The Granularity of PC Actions

If you ever walk away from a session of D&D thinking not much happened, your game may be too granular. This is D&D, the game where a three month journey takes three seconds and a three minute combat takes three hours.

The trick is twofold: conveying to the players the granularity at which you would like them to state their actions, and cutting to the next scene when the tension is resolved and a decision is made.

For the players, the granularity depends on the fictional situation, but mostly it depends on the DM. You don't ask the PCs to narrate step-by-step going down to the bar for an ale. So don't ask them to navigate street by street to go to Gilmore's Glorious Goods.

If your game isn't a hex crawl, or is in no way about resource management and long-distance travel, let your players say "We go to Waterdeep". Encourage them to say that if it's what they want. Charge them some gold for food and transportation and say "you arrive 2 weeks later". If they must run into the Waterdevian army on the march or some other key encounter, only then interrupt the journey.

If your game isn't a dungeon crawl that involves careful mapping, managing light food and water, or the possibility of getting lost, don't narrate every twist and turn or provide cardinal directions and exact dimensions of every corridor and room. Ask for some sort of exploration check if you must and tell them the options that they find.

You might think this eliminates the possibility of traps but you'd be wrong. Part of the exploration check can include spotting signs of a hidden trap. If they fail to spot it, triggering the trap starts an encounter which should be dynamic and interesting, not just a hit point tax or instant death. Even better, make traps obvious but navigating past them the real challenge.

You might think this eliminates the possibility of getting lost but you'd be wrong. Part of the exploration check can be keeping a rough idea of where the PCs are. Failure on the exploration check might bring the PCs back to a place that they've already been, or bring them to a place they were not intending to go and suffer another potentially dangerous encounter. This is especially effective if they're trying to get back out of the dungeon or wilderness.

This game is about making interesting choices in tough situations. Let's leave the "crawl" to the dungeon and hex crawls, and the high percentage of empty rooms and hexes with them. You don't raise the tension by carefully exploring 4 empty rooms before the action happens in the 5th. You keep the tension high by narrating them right to the 5th room, and the 5th room after that, and the 3rd one after that, so that when your players leave the table they're gasping for breath in awe of all the fantastic adventuring they got done.

PCs Without Stats

One of the greatest insights in Tracy Hickman's Xtreme Dungeon Mastery is that most of D&D (and other d20 RPGs) comes down to rolling a specific number or higher on the d20, or any die for that matter. As Professor Dungeon Master of the Dungeon Craft YouTube channel states "this is like seeing the matrix".

What this means is the DM can take any player action, however grand or granular, judge how difficult that task would be for this character, and ask the player to roll that number or higher on a d20. This is a beautiful foundation upon which you can play any sort of RPG in any setting with virtually no other mechanical rules.

In most games we differentiate character abilities by stats. These translate into roll-under target numbers or map to bonuses depending on the system. Generally either these stats improve over time, or some other bonus (training, proficiency, etc.) improves as the PC gains experience. These bonuses are intended to reflect the PC getting better at their specialty but can create bonus inflation depending on how quickly they're accrued.

Inspired further by the XD20 system laid out in Hickman's book I've begun to wonder about stat-less PCs. Hickman's system only has 3 stats (subtract d8 from 15 and that's your target number for physical, mental, and magic/luck-based tasks) and "leveling up" only ever gives the player the ability to contest a DC by stating "I'm a level 5 Thief. Picking that drunkard's pocket should be easier than that", which a DM can choose to adjust for or ignore. That's it. No extra hit points, skills, or bonuses.

I dislike that a player is rolling for a fixed target number on their sheet. The GM can adjust it but they have to either know it or ask for it first. But the leveling up idea I want to take to the extreme. If we remove stats entirely, PCs instead become an archetype or even a classless, imprecise set of skills. The only "stat" is their level and its only value is helping the DM pick a target number between 1 and 20 for the given task.

If the task is easy, something the character is naturally be good at, or something they're trained to do, the DC should be lower. If the task is difficult or something the character is bad at and has never practiced, the DC should be higher.

Examples:

A 5th level "Thief" tries to pick a drunkard's pocket. DC: 5

The same Thief, who is typically standoffish, tries to befriend the drunkard: DC 10

The same Thief, who is scrawny and poorly fed, tries to withstand a weak poison: DC 15

The same Thief tries to strike a dragon with a 2-handed great sword: DC 20

A 5th level "Paladin" in the same, if unlikely, situations may well have the opposite DCs.

It is then up to the DM and the table to decide how many vague attributes or skills the PCs begin with, and whether than can gain more during play or by training during down time. The point is it happens in the fiction and the only mechanical implication is a DM can rule a target number by assessing a PCs level and what they're good at.

This makes rulings over rules the heart of the game.

Roleplaying Traps

Traps, riddles, and puzzles can be a strange beast in roleplaying games. We don't expect the player to physically lift the portcullis, we make a ruling based on the character's Strength. So why do we expect the player to solve the riddle as opposed to the character?

Some say we shouldn't. The GM should make a ruling and possibly ask for a roll based on the character's Intelligence. But that seems boring.

Some say mental stats shouldn't apply to this aspect of the game. The fun is actually solving the puzzle not simulating solving a puzzle, so let the players have at it regardless of character. But that can break verisimilitude. Why are we pausing the role-playing to solve a riddle as friends around a card table in mom's basement?

Some players aren't good at or don't enjoy puzzles but would still like to play a brainiac. Some players are great at puzzles but want to play a dumb brute. The best answer always depends on your table, but here's my approach:

If the table doesn't like puzzles don't put them in your game at all. Narrate the smart characters solving them or perhaps making a roll, and for the love of the gods don't hang a choke point in your adventure on it.

If the table likes puzzles, test the players but feed the clues to the most Intelligent characters. If the player that is really good at puzzles happens to be playing the dumb brute, encourage the player to *gasp* role play solving it. This can be good fun and quite humorous when the character solves it by "accident" or "unknowingly" asks the right questions that point the more Intelligent characters in the right direction. Don't be condescending, but play it innocently, whole-heartedly, and convincingly.

By the way the same sort of principles also apply to awkward nerds that want to play a Casanova, or to emotionally intelligent players that would like to play someone socially daft. Feed relevant information to the appropriate characters. Encourage players to role-play unlikely outcomes for their ill-suited character or indirectly set up the "appropriate" character for success by playing the foil, the fall guy, or the dupe.

P.S. I'm intrigued by the idea of only having physical stats and relying on the player's Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma, etc. Go ahead and role-play convincing the guard to let you into the party. The GM can make a ruling or ask for a roll depending on how convincing they think you were. Food for thought...