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.
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.
It turns the entire game into the so-called “mother-may-I” game that lots of people despise.
This is something that has always entertained me. Story games like FATE or Spark or Story Engine or their ilk are denigrated by the OSR grognards because “it’s all GM fiat; if you can sweet-talk the GM into it, you can do anything”. And then they hold up … exactly the same thing as a strength of the OSR over modern trad games.
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.
Your relationship with your significant other. Some monsters don’t look monstrous. They can use charms and wiles to steal your girl/boy/otherfriend from you if you don’t pay up.
From way back in the days, Valley of the Pharaohs. While not my first game that attempted to be historically accurate (that honour falls to Chivalry & Sorcery) it was the first such game I found that not only tried to be historically accurate but also supplied loads of supporting material for it. (This was more important pre-Internet than it is now because it was both time-consuming and hard to find good, solid historical information that was usable in play.)
How Difficulty Class and the D20 engine ruined roleplaying (mythlands-erce.blogspot.com)
d100 things a monster can threaten that aren’t your life (newtwizard.github.io)
What's your favorite game that you've never played?
What makes it your favorite? Do you want to play it? If so, what’s keeping you from doing it?...
What are your favorite accessories?
Not the coolest or most expensive ones but the ones that you actually use All The Time.