In Defense of Roll Play

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A design question I’ve been stewing on for a while is how to avoid overlong or circuitous conversations. Maybe it’s just the (with all the love in the world) absolute yappers I usually play with, but I find these come up pretty often. Primarily when two parties want things at odds with one another. I wanna get into the high-class ball I wasn’t invited to, but the guards want to keep things secure (or at least their jobs!). Two player characters both want the same magic item the party just found.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these conversations going on for minutes at a time or spiraling in on themselves. But it’s not very cinematic, and I personally most enjoy cinematic play. I want everybody at the table to feel like we’re watching a thrilling movie or reading a great book. In real life, arguments VERY often degrade into back and forth “yes” “actually no” ad nauseam. That just doesn’t happen in media. And for good reason. As soon as a conversation is volleyed once or twice without anything changing, the tension of the situation evaporates. Someone needs to introduce new information, change tact, or give ground.

If everybody at the table is a top-class improviser, that’s no problem. But us normal folks need a little assistance to keep things moving forward.

You know what exists in (many) TTRPGs to handle uncertainty, enhance drama, and codify stakes? Rolling the damn dice!

I find folks are more hesitant to call for a roll during interpersonal communication than in almost any other place games suggest rolling. Maybe it’s a matter of getting lost in the theater of the thing and forgetting there are rules. Or maybe it’s to avoid “Roll Play”.

At some point late in highschool, deep in our 4E D&D days, my friends and I had a breakthrough. Why are we doing all this make-believe talking if we’re just going to roll Diplomacy to see if it worked? Brian just gave an incredible, rousing speech that didn’t accomplish its goal because he rolled a 3. I said “Oh your boss told us we can come in”, with nothing to back it up, rolled a 19, and the guards let us in with smiles.

I think the gut response “let’s ditch these social skills and just roleplay it out” is pretty common. But it’s a misdiagnosis of the root cause. This is a failing of when you call for a roll.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons never explicitly tells you when to call for a roll (4E heads out there correct me if I’m wrong, I’m going off memory and a brief skim of the books). So it was easy for us to assume “If you’re doing the thing, you roll for it, always.” 5E, bless its heart, does better here!

Moving into more fiction-first games, there’s further guidance given. Only roll if there’s a troublesome challenge, only roll if there are interesting consequences for failure, etc. Look for the specific verbiage in your games! Some are very nuanced and can tell you a lot about the designer’s intent for how the game should be played.

The important thing is that these roll criteria are supposed to be used everywhere. Don’t be afraid to bring the dice out when you’re in a conversation. As long as you’re rolling to heighten tension rather than deflate it, your scene is going to flow way better than if you stand back and let the conversation run in circles for minutes.

What about conversations between two player characters? Some games are still built to handle this with rolls. Apocalypse World, for example, has separate player-vs-npc and player-vs-player cases laid out in its social Moves, and it works great. But I believe you can still write rules that guide players away from roundabout conversations without rolls.

Here’s a work-in-progress Move from Barium Complex, a mech game I’m working on. The specifics are tailored to interpersonal relationship arguments (read: non-physical fights), but as a diceless guiding framework it could be adapted to other situations or used in other games.

Tell me what ya think, come ask me questions about my mech game, or come call me a big dumb idiot that doesn’t know anything! Subscribe to our newsletter below for more thinkpieces, hot takes, and news about upcoming releases from all us pals over at Storygames Chicago :)