d1 RPG, and Determinism

d1 RPG is a joke, right? Of course it’s a joke. Reading the rules makes it abundantly clear that this is a bit of a spoof. A parody what it means to play an RPG.

Isn’t it?

I mean, it has charts! Table A tells you the results of each side of your d1: if you roll a 1, your action succeeds. That’s it. No failures, no complications, nothing but success.

Imagine for a moment, playing a game with the d1 system. Imagine your last Werewolf session, or Ars Magica. Imagine Call of Cthulhu, GURPS, or D&D played with a d1. Imagine succeeding every time you tried anything.

It may sound like a joke to some of you, or confusing at least, but it isn’t.

Magician explains their take on “goblin dice” here. A brief summary: dice are great for killing goblins, because no one really cares when or how they die. They could run away, even. It doesn’t matter. It’s just flavor for the story.

But instead, imagine deciding the fate of your whole game-world on a roll of these same dice. If you roll well, you win the game. Otherwise, the evil Foozle conquers the world, and your souls are forever their playthings. Does that sound like fun to you? Just flipping a coin to win or lose?

Well, to be fair, it’s not just flipping a coin, because you’ve done all the legwork setting up the traps, leveling up characters, getting powerful armors and legendary spells. You even found the evil Foozle’s one-true-weakness, the Holy Blade.

So your victory is a sure thing? Is there no way the Foozle could survive?

Of course there is. It may be less than a 50-50 chance, but even if it’s 95-5, the Foozle could still roll a lucky success, or you an unlucky failure. That doesn’t sound satisfying, does it? If you really have “done all the legwork” for an entire campaign, then the Foozle escaping death on a lucky roll isn’t just irritating, now it’s unfair.

Either a die is used, which means bad luck could ruin the game, or bad luck is removed as a factor, in which case why use a die?

Why are RPGs random?

The obvious answer is that it’s a holdover from the world of game stores and board game clubs that RPGs were born in. Cards, dice, and all forms of random chance were part and parcel of gaming in the era, because gaming was about finding which side wins. Wargames had no overarching game-narrative, no investment in individual soldiers; it was distant strategy, a mathematical model of probabilities.

But RPGs aren’t just wargames and they’re not just make-believe. They’re an ungodly hybrid of the two and the eternal struggle between system and narrative has its proxy in the war between your Dice and your Character sheet. They are the two tools every player needs: a character sheet to detail the traits and specifics of your character, a list of what they are and what they can do; and dice to make manifest your will, to act and affect the world in which your persona resides.

And they hate each other.

La Torra, in their post “Let me tell you about my character,” tells a fascinating story about the dwarf Baston Scurlock, who manages to charm his way into high society as the offspring of a local lord. A surprise to everyone, because the character-sheet said Bastion was terrible at social niceties. He had such low skill scores that he should have insulted everyone he met with his brutish ways.

But he didn’t. The dice ruled the day.

Does that sound amazing to you? Do you delight in the idea that the dice might turn a classless brute into a social butterfly? That the landed gentry might have found his rustic bluntness refreshing? It’s fuel for a great story: Terry Pratchett himself used it in Feet of Clay.

Would you delight if a critical failure decides your character Wizar the master wizard knows nothing about an important arcane ritual? If multiple failures on arcana checks turn him into a veritable buffoon?

One of the common descriptors of RPGs is “collaborative storytelling” and that sums it up quite nicely, but collaborative storytelling goes by another name: Improvisation. It follows the same rules as improv, is guided by the same ethos. Players input their own creative stance on the game, dictating what their characters do.

You’re never supposed to say “no” in improv. If you’ve ever heard the phrase: “Say ‘yes and,’” that’s where it’s from.

You know what constantly “says no” in RPGs? Dice.

There are multiple solutions to the tyranny of dice, some more effective than others. Most tend to rely on the GM’s judgment, urging fewer dice rolls for situations which don’t involve a major dramatic situation, but this simply reduces the number of times the goblin-dice rear their ugly heads. This leads us to the natural extreme: why not do away with dice all together?

It’s not as bizarre as it may sound. There are quite a few diceless games out there. Noblis, for example, has the players take the part of “Sovereign Powers.” They’re not angels, exactly, nor Elder Gods, precisely, but something powerful. If they want to bend a sword blade or walk across water, it’s done. Sovereign Powers don’t “try” the same way that mortals do, they just do. True, there are stats and methods of ensuring that everyone can’t do everything, but fundamentally the game is purely deterministic.

Noblis isn’t the only RPG like this, nor even the first. Amber Diceless was published in 1991.

For some players, this runs contrary to everything they know about RPGs. “That’s not a game,” they shout. “Without dice to foil your plans, what’s to stop a player from saying ‘I hit the dragon in its weak-spot and kill it?’”

Well, there are lots of possible responses to that question, but the one that interests me in the moment is “nothing.”

To complete the answer: “…so struggling to hit the dragon in its weak-spot must not be the point of the game.”

When talking about stats, I mentioned the gamers who see rolling-to-succeed challenges as boring or pointless. “The game is supposed to challenge the player,” they say, “not their stats. Puzzles can’t be solved by intelligence rolls, and we need to hear what your character says to know if they persuade the guard or not.”

Diceless play is the natural culmination of that. If puzzles and persuasions can’t be resolved with stats, then why is combat handled with dice? That’s not testing you, that’s testing your character’s sword-arm, isn’t it?

And there’s the lynchpin of it. Diceless play can’t have the same challenges as dice-based games: The GM can’t test the players with protracted combats, but rather with consequences. If success is a given, then the players can be challenged not with how to succeed, but what to succeed at.

Now, the obvious limitation is narrative in nature. You can kill a goblin without rolling, but that won’t stop the fifty other goblins from killing you, right? You have to think up a plan to survive, and even that’s not necessarily the end of it. After all, deterministic gaming does not mean omniscient; if every action is automatically a success, that doesn’t mean you know which action is the best one to take. The GM can put the characters in situations where they might not know what the right thing to do is. Have them question whether or not they have the right to act. Make them wonder if the consequences are worth it.

At the same time, deterministic doesn’t mean simple. If you always succeed at your actions, it doesn’t mean your intended actions will always get you what you want. Obstacles can become narrative, because even if your sword hits every time you swing, it won’t do much against a regenerating slime. You can swipe the gemstone, but now you have to deal with its curse. You can overthrow the tyrant, but now the neighboring kingdoms want reparations. You can kill the dragon, but what does that actually solve?

This works best if you and your fellow players are more willing to see each of the game’s players as a kind of sous-GMs. Great stories have successes and failures, new obstacles and powerful challenges. There are players who are more than willing to suggest troubles and mistakes that their characters might make, and wait eagerly for the chance to work out how they get out of it. Don’t make the dice decide whether or not they succeed, make it the player’s choice.

If that sounds strange to you, I encourage you to play a diceless game at least once. It is a fascinating experience, playing a game where you always succeed.

Hmm…can I go even deeper into this subject? Ah…yes, here we are.

Annoyingly smug segue #25: “But what does success even mean?”