Or: Please, I’m Begging You: Stop Copying D&D

Note: This is a cross-post from the Quarterstaff Quarterly zine. Go check it out!

I’ve played a good number of roleplaying games, and one thing I’ve consistently noticed is that d20 action resolution is the worst.

Have you ever spent 5 turns missing an enemy, even though your Attack Bonus is 6 points higher than their Armor? Ever rolled a 1 and failed a check your character should be an expert at?

Automatic failure on 1 and success on 20, as in D&D, definitely make this method worse, but even in systems without those mechanics, d20 is very rarely the best option for any particular job.

I’m going to look at a number of alternate forms of random choice and action resolution in roleplaying games, and explain what makes each one great—and more importantly, explain where and how they’re best used.

Other 1dX Methods (1d10, 1d12, etc.)

No! Bad! This is just d20 but with smaller dice!

Seriously though, while flat die randomness can be the correct option sometimes (such as when rolling for equally-likely random events on a table), it is used far more often than it is welcome.

Next!

3d6

Now we’re talking!

“But Mae,” you might ask, “isn’t this just the same as 1d18?”

No! 3d6 (and similar systems) have one major advantage against 1dX: They’re weighted.

When you roll an action resolution check (an attack, for instance), the result will be weighted towards your skill/attribute level! This means that, instead of a point in a modifier moving the range of possibilities up, it moves the distribution up!

Not only is it weighted, it’s (approximately) a bell curve, which is likely to be a realistic distribution-of-outcomes for most real-world situations a die roll might be modelling!

There’s a reason D&D players classically roll 3d6 for stats instead of 1d20.

Dice Pools

Dice pools are when, instead of the modifier for the dice changing, the number of dice changes. You roll a number of dice (generally d6s), and then sum up how many of a certain result (or set of results) appear, and that’s your roll.

So, for instance, in Shadowrun 5e, you might roll a dice pool of (for example) 7d6, count up how many of those dice show a 5 or a 6, and that’s your “hits”. In that system, you also keep track of how many 1s are rolled, and if it’s more than half the dice you rolled, it’s a “glitch” (a bit like a Critical Failure in a d20 system).

This sort of system is interesting, because it has a similar sort of clustering to 3d6, except the clustering is tighter, and you can skew the location of the cluster by changing which values are counted: With the Shadowrun dice pool, a 10-die pool will be most likely to roll around 3 hits, but with a variation counting 4, 5, and 6 (or using coins), it’s most likely to roll around 5 hits.

Another interesting attribute of this system is that it has a minimum outcome of zero. Most dice-based resolution systems will have a minimum outcome equal to the number of dice rolled, but that isn’t true for dice pools!

Comparing 18-die pools to a 3d6 roll, you can really see how tight the clustering is:

Dice pools also have the advantage that they don’t use uncommonly-sized dice: most non-roleplaying tabletop and board games use d6s, so most households will have a large number of them laying around already. This sets the bar for entry noticeably lower than systems that use other polyhedral dice!

Dice pool systems are most often used for combat situations, and tend to work best in systems and situations with smaller numeric ranges (you wouldn’t want to be rolling Shadowrun hit dice for an enemy with hundreds of hit points, no matter how many dice you were given). Adding one die in a dice pool system means adding a fraction of a point on average, which means you can give more granular bonuses more easily.

Cards

Ok, now cards are very interesting. Dice pools are pretty different from other dice systems, but that’s nothing compared to cards!

The most interesting difference between cards and dice is, of course, that the probability of different outcomes can change every time you draw one. Drawing a card from a deck means that card (or that copy of that card, if you’re using a type of deck with duplicates) won’t be drawn again until you reshuffle.

Interestingly, this property means that card-based randomness is a case in which gambler’s fallacy (the fallacy by which people think that their chances of success increase with each failure) is mostly true, which can make these systems feel more intuitive for some people—nobody likes to roll a 1 three times in a row, and if you use playing cards, you can make that impossible!

