A Tribute to Rolling in the Open

Today I share a tribute to those brave game masters who choose to roll the dice openly, without screens or cups to conceal the results. Or at least, those whose creed is total honesty, and letting the dice results remain untampered and pure in all cases.

To those who throw caution to the wind, risking the sudden and unexpected demise of player character, I salute you. To those who consider themselves up to the challenge of working around a series of bad rolls, I respect you. As your players face the hordes of flailing, non-threatening foes, I bid you godspeed in keeping their interest. As the critical failures and critical successes lay waste to your best-laid plans, I weep for you.

Yours is not an easy road. Nor is it a path for the inexperienced. The thrill and risk of the naked die roll is its own reward. Fortune favors the bold. So shine on you crazy diamond, giving your players every opportunity to hate you for your blatant concession to the random whims of chance. If you succeed, you will weave a tale of drama and breathtaking suspense in which every die roll holds a fateful twist. If you fail, don't try to blame the dice for your own hubris. You made your choice. You're going to have to live with it.

I salute you, open rollers, and your refusal to fudge or conceal your chaotic dice. You are hardier souls than I ever could be. 

I am impressed by your chutzpah, but I'm going to keep my DM screen, just in case.

Happy ventures! ;)

Five Surprising But Common Problems That Ruin Games

Artistic depiction of a player dealing with these common mistakes.

Here on DMpathy I try to put a positive spin on things, because I believe that providing positive suggestions is a better motivator for running games than negative criticism. However, it is still important to recognize some of the major pitfalls that can bring down a good game session and get in the way of having a fun time. Time and again on this blog I have run down some of the biggest mistakes to avoid when you are game mastering. But there are a few in particular that I run into with notable frequency, and I think it would be helpful to put them down here in list form.

These particular problems are surprisingly common among game groups, even if they may seem easily avoidable at first glance. I have played with several different game runners, and many of them fell prey to at least one (if not all) of these issues. And yet some of them avoided making these mistakes altogether. These significant errors can affect any DM or gaming group, but they are especially common among groups that are just starting out or have inexperienced DMs. If this ever happens to your party, there is no reason to make anyone feel bad about it, but it should be corrected before it causes the game to get too boring or disorganized. With no further ado, here are five of the most common pitfalls of game mastering and how to address them.

5. Too much dice rolling

"You want to search the drawer for the treasure map? Roll your perception...*Rolls* You don't find anything." *Players can't continue adventure without the map*

Whenever you call for a roll, there is a chance of failure. Don't force players to roll so frequently that they fail basic actions or become afraid of taking actions because of those failures. Have the players ask before they roll dice, limit the randomness to situations in which you can work around the possibility of failure. And NEVER make the players roll the dice multiple times until they succeed at something. That's just silly.

Suggested reading: Don't Roll Them Bones Unless You Mean It!, Fudging The Dice: Honesty Behind The Screen, Slaves to the Dice

4. GM Nerves

"Now that you have killed the guild master, you... Oh man, let me think... I didn't plan for this, guys. It's all messed up...Umm..."

We all get nervous, we all get stressed. Even the most skilled DM runs into situations they hadn't accounted for. When this happens, take a deep breath and take your time. Put the game on pause for a moment if you need to and let the players enjoy snacks and conversation while you collect your thoughts. Don't panic or give yourself anxiety over the game. Your outward energy effects the group, and negativity will begin to snowball if you let it start getting to you. 

The second worst thing to hear from a DM is "Uh oh," or "Oops." The absolute worst thing to hear is "I'm sorry," because it suggests that you don't have a way to fix things, it makes everyone feel bad that something is going wrong, and it puts the players in an uncomfortable position with a lot of nervous tension. 

Believe in yourself and your ability to correct mistakes. You can do it. You can apologize for any snags and snafus after the game is over, but focus on the good that you can do going forward rather 
than the mistakes you have made in the past.

Suggested reading: When To Become DM, Sharing With Players and Clear Communication

3. Lack of direction/too much freedom

"Now you've killed the town guard, broken into the winery, forged a letter from  the mayor, and saved a random orphan from some wild dogs... what was your quest supposed to be again?"

