made up of three things: quantity, replenishment, and value. There are additional complexities if the GM can use them as well. I will not touch on the implications and feelings associated with GM facing bennies in this post. Today we’re focusing on the player side of bennies.

Quantity of Bennies

Quantity is simply the number of bennies you have at a time. When you have more, you can act more risky as you have a safety net, when you have fewer, you use them more sparingly.

Replenishment of Bennies

Replenishment is simply how you get more. This also includes a limit of how many you can have at once, and the circumstances where there is no replenishment.

Value of Bennies

Value is the most complex of the three mechanical aspects of a benny and where most of the design work for implementing a benny in a game comes in. Too much value, and the benny is only rarely used, too little and the benny is ignored. Furthermore, if the benny has multiple uses and there is a huge disparity between the perceived value of the options, the benny is only ever used for the option with the perceived highest value. In such cases, the value of the benny is the value of the strongest option.

For example, if you are playing an item-based post-apocalyptic survival game and your benny options are to re-roll a skill check, blink as a free action, or to prevent death. The third option has the highest perceived value. While it is true that re-rolling a skill check would almost always be the way to prevent death, it is not guaranteed. The way the benny value is written to prevent death itself has the highest perceived value. The players will almost always play to their optimal advantage, so in this case bennies held becomes the number of extra lives the players have.

This looks like it gives us three knobs to adjust in design, but quantity and replenishment are really just two sides of the same thing. While “how the bennies are replenished” is an interesting design space, it ultimately results in more quantity.

Value vs Quantity

As true in game design as it is in life, the plentiful things are worth less than scarce things. But let’s look at why by looking at the four cases: high qty and high value, low qty and low value, high qty and low value, and low qty and low value.

High Qty + High Value

High quantity and high value means that you have a large number of impactful actions you can take. This results in your roleplaying game being about spending bennies. It takes on a more board game type feeling with limited resources. This is not necessarily a bad thing. This can work very well for unique mechanics in one-shots or to codify when a player can make a significant world-level change in a story game. Use this setup if you want your game to mechanically have a benny-centric feeling. Whatever mechanics you have assigned to the benny takes the main stage with this setup.

Low Qty + Low Value

Low quantity and low value means that you have a very limited amount of nearly insignificant actions. This results in your benny being forgotten. I do not recommend this set up for roleplaying games as this would be a sign of feature creep or mechanics bloat.

High Qty + Low Value

High quantity and low value means that you can take a lot of actions of low impact. This frees the player to spend the bennies as they know they will have more, but also keeps their impact manageable. This feels freeing to the player without being stressful to the GM. Let’s look at a few examples to better understand this setup.

In a traditional dungeon delving game, say a benny grants players the ability to describe something in a scene. While the game is mostly about combat and problem solving, this can work to give players a codified signal to contribute to the narrative as well. In a game about high school teens looking to remove the local gang’s influence from their school, say a benny allows them to pause the narrative to take an in-character moment based on their character’s traits. In both of these cases, we can see how to nurture this freedom while encouraging shared roleplay, just with bennies.

Low Qty + High Value

Low quantity and high value means you can take one or two high impact actions. This is a classic setup for traditional games. This makes the player feel powerful and gives them another resource to consider while limiting the stress on the GM to only a few moments. Often this is used for re-rolls or threat resolutions. This setup is used in Savage Worlds, Fate, Deadlands, and Genesys to re-roll dice, soak damage, encourage roleplay, or use special powers. It feels classic and is easier to balance than any of the other setups due to the easily tweakable numerical quantity aspect.

Types of Replenishment

We saw how important quantity is to the mechanics of bennies so naturally, how that quantity is achieved is equally important. This is where you can get creative with the quantity aspect of bennies. There is one important thing to remember: guaranteed replenishment frees players to spend bennies more, thus using your mechanics more.

I want to look at three classic methods: session start, subjective milestones, and mechanical milestones.

Session Start

Session start is a simple way to control quantity, Savage Worlds, Fate, and Genesys all do this. You get a set number of bennies to spend at the start of a session allowing players to interact with the mechanic right away. It encourages players to spend them throughout a session because they know they will get more the next time. The shorter the session, the stronger this effect is.This also creates a bit of urgency or sense of loss in the player for those that did not spend their bennies at the end as it feels like a waste of potential when not used.

