D&D General Hot Take: Uncertainty Makes D&D Better

[Aldarc]

Thanks for the hints. Maybe I have just not seen a game that ultilized those distribitions well.

I'm kinda cheating by calling Ironsworn "2d10" because it's not meant to replace a d20 roll.

 

[Reynard]

I'm kinda cheating by calling Ironsworn "2d10" because it's not meant to replace a d20 roll.

It's not even a dice pool. it is a shifting multipronged difficulty, I guess?

In either case, it is a level of randomness I like, even if the range is a little narrow. granted, i have only ever witnessed it by watching Me, Myself and Die! and don't know how it feels in actual play. But that show is great and the system seems super fun.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thanks for the hints. Maybe I have just not seen a game that ultilized those distribitions well.

If I may, let me give you an example from my Dungeon World game, which uses 2d6.

Sometime roughly in the late middle of last year, the party (Battlemaster, Spellslinger, Fighter, and Bard) wrapped up their preceding adventure to a lost Genie-Rajah city in a volcanic caldera and came back to Al-Rakkah (the main city of the region and their home.) One part of the Battlemaster's ongoing story is that he is investigating the story of his mother, an "elf" who disappeared when he was relatively young, leaving him with his human father. She left him an important sword (long story, won't bore you with details), however--a sword that can grow stronger by absorbing the powers of captured enemy weapons. She was actually one of the "El-Adrin" who hid their civilization away in a pocket plane long ago to avoid its destruction due to a change in the nature of magic.

As a result of the above, the player has been looking for leads on his mother's people, who have been completely forgotten by the modern world. Previously, one of their allies had said he'd heard rumors (which the party acted on for an adventure quite some time ago), and the player said, "Hey, where was Shen going for his information?" We played it out, and it turned out he was talking to an antiquities dealer who has both a legitimate business and some illicit (but not particularly immoral) contacts as well. She's made good money from her business and her marriage to a (very minor) genie noble, maintaining a townhouse in Al-Rakkah, a residence and private gallery in another city, and a private estate outside the city proper.

But the player rolled snake eyes on a Discern Realities (essentially Perception) roll to get information on this woman. (Wisdom isn't one of his strong stats, so Discern Realities rolls can be a challenge for him, but that challenge does not mean the consequences are "bad" in a painful/letdown sense. Just that they're not what he wanted.) That meant he got a "fail," enabling me to make a "hard" move. So I said nobody had seen her in weeks, and there was evidence of foul play--not only would he not get the answers he sought, but something bad had happened and would probably warrant fixing. Their investigation of the woman's townhouse caused them to get jumped by alchemically-roided-out gangers who picked a fight (one of whom actually transformed into a half dragon! Story for another time) and revealed that she had come into possession of something big, something she knew was dangerous and guaranteed to attract attention. Her disappearing act was partially intentional, but she'd clearly gotten wrapped up in something she wasn't ready to deal with, and the party both wanted to aid her (they're pretty reliably heroic) and find out what all the fuss was about.

From this one, single failed roll, an entire adventure arose, dealing with a time break, fractured shards of possible realities (some of them quite disturbing to the players), mysterious artifact books that can connect to other worlds, and otherworldly beings whose job is to keep the cosmos running smoothly. I planned exactly none of this prior to the player rolling poorly that one time, and a good portion of the adventure arose from what the players chose to do with it (e.g. they didn't try to reason with the modrons, but did act diplomatically with the Genie-Rajah queen they met in a distant-past time shard) rather than "neat scene I thought the players would enjoy."

All this, from one roll going poorly instead of going well. That's surprise and variability serving the good of the game to my mind.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If I may, let me give you an example from my Dungeon World game, which uses 2d6.

Sometime roughly in the late middle of last year, the party (Battlemaster, Spellslinger, Fighter, and Bard) wrapped up their preceding adventure to a lost Genie-Rajah city in a volcanic caldera and came back to Al-Rakkah (the main city of the region and their home.) One part of the Battlemaster's ongoing story is that he is investigating the story of his mother, an "elf" who disappeared when he was relatively young, leaving him with his human father. She left him an important sword (long story, won't bore you with details), however--a sword that can grow stronger by absorbing the powers of captured enemy weapons. She was actually one of the "El-Adrin" who hid their civilization away in a pocket plane long ago to avoid its destruction due to a change in the nature of magic.

As a result of the above, the player has been looking for leads on his mother's people, who have been completely forgotten by the modern world. Previously, one of their allies had said he'd heard rumors (which the party acted on for an adventure quite some time ago), and the player said, "Hey, where was Shen going for his information?" We played it out, and it turned out he was talking to an antiquities dealer who has both a legitimate business and some illicit (but not particularly immoral) contacts as well. She's made good money from her business and her marriage to a (very minor) genie noble, maintaining a townhouse in Al-Rakkah, a residence and private gallery in another city, and a private estate outside the city proper.

