What are we rolling for?

Originally published April 16, 2014

Last week when I talked about Amber and diceless roleplaying, I questioned why we needed dice at all. This week I want to look at the questions of how dice can be useful in a game, why we should roll and who should do the rolling.

Why Do We Roll?

The first two questions are basically the same, what reasons are there to include dice or some other randomizer in a roleplaying game?

The first best reason I see is to create a sense of tension. Whenever a character commits to an action where it isn't clear if they will succeed of fail, it brings an element of tension to the game. Will I succeed or won't I? This in turn tends to pull a player deeper into the game, engrossing them in the action, not as a spectator but as a participant.

Seen this way, rolling dice then become a cue that this bit of the game is important. Roll perception? Well clearly there is something in the darkness waiting for your hero. Roll for the first impression you make with the count? Then social interactions are part of the heart of this game.

What makes dice nice for this is that it gives the players an actual physical thing to hold in their hands, a tactile trigger for their excitement. When the dice start flying, the players know that the pressure is on. Success and failure are important and no one knows how it will go.

That brings us to the second reason: to create unexpected twists and alternate outcomes. When you leave the decision to a die, then you can't be sure how things will play out. Perhaps that hall is crawling with random monster encounters, perhaps our hero drops their sword at the wrong moment. Or perhaps the heroes score a critical hit on the lead villain in round one, making a tough encounter into a cake walk.

Here the dice ensure the story is not beholden to where we want or expect it to go. Fate or chance, in the form of a piece of molded plastic, can overturn our best laid plans or deliver riches to lucky fools. This can be both a good and bad thing. It can be bad when the dice destroy a more satisfying story but it can also be helpful in the absence of such a narrative, interjecting complications and opportunities, thus sparking the imagination. The dropped sword can lead to quest to recover it or an interesting interlude to replace it. The speed with which the heroes slew the lead villain leads their foes to assume the party is much more powerful than they actually are. The game master (GM) can riff off this, having their foes take more drastic measures to stop them or surrendering easily in the face of this "superior" force.

A third reason to use dice is the most simple: to determine the success of an action without placing all of the decision-making on the part of the GM. This familiar reason stands behind all of the rules determining the chance of success for various actions (based on the reality or style of the setting). It removes the blame of failure from the GM and places it instead on the rules and the dice. It also provides a level playing field within the rules system and comfortable starting place for the players. With the exception of comfort level, I think it is the least important reason but it is a valid reason.

Who Rolls?

With the why out the way, the questions turns to who should be rolling. Should just the players roll? The players and the GM? Or just the GM?

Let's start the cases where only the GM is rolling. There are plenty of cases where a GM might be the only one rolling dice. The most common case is Perception or Notice rolls. Here we are keeping the information of what is out there for the PCs to see while signalling that there is something there (from the rattle of dice at the very least).

In my opinion any rolls a GM should be quick and ideally out in the open. The more hidden rolls a GM makes, the more he or she turns the players into spectators. In the worst case, such in large conflicts between many opponents, the player characters (PCs), and their allies this can kill excitement as the players sit waiting for the GM to finish rolling attacks between his non-player characters.

In such cases, I would advise not don't roll for all of the characters. Either give any allied characters to the PCs to manage (and keep them involved) or consider abstracting any NPC vs. NPC conflicts, focusing on the interactions that directly relate to a PC.

Next we get to cases where both the players and the GM rolls. For example in Fate, the players rolls to attack a foe while the opponent rolls to defend.

In general I question why have the second roll at all. Looking back at "why do we roll" these case seem to fail our first reason. Having the GM roll only adds to tension if he is rolling alone. There are rapidly diminishing returns the more people roll at once. I also feel it does a disservice to the player and comes off as more antagonistic. The times the player rolled high but the enemy rolled higher sticks in the mind more often than the times you both rolled low or when the player beat out a terrible roll by the enemy.

This is why I favor player facing rolls where the PCs do all of the rolling. This method is the simplest and quickest mechanically, frees up the GM from another thing to keep track of, and places the agency in the hands of the PCs. Some systems like Apocalypse World use this explicitly. Others like Fate can be made to work this way easily. Some sadly cannot easily be changed but contested and GM rolls can be minimized.

Conclusion

What do you think? Are there other reasons to use dice? Does that influence your thinking on who should be rolling?