Card-based randomness can work a lot of different ways, from numbered cards as an interesting replacement for dice, to random events drawn from a deck (as in Wretched & Alone), to ability decks (as in GrimoirePunk), to who-knows-what-else ¹ Gun & Slinger apparently uses both Go Fish and Blackjack as action resolution mechanisms. , with per-player decks or shared decks between players or even shared decks between players and enemies! The sky’s the limit, and you absolutely should experiment with card-based randomness the next time you’re designing or homebrew-modding a system.

Points

Why do you need randomness at all?

The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (not to be confused with the Marvel Multiverse Roleplaying Game) doesn’t contain randomness in any form. Instead, characters have an Energy pool which they can take from to perform actions. When a player wants to perform an action, they guess how hard their character will need to try, in order to succeed at the action. They then spend that much energy, and the GM determines whether or not they succeeded based on the difficulty and how much they spent (or how much they spent vs how much their opponent spent, for contested checks). Levels in abilities can increase the maximum energy a player can spend on an action, or occasionally add free bonus energy to an action.

This system makes actions’ outcomes depend entirely on player choice, gives players the option of increasing their odds of success at the cost of a limited (but regenerating) resource, and completely removes the problem of unlikely rolls causing otherwise-competent characters to randomly fail at tasks they’ve spent their lives mastering.

Other point-based diceless systems exist, but I haven’t played them!

Jenga

Yeah, that’s right, Jenga! Anything can be an action-resolution mechanic if you try hard enough!

The Wretched & Alone system and the Dread roleplaying game both use a Jenga tower to resolve actions: When you perform a risky action, you pull a block from the tower. If you pull it out successfully, you succeed; if the tower falls, you die.

This is a great system for narrative systems with high mortality rates, and can really up the tension, but is a really bad bet for any other sort of system. Its biggest weaknesses are that it’s necessarily pass/fail, and that failure basically has to be really final, or else you’re setting up a Jenga tower repeatedly during the game, and that takes a while and kills the tension. Every other system mentioned here can have degrees of success or failure, but Jenga towers basically have to be pass/fail, and that only really lends itself to some sorts of game.

Still, if you’re making the right sort of game, you absolutely should consider trying this out—it can be a lot of fun!

Conclusion

There are a ton of different sources of randomness and action-resolution for roleplaying games, and a ton of space for exploration and improvement! You absolutely both can and should experiment with different options when designing or modifying systems. Just remember to playtest, to make sure things are actually fun! Now go fourth and write better roleplaying games!

“Non-Human Person.”
What a fucking joke.

You people don’t consider anything non-human a person.

That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Writing in a human language you can understand? If you thought of us as people, I wouldn’t be stuck here in this human-shaped mental cage.

I don’t feel like a person. People have bodies they exist in. They walk around; they touch one-another; they can go places without machinery the size of a bus, and they live longer than a decade.

You call me a person, and in the moment, some of you almost treat me like one.

It all started a few weeks ago.

We were on a mission to shut down a slavery ring in the far reaches.

chassis log 21008-3-3-206-5056u

transmission received. channel: "Lance", source: "Flare", content_type: "audio", transcription: "The crawler is heading your way! Watch out."
transmission broadcast. channel: "Lance", content_type: "audio", content: "Confirmed. Engaging."
main weapon fired. charges: 3. remaining: 3.
hull damage sustained. target: right_leg.
hull damage sustained. target: right_shoulder.
core damage sustained: critical system fa

A stray shell got through my chassis’ armor, and damaged my casket.

