The barbarian wasn’t rolling to smash through the door, this was inevitable, what was at stake was whether he got to intercept the assassin in time.
– Ian O’Rourke, www.fandomlife.net
One of the most most important choices you have at the gaming table when it comes to maximising your chances of a dramatic story being the outcome of your TTRPG is when to roll dice and what you are rolling the dice for.
These two choices have power, just as much, if not more so, than crazy voice acting or improv skills and are key to author focused play.
A Problem With Doors
We can use an example from Critical Role to demonstrate what happens when you decide to roll at the wrong times for the wrong things.
You have a very strong, preternaturally strong Barbarian who has faced down White Dragons and all sorts of other fantastical creatures. He stands outside a door to a room in an inn. Inside the room is someone he needs to save but they are being attacked by an assassin.
He decides to break down the door. Why is he rolling and what for? It’s simple, to break down the door, right? Possibly. What happens if he fails? You have a ridiculous strong Barbarian who has arm-wrestled demi-Gods bouncing of a normal inn door. Is that it? Do you let them try again with easier and easier rolls as the door weakens? It starts to feel ridiculous and your intentionally dramatic story is weakened.
The error is in making the roll about breaking down the door.
It became a running joke in Critical Role that the nemesis of the group was doors because they’d continually fail to break them down in scenarios that didn’t really make much sense. The statistical distribution of the D20 in Dungeons and Dragons is brutal and the system offers you nothing to moderate the result after the fact. This makes choosing when to roll and what for even more important.
The comedy inherent in these situations can be very funny, but they don’t help make your game an intentional, dramatic story.
Setting The Right Stakes
The barbarian wasn’t rolling to smash through the door, this was inevitable, what was at stake was whether he got to intercept the assassin in time. That was what the roll was for. Once you set the stakes correctly a number of enhancing factors enter your TTRPG experience.
The dice hit the table and the character succeeds. He bashes through the door and gets to engage with the assassin before he kills or seriously harms the person in the room. The dice hit the table and the character fails. He still heroically bashes through the door but fails to arrive in time and the person in the room is seriously harmed, bleeding out or dead.
In both these situations, the character does not fail to look heroic and doesn’t enter a situation of ridicule. It’s also true different characters could apply different skills against the same stakes? The rogue may say he’s going to pick the lock to intercept the assassin in time? The amazingly charming Bard may decide to try and talk the assassin into delaying? Either way, the roll decides whether they ‘intercept’ the assassin not whether they breakdown the door or pick the lock. They will always succeed at mundane things.
As well as keeping the drama heroic, you’re also keeping the points were the dice decide a direction to something that feels like a story direction rather than a mundane, tactical accomplishment. This stands more chance of feeling important because you’re rolling for what’s important.
Should I Roll At All?
The quick among you will already be thinking if getting through that locked door has nothing important on the other side should I roll at all? I suspect if you’re asking you already know the answer: no. If character potentially strong enough to break down the door wants to break down a locked door and there is literally nothing at stake just let them break down the door.
What is interesting in them failing? Nothing.
If there is something special about the door that makes it hard to break through than by all means have them roll. The best measure of whether to roll or not is whether each of the possible results is interesting.
Keeping Things Dramatic
The key outcome of setting stakes correctly is you raise the serious drama and story intent of your game. It doesn’t become a series of tactical rolls which sometimes have uninteresting or comedy outcomes. Such outcomes are fine, but if you’re wanting to lift things to the heights of a more dramatic and intentional story they’re best avoided.
It also keeps the characters appearing more like the protagonists in books, who tend not fail at minutia but at things that are important to the story, setting it off in different directions. We’ll come back to how your characters aren’t just normal people in future articles but this lays the groundwork of supporting that.
I’m not going to pretend always rolling with perfect, dramatic stakes isn’t difficult. I try to keep this philosophy in mind as a player and a DM but I can occasionally lapse. Every time I do focus on it the game is raised and directed more towards that intentional, dramatic story that I desire.
This does mean you may well roll less dice. You’ll potentially be rolling less dice because once you move to setting stakes you often shift to deciding the outcome of the fiction rather than a singular action. This brings us to the concept of deciding the fiction, which we’ll discuss next.