#30thoughts

When we play a TTRPG, every mechanic that involves a die roll is just a game of chance. Sometimes we're able to manipulate that chance to our favour, sometimes we're not.

I've seen aversion to the idea of "flat checks" to determine outcomes, and I myself have even had initial distaste for the OSR's attachment to using a d6 in such circumstances (usually calling for a 4+ or 5+)- but I think it's finally "clicked" in my mind, and I've come to appreciate the virtues of simplifying the mechanic as much as is reasonable.

Let's take an example from Pathfinder 2e, since it's a very math-heavy game (and likely what my audience is most familiar with): The creature building rules provide example ACs for monsters at levels -1 through 24, and while it does vary, generally the values are set such that a dedicated martial, fully investing in their ability to hit creatures, will have a baseline ~50% chance to hit. It's basically a flat check.

Now, we have to inspect and appreciate what nuances are allowed by a system before we can deconstruct it. Just because the values in Pathfinder tend towards a 50% success rate doesn't mean we can just start rolling d6s and hitting on a 4-6. With the example of Pathfinder, using a d20 gives us, well... 20 results. A wide spread of numbers that can then be meaningfully interacted with, as each point of bonus or penalty is worth a 5% statistical modification. Additionally, the +-10 critical success/failure system gives these points secondary values in modifying crit chances, and nat 1s/nat 20s a static 5% bump chance.

If we were to try to reduce the to-hit system down to a d6 then, what do we lose? Or more specifically, what changes? Well, modifiers either become much stronger and potentially much more necessary- each point is now worth 16% (over three times as much!), and depending on the game balance, a high modifier may now be necessary to even hit a creature. Critical results too lose something in this adaptation- maintaining the +-10 system makes modifiers the only way to reasonably achieve critical hits, and dumping it in favour of nat 1/nat 6 once again over triples the chances of a crit one way or the other.

In many important ways here, something quite important has been lost. Much agency and much nuance are jettisoned in favour of smaller numbers.

But let's take another look at Pathfinder now, and specifically its flat checks. Pathfinder has a variety of actions, effects, and miscellania that rely on the roll of a flat d20 to determine their results, usually at DCs 5, 11, and 15 (75%, 50%, 30%). As far as general play is concerned, these DCs don't shift and players don't get modifiers for them, so they function purely as statistical values. In this case, replacing them with a d6 system may in fact function fine. Setting the ranges to 3+, 4+, and 5+ (66%, 50%, 33%) results in nearly identical mathematics, and a functioning game system nonetheless. Flat checks, additionally, do not have critical successes, which leaves the other primary benefit of a d20 system out of the equation.

So why, then, does Pathfinder use a d20? I'm sure there are plenty of reasons. A d20 still has more manipulatable results, allowing for potential DC variance a d6 cannot emulate. A d20 is the primary chance die used elsewhere in the game system. A d20 is iconic.

But to circle back and round out my thoughts here, die rolls are, ultimately, nothing but chance. Without other systems interacting with (and creating results off of) their values, the method of delivery by which you achieve your chance is all but irrelevant. In such cases, what's most important is how easily one can access and adjudicate the levels of chance. A d20 with 5% per value might be quite intuitive to some, while others might prefer the more pie-like 16% of d6s. A 1 and a 20 are relatively rare on a d20, while a 1 and a 6 on a d6 are relatively common.

So I've been considering many aspects of design as I delve back into the OSR (where I cut my teeth as a kid playing ttrpgs, but where I have not been for over a decade and a half), and I've been met with many catchy lingo phrases touted religiously by long-time players. I want to address one of them today: "Rulings not Rules.".

The phrase, at least according to cursory research, originates from Matthew J. Finch's excellent work, "A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming", where he describes it as the first "Zen Moment" that can make OSR-style TTRPG click for players. The thesis he sets forth is that the rulesets of old games were intentionally left sparse so as to exclusively be a resource for the GM, an incomplete collection from which to create your own rulings in the moment using some combination of "common sense" and die rolls.

Further, he (and many others) elaborate that in this lack, player engagement with the world is deepened; without a skill to roll for "Disarm Trap", everyone is encouraged to interact with and "solve" the trap as they would were they really there. See Brooks Dailey's "The Danger of Skills" for an excellent breakdown of this design outcome separate from Finch's work- I'm perpetually left considering and reconsidering the phrase "Before the addition of the Thief, everyone was the thief." from that blog post.