Lay out a clear objective when a new campaign begins. The DM always has the initiative in the opening scene to establish where the players are and what they are doing. The mission should be clear and present to the players. Don't force them to wander around town looking for work or coming up with reasons why they should care about the quest to fight the goblin clans. Make sure there is a premise for the campaign that is clearly defined and some very apparent directions the players could take to follow their mission.

New players will often abuse the creative freedom of tabletop RPGs to act out and do unproductive and chaotic things. You can curtail this politely by providing lots of cues and hints to direct players toward the main quest and more constructive actions. If the players still don't care about the objectives of the campaign, you might need to re-assess what they want out of the game and make some changes to the planned adventure.

Suggested reading:Running a Tabletop Adventure For New Players, Raising the Stakes, Keeping Bad Guys Bad, Sharing With Players and Clear Communication

2. Annoying NPC

"Ha ha! Looks like you ragamuffins need a helpful guide to lead you through The Jungles of Eternity! Never fear, I will protect you bunch of scalawags from your own mischief! Ho ho!"

This obnoxious son of a gun shows up so often that I can set my watch by his appearances in a campaign. For some reason, many DMs feel the need to vicariously commentate or antagonize the players through an NPC that follows the party around on one or more missions. They might range from incredibly powerful to the point of overshadowing the player characters to helplessly weak and constantly getting into trouble. The one thing they all have in common is that they are way too involved in the game. They talk too much, hog the spotlight from the players, and generally get in the way. They often criticize or ignore player characters, and provide more irritation than entertainment.

If your players need guidance you can provide that out of character with polite side notes as a DM. Don't use an NPC as a sock puppet, and don't force players to work with characters that will be unpleasant with no recourse. If you are a DM, your main goal is to provide an adventure for the players to experience and enjoy, not your own non player characters.

Suggested reading: "The DMPC Must Die!", Players Make the Game!, A Conversation With Myself: NPC Interactions, Friend or Foe? The End of Adversarial Game Mastering

1. Player versus player

"The paladin squares off against the thief for purloining The Sacred Tome of Azura, despite the fact that the established purpose of this quest has always been stealing this artifiact."

Here's a tip to avoid a lot of grief and inconvenience in your first campaign: Always vet and approve player characters before the game begins. Make it clear what the adventure is going to be about, and how the party is going to work together as a team. I can't tell you how many times I have seen a new party descend into in-fighting and bickering because nobody was coordinating with the group when they designed their characters. Everybody built characters of different alignments and allegiences, one of the players started working against the group's interests, nobody worked together to establish any history between the characters as a team... it's all so easily avoidable yet all too commonly a problem.

If your players don't want to play characters who work together, then your game is a bust before it even begins. A little conflict or drama can add spice to a campaign, but if your party can't work together then your game is going to fall apart in short order. So collaborate with your players and solve these issues before the game begins. Make sure everyone is on the same page about their roles and relationship to the group. Make sure everybody is ready to get along and your campaign will run much smoother for your efforts.

Suggested reading: Link: Regarding the Phrase "I'm Just Playing My Character", Character Motivations, There's No "I" in "RPG"

Happy ventures!

Slaves to the Dice

When you roll dice as the game master, you don't ever do it while expecting a certain result. When you call for a roll from your players it is no different. 

Unfortunately this is not a universal policy. I have participated in a convention game where the DM kept calling for skill checks for the group to overcome a certain challenge. There was no consequence for failure, but he kept calling for rolls anyway. After a couple minutes of laughing and joking our way through the repeated failures, boredom set in. A silence fell over us all, filled only by the sound of plastic polygons clattering across the tabletop. It was like some grim ritual as we waited for the dice to provide us with the right numbers to free us to adventure again. It's times like those that remind me why tabletop gaming often gets the short shrift as a mainstream activity. That sort of monotony is unheard of in other media, and misses the basic concept of entertainment as a whole.

Dice rolling doesn't need to impede your progress, and you don't need the dices' permission to advance. Rolling doesn't do anything but create a branching path of outcomes, and if the eventual outcome will be identical regardless of the result, it has no point. 

