What kind of stuff do you really dislike having to roll dice to see if you can do in a game? Obviously, you should be talking about stuff that at least one game out there somewhere requires rolling for.
RPGPundit
Anything.
The key part of your question that warrants that answer is the "have to" portion. I don't mind rolling dice, and I certainly like having that option.
But it should be a choice, not a requirement.
Drive down a road on a routine trip.
We had a CoC GM that didn't get probability and made us roll 5 times for a routine trip, and didn't get why even characters with 60-80% drive skill were routinely wrecking their car.
Typically anything just too mundane to worry about (stubbing your toe when you get out of bed, making coffee, buying a paper, etc), or things so involved they involve an endless series of rolls and charts.
Anything my character is extremely competent to do.
Anything where failure is boring.
Language skills. I'm not saying it's impossible to implement them in a way that would make it reasonable to roll dice to have a conversation in a foreign language, but the ones I've seen haven't exactly thrilled me.
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;372248Language skills. I'm not saying it's impossible to implement them in a way that would make it reasonable to roll dice to have a conversation in a foreign language, but the ones I've seen haven't exactly thrilled me.
Top Secret has a nifty system for this: you add together the language values of the two speakers and the total must exceed a certain threshold for effective communication to take place. Simple but playable.
Yup, Runequest had the same rule; I think if the total was under 100% you were supposed to roll.
It just doesn't seem very interesting or workable, and it's not too realistic either. I mean, I know English very well, but that just isn't going to compensate for someone else having a rudimentary knowledge of the language.
In fact it was the exact rule that I was thinking of when I posted. I do think there are circumstances when you could/should roll for language ability--I just think that rule doesn't work very well at all, and I haven't seen any that work better other than the old "you know the language or you don't" approach.
I just hate rolling for anything twice.
Like, lets say I want my character to jump on a table, then jump off to kick someone. I don't want to have to roll an acrobatics check to do the stunt unless success means I get to do double damage.
Rolling for routine driving is a good one.
I also hate games where the percentage chance of success is slim no matter what you are doing.
I was playing dark heresy the other day (my favorite game). I was at the top of a ladder. There was a guy climbing it behind me, who didn't know I had stopped and was waiting for him. So there I am, with my highly experienced character, 10' from a ledge with a guy quickly trying to climb over it. I've got my high gun skill, bonuses for auto, surprise, and range, and I still miss. I think I still had a 20% - 25% chance to fail.
Compare that situation to Pathfinder, where I'd be performing a range touch attack against a flat footed opponent without deflection bonuses. I think I'd need like a six. Virtually every first level fighter or rogue I've rolled up can hit that on a 1. (95%)
Interaction with NPCs. Look, dude, I've just laid out for this NPC precisely what's going on. I've presented him with three different forms of proof. We've checked and made sure he's got no personal reasons not to believe us - in fact, we went to him because it suits his purposes to believe our story, so he'd be an easy sell. The last time I checked my Talking To Guys attribute wasn't in single figures. And you want to make me roll on my Persuade Dude skill? With no modifiers? Fuck you, man.
QuoteIt just doesn't seem very interesting or workable, and it's not too realistic either. I mean, I know English very well, but that just isn't going to compensate for someone else having a rudimentary knowledge of the language.
"Oh, its a
scythe..."
(For anyone who doesn't get that - sorry! One of my favourite lines in Blackadder the 2nd)
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;372278"Oh, its a scythe..."
Yes, that's a great moment.
Felt guilty that my last post had no information content, so in answer to the initial question, things I don't like rolling for include:
*Personality traits (e.g. Pendragon, Forge games). I prefer to have some say in the matter. If the players can't actually roleplay having feelings/character goals/etc. without needing a Randiness attribute, they'll probably have more fun just killing things anyway.
*seeing if your skill goes up a notch (a la Runequest: got badly burned in Ringworld aways back).
*soak rolls. I prefer characters just have variable HP. I'm not sure now if it was Warhammer 1e that first gave me this criteria (Naked Dwarf!) or if Shadowrun got there first.
At the very basic level I don't want my character to have to roll for anything that I personally could do without issue under similar circumstance. To go up a notch I wouldn't want my character to ever have to roll for things that other NPC's or my character before adventuring would do as a normal part of his life.
Stupid things like climbing trees, or dropping 10' or walking across a ledge etc.... I'm not even talking about doing those things while I'm being shot at or whatever. Just routine mundane things.
Searching and noticing. If I explain how my character is searching and where he is looking, I should find stuff.
This doesn't apply to "awareness" skills like spotting a potential ambush - rolling for that sort of thing is fine.
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;372212Drive down a road on a routine trip.
We had a CoC GM that didn't get probability and made us roll 5 times for a routine trip, and didn't get why even characters with 60-80% drive skill were routinely wrecking their car.
Yeah. Rolling for really mundane tasks sucks.
Repetitive rolling sucks, i.e. rolling ten times your Climb skill to reach the top of the cliff.
