Not in the rulebook

Recently, I’ve been paying attention to the things I do when I run a roleplaying game. Some of those things aren’t in the rules…

I don’t know why they’re not in the rules. Perhaps they’re so obvious they don’t need to be.

Anyway, this is the first.

Making decisions

When I run a roleplaying game, I roll dice for one reason more than any other—and that’s to decide.

These decisions include:

• Answering player questions: “Is there a phonebox nearby?” “Does the store sell wellingtons?” “How far is the nearest river?”
• Deciding how difficult a challenge (such as the scalability of a cliff-face) should be.
• Deciding how cooperative an NPC will be.

If I don’t already know the answer, I let the dice decide. And I make these kinds of rolls more often than for any other reason.

If I roll high then it’s in the players’ favour. If I roll low, it’s bad for the players. And if I roll in the middle, then it’s complicated (ie, good and bad).

Sometimes I’m open about the roll and will explain why I’m rolling and the consequences, and sometimes I do it secretly. I don’t think there’s any logic to this—I do whatever feels right, although as I get older I’m more likely to be open about the roll.

In a recent example, the PCs went to visit a theatrical impresario. I knew nothing about this character, so I grabbed a name and rolled to see how cooperative he would be. I rolled high, so the players found him in good spirits and happy to help. Had I rolled low, he would have been uncooperative and the PCs would have needed to work harder (a skill roll, maybe a bribe) for his help.

The players are not the characters

I know that should be obvious, but sometimes we act as if it were so.

I certainly have done it when creating Call of Cthulhu scenarios. For example, I’d present clues and expect the players to figure them out. Or I’d expect the players to blag their way past a stuffy butler through sheer “roleplaying” alone.

I don’t do that any longer. (At least, I hope I don’t.)

After all, I don’t expect players to use their real-life fighting skills or their real-life lockpick skills. So why would I expect players to use their real-life persuasion or investigation skills?

Characters and players know and experience different things. Characters may be scared; the players may not be. The players may know that someone is lying, the characters don’t. The characters know how their world works; the players may not. The characters may understand the clue; the players may not.

So now when I present a clue, I also explain its context and what it means to the characters. (Assuming I’m not running something with a different approach to investigations like Brindlewood Bay.)

And if a player simply wants to describe how they are persuading the butler (and then rolling the dice), that’s fine too.

The players are not the characters.

Derailed by poor dice rolls

I try not to let a poor dice roll derail an investigation.

For example, during a recent session of The Dee Sanction, the players tried to extract information from an NPC—and rolled poorly. However, they were on the right track, so I said, “Mrs Brisket won’t tell you that—she either doesn’t know or won’t say. But you’re sure that there’s more to find out here, but you’ll have to try something else.”

If I hadn’t said that, the players might have thought there was nothing to find and headed off in a very different direction.

But the players aren’t the characters—the characters can put two and two together even when the players can’t.

An alternative to this is to offer success at a cost. (Fate does this.) So the PCs succeed but at some penalty. So in the example above, I could have offered the players success at a cost, such as Mrs Brisket seeing through their disguise (although ideally, I would let the players tell me what the cost was).