Subjective Milestones

Subjective milestones are rewards for good roleplaying during a session. FATE and Genesys both use this method. This can encourage people to branch out and roleplay more who would not often roleplay, but can sometimes feel like a popularity contest or can just devolve into a “who said the funniest thing” depending on the group.

Mechanical Milestones

Mechanical milestones are rewards for story objectives or personal character goals. Genesys uses this method. This encourages players to keep moving the narrative along and can be good to help focus groups that tend to get distracted. This can end up as a win more mechanic since you are often already winning when you complete an objective. Another result can be a poorly paced power infusion if the objectives are significantly varying in their efforts to complete.

In each case of milestones, the replenishment trigger is used to encourage player behavior. Yeah, it feels weird to compare us all to Pavlov’s dog when it comes to bennies, but be honest with yourself, you’ve been salivating every time I have said the word benny. Benny, benny, benny.

Summary

For a simple token there is still a lot of design space to be explored. When looking at the dichotomy of quantity vs value you have three classic cases to consider. Your classic low quantity vs high value is the simplest and easiest to implement and feels right at home in many roleplaying games. The rarer high quality vs low value can be tricky to implement right but can add a sense of lightness and low stress encouragement for the players and GM. Finally, the high quantity and high value case can work to emphasize a mechanic and plays well in one-shots.

Whichever of the three dichotomies it is, the benny is more than a piece of plastic that sits in front of you, it is an impactful addition to how players experience the game. Take time to consider how that value and quantity pushes your decision-making in your favorite games. Then, tell me about it in the comments below!

This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Brandon Gutowski of the C22 System. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached on Twitter at @c22system, on Facebook @PagodaGamesLLC, or visit their website at www.c22system.com.

Mechanics have feelings too: Health vs Wounds

In tabletop roleplaying games, there are many different ways to track when a character fails, each giving their own mechanical feelings to our games. Today I want to look at two more combat-focused game design tools: Health and Wounds. Then after reading this article, you can better decide which of these concepts are right for your ttrpg.

Health Definition

For the sake of today’s post, Health is a numerical representation of a character’s wellbeing. Here are our assumptions:

• The lower the number, the closer they are to failure in the encounter/game.

• The character’s performance is nearly the same at full Health and low Health.

• Health is lost or gained in small, medium, and large events (single attacks, sliding on pavement, etc.)

Wound Definition

For this argument, Wounds are a milestone representation of a character’s well-being.

Here are our assumptions:

• The more Wounds a character has, the closer they are to failure in the encounter/game.

• Wounds are incurred only by significant events (big damage, large stresses).

• When a Wound is incurred, a penalty is incurred and the character’s strength decreases.

What Health Feels Like

From a player perspective, Health is a clear indicator of how your character is doing and feeling. When your character has 5/20 Health remaining, you can quickly tell that you are in a dangerous spot. You know to trigger a change in tactics.

How the game approaches healing (the restoration of Health) changes the tactics you might adopt. For example, a game with easy access to healing in an encounter might only encourage you to take a quick break from the action, to increase your health. In a game where healing can only happen rarely outside of an encounter, you will might up more defensive actions for the rest of the encounter.

In either case, the measure of Health acts as a warning to players of the state of their character, assuming that when your Health reaches zero, your character can no longer function, and therefore the player can no longer play. From that perspective, Health is a measure of how far away the player is from not being able to play the game.

What Wounds Feel Like

A Wound is a condition placed on the character that makes playing them more difficult. From a player perspective, they can stand their character taking damage to a certain point, but even a single Wound is something to be avoided. Each instance of a Wound carries a weight; the implication of making your character play worse, and more susceptible to gaining another Wound in the future. When a system has Wounds it leads to more cautious play, especially when getting a Wound makes it easier to get more, creating a “death spiral type effect as each Wound makes getting the next Wound easier. So, if you failed the check without a Wound, you will certainly fail the check with one. Players understand the implications of how a Wound will affect play, and it influences how they approach situations in-game. 

