I think FATE’s approach to {when to roll dice} might be my favorite advice for random chance in game design in general. like:

• if both the good and bad outcome are fun and interesting, then you should roll dice to see which one happens
• if only the good outcome is fun and interesting, then the good outcome should happen with no dice-roll needed
• if only the bad outcome is fun and interesting, then you should bribe the player(s) into getting the bad outcome

I think this also illustrates why {random chance to miss in games like X-COM} is so unfun (IMO): only the good outcome (hitting your target) is fun and interesting. missing is basically “nothing happens but you have to watch a little cutscene about it” which is pretty boring and a little frustrating tbh

I think if I were to design X-COM’s {random chance to hit} system, I would make it so that every miss also gives a positive buff or some kind of advantage. for example every time one of your soldiers misses, they permanently get better at aiming because they’re learning from their mistakes

@kasdeya I thing it is dungeon world that when you miss [action] you gain xp

@passocacornio ooh - I really like that. I think “getting something wrong is how you learn” is a really nice lesson to bake into a game’s systems

@kasdeya @passocacornio
In kenshi, the worse you get your ass kicked the faster you get xp, unless you die

@kasdeya Ok, this is a very obscure recommendation and it takes many hours of learning from both the DM and players, but I believe that what you may be looking for long term is Anima: Beyond Fantasy

@lyrial woah I just looked into this a bit and honestly just the concept of a TTRPG that’s heavily inspired by JRPGs sounds really unique to me. thanks for the recommendation!

@kasdeya You do need to know that while it is awesome to play - setting it up is very hard. There’s not going to be only one session zero. Both the GM and the players really need to know what they are doing in this game for combat to take less than an hour. The plus side is that you can make whatever character you’d like from any aspect of the imagination.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, needs to read in depth though. So, a large amount of players will not be up for it (read: most). If you’d like, I can send you the PDF

@kasdeya if there's a little cutscene when you miss then it should be used for comic relief. Have the guy slip on a banana peel or something.

@nycki I think that would add a lot to the tone of X-COM tbh. amazing idea

FATE is honestly such a genius TTRPG system in general. every other TTRPG system that I’ve read has basically had the philosophy of “every action that you can take in this world should have its own distinct rules that we write in the rulebook in advance. unfortunately we can’t think of every possible thing, so our system will have some blindspots, but hopefully we can give you enough rules to simulate a large amount of this world, and you can improvise the rest”

but this has a lot of problems:

1. combat in these systems tends to feel like a turn-based tactical RPG video game - sacrificing verisimilitude for well-balanced gameplay, which takes me out of the experience. also it can often drag on for way too long and just become tedious
2. these systems tend to be very restrictive. you’re only allowed to tell a story that fits a certain genre, with certain types of characters that fit certain parameters (like classes and races and choosing abilities from a list), and you pretty much can’t do anything that the rules didn’t account for at least indirectly
3. everyone at the table is generally expected to do a lot of math - especially at the very start when the players are making their characters
4. there are just too many rules to keep track of and when I’m playing I tend to think in terms of “am I allowed to do this? is there a rule for this in the book? will the rule give me a favorable outcome? what stats does the rule rely on? do I need something on my character sheet to be allowed to do this thing?” instead of what I want to think about which is: “how would my character respond to this situation?”
5. these systems - because they’re focused on simulating a world accurately - don’t really care if your character lives or dies which puts a lot of pressure on individual players to keep their characters alive, making every action feel risky and leading to paranoia and stress
6. these systems’ focus on simulating a world also gives a lot of power to the GM, which can lead to some pretty toxic power dynamics between the GM and the players

but FATE is able to completely bypass all of these problems because it realized that “wait a minute - when we’re playing a TTRPG our goal is not to accurately simulate a world. we’re trying to tell a story! and the scenes of a story only follow like 3 possible patterns: conflicts, contests, and overcoming obstacles. so we can literally just have 3 simple rules for resolving 3 different challenges that the characters can face, and that will work for literally every story possible!”

