The point of rolling is to adjudicate what can't be resolved through roleplay, the most common example being combat. When you're a kid playing pretend, there often comes a point where you and the other kids try to kill each other, but it amounts to you all arguing "nuh-uh I killed you" with each other over and over until you get bored and move on. The point of rolling dice is to resolve disputes like that, specifically PLAYER disputes for the autists that need it spelled out. My and your character might hate each other, but unless we the PLAYERS have a dispute out-of-character, there's no need to waste everyone's time by having our characters literally enter combat against each other (unless we're playing a very, very specific kind of game where potential PvP is half the point, like Shinobigami). I have been in more than one game where pointless PvP happened because the GM kept forcing contest rolls for no reason among PCs, which escalated into combat.Did you know you can actually roleplay combat if both sides are in agreement on what happens in the game? We draw our blades, after some clashing we reach a stalemate and gain newfound respect for each other, all roleplayed without any dice rolling. Mind = blown.Rolling dice is like messing with the fabric of the game's universe. The more you roll, the higher the chances of things going completely off-rails, a figurative trainwreck. What do you think is going to happen when a Call of Cthulhu GM makes his player roll for every clue, and the player fails every roll? The scenario is unsolvable? No shit Sherlock.A lot of GMs nowadays come from a heavy video game background, so they treat the mechanical framework of an RPG in a literal sense, like a "physics engine". Might have something to do with video game RPGs being bad at doing the roleplay part.Imagine a game where you had to roll to walk and talk. Would this game be a wonderful way to spend 4 hours of your evening on?
>>92706630's a bit dogmatic. I think 'roll when necessary' is a good starting place, but it's not the only way to design an rpg
>>92706630>A lot of GMs nowadays come from a heavy video game background, so they treat the mechanical framework of an RPG in a literal sense, like a "physics engine". Might have something to do with video game RPGs being bad at doing the roleplay part.I have a player with this mindset and it makes me want to throw him out of a window.
>>92706630that's certainly an opinion someone could have
>>92706630>The point of rolling is to adjudicate what can't be resolved through roleplayIts not though, you got filtered at step 1. Rolls are to resolve uncertainty. I wont make you roll to squash an ant because there is no uncertainty to the outcome of that combat. I will make you roll to lie, because there is uncertainty in the outcome of that roleplay.
>>92706743You must be a huge fan of video games.
>>92706630No, the point is role-playing. Because if there are no rules to handle uncertainty role-playing will quickly degrade into regular playing pretend. For example, if you can resolve the persuation through role-play you can still roll the dice at least to get clues and social reaction. Otherwise, it is unclear what is the difference between you and your character except you are the one who currently playing a wargame. You can resolve this without dice like in Amber or using the other mechanics, but one thing stays the same. Description of your character matters. Dice are just byproduct.
>>92706855>clues and social reactionThis is the GM's responsibility, not the responsibility of the dice. The GM is not a dice rolling bot.
>>92706766>no counterargumentSeethe if you must but its true. You dont need to roll to resolve conflicts between players because you have a gm, and you dont need to roll for player-GM conflicts because the GM has authority. Just accept that you really just want to write a collaborative story and leave the system on the shelf. Its clear you dont enjoy it and dont want system knowlege, so why force yourself to sit through it?
>>92706871Why don't you go back to video games if you're not interested in roleplay.
I'm a forever-DM and I'm still trying to recover from my first session as a PC in three years (on friday) involving me rolling investigation to look inside the drawers of a desk, failing the roll, and another PC dogpiling the idea, succeeding, and finding the key to the door we needed to open
The term is "role playing game", not "gamified role playing". This means that "game" is the noun and "role playing" merely a modifier: it is a game that involves role play, not a role play activity with gamey features.
is this a bot thread
>>92706890>still no argumentWould you like to respond? Or just more low effort canned responses
>>92706924You have no idea what you're talking about. The origin of the hobby is Dave Arneson running a social intrigue game in a town where the players were the town's inhabitants, like a more elaborate version of Werewolf/Mafia. Conflict was resolved through Dave Arneson. Now tell me that wasn't actually a roleplaying game session, the literal origin of the hobby. Video games have fried your brain.
>>92706937>appeal to authorityFreud thought german children were sluts who kept seducing adults. Being foundational to the field doesnt make any of your work legitimate, certainly not your first work. But sure lets pretend that isnt enough to automatically dismiss your argument>werewolfAre parlour games TTRPGs? Its an edge case, is pinball a board game? We never have parlour game threads so at least on /tg/ the consensus seems to be that they arent. But even then, lets assume it is - you still hit a wall at the fundamental core of my argument which you still havent been able to refute. Inter-player conflict is arbitrated by the GM. You never need to roll dice at all. You never even need printed rules. And you dont seem to like dice or printed rules, so why are you using them?