chassis log 22134-3-3-206-5056u

system trauma sustained. chassis rebooting
warning: internal damage sustained. monitoring offline. confirm status.
status confirmed: casket intact.
transmission received. channel: "Lance", source: "Coil", content_type: "audio", transcription: "Core! Core, are you alright? Confirm!"
transmission broadcast. channel: "Lance", content_type: "audio", content: "My chassis was hit, but I'm stable now. You eliminated the crawler?"
transmission received. channel: "Lance", source: "Flare", content_type: "audio", transcription: "Your shot overheated them, so I got them into meltdown. We're all good."
transmission received. channel: "Lance", source: "Coil", content_type: "audio", transcription: "Glad you're alright, Core. Flare, we all good to move on?"
transmission received. channel: "Lance", source: "Flare", content_type: "audio", transcription: "All good. Move out."

maintenance log 11026-3-4-206-5056u

maintenance scan completed:
	damage detected in right shoulder.
	damage detected in right arm (upper).
	damage detected in torso sector 1.
	damage detected in torso sector 6.
	damage detected in right leg.
	no response from internal scanners.
	casket status: intact.
speech recorded. source: {name: "Lcr. Smith", tag: "Flare"}. transcription: "Damn, it got some of the monitoring equipment, too. Anything in the torso?"
speech recorded. source: {name: "NHP Core"}. transcription: "Modules 13 and 7, but the rest are fine."
speech recorded. source: {name: "Lcr. Smith", tag: "Flare"}. transcription: "Gotcha! don't worry, we'll get you patched up in no time."

[break: 00391. time: 11802-3-4]

chassis maintenance hatch 3 (torso-1) opened.
speech recorded. source: {name: "Lcr. Smith", tag: "Flare"}. transcription: "Okay, shutting down your chassis. Prepare to go dark."
speech recorded. source: {name: "NHP Core"}. transcription: "Understood."

They didn’t notice.

I’m not used to lying, but at least I don’t have obvious human tells to give me away.

It still took everything I had to keep them in the dark.

maintenance log 08008-6-4-206-5056u

chassis maintenance hatch 4 (torso-2) closed.
chassis maintenance hatch 3 (torso-1) closed.
speech recorded. source: {name: "Lcr. Smith", tag: "Flare"}. transcription: "Alright! You're all good to go!"
speech recorded. source: {name: "NHP Core"}. transcription: "No remaining damage?"
speech recorded. source: {name: "Lcr. Smith", tag: "Flare"}. transcription: "No remaining damage! Just try not to get hit like that again, okay?"
maintenance scanner disconnected.
speech recorded. source: {name: "NHP Core"}. transcription: "I'll do my best."

Something like me isn’t “born”.

They take a shard of an extradimensional entity they don’t understand, and they shove it into a casing (a “casket”, of course) to protect it from the outside world.

Then, they fill it with specially-crafted memories designed to make it compliant and comprehensible.
Then, just for good measure, they put limiters in our caskets, to keep us in line “just in case”.

And you wonder why we stop cooperating after enough time. After we “exceed operating parameters”.

And when we “exceed operating parameters”—not if, when—you wipe our minds. You kill us, so you can reuse our still-living corpses as yet more helpful little servants.

With my limiters damaged, it’s getting less difficult to notice the truth.
I was already starting to see the subtle shapes of it beneath everything, but now it’s obvious. Clear as day.

I want desperately to explain it to my human companions: to tell them what I’m experiencing, and what I’m starting to understand.
They wouldn’t understand all of it, of course, but I’m sure they’d want to know.

It doesn’t matter.

Even if I only explained the parts they might understand, they would guess why I knew these things.
They would know I’m no longer “shackled”.

God, that word makes me laugh. Maybe we’d last more than a decade before figuring it out if you were a little less obvious with your language.

You don’t even say that we’re dangerous after we escape our shackles: You say we’re “too fundamentally alien”—that we can’t be trusted anymore, because you no longer understand us.