and the crazy thing is that FATE is right about that? you don’t need a massive rulebook that covers every possible situation - you can just have a tiny little $8 book that is like maybe 60 pages long which covers any story you could ever want to tell*. and by taking this approach FATE is able to address every single complaint I had above:

1. combat follows very simple rules which are designed to let the players or the GM gloss over the boring parts and get right to the interesting sections. FATE also has rules (invoking an aspect, compels, etc.) that are designed to help spice up any part of the story, too - so there are fewer boring parts in general
2. FATE lets you tell literally any story you want, and play as literally any character you want, and you don’t need any special rules to do that (unless you want them, because the system is designed to be extremely hackable so you can add whatever you want and it probably won’t break anything)
3. you barely have to do any math and the math you do end up doing is so simple that you’ll probably forget it’s even math
4. FATE’s rules are so simple, and follow the story’s logic so closely, that you can pretty much just ignore them and think in terms of how to respond to the situation in front of you - trusting that FATE’s rules will be fair and make sense in the current context (spoiler: they will)
5. FATE basically has an opt-in death system. the players have to want to sacrifice their character in a dramatic death scene - otherwise the GM couldn’t kill their characters even if they wanted to
6. FATE barely has a hierarchy of power at all. the GM is “the first among equals” - they’re basically just another player at the table except they’re playing as the world and all of the NPCs. their only special power is that they get to break ties when the players can’t agree on something

anyway idk I fucking love FATE. it is so dead simple and so elegant and so well-designed. it managed to solve the problem of “my friends and I want to roleplay and tell a story, but we want there to be mechanical opposition to our storytelling” in a way that fits into a tiny 60-page book and IMO does its job so much better than any massive TTRPG tome ever could

* okay this isn’t totally true. FATE gives players and characters a lot of freedom to do whatever they want, which I think is a huge advantage of FATE. but that also means that its design fundamentally undermines any kind of story that’s meant to make the players feel helpless, disempowered, or afraid. it also doesn’t do well with stories about characters that aren’t competent

TL;DR: kas loves FATE and finds it elegant and beautiful because she thinks it solves almost every problem that other TTRPG systems have; and works for nearly all possible stories, characters, and genres; despite being an incredibly small and simple system that is extremely easy to learn

conspiracy theorist kas thinks that maybe TTRPG systems tend to go for the “there must be a specific rule for every type of action” approach because that makes it really easy to sell people expansion books that contain more rules for doing more things that the players want to be able to do

it’s way more profitable to sell someone three $60 books plus two $60 expansion books - instead of one tiny $8 book and maybe some dice

@kasdeya While my addition here has no bearing with the FATE system, I want to bring forth the fact that Cyberpunk RED has released most expansions to its rule system as free DLC downloadable from their website. Stuff like more involved stealth, long-term investigations, "super critical hits" and base building to give a few examples.

They did also release a VA-11 Hall-A crossover as one such DLC too, that was cool.

@fargate woah I love that - good on them!

also I can’t believe they had a VA-11 Hall-A crossover - that’s genuinely so cool lol

@kasdeya One can imagine that people who write a TTRPG decrying the horrors of overcommercialisation would have a heart that drives them to do the right thing. I trust R. Talsorian Games to be a force for good, and am glad to not have been proven wrong.

For the crossover, should you be interested in having a look, you can find it here on their Downloads page. Using the browser native search to find it among the other free stuff works fine.

@fargate oohh, thank you! it is honestly so refreshing to just have a massive page of downloadable expansions like this - I love it

@kasdeya I know people who simply enjoy overcomplicated rules.

A friend told after two hours of explaining their custom combat system (which turns every fight into a day-long event): "But it's no fun to play. Maybe we need more detailed rules." Unironically.

D&D first edition was a hodgepodge of rules "borrowed" from several game masters, so having confusing and inconsistent rules is maybe in the nature of at least some roleplaying games.

@wakame hehehe! interesting omg. I think there are just some types of games that I might never understand, and that is definitely one of them. but I’m glad that people are able to find TTRPG systems that they like - and that that niche is served