Situations which really shouldn't be failed by a competent character, too, like a Fighting man recognizing a weapon or armor suit for what it is, or the purpose of a particular siege engine he's currently looking at (unless completely unknown in his part of the world, of course).
It's all about judgment calls really. Sometimes, GMs suck at making judgment calls.
Quote from: noisms;372310Searching and noticing. If I explain how my character is searching and where he is looking, I should find stuff.
This doesn't apply to "awareness" skills like spotting a potential ambush - rolling for that sort of thing is fine.
For me too. I want player's skill to determine the result of searches. Not character skill. Same thing with disarming traps, for instance. If I come up with an ingenious way to bypass these pesky tree trunks swinging back and forth across the bridge, I shouldn't have to make an intelligence check or something. That's completely anticlimactic.
But then again, I value player's skill over character's skill, generally.
I'm with Halfjack. Anything where the result of the roll (whether success or faiure) can be "Nothing happens." Also, I hate it when a character has to roll again for a task he's already succeeded at. (Like, "Roll to climb down the steep, slippery stairs. Okay, now roll to climb back up.")
Quote from: two_fishes;372320I'm with Halfjack. Anything where the result of the roll (whether success or faiure) can be "Nothing happens." Also, I hate it when a character has to roll again for a task he's already succeeded at. (Like, "Roll to climb down the steep, slippery stairs. Okay, now roll to climb back up.")
Or rolling multiple perception checks in the same area.
One of the things I'm really working on as a GM is avoiding this. One roll per area or scene, unless something changes to alter the situation.
Seanchai
Stab a sleeping person. - After it's established that I sneaked up to the guy with the knife in hand.
Quote from: The Shaman;372250Top Secret has a nifty system for this: you add together the language values of the two speakers and the total must exceed a certain threshold for effective communication to take place. Simple but playable.
That's very clever.
RPGPundit
If it was whitewolf you could make a humanity or willpower roll to get it done. I get tired of homicidal maniac pcs.
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;372281*Personality traits (e.g. Pendragon, Forge games). I prefer to have some say in the matter. If the players can't actually roleplay having feelings/character goals/etc. without needing a Randiness attribute, they'll probably have more fun just killing things anyway.
Personally, I don't mind the implementation in Pendragon, if only because (in the RAW) at first you're never forced to roll under any particular personality trait, so they end up more like ways of tracking how your character has been behaving rather than means of determining how your character is going to behave. You only start being obliged to roll to act against character when your scores start going to extremes (and IIRC that's optional), which in practice means that you've been behaving in a fairly consistently extreme manner throughout the campaign. I don't mind a system that taps me on the shoulder and says "you've portrayed this character as being this sort of person throughout the entire game, and now you're turning around on that? Are you sure?"
And of course when running NPCs they're a godsend.
Like most I dislike having to roll for mundane stuff... or things that should be givens, with or without skill.
I also don't like rolls that are purely intended to discourage me from some course of action...
In our Deadlands game our GM made me roll multiple times to shoot a guy who was tied to a chair... I think mostly because the status quo of our group wouldn't ordinarily condone shooting a helpless target.
It shouldn't have required a roll at all... but because it was a nasty thing to do he seemed to think it should be somehow difficult (he claimed it was because I wasn't using my own gun).
I'd rather the repercussions of villainous behavior come from the setting rather than the dice.
In our old CoC games I'd pretty much never make folks roll for stuff they had reasonable skill with... as long as the situation was not stressful. Occasionally I'd have them roll just to see how long the action took... if that was somehow important.
I really don't like empty dice rolls; rolls which don't actually count for anything but the GM has asked for out of habit, or because he thinks have players rolling dice once in a while is what makes the game interactive or even just to give himself some time when consider the situation.
I hate it when the GM asks the entire the party to make a perception roll – of course someone is going to make it and we all get to find out the outcome so what's the point?
And recently I got rather frustrated with a GM who, after making me roll on some sort of investigative thing, then just fobbed me off with the same old vague clues we already had even though I'd aced the roll. If there are no further clues to be had why waste my time? Seriously, how does not realise how much this sort of thing undermines the game?
Of course until recently I used to do all the above myself, and worse. It's taken me a couple of years to unlearn all this as a GM but at least now when I do ask the players for a dice roll, they take it seriously.
Quote from: RPGPundit;372209What kind of stuff do you really dislike having to roll dice to see if you can do in a game? Obviously, you should be talking about stuff that at least one game out there somewhere requires rolling for.
One word. FATAL.
"Really dislike" is a bit mild though.
"Things I don't like to roll for"?
Well, let's see...
In general any trivial act that really doesn't have any real consequences in the game world.
Basically you should only have to roll for:
Anything that you have a significant chance of failing at AND that actually matters.
So anything that doesn't fall into the above paragraph is something I don't like to roll for.
On another hand, there was a time the GM started having us all roll for failry minor acts as a way of letting us know our characters had been affected by a subtly chemical weapon that was giving us a condition like ALS. After we askd him what was with all the rolls he told us we needed to see if our characters were all right.
