Project: The End 01

Endings.

After writing the post on the best Dragon fight in an RPG and looking at ideas like the 16 HP dragon, I have thought a lot about averages and granularity in roleplaying games. Especially how it relates to success and failure.

An RPG could be, mechanically, simply this: ”You want to defeat the evil in this world. Tell me how you want to defeat it. Roll a D6. On a 1-3 you fail. On a 4-6 you succeed. Good job."

An RPG could be, mechanically, as annoying as this: "You want to defeat the evil in this world. On the way there, roll for each step you take to see if you fall over. Roll for the left foot. This is going to take a while…"

The choice on how much we zoom in on the action is both a storytelling and mechanical one. Do a year go by every session? A decade? Minutes? In most RPGs we go day by day. To get into a vault, a player needs to climb a wall and sneaking past a guard. In most game systems this will be two different rolls, not just one "getting into the vault"-roll. It plays well with standard skill systems and lists. Climbing could be a discreet skill in our system and being good on it would help define or charcater. Or we could check against athletics, strength or even dexterity depending on how we envision climbing working in our system. If we're running a game about a circus crew, perhaps the skill will be acrobatics? However, we probably won't check the same skill for sneaking past a guard. Sneaking, movement, stealth would be more fitting skills here. So, to help our characters shine and fall short in a mechanically realistic manner, two rolls will be used. This is storytelling by stats. It is important, because the mechanics help flesh out the characters.

But that is not the only reason. Another very important reason that we usually do it with two rolls is that failure is what makes RPGs sing. If "Yes, and" is important for improv, the "No, and" is the bread and butter of RPGs. Having more, and understandable, points of failure is what makes and RPG go from being a narrative story written by an author to a narrative story written by several authors. Ceding control is what makes it both a game (not a pre-written story, but also an interesting story (not a power fantasy). If we do two rolls, one for climbing and one for sneaking, it is much easier for both the group and the facilitator to envision how something goes wrong, and merge into the story. Since this is one of the most important things in an RPG, this is an important reason.

These are both good reasons, and makes sense from a logical and also from a game design standpoint.

But there is a third reason. A reason every game facilitator/GM/DM/referee knows well, and has known from time immemorial. Do you recognize this?:

"I'm trying to sneak past the guard."

"Roll dice."

"Fail."

"The guard notices something. Roll a die again to see if you can blend into the shadows."

"Fail."

"OK, the guard notices something there, roll a die to see if you can sound like a mouse."

"Fail."

Etc.

The multiple roll as a means to getting to the desired outcome. This is not something every game system encourages. Or something every facilitator will admit to doing. But we've all done it. Another roll is another chance at success.

But I don't believe it is just another chance at success that is the reason we give or get several rolls. It is rather to reduce the swinginess. If we get several rolls, our stats, skills and our luck with the dice, will surly give the expected result enough times to make the expected outcome feel natural enough.

And here we are back to the 16 HP dragon and the ending.

The reason most dragons in RPGs are not an enemy which a single lucky arrow can kill, yet have already killed hundreds of enemies itself, is that it is too swingy. A 16 HP dragon might be killed in the first round of combat (not really, RPG-wise, because the whole point of the 16 HP dragon is that it needs to be gotten at narratively. But bear with me.) and that might make the win feel unearned. Or it might just not be killed at all. And feel like a boring end to a campaign. Instead, we've put damage sponges with tons of HP as end bosses. This is common for many bosses in video games as well, but here, I think that the reason is somewhat different. In a game about reactions I think this is a way to make the player deliver for a prolonged period of time. To show their skills. To not crack under pressure. In an RPG dependent on random numbers and chance, and not reflexes, I think a high number of HP in a boss monster does not provide the same result at all. It does not make the encounter harder. What it does do is that it makes all rolls regress towards the mean. It is a way of reducing swinginess. One D10 damage roll can give you 1 damage or 10 damage. A hundred D10 rolls will probably give you a damage score close to 500. A longer fight will negate rounds of being stunned by the enemy. It will give the player the chance of going through all their gear. Special abilities. Everything in their arsenal. Instead of everything being decided on a sigle die roll.

It will give the expected (statistical) outcome more often.

So. How much is supposed to rest on just one throw of the dice? The answer to that lies right at the intersection between granularity and probability. The heroic lucky shot from literature is safe, because the one in a million chance is the story that gets told. It makes for an epic tale. But if it's one in a million in a RPG, 999 999 out of a 1 000 000 we just have a dead party of players and a sad ending.

This project is about figuring out how many dice rolls are needed to finish an adventure.

My hunch is that several dice rolls are good because it gives us several opportunities for failure, which is what makes the story interesting. But not enough that every swing of a sword is simulated. Not every step taken on the way to save the world. Right foot, left foot, right foot.

And is the end that important if the story up until the end was interesting enough? Let's find out in the next blog post. Or the one after that…