Don’t Roll, Think
DM: “You see a few white, eyeless fish, and various stone formations in a pool of water about 4′ to 6′ deep and about 10′ long. That’s all. Do you wish to leave the place now?”
Player 1: “Yes, let’s get out of here and go someplace where we can find something interesting.”
Player 2: “Wait! If those fish are just blind cave types, ignore them, but what about the stone formations? Are any of them notable? If so I think we should check them out.”
– Dungeon Master’s Guide, 1979
Here’s a Generation Gap moment for some of you: old-school D&D did not have a Spot check.
There were no rules to determine if you saw something, or heard something, or smelled something, or whatever. There were rules for surprise, rules for listening at doors (but only doors) and there were rules for finding a secret door (”tie the elf to a stick and wave him around!”), but a generic Spot check did not exist (or Search check, or Listen check, or Notice check or whatever).
Wow, you think, things are so much better now in this modern world! Now I have an accurate way of determining whether a character notices something or not. Now I can give them fair unbiased information about the world around them with a simple die roll!
How did those primitive gamers survive, you ask? Simple: players listened to the GM’s description of the game world. Then they asked questions. Then the GM (ahem, DM) told them the results.
Rolling dice is not supposed to replace your brain. Making Spot checks all the time is just a lame way of saying “well, you haven’t asked anything that would really tell me if you would notice this or not, so we’ll just roll and let the dice decide.”
And if the information you may or may not notice is pertinent to the plot, it is asinine-by-design to decide whether to reveal it with a die roll. Scene from a GM lynching: “well if you had rolled better you would have seen that the tribe had red banners instead of black and that whole game would have probably made more sense to you, but hey, you failed your Spot check…”
Why am I picking on the poor Spot check? Partially because I’m a big bully, but mostly because it’s a good example of a bad trend.
It’s not surprising that as a game evolves, people expand the rules to cover more and more cases. Do we have rules for car chases? No? Better add some. Even if it’s just a question of applying a core mechanic where it has not been applied before, its logical to want to be able resolve more and more situations with dice.
The trick is that dice are supposed to improve the game, not replace the gamer. What’s the final outgrowth of resolving more and more things with dice instead of brains? The one-roll adventure: if you make the roll you win! Game over. No player decision making needed.
What are dice supposed to do? They’re supposed to resolve things that cannot be resolved in the polite confines of a kitchen table or in the physics of our world. Does my car explode when I crash into that tanker truck? Does my broadsword cut off that dragon’s head? Does my magic spell levitate the castle?
If it’s something you can do at the table, you should do it, not roll for it. Unless it’s boring. Or rude.
Your character is your representative in the game world, not your replacement. Tell your character what to do. Ask the GM questions. Explore the environment. Think, play, etc.
Here’s the challenge: if it’s not a combat situation or about to become one (aka checking for surprise or attacks at unawares), don’t use Spot checks. At all. None. Zero. Let players describe what they look for or how they are behaving and just arbitrarily decide what they see or don’t see.
Once your players get the gist of it, see if they become more inquisitive, interactive and basically just play more instead of falling back on the Spot check crutch.
What other rolls should you stop using in favor of play? You tell me…
@Don re: Gather Information. How about giving the players the info, but a failed roll means their opponents find out they’ve been asking questions?
I’m going to suggest a different solution to the same problem that isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario.
But first, I’m going to draw an analogy with social skills: For a long time I disliked the idea of social skills. “If you can do it (i.e. roleplay it), why are you rolling dice?” But I’ve since come to realize that the correct application of social skills is actually advantageous because it removes arbitrary decision points.
One of the things I love about playing RPGs is when unexpected surprises spontaneously emerge out of gameplay.
So if the PCs lie to an NPC I have a decision to make: Does he believe it? Without a social skill, I have to either say “yes” or “no”. But if I add a Bluff skill to the game, I can suddenly say “maybe” and see what happens. Even more importantly I can vary the likelihood of the lie being believed depending on how believable the lie was.
Rather than closing down social interactions, it opens them up: Players become engaged with the game as they try to figure out how to use their skills to their best advantage.
Now, let me bring this back to Spot and Search checks: I vary the difficulty of the check by what the player tells me they’re doing. Is there a bit of writing carved into the lower lip of a desk? That’s difficult to notice if you’re searching the entire room, but far more likely to be noticed if you’re focusing your search on the desk itself and will almost certainly be noticed if you tell me that you’re specifically looking at the underside of the desk.
Perhaps the most common example of this is the infamous “I look up” instruction that happens whenever they get ambushed by something dropping down on top of them. But just because they’re looking up doesn’t necessarily mean the pirates should spot the ninja lurking in the shadows there — maybe the ninja is just that good at hiding. So, when you give me that instruction, you get a bonus for spotting things on the ceiling… but suffer a penalty to noticing things anywhere else.
This type of mechanical differentiation encourages the same type of proactive play that you’re advocating; but it doesn’t discard the advantages of using mechanics, either.
As for the example of a scenario falling apart because the PCs don’t notice one particular clue… well, that’s just as likely to happen without Spot checks. One solution is to make sure you always give them all the clues, but I find a better solution is the Three Clue Rule.
Justin if you haven’t read it yet take a look at Rolling for Roleplaying: the Virtual Roll. I think that might be the kind of approach you’re talking about.
Just discovered the site. Awesome!
I agree that rolling should not replace thinking, and just wanted to point out that GMs got lynched back in the old days, too, when they forgot to think (Well you didn’t SAY that you looked at the floor, and that’s why you didn’t notice the pool of lava….).
