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Old 10-15-2018, 05:27 PM   #12
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Drama, dice-rolls and Plot

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Now, imagine people doing those activities, only there's an adjacent street with passing traffic. The random noise from passing traffic is roughly the dice.
No, I'm sorry, that's stretching things further than I find plausible. RPGs don't have dice rolls made by random passersby at times unrelated to the flow of the narrative, and they don't produce completely random and arbitrary events. Rather, the dice come out when the narrative provides occasion, and especially when a player chooses to have their character do something that puts them at risk for the sake of a goal; and the outcomes are not purely random, but reflect the way the character's action might turn out in the context where it takes place.

For example, I lately had the players in Tapestry roll dice to determine how well their characters did on their long trade voyage to unknown shores. I had decided what the expected return was (a return equal to 10x their investment), and how much effect their rolls would have (10% adjustment per point of success or failure), and I had decided on more extreme effects for a critical success or failure. But a critical failure was not going to result in one of them losing a limb, or in a demon showing up and attacking their home port, or in their suddenly forgetting everything they had done for the previous eighteen months. None of those was remotely plausible in the context of "How much did we make from our voyage?" And conversely, if one of them got into a fight, and made a critical failure, they might throw their weapon away, or trip and fall down, but they wouldn't suddenly discover that two-thirds of their money had vanished from their purse.

It's just not random in the way you suggest.
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