>>92706964>>appeal to authorityThe literal origin of the hobby isn't an appeal to authority, it's history.>Are parlour games TTRPGsNo, but they are traditional games, and in fact on-topic for /tg/ as much as chess and mahjong are, even if 99% of anons don't care for chess and mahjong.>is pinball a board gameNo, pinball is an arcade game. Pinball discussion belongs on /vr/, even if it technically pinball isn't a VIDEO game, because /vr/ is the home of all arcade discussion.>And you dont seem to like dice or printed rules, so why are you using them?Who says I don't like having rules? As GM I don't want to wing everything. As player, rules give me peace of mind.
>>92706937The origin of the hobby is war games.
>>92707008The origin of comic books is books. No that's fucking stupid. The origin of the hobby is Dave Arneson's game.
>>92707000>its history.Its an appeal to arnson, who didnt do any relevent work after '77, as if that would have any bearing on modern game design. And let me rephrase. Your collaborative story can have codified rules if you need the structure, but it doesnt need game mechanics. Your complaints consistently revolve around disliking the actual game element of these games, which makes it bizzare that you're forcing yourself to engage with them when there's no reason to
>>92707082>It's an appeal to ArnesonIt's history.>modern game designThe fundamentals of roleplaying have not changed since the 70s.
>>92706867But this thread is for sure one.
>>92706937You don't even bother to get facts you can google in 5 seconds straight. What a champ. Do you generate your responses through a prompt or something?
>>92707108You didn't learn about Dave Arneson's game in 5 seconds of Google. I had to dig for it during my OSR phase.
>>92707101>The fundamentals of roleplaying have not changed since the 70s.Okay champ
On a related note, when will players stop complaining mid-session which disrupts the game. Air your grievances after the session, don't distract the GM with negativity while he's trying to focus on presenting the game. Whatever complaints you have likely can't be fixed mid-session anyway.
>>92707164How have the fundamentals of roleplaying changed since the 70s, exactly?
>>92707113The name David Wesely tells you something?
>>92707254Yes, Braunstein, the game I was thinking of. I got him confused with Arneson. Your point?
>>92707174I don't know what kind of shitty games you're playing but players shouldn't be complaining at all unless they rolled 5 consecutive 1s or something.
>>92707072>source: my ass
>>92707354Name an earlier example of a roleplaying game than Braunstein.
>>92707342Players whine all the time. You must have a golden group from childhood or something, because my experience playing with strangers from all corners, /tg/ included, is they will complain mid-session.
>>92707380Remember the god-damn name right, you fucking spammer.
>>92706630>When will GMs stop rolling for everything?Never. I play TTRPGs so I can roll dice and imagine monsters kicking my idiot friends in the head. I will continue to roll dice whenever I damn well please, and you thinking embellished stories from the 70s are the pinnacle of gaming won't change my mind. I'll roll to see if you step in shit. I'll roll when you have to sneeze. I'll roll to find out how much spaghetti spills from your pockets when you try to talk to the pretty elf shopkeeper. Fuck, I'll roll randomly, shake my head sullenly, ask what your armor is, roll again, then pass you a note saying, "Fuck You". In fact, now I'm going to make a table to determine random things that happen to your body. You're going to randomly get hang nails, zits just on the inside of your nose, and twitches in one eye that lasts for an hour for no apparent reason.
>>92707428>spammerWhat spam. This is the only thread I've made. And the game is called Braunstein, I didn't get that wrong.
>The more you roll, the higher the chances of things going completely off-railsI like when things go off the rails and the story leads into places you weren't expecting.
>>92707658Hey, whatever works for you man, but majority of GMs can't improvise for shit and bad rolls turn their games into disasters.
>>92707682Quick, force them to run Amber then. It will fix EVERYTHING.
>>92707778You're speaking to a guy who had his starting PC killed while chained in a cage after waking up, by an arrow in the middle of some combat, because the GM rolled. You have no clue how bad things can get.
>>92706630Sounds like you want a narrative system, and not a game.
>>92708040What I want is irrelevant, consult "bitch dats a whole new ass sentence"
>>92706630Because my players bitch at me when they haven't rolled, even if they roleplayed for an hour. They'll still go "I didn't roll anything!"So I'll go HERE! ROLL THIS STUPID CHECK to placate their dumbasses.
>>92706743You filtered yourself at step 1. Its roll if the uncertainty has interesting consequences. If it doesn't, make a ruling and move on with the game.
Too many back and forths there to link properly. The term for social engagement could be>procedures rather than dice specific mechanics although it could also involve those. The background of a concept is interesting for seeing how it developed to further understanding but does not mean it is the same as the history. The history of a thing is how it develops over time.