And then there are the worse cases where a roll is called for when performing a simple action, like ordering a drink from a bartender or tying your horse to a post.

 Remember the message you are sending when you call for a roll. A roll doesn't represent a character's action within the fiction, it represents their risk of failure. It represents danger. At the very least it represents the chance that things won't work out as well as you planned. 

Critical Success and Failure in MY Game? It's More Likely Than You Think.

In many systems, rolling the lowest value has extra serious consequences. Critical failure, botch, whatever you want to call it. But in most systems, it is not that unlikely an event. In a D20 role playing game, that's one in twenty chance. That makes it so much worse if it is applied to basic and everyday actions. 

Don't turn your bold adventurers into this guy.

If every single time you used your car there was a one in twenty chance of being involved in an accident, you'd soon find yourself taking the bus everywhere. So it is with dice rolls to determine success at basic out-of-combat actions like climbing a tree, dancing a jig, or taking their dire badger for a walk. Your players will stop taking decisive actions if they are afraid that the most basic move might result in a negative consequence. It's like being trapped barefoot in a room of broken glass, your players are just going to end up stuck in a corner or tiptoeing around at a glacial pace. Or worse, it becomes a comedy of errors with characters randomly tripping over their own feet and causing mayhem when they attempt to accomplish anything.

Conversely, don't ever tell a player to make a roll and deny them success even if they roll the highest value. It's deliberately misleading the player into thinking they have a chance of success so you can pull the rug from under them, and watch their shock when a critical success is denied. If an action is impossible, it does not need a roll. Your players should always be considered a friend. And you shouldn't play those kinds of tricks on your friends, it just ain't right.

In the heat of combat, of course, things become more difficult. That's when a character is under pressure and will often need to roll for actions that would usually be easy to perform. This principle applies to non-combat scenarios too. If the character is under pressure, and there may be consequences for failure, it is time to start chucking dice. Let's put it this way: making yourself a sandwich is routine, but making a sandwich for the Crown Empress will require a roll, and the player had better hope it's a good one!

There are always those few instances where failure is inevitable.

Routine Skills, Abilities, and Training

If you want a player to know something, then don't require a skill check for it. Instead, look to the earliest writings of Dungeons and Dragons for inspiration on how to handle these things. In some of the early modules, such as the Isle of Dread, there are scenarios in which a player character of the thief class has the ability to navigate certain hard to reach locations regardless of their statistics. Why? By virtue of their basic training as a thief, of course.

Computer programs often have features that work by triggering automatically if the conditions are met. "IF/THEN" statements, or conditional statements. This provides a great framework for how we treat player characters. If they ask to do something that would help to progress the game, don't play dice with it. Instead of rolling the dice on vital information or basic actions, first determine if that player's class has training or specialization in the skill. Then treat it as a 'routine' action, one that doesn't require a roll. The player has passed a 'gate' by having the proper skill. They still get to perform their role in the game, practicing their specialty, and you have encouraged them to use their skills rather than fear them.

This way you can plan adventures and scenarios around the characters in your party. A thief may already know of a local smugglers' guild, and a wizard may notice a spy using a common disguise spell. These things can happen by fate rather than chance, paving the way for the story while showcasing the unique skill sets of the PCs.

How do you know the difference between a skill check that should be routine and a skill check that needs a roll? Here are my general guidelines when making that call:

View this table as an image here.

One Last Note

One of the worst thing any dungeon master can say is "Oops." It makes everyone nervous and damages your own confidence. Though it happens to the best of us, we can prevent a lot of oops moments by remembering not to let sheer chance undermine your game. No DM should feel like they are a slave to the dice. They aren't artifacts of power, or sacred stones of fateful import. They are gaming aids to keep things lively and exciting. Your main tools are still your knowledge of the rules, creativity, and of course your own awareness of your players!

Happy ventures!

Don't Roll Them Bones Unless You Mean It!

Previously I shared some details about how to keep your game engaging and dynamic. I think it's about time I get into the nitty-gritty and lay out some of the rules I set at the game table to make sure I follow that core principle. The first one worth mention is of course:

Don't roll the dice unless failure would have a unique and interesting result!