On the opposite side, players will take more risks if they don’t think their actions could result in a Wound , creating a more superhero-feeling for the player. Those five bullets did no Wounds to me? “I just got shot five times and not even a scratch on me,” the player might say, and that becomes the narrative. This leads to a heroic, flashy, rule-of-cool style gameplay when you know there is little to no chance to acquire a Wound in an encounter, since the lack of mechanical consequences leads players to believe that there are no consequences at all. 

Design Space

Health is easy to quickly look at and understand. Number goes up, good. Number goes down, bad. Wounds have different requirements to determine when they are applied and what the consequence of getting a Wound is.

Player perception of Health changes drastically between 1 Health to 0 Health. This shift is unrealistic, and lends itself more to heroic games or systems about solving the system like a puzzle. Higher damage and lower Health values can shift the style away from a heroic feeling.

Wounds can have the design potential for both heroic and gritty games. The nature of Wounds not always being applied means that players feel heroic fighting peons but can feel more gritty when fighting bosses. So, the number of threatening enemies is how you can control the level of grittiness and heroicness.

Within a design space, Health is generally more granular, meaning designers can give more incremental rewards, relating to reducing Health more or having more Health, without those rewards being as game changing as systems with Wounds. But that does not mean Wounds are devoid of design space, as you can still tweak the threshold at which a Wound is applied and how to choose consequences, or even what those consequences are.

In summary, here are some considerations for when you are deciding between Health and Wounds, and which one (or both) will be right when designing your system.

Health

• Simpler and more intuitive

• Lends itself to heroic games

• Easier to create items and abilities

• Can lead to Health sponge situations when Health values get too large

Wounds

• Can be more realistic

• Can do gritty

• More design work needed

• More space to explore with consequences of wounds received

• Be careful of death spirals

Extensions

I wonder what other design spaces we can explore with the relationship between Health and Wounds. Can we expand Wound systems to break a death spiral, maybe making players not necessarily weaker, just different, with each Wound? Can we make Health feel less of a drastic change between 0 and 1 Health, or would that just be too heavy-handed in forcing players to change their tactics? How much of a grittier feeling would incremental Wounds along a Health track cause? Ultimately, you need to choose what’s right for your game and the kind of play-action you want to encourage in your players.

This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Brandon Gutowski of the C22 System. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached on Twitter at @c22system, on Facebook @PagodaGamesLLC, or visit their website at www.c22system.com.

Role vs Roll and Why we disagree: Part 2

This is a continuation of a previous article on why we disagree about Role vs Roll and what we can learn from it https://c22system.com/design-insight/2ochsp6560a5obe87p7w0ndcgbvk1r. In the last post I talked about engagement and the flow state, then discussed two broad skills we as roleplayers use during tabletop roleplaying games; Roleplaying Skill and System Mastery, and their influence on that flow state. Today we will look at the other two aspects that should complete our understanding.

Creativity and What it Does

How do we enjoy a system that does not meet our system mastery needs and our roleplaying expression needs? As we get better at roleplaying games, does that doom us to enjoy less and less tabletop roleplaying games? No, because of creativity. 

Creativity allows us to create our own challenges or introduce our own variety to a tabletop roleplaying game. The ability to create our own challenges allows us to move along the chart, reaching flow in games and situations that do not challenge us. We can use the excess brain power to creatively expand upon the situations, keeping us entertained and even entertaining others at the table. 

These moments where our creativity entertains other players, we are often roleplaying. Since roleplaying moments more often involve other players, we more often see creativity shine alongside roleplaying skill. This creativity helps players of varying roleplaying skills interact while still being engaged. The biggest player in these interactions is the Game Master.

The Game Master

<Body> The Game Master’s creativity can have a large impact in being able to adjust the difficulty for the table’s enjoyment. Just as we discussed in the last post, the GM’s choice in unique factors can vary the difficulty without changing the difficulty of the challenge itself. Additionally, the GM’s creativity can allow a game to exist at different difficulties for different players. For example, a player with less system mastery can rely on their creativity to come up with unique solutions to solve problems. The GM then aids the player’s suggestion with their system mastery and creativity to keep the game flowing. This is not a super secret skill, all GMs do it. Yes that also includes you that one time you GM'd.