I'm in a play-by-post game right now that is in a stalemate because the GM refuses to resolve a situation without rolling and the whole party is rolling bad. It's fucking awful. Think "roll to open door you need to get through".
as a forever GM it is my experience that players LIKE rolling dice AND enjoy narrative resolution.sounds like you need a better GM
>>92707000i say you are right, but history is an authority. history in this context it not "A resulted in B therefor C" more like "A was like B so C must be wrong".
>>92707108OP is obviously a troll or just another delusional idiot.Even the name TSR tells you how D&D got started (Tactical Studies Rules).I have the original rules books and it was more Roll Playing and far less Role Playing.
>>92707183You expect me to dignify that with a response when your own concept of how a game should be played is antithetical to the OSR games of the 70s? Grow a brain>>92708097A boring event has no variability by definition, all outcomes are inconcequential
>>92709473>You expect me to dignify that with a response when your own concept of how a game should be played is antithetical to the OSR games of the 70s?>OSR games of the 70sNever existed. Old school D&D. But either way you are just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point.
>>92709048Did you try looking up Braunstein?
>>92706630Yeah? Well, that's just like, your opinion, man.
>>92706630I get that. Recently my players were on horseback and saw some foot bandits at a distance. They described they would just ride around them. I said, fair enough you keep your distance and they pitifully try to chase you as you ride away, no rolls. Sorry you are dealing with zoomers though..
I have the complete opposite opinion, in my games you roll even to decide wjat your character is going to do in given situations. The player has full agency on character creation, but after that his character is its own thing and the player is more of a guardian angel guide sitting on his shoulder than an et piloting him from inside his brain.But I respect your opinion. As long as the game you are playing doesn't have charisma, intelligence and personality stats that is, because then it would make no sense to just have a bunch of useless dump stats around.
>>92709473>A boring event has no variability by definitionholyshit you're stupid
>>92714029at that point, why not play a co-op crpg. what even is the difference if the players have zero agency in lieu of the dice? (super slow computer)
>>92706891I was having trouble falling asleep last night and I was scrolling /tg/ and I came across this post and it made me so mad that I passed the fuck out. It’s now ten hours later and I feel extremely well rested, thank you anon
>>92706630You'd be amazed how many people have been playing these games for years, decades even, without having closely read and understood the very basic and common ideas found in most of them. Specifically the "don't roll all the fucking time" stuff that you can find in nearly every RPG printed in the last 40 years.
>>92706630You had me in the first half. Then it turned into storyfagging. Kindly fuck off back to somewhere that PbtA is relevant
>>92706630>When will GMs stop rolling for everything?When players stop being such whiny bitches whenever they're told "no, you can't do that".
>>92706630>Did you know you can actually roleplay combat if both sides are in agreement on what happens in the game? We draw our blades, after some clashing we reach a stalemate and gain newfound respect for each other, all roleplayed without any dice rolling. Mind = blown.That doesn't represent any combat that would ever actually occur in an RPG. I don't think you have played any games in your life.Combat that actually occurs in an RPG in 99.99% of cases involves two sides who will fight each other to the death and will not accept anything else as the result.
>>92706630>unless we the PLAYERS have a dispute out-of-character, there's no need to waste everyone's time by having our characters literally enter combat against each otherHalf agree. Some players will find it fun to actually test which character would win, even if they have nothing against each other outside of the game. The first long-term campaign I played in had a scene where two of the other PCs had a friendly duel (with rolls). It was an interesting roleplaying moment, and I would say that the unpredictability of using dice made it more exciting, particularly for the players participating in the duel.>I have been in more than one game where pointless PvP happened because the GM kept forcing contest rolls for no reason among PCs, which escalated into combat.That said, what the fuck is wrong with your GMs?
The rules of the game literally exist to simulate the world and delineate the possibilities for roleplay. Yes, like a "physics engine" if you will; but video games actually took all that from tabletop RPGs. You can do "pure roleplay combat" but it's not based on anything. If you want the outcome of a clash to be predetermined, fuck you, write a story. In a roleplaying game, you may reach a stalemate and gain newfound respect, after actually clashing, but another outcome is that one party is completely trounced and actually loses the respect of the other and quietly harbours resentment, or that a "friendly" bout turns serious after someone takes it too far. "But I didn't agree on that" - no, and that's why you fucking roll. The rules of the game are the foundation, you roleplay by reacting to them. The drama isn't canned. If you say "our characters are going to find and end up in a stalemate and gain newfound respect" you're making your characters play pretend themselves.
>>92725992The problem with this viewpoint is that mutely observed rules tend to lead to boring or disappointing outcomes unless they're managed. No rule system in existence leads to fun on its own, and most will throw up absurdities too. So the belief in the events of the game disintegrates. This is before we consider bad faith actors like power gamers and saboteurs.
>>92726093The occasional boring or silly outcome is the necessary cost of uncertainty. Of course, no set of rules is perfect, so in some cases the GM may have to step in when following RAW would produce a result that makes no sense, but that should be the exception rather than the rule.
