Characters. More than in books, more even than in video games, characters are the driving force in every tabletop roleplaying game. Movies or books can be plot-driven. Video games can tie you to the rails of their story. But in TTRPGs, more than in any other medium, we open our narratives up so players can engage with them on their own terms. They can take our plotline, they can skirt it, or they can turn their backs and go in a completely different direction. This puts the collaborative in 'collaborative storytelling' in a way that's impossible in other art forms.

But this isn't just something for us GMs to complain about, it's also a powerful tool we can use to elevate the level of our campaigns. When we harness our PCs and their plot-wrecking urges, instead of merely accommodating them, it makes our stories better.

When we remember or relate our exploits at the gaming table, we speak in terms of narrative, like the time I snuck up behind a troll and took him down with one good pistol shot to the back of the neck, or the time my player jumped off a cliff to stab a black dragon in mid-flight. All too often, though, that's not how we experience the events at the gaming table, and the moment we remember fondly as an exploit of sheer thrill and terror is, in reality, much more several minutes of dice rolling and math than several seconds of excitement.

That doesn't have to be the case, though--I mean, we tell our stories using the random element that dice add and the convenient abstraction that Hit Points (or some similar mechanic) represent, and we're not going to get away from those elements in tabletop roleplaying. However, our focus at the table doesn't have to be about ability scores and damage bonuses, and never is that truth more important than the middle of combat.

Let's go over a roleplaying attack roll, from declaration to resolution, and explore what it takes to roleplay an attack.

Different roleplaying games approach character abilities in various ways, but most systems can be generalized into one of two camps: attribute-based or skill-based. Strictly attribute-based systems, like many OSR games (or the old D&D video games from the 80s and 90s), use loose attributes like Strength and Intelligence for dice rolls and don’t even have skills. Primarily skill-based games, like d20, Shadowrun, Storyteller, or D6, (or the Elder Scrolls video games) use skills for almost every dice roll except a few, well-defined mechanics like Soak or Drain, which roll against attributes. Many games fall somewhere in between the two extremes.

What are the strengths of skill-based systems? What are their weaknesses? Let’s consider these today as we look at skill-based RPGs.

At their core, RPG adventures are stories, just like screenplays or novellas--and just like screenplays or novellas, one vital element you cannot escape is the plot. It’s this plot, this overarching narrative, that ties your encounters together and makes a roleplaying game different from a tactical wargame. For a game of RECON or Heavy Gear or even Savage Worlds, you may sit down and play a battle or a series of battles with little more than a set of winning objectives to guide you. For a roleplaying campaign, though, you’re telling a story, and, whether you’ve sat down and meticulously outlined each plot point ahead of time or whether you’re GMing by the seat of your pants, story always means plot.

We discussed the source material for D&D spells in regards to wizards last time; in this system, the mechanical processes of memorizing and casting magical spells for priestly classes is essentially the same: i.e., the spell embeds itself in the caster’s mind, straining against the mundane limitations of the mortal’s physical shell. When the caster goes to access the magic using processes revealed by the living knowledge that possesses hir, the spell erupts into the physical plane through the conduit provided by the caster hirself. The actual components used in priestly spells tend to rely more on holy symbols and less on material fetishes. The processes are similar enough, though, that a superstitious commoner, unacquainted with the workings of magic, might not notice much difference between the two.

Vancian magic, named for its original creator Jack Vance, is the style of “spell slot” magic popularized by Dungeons & Dragons. In it, magic users take time to make lengthy spell preparations in advance so they can complete the spell later in the day with nothing more than a trigger procedure and, perhaps, a material component or physical focus. It works well for D&D because it requires comparatively little bookkeeping, since casters work with discrete slots instead of a pool of points and the slots essentially refresh when the character sleeps instead of throughout the day. This process becomes strained, however, at higher levels, when casters have twenty or more spell slots to prepare. It also cripples the power of magic-users, since, as most DMs apply this system, they have to prepare their spells before they have any idea what sort of challenges they’ll face throughout the day. This renders sometimes 90% of the caster’s spellbook inaccessible.

“Roll initiative!”

What is initiative? What does it represent and why is it so important? Why are there so many different types of initiative? Speed Factors, Action Modifiers, Wound Penalties, Skill Rolls. Every one of these considerations will flavor your decision, as GM, on when--and whether--to roll initiative for a particular situation. Let’s take a look.

As creators, all of us face the blank wall of writer’s block every now and again, and never is it more frustrating than when you sit down to start working out an awesome idea for a new world. I’m gonna go over three cornerstones of world building from an RPG perspective in a way that will, hopefully, get those creative juices flowing for you as you read on.

Critical hits. Don’t you love critical hits? You roll your attack and you manage to get that fleeting, ephemeral thing: a natural 20. Or even rarer, a 3 if you’re playing GURPS or HERO. You bask in the glow of achievement as the odds really do fall in your favor. You pick up the extra damage die, whisper sweet nothings to it, and then let both dice fly...

For double 1s.

And just like that, your critical hit turns into a critical disappointment.

A beginning is…