[4e] Players Roll All the d20s
angelfromanotherpin:
In another discussion on game design, I recommended that if an attack is to be resolved by a single roll, it should be a defense roll. That way players are engaged on their turn by making decisions, and on enemies' turns by making rolls. This is, of course, assuming a turn-based system like the various D&D types mentioned.
Ron Edwards:
Hi,
As far as I know, the first RPG to use the "only players roll" technique - or more accurately, using NPC scores as modifiers of or targets for a single roll - was Legendary Lives, from Marquee Press in the early 1990s. In retrospect, it's pretty surprising that it took so long to appear. As you say, getting the same mathematical result for a good halving, or more, of the search and handling times of resolution is a damn good deal.
I first encountered it in the game The Whispering Vault (1994), in which your character's attack uses the foe's defense score as a target number, and the foe's attack is also rolled by you, using your character's defense score and the foe's attack score as a target number. It's remarkably easy and fun.
Wait a minute - now that I think about it, this is also seen in a very simple fashion in the old Fighting Fantasy solo books from the early 1980s, in that when you fail a roll to hit or defeat something, you take damage. Those rules were not constructed in the standard GM/players RPG model, but they were my main influence in designing Elfs, in which only players roll and (in a fight or similar) take damage simply by failing. I was influenced by The Whispering Vault in designing Trollbabe, in which there are no GM rolls either.
Jeff Dee's excellent game Pocket Universe uses the same reasoning you described (subtracting a foe's result), and it's the first rules-set I can think of to do so. However, in that game, the GM does roll for his or her characters, using player-character values to influence it - in other words, GM and players use the same rules.
I also recommend checking out Dead of Night, in which the same math is employed, and the issue of "who rolls" bounces around the table according to rules of its own.
Best, Ron
Callan S.:
Yeah, contrasting fighting fantasy against most RPG's makes you realise that the to hit roll does absolutely nothing at all. Okay, you roll a hit and...nothing. It has affected nothing. It's the damage roll that actually does something. Rolling a hit in itself is just handling time with no actual result, except that it tells you to go onto more handling time (the damage roll). Though in 4E on a nat 20, you do don't go to a roll, you do max damage. So that roll could be said to be capable of having a result in itself.
When I bought a reprint of a fighting fantasy game a year or two back, I noticed you roll 2d6 for player and monster. When I played it I just added a flat +7 bonus to the opponents attack skill (+7 because of certain averaging rules) and I rolled. That sped things up even more. The fact that you always get a result (whether it be a happy one or otherwise) is...I don't know how to put it...solid, in feel? While rolling a miss and...nothing happens...it'd be like playing a card game where you draw a card and it's blank, so you discard it (making drawing a waste of time). Funnily, even if the blank card did something nasty to you, atleast it does something, making its draw worth while. Anyway, I'm posting too much.
Big J Money:
I'm running a 4E game right now and I thought of this myself as a time saver as well.
Ryan, if your around, can you elaborate on this more? Did you give every monster a +12, regardless of the monster or its level? Do you think it would it be workable to keep the game's written stats and accomplish this? For example, change a monster's +10 to attack to a DC 20 Defense roll?
Callan, I am really intrigued by that idea. I am wondering how difficult it would be to modify a heroic adventuring game like D&D to work like that. I suppose you would have to sacrifice some element of tactical surprise (discovery and research), as the players would necessarily be aware of the monsters' complete combat statistics, no?
-- John M.
Finarvyn:
Quote from: Ron Edwards on October 24, 2008, 12:19:54 PM
As far as I know, the first RPG to use the "only players roll" technique - or more accurately, using NPC scores as modifiers of or targets for a single roll - was Legendary Lives, from Marquee Press in the early 1990s.
I'm pretty sure TSR had a "players only roll" game.
Maybe it was the SAGA system? (They had SAGA DragonLance and SAGA Marvel.)
Somehow that doesn't sound right because I think SAGA was card-based instead of dice-based, but some game of that general era used this general concept.
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