How about some more elaboration on this part? Just being curious... what do you prefer to see in an RPG?
Bye
Thanee
The method I don't like, which I have dubbed "skill-rollery", is the method by which you solve problems by rolling high using a skill. In this type of game, which has dominated game design for years now, you figure out which skills you have that would solve the problem. Then you pick the most highly-rated one (obvious) and then roll. D20 exemplifies this method. Obviously lots of people like that kind of game, so that's fine.
For me, a fun role playing game is all about player choice. Don't roll dice, instead tell me what you're doing. We'll only roll dice if we have to. To take an example from a recent session of Empire of the Petal Throne, the party defeated an undead thing that rose from a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus was large but apparently empty. One player wanted to know if the sarcophagus looked deep enough or had any unusual features. I said that in the flickering torchlight he could not tell... unless he climbed
into the sarcophagus to search. He chose to do so, and so I told him that he found a hidden button. When he pushed it, a secret door was opened.
He made a smart choice because this was a tomb and there was no sign of loot thus far, and they had searched the extent of it. The sarcophagus wasn't full of slime or anything that looked like it would hurt him. So it was a risk, but a smart risk. It turned out to reward the entire party with a new opportunity (though itself fraught with risk). That is interesting to me. Just saying "I make a Search roll" and throwing a d20 is boring to me.
Here's another example, this time hypothetical: a group is traveling along a corridor and one man is poling ahead. The pole thumps a hollow-sounding area so they decide to stop... on examination they see that there is a covered pit here. Since the place is old they assume that the pit is hinged. So they tie together lots of gear and low-value coinage with a rope and toss it onto the pit area. When the pit opens, two men rush forward with poles and jam them into the mechanisms on each side. The rest of the party pull their gear back up with the rope. All that is done without a single die roll.
That is fun to me. Just rolling Search and then rolling Disable Device is not fun for me. It reminds me of a computer game where your man moves up to the trap, does some kung fu with his hands and then a dialogue appears saying if you succeed or fail. That's fine for a computer because it's so limited. But role playing games have almost limitless potential for crazy plans and schemes... why throw all that potential away with a boring shake of the dice? Dice are the side dish, not the main course. If I wanted to play Yahtzee, I'd play Yahtzee. YMMV.
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