Recommend a table-top pencil-and-paper role-playing game

The Game Room
101

I’m mostly on board with you. I’m firmly in the camp that states “dice are there to make noise behind the screen”. And I’m firmly in the camp that states that the DM and PCs are not on opposite sides, with the players trying to “win” over the DM and the DM trying to kill them at all cost à la Gygax. That’s just dumb (and the DM will win). We’re all cooperating to tell a cool story, investigate cool crimes, summon cool eldritch abominations wot man should not wot of and so on.
Bearing that in mind, in the overwhelming majority of cases I won’t “cheat”, either because the results of the dice roll don’t really matter to the action at hand or because I don’t have a strong opinion on the result of a given course of action - whether that kobold hit the fighter for 5 HP or missed isn’t going to be remembered in the Great Book of Memories ; and that NPC may or may not see through the PCs lies - that’s why we have portable random number generators on the table. I also won’t **ever **cheat when I roll on behalf of the PCs (such as when rolling their perception, sense motive etc… ; I prefer to jot down their scores and do it on my own than call “roll Perception”, because of course when you do that the players know there’s deffo something to percept at ; and even if their characters don’t hear shit they’ll go into paranoid mode. I’ll routinely make fake rolls to hide the real ones, too).
OTOH, if a roll of mine would kill a PC for no reason and no fault of their own (i.e. oops, that ogre crit for all the damage, as opposed to “oops, you took 40d6 of falling damage because I TOLD YOU THAT CHASM LOOKED TOO WIDE TO JUMP”) I’m not above forgetting the crit. I sometime kill PCs, but I’d rather they go out with a story and a bang, y’know ? OTOOH, I’m also not above saving a Big Bad that I intend to be a recurring guy they’ll love to hate just because somebody rolled a 20, or because my guy rolled a 1 on a dumb save-or-suck he could only have been affected via said 1. It’s not kosher to turn the villain to stone while he’s dramatically monologuing ! Have a little class !

Unless it’s funny, of course.

None of my players ever complained it wasn’t “fair” to them. It’s understood that sometimes the DM gets to say “shut up, it’s magical” for the purpose of storytelling. There are games where narrative control is shared with the players and games without DMs at all ; but in D&D-likes (and similar “traditional” RPGs), the DM is the final authority on what goes and what doesn’t. And if they don’t suck, they’ll only use this ultimate cosmic power for good.
Or when a player is being a jerk and needs a Lesson :D.

102

Completely agreed, Kobal2. I don’t “cheat” as a GM often – in some sessions, I don’t cheat at all, and when I do, it’s probably no more than once or twice a game session. And, as you say, its rarely when the results aren’t going to matter much, if at all, to the overall narrative.

My fudging on the side of the monsters is probably more often a matter of “I’ll give these guys some more hit points”, just so the fight lasts longer than half a round, and so that all of the players get a chance to do something.

103

The question is… why are you playing games that require you to ignore them to make the story good?

There is reasonable evidence that “Because that’s how RPGs work” isn’t actually the answer.

104

I don’t think anyone could ever play a game and ignore every aspect of it. Because then you’re no longer playing it. But you can cherry pick features of the game and it’s still useful. Let’s say you want to play 7th Sea, which traditionally has a great alternative history Renaissance Europe setting but the rules are horrible (even the latest version which totally revamped everything is awful). I would fault no one for using that game just to have a great setting and NPCs but use a totally different game’s rules. You’d probably have a better experience.

105

The obvious answer is, “Because what I’m doing is leading to a fun time.”

106

Because that’s generally far overstating things?

Ignoring one roll out of a hundred for the sake of game flow and story isn’t really a great reason to toss out the rest of the game.

107

I’ll say that I’ve stopped playing certain game systems (most notably, 4E D&D), because I found the game systems to be so crunch-heavy that they proved to be an impediment to storytelling, immersion, and roleplaying.

My moment of epiphany about 4E came when I was running a game of it for one of my groups (a group that’s been playing together for decades). I was trying to describe a scene, and as I looked around the table, I realized that none of my six players was paying attention to what I was saying. All of them were studying their character sheets, trying to keep track of all of the powers and things that their characters could do. I strongly believe that most of the players I know (and certainly all of the players in that group) have a difficult time engaging with the story, and role-playing their characters, when they have to devote most of their thoughts to managing a big suite of potential character actions.

I also think that, short of a very rules-light system with minimal dice-rolling, there will always be moments in which I, as GM, may need to give the occasional nudge to the dice results or the strict rules interpretation, in the interest of not letting those things get in the way of a good story, and a fun game for everyone at the table. I think that the less that that sort of touch is required, certainly the better, and that’s part of why I’ve found myself gravitating to games like Fate and 13th Age lately.

108

Not a problem.