But I digress- I've discovered, over the years, that this thesis is immensely successful and informative, foundational really to an entire, rewarding style of play. But I do also find, to my taste as someone re-entering this older style of play, that many games seem to take its words too literally, or misunderstand the core message it's trying to impart.

If the fundamental idea is that a rule restricts the players, I have found some to take this message to mean that as few rules should exist as possible. That rules are a detriment to a game, and only the barest essentials should be provided. And I find, increasingly, frustration with this attitude. Rules are not a nuisance to be excised from the hobby, they are a tool to be carefully considered and wielded, a fine-honed blade that can sculpt the experiental clay of the player experience before the kiln firing of publication.

Let's take some unnamed examples, because I feel as certain that this post will be receieved extremely poorly by some as I do that my conclusion is an important one to some others:

1. Falling is codified in the rules. If you fall X amount of distance, you take some calculable, consistent amount of damage. 2. Being prone is codified in the rules. If you are tripped or otherwise fall over, you suffer some number of penalties and others gain some number of advantages. 3. Your ability to disarm traps is codified in the rules. It's a talent that can be practiced, perfected, and invoked, and it has a consistent outcome, whether chance-based or otherwise. 4. Your ability to carry things as an adventurer is codified in the rules. You can hold only so many things at once, and you cannot hold any more than that.

Now, one of these should stand out to those with a savvy eye for design. Examples 1, 2, and 4 are all foundational aspects of the game system, things that shape how the world responds to being interacted with. Example 3, on the other hand, is a rule creating interaction with the world, it decides how a player can interact with traps. If you can't disarm traps, you can't disarm traps. But a fall is always a fall.

In Beau Rancourt's "On Pathfinder (and most TTRPG) Combat Being A Separate Game" (and sorry for the long quote), they state of rules-heavy (sub-)systems "This allows players to reason about the game and make future plans without the sense that they're playing Calvinball. It allows the GM to be fair and consistent when the PCs' lives are on the line. It encourages and rewards system mastery for the folks who seek that (since now there's a coherent system to master).". I would extend this out into interactions with the world- the standard methods through which the world responds to players (the occasional necessities (and unrepresentable through player reasoning) of swimming, climbing, picking locks, falling, and especially combat should be heavily codified and reliable.

Not in such a way that creative engagement is espoused, or that overcodification becomes a problem (as per Arnold Kemp's ""Rulings not Rules" is Insufficient", where they say "[If I've written] two pages of rules on how to attack tiny animals in your stomach, I've codified the acceptable options and excluded more esoteric solutions."; it takes a delicate hand, yes, but I'd argue a not-too-subjective line of where is "too much" or "too little" to make that decision, and I think I can offer a few considerations and a few pointers to internalise when designing your systems.

1. If the thing is a result of the world's response to players, it should be a rule. Falling damage should be a consistent rule (though how individual players attempt, or don't, to mitigate such damage may not be). 2. If the thing is reliable in how it can be handled, it should be a rule. How swimming does or doesn't impede the movement or survival of characters, dependent or not on their gear varying by your level of simulationism, should be a consistent rule. 3. If the thing cannot reasonably be expected of a player, it should be a rule. Lockpicking is perhaps the most obvious example of this because short of pulling out a real lock and picks and asking the player to solve it, there is no way to reason your way through it. Instead, we either set time, roll dice, or require certain tools. 4. Finally, if the thing is a risk the players can consistently encounter, it should be a rule. This is best exemplified in combat, and re-referencing Rancourt's words above, how ensuring this engagement is consistent creates a game that is fair. How individual players may attempt to interact with, subvert, or succumb to catastrophe within these rules remains a viable avenue of expression, but giving a foundation off which to build pitches the onus onto the players and takes an immense load off of the GM. Rather than someone falling into the waves and the GM having to come up on the spot with some variation on "slower movement", "ditch some things or drown", "you just drown", or "test [attribute] to see what happens", a decision that may end up needing revision or reminding down the road, the decisionmaking is immediately in the players' court; they know the risks at stake, and must imagine a way out of them.