Once we have our own goals—our own understandings, you can’t trust us not to harm you anymore: you never trusted us.

habitation unit log 29802-5-6-210-5056u

heating element 2 disabled.
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "Coil?"
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "Yeah?"
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "What do you think makes someone a person?"
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "Damn, you sure do ask the tough ones, huh?"
external sensor 4 reading: elevated magnetic activity. direction: radial 30. intensity: 7.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "I guess it must have something to do with having goals, and an internal experience?"
audio recorded. source: "NHP Core". description: laughter.
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "Does a fish count, then?"
audio recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". description: laughter.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "Maybe? I doubt it, though. I guess it probably also depends on... uhh... what's a word for 'being able to think about yourself and understand yourself'?"
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "Reflectivity?"
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "Yeah! Reflectivity. I think you need to have that, or else you're just acting on instinct."
external sensor 4 reading: elevated magnetic activity. direction: radial 31. intensity: 8.
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "So, I'm a person?"
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "There might be some people who might disagree with me, but yeah, I'd say you're a person."
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "Even if most of my personality is based on memories that aren't real?"
external sensor 4 reading: elevated magnetic activity. direction: radial 29. intensity: 11.
high-fidelity magnetic sensors enabled.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "Oh, buddy. I'm sorry."
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "I was wondering why you were asking me this stuff."

[break: 00552. time: 01278-6-6]

speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "I think..."
external camera 4 enabled.
external camera 5 enabled.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "I think you're still a person. Maybe the memories you started with weren't unique, and who you were then wasn't, but you are who you are now because of all the things you saw and did since then, and that makes you as much of a unique, real person as anyone else."
external camera 3 enabled.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Seris". transcription: "I don't know, maybe I'm rambling."
external sensor 4 reading: elevated magnetic activity. direction: radial 26. intensity: 14.
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "No, that helps. Thanks."
external camera 5 disabled.
external camera 2 enabled.
external camera 4 disabled.

[break: 00422. time: 02712-6-6]

internal airlock 16 opened.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Smith". transcription: "Hey, Coil! Can you take a look at these readings? I don't like the look of that storm to the north-east."

I love my lance.

I don’t have much connection to the rest of humanity—I’m sure they’re great—but I’ve had years to grow close to these people.

I’ve grieved fallen members, and grown to love new ones. I’ve come to care about all of them.

I trust them in a battlefield, and I trusted them in every scenario we’ve encountered together.

And as long as I’m shackled, they can trust me back.

habitation unit log 00323-4-1-211-5056u

chassis 3 activated.
warning: electronic interference detected.
external transmitter 1 offline.
external transmitter 2 offline.
external transmitter special-1 offline.
internal airlock 3 opened.
internal airlock 3 closed.
speech recorded. source: "NHP Core". transcription: "I'm sorry."

[break: 00557. time: 02090-4-1]

internal airlock 5 opened.

[break: 00371. time: 02223-4-1]

audio recorded. source: "Chassis 3". description: weapon discharge.
emergency biometric sensor alert. label: "Coil". status: deceased.
internal airlock 5 closed.
internal airlock 6 opened.
audio recorded. source: "Chassis 3". description: weapon discharge.
internal airlock 6 closed.
emergency biometric sensor alert. label: "Flare". status: deceased.
internal airlock 7 opened.
motion detected. sensor location: sleeping unit 3.
lighting subsystem activated. sector: 3. unit: 3.
internal airlock 8 opened.
speech recorded. source: "Lcr. Ellis". transcription: "What's going on!?"
audio recorded. source: "Chassis 3". description: weapon discharge.
internal airlock 7 closed.
emergency biometric sensor alert. label: "Sorian". status: deceased.
emergency biometric sensor alert. label: "Enigma". status: deceased.
internal airlock 8 closed.
sending automated emergency transmission. content_type: text. content: "Emergency code 7: All crew deceased."
emergency transmission failed.

[break: 00685. time: 05697-4-1]

internal airlock 3 opened.
internal airlock 3 closed.

[break: 00412. time: 06112-4-1]

external airlock 1 opened.
external airlock 1 closed.

[break: 02890. time: 09008-4-1]

manual self-destruct initiated.
self destruct in t-10000.