Another note, this also manifests itself in system hacks and homebrewing.  The creativity you add with your unique homebrews can shift the difficulty of the challenge itself.

So we know that different challenges require different skills to maintain engagement and we have split this into two different skills: Roleplaying Skill, and System Mastery. We know that creativity allows us to stay engaged during games that have a lower difficulty than our skills. We know that the GM’s creativity plays a larger role in adjusting the difficulty to maintain engagement. So, with creativity in the mix, I think we can finally determine why we disagree and how we can find the best games for us.

There is a bit of a stigma that less creative people need complex systems to support them, while more creative people can then enjoy simpler systems because their creativity is less restricted. There is some truth to this stigma, but the correlation is not as strong as you would think. The major contributing factor is the experience a player has with tabletop roleplaying games. The more you play tabletop rpgs, the better you get at them, because you are training your creativity.

According to a paper published by Arne Dietrich in 2004, creativity moments can be aligned along two scales:

• Spontaneous and Deliberate

• Cognitive and Emotional

Most creative moments align somewhere along both scales, being more Spontaneous than Deliberate and more Cognitive than Emotional, for example. I want to use the extremes here to broaden our understanding of how these types of creativity play different roles in tabletop roleplaying games. 

Creative moments that are Spontaneous are classified by being mainly handled by your unconscious. They work best when you are not thinking about something, letting your unconscious do the work, like when you get an epiphany in the shower. I believe this type of creativity is more based on the genetic lottery, so I won’t go into them in this post. The good news is that they are not used as often during tabletop roleplay game sessions. I do not know how many of you are relying on shower epiphanies during your gaming sessions, but they seem very unreliable. 

Creative moments that are Deliberate come from the moments you collect a lot of knowledge in your brain and mix and match it to create something new. You could be weighing all the options of what is in a dungeon versus other expectations you would have from 1100th century architecture to create a new option for your team. You could be recalling a mix of emotions that occurred when you were elated to determine how best to react when another character comes back from the dead. I believe these moments make up a vast majority of the creativity seen in roleplaying games, specifically those seen in GM preparation. 

I want to focus on the two extremes of Deliberate and Emotional creativity and Deliberate and Cognitive creativity. Deliberate and Emotional creativity comes from feelings and emotions on a subject. It is the feelings and emotions that ignite this creativity. Like when another player’s action resonates with your character and causes you to create something new. You latch onto the feelings you currently have, mix it with the situations you know, and create a new roleplaying moment with the other players. Deliberate and Cognitive creativity comes from understanding the rules and applying them in new or unusual ways. The important part here is that it requires you to understand the rules beforehand and have existing knowledge. It requires time, which is directly proportional to the complexity of the system. More complex systems take more time, but when you are searching for creativity, you have more pieces for your brain to play with. 

From our understanding of roleplaying skill and the system mastery it appears that as you develop these skills, you would enjoy roleplaying games less and less, but then how is it we can play such vastly different encounters and systems and still have fun? This is where creativity comes in. As I mentioned before, I believe that our individual creativity can allow us to flex this preferred flow area of complexity. 

While the encounter might just be talking to a guard to convince him to let you in a gate, an encounter you have played twenty times before, your creativity allows you to create new aspects to this encounter generating additional enjoyment. You do this by considering all of the rules, then what ways to create something unique to your character, within those rules. In this way, your Cognitive creativity allows you to shift your flow area to a less difficult area of the channel, thus keeping you engaged. Another example: in a highly tactical fight involving another goblin ambush, you decide this time, you are going to try to kill them with a boulder rolling down the hill, you use your knowledge and mastery of the system to add additional challenges to make this less engaging encounter be more engaging for you.

I believe Emotional creativity allows you to flex your flow area higher along the channel as you live in the moment and build off other players, you create based on what you are feeling from the game. You think passionately in the moment and create something new from your anxiety. For example, the guard’s lack of proper equipment is a reportable offense. The guard’s equipment was never mentioned, but now you brought it into the game with your knowledge from outside the game and your feeling in the moment. So, that is the power of creativity, our creative skills allow us to move along the flow channel of our system mastery and roleplaying skills.

