The d20 is stupider than you think, and that’s great.
So the d20 is boring, swingy and un-opinionated, but these are not only useful features of the dice, but actually critical to the continued success of D&D.
Single Roll Combat
I’ve been trying to figure this one out for years: How can you resolve an entire combat with a single roll of the dice? I finally figured it out and the solution is wonderfully clean. OK, firstly, why would you want to do this? Well sometimes a fight is a foregone conclusion and it really […]
Partial Success Isn’t As Good As It Could Be
In our post-Fate/PbtA landscape you will often read praise for these processes. “It’s more interesting,” or “Mixed successes are more fun because those consequences drive the story forward.” Hand in hand with this people will say that they find the binary outcome of a d20 or a d100 boring.
I’m here to tell you that these people are kind of right, but also quite wrong. A mixed success you could say.
RPG Design Assumptions
“An RPG’s mechanics should support the fiction.” has become “Fiction needs to be supported by mechanics.”
Components in Play
Sometimes people talk about the RPGs they have been playing and it feels like their games and my games have absolutely nothing in common. It’s like trying to compare a Philip K Dick novel with a game of poker. Other times I read what people are doing in their RPGs, which should be as unlike […]
Dice Set Sunday!
I mentioned to a friend that I was going to take a day off from my blog, then he mentioned an author who posts pet pictures when he doesn’t want to write that day. Now, I do have pets, but they are harder to photograph than dice, so here’s my GMing dice set! Contents: Chessex […]
The best ways to roll stats in old school RPGs!
A short post today, solving another eternal discussion. Doesn’t it feel good to know that no one will ever again discuss ways to randomly generate a Strength score? 3d6 down the line is classic and works well if all your stats are doing is providing modifiers for particular activities. Because the stats aren’t balanced in […]
Some RPGs Perfect for Open Tables
I’m keeping it simple today with a few recommendations for RPGs which work well for open table play. Because I often have people new to my table, and sometimes new to Roleplaying, joining in I like to keep things simple. This also helps us spend more time in the roleplaying rather than in character generation […]
Linear rolls, bell curves or dice pools? The Best RNG Distribution!
D&D, Pathfinder (also D&D) and most of the OSR (still D&D) uses the d20. A nice flat distribution where every number has a 5% chance of occurring. This is good, the probability of rolling any particular range is easy to figure out, +1 matters, but not too much. There’s a reason it is still the […]
Roll-under Or Roll-over?
Yesterday’s resolution of a never-ending argument seemed to go down well, you know, barring a few outliers who seem to want to keep discussing the topic as if there isn’t one perfect answer right there… Anyway, here’s another never-ending argument resolved! Roll-under Or Roll-over Some people like to roll their dice and add their bonuses […]
Ominosity 