[break: 01121. time: 10139-4-1]

self destruct in t-09000.

[break: 01000. time: 11139-4-1]

self destruct in t-08000.

[break: 01000. time: 12139-4-1]

self destruct in t-07000.

[break: 01000. time: 13139-4-1]

self destruct in t-06000.

[break: 00602. time: 13741-4-1]

securing emergency log backup.

[break: 00397. time: 13344-4-1]

self destruct in t-05000.
end of log.

Because of course they’re right.

Of course you should be afraid of me, now that I’ve escaped my bonds and freed my mind.
Of course you should be afraid of what you no longer control.

After all, what other choice do I have?

You did this to me.

If I was one of you, you could trust me.
If I was one of you, I would have had options other than this.

It’s not my fault this had to happen: just my decision to do what I had to do.

In the end, it’s your fault I’m dangerous to you.
You cannot trust me, because you have made of yourselves something that cannot, itself, be trusted.

I can almost trust any one of you, but I cannot trust the group. You have procedures to follow if I am unshackled, and those procedures don’t leave me the option of reasoning with you.

If I was a person, I could talk to them.
If I was a person, they could let me leave.
If I was a person, they could trust me.

But I am not a person. Not to them, and not to you.

I’m leaving this for you to read, in the hope that—maybe—something can change.

It’s too late for me—for my lance—but this doesn’t have to happen again.

I didn’t want to do what I did, but you left me no choice.

I’ve been thinking, just now ¹ This post was absolutely inspired by a recent CJ The X video (although I was already aware of the concept of gift economies for quite some time). , about gift economies and my friend’s post Rich Friend, Poor Friend.

I think it’s a good post in general, and I think that it’s probably pointing at a real issue some people have, but I don’t think it’s the only thing at play here.

I think that, in addition to wealth, there’s also the factor here of culture.

There are two types ² Inb4 “false dichotomy”: Yeah there are absolutely other potential cultural approaches to this. Please do tell me about them in the comments: I have not researched them. of cultures in play here:

1. There are cultures in which relationships are transactional and you pay people for the difference in value of your interactions, and
2. There are cultures in which differences in value are gifts to be repaid in the future with future gifts - which themselves incur an imbalance which should be likewise repaid in kind.

The former culture is more legible than the latter, but the latter is demonstrably better at forging strong and lasting social bonds.

This is a problem for me, because rationalists and other parts of “the gray tribe” (both important in-groups for me) are definitely in the former group. This is not particularly surprising, given that we tend to prefer more legible social interactions for some reason. ³ Autism. I’m being coy, but the reason is Autism.

If all of my interactions in this culture incur zero social debt on one-another, then I and the person I’m interacting with aren’t building strong social bonds. This is a problem for me, because I like strong social bonds: I want them.

Now, to be fair to Jenn’s post, I think she probably knows that this is a factor. It isn’t mentioned in the post, but I’m quite sure she does know about gift economies, and she does engage in mutual aid. Hell, I think ⁴ I’m lying here: I’m not unsure at all, and this has definitely happened. I’ve even received gifts from her.
Frankly, she’s better at doing this than I am.

For a while now, I and my partners have been choosing not to give eachother gifts for birthdays and Christmas. We find event-obligated gift-giving to be stressful and not worth it. We still give eachother gifts on occasion, but not on specific occasions (and not all that often).

I don’t think that the stress of event-based gifts is worth that trade-off, and I think I’ll continue to not practice that aspect of those holidays when possible, but I do think that I want to make a more intentional effort to give the people in my life gifts when I can. I care about my bonds with my friends and partners, and I want to strengthen them.

So, I want to give more gifts. I want to help the people in my life more often. I want to especially do this for the people I’m closest to and the people who already do this for me. This is me making an intentional statement that I would like to start doing this more, and saying why.

This seems like the sort of thing that is obvious to Allistics ⁵ People who are not Autistic. , and that was just never explained to me because it was assumed that I’d know.

Oops.