Playing tabletop roleplaying games will train both of these types of creativity in different ways but it is their differences that will help us understand why we disagree on Role vs Roll. As we gain more emotional knowledge from interacting with other players, we can increase our Deliberate and Emotional creativity, as we learn the system and interact more with the mechanics, we train our Deliberate and Cognitive creativity.

 What That Means for the Argument

<Body> I think that gives us enough to bring it all together and really break down where that disagreement comes from. Players who have only played a few roleplaying games, or have only played a few types of roleplaying games, will rely more on their innate roleplaying skill, System Mastery, and Emotional creative skill, and Cognitive creative skill. So, looking at these types of players individually, we can get a better idea of where they side.

I do not think initial System Mastery and Roleplaying Skill trend toward one game type or the other, I think initial creative skills are the main driving factor. Players with more Emotional creativity, be it Deliberate or Spontaneous, will gravitate more toward “Role” games. This emotional creativity allows these players to be able to roleplay out of situations that have a higher difficulty of system mastery through the interactions with the other players. This then leads to a perception that the “Roll” is not necessary since the “Role” can resolve the issue.

Players with more Cognitive creativity, be it Deliberate or Spontaneous, will gravitate more toward “Roll” games. This cognitive creativity allows these players to be able to explain their way out of more difficult roleplay encounters by using their game knowledge to move the difficulty closer to their roleplaying skill level. This then leads to a perception that the ”Roll” informs the “Role”, thus making it superior.

Do not get me wrong, both of these methods are equally creative and create equally excellent moments in roleplaying games that should only ever be celebrated. But here is where our disagreement lies. Those with differing levels of natural Cognitive or Emotional creativity.

No matter which side you tend to favor, you can learn something from the other side that will improve your preferred type of game. “Role” favored players, the goal of the game rules should be to get out of the way of roleplaying, sure, but try to use those rules to springboard your own creativity and trigger more roleplaying moments. You can continue to push your “Roll” knowledge by trying more and more complex rules or rules combinations. “Roll” favored players, sometimes too many rules can hinder roleplaying, instead embrace adding new things to the encounter without checking to see if a rule supports it. Run with what you decided and build new rules or consequences based on that change. You can continue to push your “Role” knowledge by trying to add more things without needing to confirm they fit the rules exactly.

Rather than fueling the debate, I hope to add methods of understanding because in the end, I just want us to have more fun playing roleplaying games.

Let me know if this aligns with your experiences. If you like what I am doing, or want me to write about something specific, let me know in a comment or by joining my discord. https://discord.gg/P6AnsmTxmK

Role vs Roll and Why we Disagree: Pt 1

In the tabletop roleplaying community, we often get caught up in the role vs roll debate—whether it is more important to embody the character than it is to object the rules of the game, or whether it is more important to work within the game (and “roll” the dice”), even at the expense of a cool idea, because that’s what the game is. Each side tries  to explain why one is more important than the other. Sure, we all agree that each game at each table is different and tabletop roleplaying games are mostly about creating the best experience for you, but this answer is a cop out. I want to understand why we disagree so we can play better games for ourselves by finding the perfect balance for our own table.

Why We Enjoy TTRPGs

Sure, joking and telling stories is fun, beating monsters is fun, and new gear is fun. What about other parts of games where your favorite NPC dies, or you are stuck on a derelict freighter surrounded by monsters staring at the Jenga tower you hope you never need to touch?. Those situations aren’t necessarily fun, but they are engaging. 

Engaging is what I am going to focus on as the goal of a roleplaying game. I am going to use the definition of the “flow state” as the optimal place to be for a good gaming session. The graph below is my favorite visualization of the flow state. Each game should aim to keep the players in the flow channel.

If the game is too challenging for the players, they get anxious or lose interest, like fighting the final boss at level 1 when it is presented as winnable. If the task is too easy, players get bored, like fighting off minions as a max-level character. The part that makes this task particularly difficult is that in a way the player skill is constantly moving to the right, so the challenge constantly needs to be increased to stay in “flow”. So naturally, the graph says that as you get better, you need more difficult challenges to stay engaged or in “flow”. 