Many of you have asked certain things, quoted certain things, etc., that might require me to post a million times and start/continue debates if I wanted to respond to you all. I was never looking for a debate especially as these posts generally take me a long time to compose.

Instead, I am going to try writing a few short paragraphs as a kind of summary of what I was doing. I will try to show that my phrasing was taken in a legitimate but unintended manner, and then I plan on stopping the debating of those issues in this thread. After all, this thread should be for recommending RPGs!

My first post was intended to show Acsenray that players (and to an extent systems and genres) have positions on a few issues that might affect the tone of RPGs he looks at or plays. I don’t think it is controversial that those issues exist in the hobby, nor that they are strongly bi-polar. Are they on a spectrum? I say yes, even though that might not have come out in my first post.

I went out my way to avoid taking a stand on the issues in that post even though I do have opinions on them. I really didn’t think there was anything controversial in there except the use of the phrase “Rules Lawyering” which I immediately apologized for as I don’t know of a kinder way to say that. I don’t think ‘following the rules’ is better as it is arguable that in many games, a GM is explicitly and exactly following the rules when he uses fiat to change anything. Furthermore, calling that side of the issue ‘following the rules’ is pejorative as it implies that GM Fiat people are just cheaters. The follow-up posts showed that some people (including me) are on each side of that issue. To me, that just showed that this issue exists and Acsenray should consider it when choosing games.

Next, it was not my intention to say that we got CR (in D&D) directly because of player complaints, although I can see why my grammar/diction could be interpreted that way. CR was developed as much as 20 years after the stories started circulating. It is likely that no one from TSR was still around at WotC/Hasbro to have directly made that connection at the time CR was invented.

The string of events I was trying to use:
[ul]
[li]D&D spread beyond Lake Geneva[/li][li]There were conventions for D&D that players attended[/li][li]Players met with publishers/authors of D&D[/li][li]Some of these players thought that GMs were too powerful[/li][li]These players sometimes told that to the publishers/authors[/li][li]These players did NOT ask for CR (or any specific rule), rather they asked TSR to do ‘something’ about the perceived problem[/li][li]As time passed other RPGs hit the big time[/li][li]As time passed D&D editions changed[/li][li]In other games and newer editions of D&D, the GM is arguable less powerful[/li][li]One example of that is CR[/li][/ul]

So, people used to complain about a problem and later some relief on that issue appeared. Do I think the direct connection to CR is there? No. Do I think TSR/WotC had looked at the issue for years, trying to find a way to satisfy the bulk of their book-buying customers? Yes. Can CR be a part of that ‘solution’ whether intended for that reason or another? Sure.

The reason I chose CR to talk about is that I could be more specific about how it can be used against GMs to shame them into less overreach without using the Nuclear Option of just quitting. If there are too many and/or too powerful encounters, the party can complain “with justification” and try to get the GM to back off a bit by using a rules appeal rather than a threat-to-quit appeal.

Finally, I told you I wasn’t going to look for the old stories of complaints and I am not. I doubt they are much cataloged anywhere. But a similar type of story (in reverse?) is famous enough that it is easy to find so I did. Here is the Wikipedia article of oD&D module S1 The Tomb of Horrors. In the section called Publication History, at the end of the first paragraph, there is the following:

Players used to go up to Gygax at conventions and brag that their 15th level paladin had beaten every dungeon that TSR had published. Gygax responded by creating new content. The point is that in the old days, players used to personally talk to the authors and the authors responded with updated content. I heard about the ‘GMs are too powerful’ interactions at the same time as I heard the ‘I beat D&D’ stories.

109

A couple of thoughts:

  1. One of the big changes between 1E AD&D and 2E AD&D was that Gygax (and much of the first generation of writers and designers, many of whom were from Gygax’s home campaign) was no longer involved with the game, or with TSR *.

The second edition was primarily written by Zeb Cook, who wasn’t part of TSR’s original group of writers. As a result, the game de-emphasized some of the thematic style of the original game as Gygax had written it, notably including encouraging the DM to act in a bit of an imperious manner, and instructing him or her to act in an adversarial role with his or her players. (Now, could some of that de-emphasis have also been the result of player complaints about “cheating” DMs? I suppose it’s possible.)

  1. Even with the advent of ideas like CR, those rules are still presented as guidelines for how a DM / GM can develop encounters, not hard-and-fast rules that **must **be followed. And, frankly, CR ratings of monsters in D&D and Pathfinder are as much art as science, and some monsters will pose a substantially greater challenge than others of the same CR. A classic example of this was the orc in D&D 3.0 – the orc was given a CR rating of 1/2, but due to its default weapon (a greataxe, doing 1d12+3 damage, with a x3 crit rating), it was an infamous killer of low-level characters. In 3.5, they figured this out, and made the stock orc weapon a falchion. :slight_smile:

As several of us have noted, if players feel that strongly that their GM is trying to screw them over, it’s a problem with their GM, or with overall communication between the GM and players as to expectations on difficulty level, and the presence (or absence) of rules aren’t going to fix that.

