i love games that are like dungeons and dragons. tabletop roleplaying is a huge part of my life. it’s one of the most rewarding hobbies there is, and it’s hard to overstate how important it is to me.
i don’t play dungeons and dragons.
if you’re here you probably know what dungeons and dragons is. there are good odds you’ve played it or a game like it. if you have, it’s possible you’ve encountered the following opinion:
“D&D sucks. [X other game] is way better. Yeah, D&D just isn’t a very good roleplaying game, you shouldn’t play it. Why? Well, its rules are (choose one: TOO RESTRICTIVE or BAD or NOT COMPLETE ENOUGH or BETTER IF YOU PLAY THE VERSION FROM THE 1970s).”
this isn’t very convincing. a lot of people hear this and are like, “wait, but i have lots of fun playing d&d, and all my friends play it. why are you insulting my favourite thing? that’s mean. i’m not going to listen to you anymore.”
this is a pretty reasonable reaction. in fact, it’s probably the correct one if you play tabletop games to have a fun time with your friends. this is a good goal when playing tabletop games, and playing D&D makes it easy to achieve it.
i don’t play tabletop games to hang out with my friends. that’s a happy by-product. i play tabletop games because the magic and art of creating a world with and for others is the most satisfying thing in the world. i am Serious about them. as a result, i think about it a lot. that also means i spend a lot of time being the person saying that shit i described above.
but we all know that opinion isn’t actually productive, right? i mean come on.
instead of trying to convince you not to play D&D, i am going to explain to you why i, myself, don’t do it. maybe you’ll sympathize with some of these issues. maybe, finally, you will hear a criticism of your favourite game that is delivered with more tact and specificity than a cinderblock hurled off an overpass. there is too much negativity in this conversation, because it happens on the internet, the worst place we have created.
i am talking about D&D 5th edition here, but a lot of this is applicable to other games that are basically D&D, too. examples of games that are basically D&D include Pathfinder and Worlds Without Number.
today i want to talk about goblin dice.
what are goblin dice? goblin dice are dice with high variance. that is, you’re equally likely to get a freakishly high, middling, or freakishly low result. these dice are good for determining the fates of goblins (or other narratively expendable types, like the marines from Aliens or teenagers in a slasher movie), but they’re not good for determining the fates of characters we care about. shoutout to the “Spire: The Game Must Be Played” review of Spire for introducing me to this concept.
unfortunately, the d20 is a goblin die. yeah, the one on the cover. this hurts my enjoyment of the game for a couple of reasons.
first, it means that you are never certain of having the effect you want, no matter to what degree you outclass the task in front of you. D&D has no mechanic for just skipping over rolls, and makes you roll dice even for things that should narratively be foregone conclusions. your grizzled veteran’s attack on a random low-level monster might miss; an inconsequential character might resist your archcleric’s Zone of Truth. these are not interesting twists and turns in the story to me; they’re poorly placed speedbumps on the road to something cool happening, something that makes people excited to pick up the dice. and when they happen, you might not get another turn, or chance, for a while.
you can talk to your friends and watch them take their turns, but what if they miss and their spells fail too? that’s a lot of time waiting for something to happen. i don’t like things not happening in my time-sensitive social event. this is worst in combat, where it can take a long time before you’re allowed to act again, but it happens throughout the system.
some of you will be thinking: this is not the die’s fault. every action should have a chance of failure, or what’s the point of dice? the d20 is a perfectly serviceable mechanism of checking for failure. while this is true, non-goblin dice consistently roll average numbers, and very rarely roll outliers. it’s a lot harder to get a 3 on 3d6 than a 1 on 1d20. this makes unexpected failures and successes feel more powerful and surprising to me, because they become rare and special.
| the roll | odds of getting it |
| natural 1 on a d20 | 1 in 20 = 5% |
| 3 on 3d6 | (1/6) ^ 3 = 0.46% (yes that’s a decimal point) |
second, goblin dice mean that your character feels less like themself. are you a master of disguise? ah, but you’ve rolled a natural 1 on your deception check, and the random guard has seen through you, resulting in a street brawl. very Marx Brothers. are you a scholar of the arcane arts? ah, but you’ve rolled low on arcana, you can’t decipher this magical script. your friend the rogue, who eats dirt, knows though; he rolled a 19, so he can understand it.
simply put, characters don’t feel competent or awesome to me when there’s a chance—a high chance, and one you can’t get away from—that a lot of the cool things they do, especially outside combat where one roll determines more, will blow up in their faces. D&D lets you play a character who’s built up as being truly amazing, but the rules don’t give you any way to keep them feeling amazing when your luck turns. i don’t like playing a character who isn’t reliably good at the things they’re themed around. a character who is reliably good at something failing at a critical moment can be cool, but the goblin dice make this circumstance (and its opposite, the incompetent character succeeding at something hard) too common, and for me, that hurts the believability of the world.
some of you will be thinking: this isn’t a problem with the d20 or the rules. only a bad DM would allow the dirt-eating rogue to succeed where the wizard failed, and only a bad DM would have a guard totally see through the disguise master’s disguise based on a single failed roll.
obviously a bad DM is going to ruin a good game, the same way a bad director ruins a good play. however, a good game has rules that support the DM and players and naturally create situations that feel good to them, situations that are what they came to the table to do. D&D’s goblin dice make the awesome fantasy characters feel less awesome, because their random failures work against them.
you may be thinking that this is bullshit, and that i am presenting a problem without providing a solution. therefore, i am adding nothing but negativity to the discussion. you would be right! here are some games i like and the problems they solve:
“Nothing interesting happens when I roll badly” — play Evil Hat’s Blades in the Dark or Scum and Villainy, or Mikey Hamm’s Slugblaster, and you’ll learn why living an interesting life is a curse. when you fail, the situation changes for the worse every single time. you have resources that let you counteract these complications, but they’re finite. choose your own price for ultimate success.
“My character’s skills are not consistent, and I don’t feel like they’re powerful at the things they’re designed to be good at because I can just roll low and have it negated” — play a Fria Ligan game like Vaesen or Mutant Year Zero, and enjoy being able to brute force the rolls that really matter and having your high skills rewarded. aw, shit, you rolled all 1s? sacrifice your future strength for guaranteed success now. and while you’re at your peak, you’ll be a powerhouse at what you specialize in.
red-headed android 