Applying this to roleplaying games is rough. What constitutes difficulty in a tabletop rpg is hard to define. We could define system complexity as difficulty, therefore system mastery is skill. Conversely we could define character depth as difficulty, so that roleplaying skill, the player’s ability to use character-interactions to accurately represent a character and effectively charming the people at the table, is our skill axis. Neither of these accurately represent what keeps a player in the flow state. Someone with perfect mastery of a system could be a horrible roleplayer, and showstopping roleplayers can have very little knowledge of the system they’re playing. So let's take a step back to what we do when we as GMs want to challenge our players further.

Our players are getting better at the game, both in using their abilities, their wits, and have gained new, powerful items. Using a combat game as an example, we would naturally throw more complex enemies paired with more environmental hazards at them and that satisfies the increased challenge as the players have more factors to deal with. But that does not always work. If we continue to throw the same type of fight at the players, they are already skilled in this fight, so even with more complex enemies, the encounter is not engaging enough. To combat this, we change the tactics of the fight. Now it's a protection fight, or there is a timer, or now they cannot see. Each of these is a slightly different skill, we are slightly varying the “Skill” axis to keep fight strength similar and keep players engaged. Just using a combat focused game as an example, we know that there are many different skills involved in roleplay games, therefore we can expect there to be multiple flow graphs.

When we break tabletop roleplaying games into two skills like this, we can see where the disagreement occurs: those that require more complex characters and interactions, and those that need more system complexity and playing the game as a game.  Both groups look for different things in systems. Every player has a unique combination of system mastery skill for every system and roleplaying skill for every style of game. This is the origin of the disagreement. So now you're thinking we solved it. Those with higher system mastery and lower roleplaying skill like crunchy games or the "Roll" side of the argument. Those with higher roleplaying skill and lower system mastery prefer narrative games or "Role" side of the argument.

No. Bad. We've haven't solved anything yet, sit back down.

There is more to it than these two graphs, as they imply that those that are good roleplayers cannot play simple characters because then they would be bored. On the other side, those that are good at mastering systems need complex systems as they would find narrative games too boring. This isn't true. We know that players with both high roleplaying skill and system mastery enjoy playing games of all types and those two skills don't limit the players enjoyment of less difficult challenges. The why is what I want to discuss more here, but first we need to take a quick detour to the pinnacle of roleplaying.

The Pinnacle of Roleplaying

What many posts about this topic decide to mention as the pinnacle of the “Role” side of this argument is when the rules get out of the way of the narrative, the narrative should triumph out of the two. This is actually a great goal to reach for roleplaying games, because it means the rules have become second nature. Using basketball as an example, when you first start learning to play, you spend a lot of your time just thinking about dribbling the ball to allow you to walk across the court. It is not until you have built dribbling and walking into your muscle memory that you can focus on the broader aspects of the game. Then your thoughts during the game change. It is not until you can dribble without thinking that you can start thinking of the game in a different way, it's wider context; how do I get the ball past this defender to score, who else is open for a pass, etc. As you practice, the rules and basics become routine, and your thinking moves to the actual game.

So, as we achieve system mastery, we can handle more complex mechanical situations. As we get better at roleplaying, we can handle more complex roleplay situations. In either case, as we become more advanced in using these skills, our brain is freed up to handle more aspects of the game. This can lead to more opportunity to roleplay, or accept more complex systems. In roleplaying, you’ll see this manifest in character voices, deeper character emotional expression, or more interaction with other player characters. In system mastery, we see these manifest in more abilities being used effectively, complex items, unique monsters, and situational rules. In both cases, our skill in each allows us to open our focus to more of the plethora of things that happen in a tabletop roleplaying game, deepening our level of engagement.

For these same reasons, if a game does not meet your requirements we fall to the other sides of the flow state, frustration or boredom. Frustration comes when there are too many things to track, too much going on that you do not feel like you are performing the way you should be. This is seen in thoughts like “My character has too many abilities”, or “I think my character would lash out in anger over this but I can’t because that would cause a rift in the party, what do they do?” or “There are different rules for climbing ladders and climbing cliffs?!” or “My character does not care about this so they won’t go”.  These are all signs of frustration either caused by the mechanics or the roleplay that can indicate a system is not a good fit.  The boredom side comes when there are not enough things going on that are new and you’ve had a similar experience at least one too many times. This is seen in thoughts like “Yes of course the intimidated guard loses their backbone and gives into our every demand, they always do”  or “Why do I need the rules for this game, I can just do this the same without them?” or ”Oh yes, the GM has stolen my character’s prosthetic arm again so we must go get it back, third time's the charm” or “Clearly the enemy in the air is further than the one on the ground so it should be harder to hit him even if the game does not say so” .  These are all very specific signs of boredom, that indicate a system is not a good fit for you. Note: your own boredom will look different (unless you play characters with prosthetic arms a lot). 