>>92726269I don't really have time to waste on boring or silly. Then again, I can trust my GM to actually run things competently so I've never experienced "mother may I." I can only assume that happens when either the player or GM is so retarded they have to rely on the rules instead of understanding a situation.
>>92706630I mean, rolling for everything is kinda realistic, especially when it comes to social interactions. In real life you may have a great plan, or be extremely charismatic or convincing, but there's still a chance whoever you're dealing with just won't be convinced or your well-crafted plan will blow up in your face. And you'll never know when that's going to happen in real life. So forcing you to roll for everything in an RPG simulates that aspect of real life where even the smartest, strongest or most charismatic person will still fail from time to time, even in situations where their success should be virtually assured.
>>92726934God forbid anyone refers to the rules when playing a game
>>92727120Let me just look up the table for breathing in. Won't take a moment. Can you check the one for breathing out?
>>92727278You know that DnD does in fact include rules pertaining to holding your breath, and rules exceptions for characters that don't need to breathe, right? Just an example of when rules do, in fact, become relevant to breathing. And these exceptions prove the general rule: characters can breathe normally without making skill checks unless there is something preventing it.
>>92706630Well, that's just like... your opinion, bot.
>>92706766What even is this attack? Video game rpgs are based on tabletop rpgs
>>92727386Characters can - and should - do most things without rolling for it. Welcome to the start of the conversation.
>>92727586I never disagreed. Look how I described a rule system governing breathing in all circumstances, including when you have to roll for it, in circumstances singled out as exceptional, in order to simulate the difficulty of the situation. The rules, therefore, are what create the drama. You don't say "I dive into the underwater tunnel and emerge on the other side after ten gruelling minutes in a heroic effort" - rather, you say "I dive into the underwater tunnel" and whether you succeed at a heroic effort or a foolish death is determined by the rules. That is the point here. The rules serve as a foundation for roleplaying and provide tension and drama to react to. If the outcome of a duel is mutually decided between players, you're just doing improv theatre, but there's no tension to it.
>>92727623>If the outcome of a duel is mutually decided between players, you're just doing improv theatre, but there's no tension to it.Yes, but that's desirable. Tension is not needed at the table in that instance, and the possibility of one side killing the other would spoil the game. There's no need to risk an outcome that diminishes fun if nobody at the table wants it. Similarly, if both players have opposing views on who should win and the characters would stake their lives on it, then the combat rules _are_ appropriate in that context. What creates drama is the investment in the characters and situation that the players have built up. I would say "the story" but I would underline that I mean the emerging story, not a prewritten one. You can't build that investment if the game just does whatever the dice say: you'll get a meandering clusterfuck and whichever tax-avoider sperg who has lurked GitP forums the most will just take control of events. The game should run mostly in the heads of the group, with the GM arbitrating from their world knowledge and common sense, and the rules come out only when shit is going down.The goal isn't to play the lowest-spec version of Skyrim, it's to emulate a piece of fiction live at the table. Good players are much more important to that than some book full of feats and polearms.
>>92727800>There's no need to risk an outcome that diminishes fun if nobody at the table wants it.Then don't start a fight.
>>92727800>and the possibility of one side killing the other would spoil the gameThis is where the fundamental disagreement lies. I don't consider such a thing to even qualify as a "game". It's just collaborative story telling. To me, an RPG is a simulation of a world, a wargame at an individual scale. This new mentality of treating RPGs like an improv session is strange and uncompelling.
>>92706630When will OP stop sucking cock and making shitty threads dedicated to shouting at clouds?
>>92727862This "new mentality" describes a play style that's 30 years old at least.
>>92707264Embarrassing, frankly
>>92706630>The point of rolling is to adjudicate what can't be resolved through roleplayOR when randomness is called for because it might be more fun. You know, fun? That whole reason why people play games at all? The main reason for the existence of games?
>>92707380Little Wars predates it by half a century>nooo that’s not an RPGThen neither was Braunstein.
>>92731530Older, it had certainly taken firm hold no later than the 1990s. And I'm not just talking D&D; improv roleplaying sessions was basically the entire basis of White Wolf's game lines with Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, etc.
>>92707380Cops and robbers, according to Gygax.
>>92715699>what’s the point of reading a book if you have no agencyCome on man. The REAL foible of OP is in his first sentence, the “point”. The point of an RPG is not to adjudicate. It’s *a point, and it *can be the sole focus, but you’re failing the breakfast test if you think it’s the only one that anyone should accept. See >>92714029 for an example, or any other one of the “zoomers” who like gameplay and system engagement itt. He’s well within his means to complain about sim GMs stepping on his preferred playstyle, but trying to make it everyone’s problem is a bit of a woman move.