That was forgivable, though he could have just told us we were starting to suffer from miscoordination and such.
Yup, I think 'significant chance to fail at and actually matters' sums it up pretty well.
To Walther:...Also hmm, to be fair I did only browse Pendragon so perhaps I haven't got the whole context for the personality checks thing.
Soylent green:
QuoteI hate it when the GM asks the entire the party to make a perception roll – of course someone is going to make it and we all get to find out the outcome so what's the point?
Interesting since here we have bad dice rolling meets bad GMing. I think having the GM roll perception rolls is good - in theory anyway, in practice I'm usually too lazy.
At least some of the time who makes it can be important though - like in an ambush, where maybe only those who make the roll get a surprise round. Plus, depending on how difficult the check is maybe everyone
could fail - extra rolls is at least extra chances to make it. Again depends alot on what the situation is - maybe they're applying the rules fairly blindly (if all you have is a hammer...).
Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;372896Yup, I think 'significant chance to fail at and actually matters' sums it up pretty well.
To Walther:...Also hmm, to be fair I did only browse Pendragon so perhaps I haven't got the whole context for the personality checks thing.
Soylent green:
Interesting since here we have bad dice rolling meets bad GMing. I think having the GM roll perception rolls is good - in theory anyway, in practice I'm usually too lazy.
At least some of the time who makes it can be important though - like in an ambush, where maybe only those who make the roll get a surprise round. Plus, depending on how difficult the check is maybe everyone could fail - extra rolls is at least extra chances to make it. Again depends alot on what the situation is - maybe they're applying the rules fairly blindly (if all you have is a hammer...).
I think in this instance the GM is really just using the "everyone make a percption roll" as a way of saying "Okay guys, pay attention something is about to happen". I just find it annoying and as a player I often don't even bother rolling in these instances and just say "I failed".
Quote from: Soylent Green;372931I think in this instance the GM is really just using the "everyone make a percption roll" as a way of saying "Okay guys, pay attention something is about to happen".
Absolutely, that's the purpose of it. As a DM you use it after an off-topic conversation to bring everyone's attention back to the game.
Quote from: Soylent Green;372931I just find it annoying and as a player I often don't even bother rolling in these instances and just say "I failed".
Wow. It's too much effort to roll a dice? I'd certainly be taken aback by that; it's an attitude that's completely outside my experience.
I think I'd turn it into a joke, but there'd be a point to it. On balance I think I'd decide that the player who couldn't be bothered to roll (a) had his trousers down squatting behind a bush, and (b) had just failed to notice a nest of biting insects. The rest of the party might have spotted the hint, clue, treasure, or approaching monster.
a Spot Hidden or Listen roll where the successful outcome of the roll is critical to the continuation of the adventure.
Quote from: P&P;372970Absolutely, that's the purpose of it. As a DM you use it after an off-topic conversation to bring everyone's attention back to the game.
Wow. It's too much effort to roll a dice? I'd certainly be taken aback by that; it's an attitude that's completely outside my experience.
I think I'd turn it into a joke, but there'd be a point to it. On balance I think I'd decide that the player who couldn't be bothered to roll (a) had his trousers down squatting behind a bush, and (b) had just failed to notice a nest of biting insects. The rest of the party might have spotted the hint, clue, treasure, or approaching monster.
It's not the effort of rolling the dice, it the charade. I know what I roll for perception doesn't matter, the GM knows it doesn't matter, the only reason we are going through this ritual of getting everyone to roll perception is because the GM doesn't have enough sense to simply say "Suddenly..." to move the scene on.
Quote from: Soylent Green;372979It's not the effort of rolling the dice, it the charade. I know what I roll for perception doesn't matter, the GM knows it doesn't matter, the only reason we are going through this ritual of getting everyone to roll perception is because the GM doesn't have enough sense to simply say "Suddenly..." to move the scene on.
It's because the GM wants you to roll a dice. The act of rolling shows you're engaged in the game again; it's a signal to say, "Okay, now I'm participating and paying attention and I'm willing to have fun."
Refusing to roll sends the opposite signal. It says, "I'm choosing not to participate until you do or say something to entertain me. That means something more interesting than this crap, Mr So-Called DM."
Not really, the act of rolling the dice in this instance isn't a sign of engagement, it just humouring the GM.
In the scheme of things, it's not a big deal. I don't imagine most players give a damn one way or the other and, bless their souls, there may even be some players who get all excited by getting to make a perception check. But for me it's a sloppy technique to misuse a skill as a pacing device and it's kinda condescending towards the players.
I'm pretty much in the "hate rolling routine driving, piloting, and riding checks" camp.
If I want to take my seaplane under a low bridge while being chased by enemy planes... Yeah, I probably need to make a piloting check, but if I'm just flying from Chicago to New York, then what's the point?
The point is that some GMs like to see PCs fail the routine. It gives them a kick. Force enough die rolls from a player and their PC will fail eventually. And so those GMs make people roll for EVERYTHING, even the routine. Drives me batcrap insane.