  • By the late '80s, Gygax had been forced out of the company in a power struggle with the Blume brothers, and Lorraine Williams, a non-gamer who wound up as sole owner of TSR. Williams apparently hated gamers, made financial decisions for the company that enriched her personally, and oversaw the company’s collapse. She’s still despised by longtime gamers, 20-odd years later.
110

Most RPG rulebooks have a section on “How to GM”, and near all of those I’ve read had a paragraph or more dedicated to “if you don’t like a rule, ignore it ; you have the final say on what goes at the table, don’t feel shackled by the rules written in this book”
It probably also helps that the very first RPG I ever played, when I was 14, was Rolemaster. A game where, RAW, you could critically injure yourself pissing against a tree ; and your shoe size (which was determined at character creation, because that’s crucially important) was always larger than your waist size because the equation was wrong. Ignoring dumb roll results comes to you real fast when you DM *Rolemaster *:smiley:

111

I had an odd, tangentially related experience the one time I volunteered to run official content at GenCon.

It was a 3E adventure about fighting orcs at a fort (super original content, obv). In my home game, I was used to modifying stuff drastically to keep it fun.

There was some sort of rule stating that for this sort of organized play, items with limited charges could be purchased for one-fifth the normal cost, or something like that. The intention was to allow potions, scrolls, etc. to be used. I forget exactly how it worked.

At my table, I had a couple of grognards (folks who’d been playing for decades), in addition to some other folks with a little less experience. One of the grognards had figured out that his first-evel wizard could spend his entire cash allowance to get a wand of color spray (a spell that knocks enemies unconscious in an area), which would allow him to spam color spray through the entire module, essentially making each other PC superfluous.

After the third encounter that he single-handedly ended, and realizing that this is what the entire module would be like, I made a ruling: he’d only benefit from another five charges of the wand during the module, and if he wanted to swap out his cash expenditure for something else non-wandish, I’d be fine with that.

Oh, how he pouted; how he sulked. He was not pleased at my flagrant rule-breaking. But everyone else at the table was suddenly able to participate again.

From a rules perspective, I still don’t know if I made the right call. From a fun perspective? Except for the grognard’s fun, it was 100% the right call.

And based on that experience I’ve never run official games since.

112

I might have a group that has fun if someone takes a shot every time they roll a d20 too, but that doesn’t make that best practice. Hopefully it’s clear that you can also have fun without doing this?

To turn this back on you: If you are only doing this for “one roll out of a hundred” (note: That’s several times a session for a lot of games of D&D, depending on whose rolls you are counting) why does it make so much difference that you need to fudge at all?

Actually, you might be surprised. None of the games I am currently running say this. Indeed, in several of them the GM doesn’t even roll dice. Come to that, not even all editions of D&D have that sort of text. Cite.

What’s more, this sort of thing can lead to interesting problems…

This is a large part of what I’m arguing – there isn’t some “right way” to play all RPGs. Maybe Rolemaster needs heavy fudging to not be a train wreck. Other games do not benefit from it at all.

Right. So the game was so poor that you had to do this or you would immediately be faced with nonsensical results that ran counter to what you wanted from the game. More or less proof positive that if the game is not garbage, this becomes less and less necessary.

113

Uh, okay. “Because they’re having fun, and not endangering their health.” I didn’t figure that clarification was necessary, but please feel free to add any other clarifications (“and not shooting defenseless birdies/and not prank calling their senators/and not stealing candy from babies”) that help out.

My answer is, I think, sufficient, because the entire purpose is to have fun. If a group finds their playstyle fun and if it lacks whatever deleterious side-effects you can imagine, that’s enough.

It seems clear you wouldn’t have fun with that playstyle. I don’t recommend it for you.

114

Oh, absolutely. I was merely thinking of “classic” games in the vein of D&D, Star Wars, Shadowrun, VtM etc… where things can get pretty crunchy and dice-heavy (especially when the bullets start flying) ; at which point I figure it’s the responsibility of the DM to not let his table be ruled *exclusively *by random chance. The vagaries of fate are an unfair PITA to deal with in real life, that’s the kind of shit we game to escape *from *:). That and spreadsheets.
We might have failed on the second front, guys :o

But of course they aren’t the only RPGs or ways to run games. IIRC you were the one who sent me on a collision course with Ten Candles, where of course it would be absurd to fudge rolls and the role of the DM is very different.