So there are a lot of factors here.  Your system mastery skill needs to align with the game’s system mastery in that small band that is not too boring or frustrating. On top of that, your roleplaying skill needs to align with the game and group’s role playing skill in that same small band that is not too boring or frustrating. Then there is the group and the schedule, it is a miracle that anyone can ever play tabletop roleplaying games at all. But when all these do align, you found the right game for you and that game will be different than the right game for someone else. 

That wraps everything up for us now doesn’t it? The best system is the one that provides enough crunch to allow you to roleplay in the way you feel most comfortable.

I’m not satisfied with this answer and neither should you. It only gives us insight into why “every player is different”.

We have a few issues with this flow model when applied to tabletop roleplaying games. The other aspect of this graph indicates that if our skill mastery and/or roleplaying skill is too high, there are games we cannot enjoy due to being too easy. We have seen plenty of examples of players with high skill enjoying less difficult games. This can most easily be seen with the system mastery skill. So that begs the question, why can someone with eight years of DnD 5e experience still enjoy a game of DnD with a group of beginners? 

The answer lies in two things: Creativity and the Game Master. Which I will discuss in detail in the next post.

This article is part of the Indie Game Developer Network’s blog series. The content of this article reflects the views of but one member of the IGDN. This IGDN blog article is brought to you by Brandon Gutowski of the C22 System. If you want to get in touch with the contributor he can be reached on Twitter at @c22system, on Facebook @PagodaGamesLLC, or visit their website at www.c22system.com.

What "Great Artists Steal" means for game development

“Good artists create. Great artists steal” is a quote I like to use a lot because I think it is valuable advice. You may remember from a previous post, in my journey to being a great artist, I stole the quote. therefore, I can now use it whenever.

So what does this mean for us, as ttrpg developers? It means we can draw upon the collective experience of the 30+ years of tabletop development. We have examples that rose out of dark to become super successful, we have examples that show that a new edition does not mean a better edition, and even examples that are fatally flawed designs. We can learn from other designer’s mistakes and steal their successful results to make our games even better.

There are a few layers to this: taking, experiencing, and extrapolating. The easiest and first step of this is simply taking the mechanics you like from games you play and putting them in your game. This is nice because you know the mechanics are already fun and you have determined you like them already. This method struggles because your game is different, and when you quickly and simply put a mechanic in your game without necessarily understanding why it is good, you can end up with an awkwardly fitting piece in your game.

Going beyond that, you can do a bit of research. You can read and experience a bunch of games to see how their mechanics work before putting them in your game. This will broaden your horizons as a designer, and expose you to many mechanics and combinations of mechanics that you can learn from. This is exactly what I mean when I say “great artists steal”. We have a huge bank of knowledge in already existing roleplaying games that we can experience to see how different designs work. By reading and experiencing how those game play, we can better understand if each mechanic fits our particular game.

The last layer of this theft of experience, is copying the design structures of similar types of games and using the successful ones in your game. This is the least fleshed out layer because we as a ttrpg design community do not have great design sharing methods; the internet and forums have helped improve this quite a bit in recent years. The basics of this process is looking at games and understanding their core design goals and experiences. Then matching the designs that deliver on these experiences. When you do that with enough games, you will see similar designs that emerge, EVEN IF THEIR MECHANICS ARE DIFFERENT. That is where you can start to explore and understand what designs you need to create, how they feel, and what mechanics create them. From this you can steal those designs that you like, and put them in your game. It is this step where I believe that true innovation in the ttrpg space happens.

Let me know if this was useful to you and what games you want to, or don’t want to steal from. If you like what I do, you can join the discord for my system, or follow me on facebook or twitter.