But the player rolled snake eyes on a Discern Realities (essentially Perception) roll to get information on this woman. (Wisdom isn't one of his strong stats, so Discern Realities rolls can be a challenge for him, but that challenge does not mean the consequences are "bad" in a painful/letdown sense. Just that they're not what he wanted.) That meant he got a "fail," enabling me to make a "hard" move. So I said nobody had seen her in weeks, and there was evidence of foul play--not only would he not get the answers he sought, but something bad had happened and would probably warrant fixing. Their investigation of the woman's townhouse caused them to get jumped by alchemically-roided-out gangers who picked a fight (one of whom actually transformed into a half dragon! Story for another time) and revealed that she had come into possession of something big, something she knew was dangerous and guaranteed to attract attention. Her disappearing act was partially intentional, but she'd clearly gotten wrapped up in something she wasn't ready to deal with, and the party both wanted to aid her (they're pretty reliably heroic) and find out what all the fuss was about.

From this one, single failed roll, an entire adventure arose, dealing with a time break, fractured shards of possible realities (some of them quite disturbing to the players), mysterious artifact books that can connect to other worlds, and otherworldly beings whose job is to keep the cosmos running smoothly. I planned exactly none of this prior to the player rolling poorly that one time, and a good portion of the adventure arose from what the players chose to do with it (e.g. they didn't try to reason with the modrons, but did act diplomatically with the Genie-Rajah queen they met in a distant-past time shard) rather than "neat scene I thought the players would enjoy."

All this, from one roll going poorly instead of going well. That's surprise and variability serving the good of the game to my mind.

I don't see how the distribution of the roll plays a major part here.

 

[Pedantic]

Thanks. That was good reading.

Very much this. But there are two things I'd add.

• The stakes under the rules as written can too often amount to "roll to see if you have to roll again" ("I failed the climb check. I want to roll again.") which is the opposite of uncertainty.
• Low stakes high volumes of rolls is sloooow. Slow is fine if you fill in a lot of detail (4e was the only D&D to really try with strong tactical combat and with skill challenges) but if not is just slow with minimal uncertainty. There's a reason we play Dungeons & Dragons not Penpushers & Paperwork

These are solvable problems without changing the scope of rolls. There's the standard "of the roll doesn't have a penalty for failure don't do it" advice, but also we've had codified take 10/20 rules in D&D before that allowed players to just perform actions with known maximum capabilities.

"Stakes" should generally be assigned to actions, not to dice rolls, rolls can be an extra layer of risk on top of that. Instead the gambit is that whatever the player is doing will improve the situation, and the roll is just a chance of activation.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is exactly why any of our attempts to replace that d20 with 2d10 or 3d6 failed. When the outcome is 95% determined, rolling is not that fun anymore...

You can't just replace one distribution curve with another, especially when there's a wide variety in skills; you basically have to design from the ground up with the distribution curve in mind because the effect of different skill levels is part of the world building. D&D goes flat - as it needs to with an absurd difference between level 1 and level 20. And as anyone who's really pushed Apocalypse Style games knows (2d6+stat, 10+ for a success, 7-9 for a partial success, 6- for a hard move) when you can even vaguely reliably hit +4 the game's basically over.

But bell curves and other systems have their advantages. Fudge chose 4dF (= 4d3-8) partly for speed and partly because they were going for realism to account for the effect of skill - which isn't always the best goal but if it's what you want it's what you want. Apocalypse World uses two points on the bell curve which makes the effect of a +1 non-linear. Dice Pools like V:tM and Blades in the Dark are blindingly fast to calculate even with modifiers (and Cortex Plus isn't much slower).

 

[Krachek]

I think Uncertainty is a great tool to make memorable game.
But it’s a tool, if handle properly it can gives great opportunities, if not it can makes things lame.

The DM have to be prepared to handle the result. the 5 Ed DM guide provide a good section on « The role of dice ». And surprisingly I found almost identical advice in the first edition Dm guide.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

You can't just replace one distribution curve with another, especially when there's a wide variety in skills; you basically have to design from the ground up with the distribution curve in mind because the effect of different skill levels is part of the world building. D&D goes flat - as it needs to with an absurd difference between level 1 and level 20.

I actually know how statistics work. O have seen games designed for 2d10 and 3d6 which were dissatisfying in play.
Using a tent/bell shaped curve for d&d was what we thought we wanted at that time, when we tried it. But that was a misjudgement.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Philosophically, I don't see the dice as there to introduce uncertainty; they're there to keep things fair.

Remember: Roleplaying is really just playing Pretend with rules, and the rules are there to get rid of the 'I shot you! No you didn't I used a magic shield and it bounced it back, so you're the one who is shot. Nu-huh! MOOOOOOOOM' issue that is how most good pretend games inevitably end up in.

So the dice are there to keep people from just declaring stuff against the other players' will. Which to me means that sometimes when everyone agrees, we can and should just say 'stuff the dice' and let cool stuff happen.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Philosophically, I don't see the dice as there to introduce uncertainty; they're there to keep things fair.

Why not both?

So the dice are there to keep people from just declaring stuff against the other players' will. Which to me means that sometimes when everyone agrees, we can and should just say 'stuff the dice' and let cool stuff happen.

Why not all three