It wasn’t garbage - it just was a) very, very crunchy and simulationistic to the point of relative absurdity, or at least had rules and options to play it that way down to the most minute of details, in a way that would be extremely cool for a computer RPG that would track all the little bits and bots but who has time to do all the math when you’re slaying dragons (and with that amount of sheer crunch, yeah, some of it won’t be well though-out, like the “fatigue and exhaustion” recovery rolls you could fail horribly on and kill yourself by pissing up a tree. And b) it was very, very, VERY dice-result driven. Every single action resulted in one rolling on some table with hundreds of entries describing how your action went in very precise details. It had one separate combat table *per *weapon. Not weapon type, mind you, no no : I did say per weapon. Each table was 250x20 (because there were 20 separate types of armour, natch) and was also linked to separate critical hit tables depending on the weapon (pointy, stabby, slashy, crunchy, spiky etc…) for when you rolled high-ish.

And that is all very cool, IMO, or was very cool to my past nerd self though again a) the type of shit to run under the hood of a computer, not on a table because holy hell that was a lot of book-keeping and b) sometimes led to absurd results as a result of the combination of the randomness of the system and its absolute descriptive/systemic precision.I *still *remember that time I shanked an orc from behind, specifying that “I sneak up behind him, put on hand on his mouth and with the other use my dagger to stab him in the kidneys”. Which resulted in the orc getting punctured in the ear all the way to his brain.

That was one long-ass dagger, lemme tell you.

115

This is actually easy to answer. It’s because only one roll out of a hundred needs it, and only one roll out of a hundred is likely to senselessly take a PC’s life, or derail a campaign, or ruin a story, or anything else needlessly disruptive. Those other 99 times you can let the dice fall as they may and go with the results. That one roll out of a hundred can make a massive difference.

116

Because if that 1:100 roll happens to be someone’s Save vs Suck or death or the culmination of someone’s creative idea they’re obviously jazzed up about, etc then it can benefit the story and everyone’s fun to fudge it. And 1:100 is really shorthand for “on rare events” and not meant to be extrapolated into “But that means you’ll do it ten times when you roll a thousand dice so your game must be flawed!”

The “best practice” is everyone walking away at the end of the session feeling like they had a good time. Beyond that, who really gives a shit how they came to have a good time? If they want to do shots or tweak dice rolls or Monty Haul powergame or spend six hours roleplaying romancing a virgin with their edgelord vampire or whatever – as long as everyone is on the same page and leaves feeling like it was time well spent, I can’t be bothered to get upset about their “best practices”.

117

So basically, you just fudge when it matters? And you let the dice fall where they may when it doesn’t? :slight_smile: If that’s that’s the way it is, the dice never matter. Begs a question, doesn’t it?

See, now you’re starting to agree with me. You don’t need to fudge dice to have a good time. And, in fact, sometimes it’s against the rules. So you probably shouldn’t do it in every RPG ever.

118

Amen.

I’m…familiar with Rolemaster, though I’ve never actually PLAYED it. I have to admit, I have a hard time calling a game where this sort of thing happens “Simulationist” because results like that would shatter any faith I had in the simulation. So either it’s not REALLY trying to simulate anything in particular, or it’s doing so…poorly.

119

No. RPGs don’t work that way. Dice rolls should always matter; if the result of the roll isn’t relevant don’t roll.

There’s a vast gulf of a difference between “fudge the dice when it matters” and “fudge dice if the result can ruin everything”. You’re trying to establish a false dichotomy that does not exist in role-playing games. Hell, if every roll of the dice had the potential to completely derail a campaign and/or ruin a session for a player or the whole party that would be an exhausting game!

Let me paint a picture for you. A group is infiltrating an enemy base. They decide to try to pick a lock. They roll and fail the check. They’re not going to be able to pick that particular lock because it’s beyond their capabilities. So now they have to figure something else out; risk the noise of breaking down the door, look for another door with an easier lock, try to climb up and get in through a window.

Did the roll matter? Sure it did, it changes the party’s plans and affected how things go. Did it ruin the game? I hope not, it’s a minor setback and you should be prepared to adjudicate their chances of getting in another way.

That’s how most rolls go. It’s different than if, say, you’re playing the second session and the group is just starting to get comfortable with the game, and enjoying their characters, and in a routine combat one of the henchmen rolls a perfect critical strike and maximum damage to instantly kill a player character. You might want to fudge that slightly to not totally off someone and ruin the party dynamic they’re building. Maybe allow the character to be on death’s door and give them a chance to save him. Add some drama without potentially crushing a player’s interest in a game he’s just starting to get the hang of.

Hopefully you see the difference?

120

Not really, no. No one said “You do it every time it matters”, they said “The times you do it are when it matters”. All lions are felines, not all felines are lions, etc etc

You keep trying to make some weird convoluted argument here while everyone else is just “Shrug We’re having fun” and you’re smugly insisting that we’re having fun “wrong”. There really isn’t some semantic trap that’s going to make me not have fun the next time I’m playing so I’m not sure what your goal here is.