Along with the spot check, I think the game has evolved from “don’t tell them unless they ask” to more of a “tell them everything upfront EXCEPT for this (Spot DC).” In the end, I think the latter premise probably keeps the game moving better.
In my next campaign im trying out a new idea:
Every spot check is a series of difficulties. I will give an example of the party going through a forest and meeting a bear:
Spot DC -10: You are in a forest (okay joking on this one)
Spot DC 10: The bear have bloody paws
Spot DC 15: Thats probably from the dead animal lying behind it, hidden in the underbrush
Spot DC 30: It looks like it just ate a lot, so it probably isn’t hungry
The point being that the better the roll, the more information, but the party isn’t excluded from clues with a low roll, the clues just get better.
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Hi.
Generally I agree with your article but there is one problem with your thinking. It disables players from playing incredibly/unnaturaly inteligent, observant or wise characters. That way they are only able to play characters as inteligent as the player is and I think that it’s not the point. Everyone wants to play character that is exceptional in some way. I think that in the bigger picture you are good without most of dice rolls but you need to consider skills of your players characters.
What if they play genious strategist or engineer. In 95% of cases the player is not able to come up with ideas that the character would be able to dish out on daily base. Dice rolls are enabling that. You are GM writing this story. You know that there is a way to stop the next horde of monsters or how to stop the oncomming disaster. Introduce the players to the story but when it comes to genious you need to help them. They are just humans playing characters that are something more than a guy with a bunch of books and dice.
@ Koori
I don’t think that Ben is suggesting getting rid of rolls entirely, just that there are many cases when rolling does not help. If something is important for the plot or sounds like a cool idea then it should probably just happen. But for things like swinging a sword in combat or leaping a chasm you should still roll.
The decision as to if the player succeeds, does not need to be just based on what the players can do. For example, the person that spots the important plot point should usually be the one with the highest spot check – even if you aren’t rolling. If the genius scientist is examining something then they should get more info then the brawny fighter.
The problem with the “My character is smarter than me, so they should know what to do even if I don’t” line of reasoning is that it can easily take away from the players being involved in the game. I think most folks would think that saying “My character is an expert tactician, so if I make my roll, move me to the best spot on the board” is obviously losing something. The key point is that the characters should be encouraged to be active in deciding what they do and then their success is determined by the skills of the character (with or without a roll) and what is best for the game. Having the players describe what/how they are searching “I think they might have hidden it in this room, and as a thief I’m pretty familiar with how to conceal things, so I’m really paying attention to places where it would be hidden by someone who knew how to hide stuff” is more involved than saying “I rolled a 23 on my spot/search check, what did I find?”.
When it comes to the player saying “I’m a genius scientist so I’ll whip up a device to invert the tachyon particles….” then the DM should either say “yeah in your lab with your skills that should be pretty easy for you” or have it be a roll. Depending on where the DM feels the task falls in the spectrum from Plot-related-spot-check thru swinging-a-sword-in-combat determines if you need to roll for it. If the cool device is a great way to defeat the monster and this is a good point in the story for it, then why not just say “yes you can do that”. If you think it’s a good thing for the story & game and he wants to do it (that is, if everyone in the game wants it to happen) why risk having him fail the roll and then feel like his scientist is an idiot?
Also look at the “virtual roll” post: rolling-for-roleplaying-the-virtual-roll as a good “it sounds cool, but I still think it needs a roll” compromise.
@ frost. That’s pretty much what I wanted to say really. I do not think that playing RPG should be a series of “If I roll 15 we win”. What I wanted to point out is that GM should take the individual skills of characters into consideration when planning next session and figure out some things that characters could come up with. During session hint them about that posibility. If we don’t want the high intelligence or other exceptional skills bo to just numbers that we use during combat GM must help players play their characters.
I totally agree that if you had to choose between excising decision-making and dice-rolling in an RPG, it’s the dice that would have to go, but you’re setting up a straw man argument here. A bad GM is a bad GM whether he’s hiding behind dice or not, and randomization holds as legitimate a role in gathering clues as it does in swinging a sword.
I also hope that we (as a community) can give the whole “old school” role-playing halcyon nostalgia a rest before I snap and start telling my stories about how we used to LARP walking ten miles up hill through the snow just to get to the dungeon. I was into D&D before there was such a thing as a Player’s Handbook, so I’ve certainly got the right.
@ GiacomoArt — It’s not about “yea old school!”, or about good or bad GMs. Just like Initiative: the Silent Killer, it’s about seemingly logical and sensible rules changes that unintentionally take away the magic of the game.
You’re dead on. I think it’s nothing about “yea old school!” or the current state of rules-happy games. It’s probably about what constitutes “game.” If you’ve been raised by computer games, you want a roll of the dice, or random number generator, to determine your fate. Well, as a DM I’m not a computer, so I don’t have the inclination to do that. I’d much rather tune into the player’s personality and work with that to see what he or she sees.
I think the idea of giving a brief but tantalizing description of a room or scene, and then letting the players “bite” on the description, is the way to go. When I DM, I expect activity, not passivity, on the players’ part. Once their attention and interest latch onto something in a description, they get into the game. Rolling dice, for the most part, cannot do that; that’s about as personal as a game of craps in your local casino.
It is a social game. If the player isn’t a genius but his PC is, then there’s game mechanics or your judgement as a DM to make him spot something that only a genius would.