BellaOnline Forums Hobbies and Crafts Role Playing Games Dice and Skill Modifiers

Hello everyone,

I love probability! This week's article is likely a tribute to that. How dice affect RPGs and what uses they have is something I've pondered for some time.

Do you prefer dice-RPGs or dice-less? Have you found a group for narrative RPGs with little "god modding?" What's your been experience with them been like?

I'm torn between the two, actually. Putting randomness into the game helps it simulate the uncertainty with which we all live our lives. However, it's nice to use fewer props to game - dice included.

Some of my experiences with narrative RPGs haven't been too grand. Lots and lots of "auto-hitting," and it really tore the fun away from it. All characters had to be awesome all the time and it ruined immersion. For me, at least.

Recently I've taken another try at primarily role-playing oriented systems, as opposed to numbers-oriented ones. I'm sure I'll be talking about those once I've gotten some more positive experience. After all, I'm not in it for the dice; I'm in it for the story and character development.

I don't prefer one to the other, but I've found the dice-less systems can work well.

I'm not a big fan of purely narrative games. There needs to be some risk for there to be a game, in my opinion. In the dice-less systems I enjoy, that risk comes from whatever resource mechanic the game system uses. There's no randomness, but players cannot simply do everything. They have to make choices.

I'm a fan of Solipsist, although I admit it's not a game for everyone. There's also one called Pace where each player has a certain number of tokens they could use to accomplish tasks, and they had to manage their use of the tokens.

If there aren't meaningful risks and decisions to make, though, then it seems like it's more collaborative storytelling.

Agreed that there's got to be some risk.

Solipsist? I'll have to check it out. Pace, too. That mechanic sounds really interesting. Sort of like "bennies" from Minimus, although Minimus still includes dice. At least it's less variable than action points from D&D 3.5 and d20 Modern, though.

I'm all for some collaborative storytelling. It really does lessen the impact of action from a game though. The greatest arena-fight-story I ever had hinged on several d20 rolls.