This includes dice rolls made by the players. The basic reasoning behind this is simple: the dice are there to help you add an element of chance to the game. They don't need to be a crutch for game-running, decision making, or keeping players engaged.

Rolling dice too often can hurt your game in a number of ways:

• It slows down the action.
• It devalues the impact of the dice results on your game.
• It places the core of your game on randomness instead of strategy.
• It adds the potential for failure in cases that may pointlessly disrupt the game.

Automatic Successes and Failures

There are times when a dice roll may be required, but there are also times when automatic success or failure is the most logical choice.

Success should always be automatic when the result is either immaterial or crucial to the progress of the campaign. Sometimes a roll may be made to determine how quickly you find the vital clue that leads you to the next chapter, but it should never incorporate the possibility of not finding the clue at all. Each roll should have a distinct purpose, so rolling five times to find the clue is likely to leave your group bored and frustrated. Many systems use the "take 10" or "take 20" system to avoid this problem (In which you can choose to spend some extra time on certain tasks and automatically complete the task as if you rolled a 10 or a 20.) 

Automatic failure is a trickier matter, and should be implemented carefully. You'll want to use it more sparingly to avoid undue frustration and dead-ends for your players, but it still has its own appropriate time and place. It could be an instance of an obvious goofball move like grappling with an intangible ghost, or simply a contingency the DM has planned for, like a failsafe alarm if the heroes shut down a security system, but some things just can't be avoided. Don't roll dice if the task is impossible, just break the news to the group right then and there.

Being Prepared For Success or Failure

In any case, the roll of the dice should always be associated with two or more results, not a foregone conclusion. Dice rolling, especially rolling in the open, is the one way that action is allowed to take place out of the hands of player and DM, so it should generally be unnecessary to undermine it by vetoing the result. Try to have an idea of the possible outcomes in mind before you call for a roll, not after you realize that a failed spot check has derailed your game. (Same goes for unlikely successes.)

Also keep in mind that failure is not a bad thing! It is necessary for the suspense and challenge of a game campaign. Failure should open up new possibilities for a player just as often as closing them. Dropping to the floor at an enemy's blow, for example, leads in to a chance to roll out of the way of their next attack! And finally, keeping up a brief but evocative narrative of the action, whether provided by the player or DM, will help to keep things from becoming a slog. When the ranger casts out her grappling hook and fails a roll, it doesn't just end with "you fail." She sees the hook pull taught against the ledge, and it pulls loose a rocky outcropping and falls free, dropping a stone on the head of an angry troll beneath that snarls a vicious threat.  The overall aim of all this is to subconsciously convince your players that failure isn't the end, but the source of conflict and drama from which enjoyment is derived. The player should ideally be able to find enjoyment in the unfolding action and gameplay, regardless of a streak of bad luck. The average dice results should not dictate whether or not a player has fun.

Having Fun With Dice and Without Them

But why is it that players and DMs tend to roll dice excessively instead of leaving them for when they are needed? One of the main reasons for this is because it gives the player a sense of active participation in the action, more so than the abstract description of their character's actions. Being able to do something with your hands and crunch the numbers of a roll is stimulating and attention grabbing, whether it is relevant or not. Additionally, some pragmatic players prefer tossing the bones to detailed role playing or storytelling and it is their way of amusing themselves to pass the time.

Rather than punishing the players for this habit, which wastes time and possibly disrupts the campaign (A character who keeps making dexterity rolls and falling over their own feet, for instance) Your group should remember to include alternative methods to provide the same feeling of interactivity. Miniatures and maps are a start, kept within reach of the players so that they can move their avatar around to represent their actions. Tokens like FATE's fate points or Savage World's bennies provide an in-game economy built around player actions that can keep things moving along. Some players might also find taking notes or modifying character sheets a useful way to track progress and stay engaged with the game. Whatever makes your players feel involved is great!

The players are of course always free to have fun rolling dice whenever they please as long as it is not disruptive. There's never anything wrong with a joke roll to determine a character's current desert cravings or feelings about jazz music. But if it comes down to rolls called by the DM, dice being used to affect the outcome or continuity of the campaign, be concentious, be prepared for any result, and make it count!

To be continued...