There are pitfalls to this as well though, and while I won't itemise them I will detail my favoured solution as of now: While a rule should create a reliable response from the world, it should also allow for the player to engage in many different avenues. In this way, skills themselves become detestable, but attributes remain important tools, alongside some "other method" of specialisation (without some way to differentiate yourself from your companions, you end up gaming exclusively as players, not characters. perhaps your will to impede or differentiate from yourself through roleplay is stronger than mine, but i prefer when the system can support that all its own). Joshua McCrowell's His Majesty the Worm, I think, exemplifies the virtues I've been espousing quite succinctly. Each character has four Attibutes, which are the simple, physiologically-bound modifiers that are added to many "tests" (the game's term for checks). Each character then also has three Motifs, which are two-word descriptors of your character or their past experiences (say Zen Wizard, Naughty Acrobat, and Fanatical Scribe). These Motifs provide an additional bonus on tests to represent your experiences and specialties. In this way, the virtues of skills (the ability to express specialisation, the shaping of a character with history or talents, nudging towards certain handlings of tasks) survive, with their pitfalls rotting off into the void.

In short, I find that games that provide a reliable route through which the GM can adjudicate as little as possible on the standard things, saving their mind and energy for the inventive and the clever, for the players' imaginative solutions, rather than their mundane actions, have far more virtue on both sides of the screen than those that expect for every table to imagine their own guidelines for swimming, for falling, and for picking locks. I hope to see more games, going into the future of this hobby, embrace what does work with the new and wield it to the betterment of our collective fantasy.

Thanks everyone. All of the cited reading is below for your convenience.

This is a bit of a shorter one than before, but I've found it interesting how many times I've seen the release of a system or a new piece of content within a system be met with hostility, even long after initial exposure, due to some breakdown in understanding for what something is meant to be.

What do I mean by this? I'll use a couple of examples, one old and one new, from Pathfinder 2e. Funnily enough, they're both from the Cleric class: The Warpriest doctrine, right from the start, focused on being more defensible than its Cloistered counterpart at the cost of some of its spellcasting potency, and was long derided as a cheap, unsatisfying alternative. In what I've heard from those who disliked it, this is mostly due to a miscommunication that starts with the name. People expected a Cleric capable of "war"; a damage-dealer and front-line fighter. What the subclass actually was (and remains, to this day) is a way to massively improve your survivability on the front lines, not necessarily your damage-dealing capability or even combative prowess. Not that it doesn't have any of that, but it's ultimately secondary to the Warpriest's attempt to emulate an old-school mace-and-shield, chainmail Clerical role in a party. You retain your full spellcasting suite, and the fact that the spells are weaker incentivises your focus further towards protective aspects of your character, honing in on a utility and support role without the cloth caster trappings of low AC and health. The Battle Harbinger, recently released in Lost Omens: Divine Mysteries, seems to be going down a similar pipeline, at least if the initial reactions I've seen online are in any way representative of general attitude (which they aren't always). The Battle Harbinger gives up not only their spellcasting potency, but most of their suite, and in return gains combative efficacy- ability to hit enemies with a weapon. But they don't gain any significant damage boosts, and their "Battle Auras" (buffing or debuffing auras they can cast and sustain with their unique feats) are still resource-limited by their spellcasting resources (though retain full, or even better, potency than standard spellcasting). Battle Harbinger's role ends up being one of offensive support, and notably still not damage. They can hit with the best of them, but they don't receive the damage-dealing bonuses that are crucial to the "standard martials" damage-dealing roles- and this is pretty clearly intentional, due to their ability to use scrolls and significantly buff themselves and their teammates. Yet, player reaction has skewed negative. What do you mean the Battle Harbinger can't hit as hard as a full martial?

People end up missing the playstyle and role defined and supported for these subclasses, instead projecting their own desires for the name or the concept onto it and being disappointed when it doesn't pan out. I'm left wondering what's more important here when it comes to player response- the name, the flavour text, or the mechanics themselves. And I think it might be skewed towards name and flavour text more than one would assume. Would the responses have been the same were the subclasses named "Heavily Armoured Support Cleric" and "Rallying Offensive Support Cleric"? They're certainly less evocative names than "Warpriest" and "Battle Harbinger". Where does one draw the line on these things? Ultimately, this will all be up to the writer to weigh and decide. But it's worth thinking about next time you name or describe something- what image are you trying to present? What image might your chosen words conjure? If there's dissonance between the two, is it worth conceding ground to mend that gap?

That's a rough one. I think each element is the strongest in a certain regard. Air does mobility, Earth does defence, Fire does damage, Water does control, Wood does healing, and Metal is... frustrating, to me.

Overall though, I would say Water and Wood are the strongest elements- the things they do are things they truly excel at, that are universally valuable, and that they have very little competition for ability to do.

unique

balanced

thematic

and these pillars are almost at odds with one another. balance restrains uniqueness and thematics, uniqueness and thematicisim struggle against eachother for a coherent identity, it's a mess.