There are six types of skill roll modifier that I take into account when assessing any attempt by a character – PC or NPC – to carry out some task. Past articles have focused on just a few of them; this post is intended to provide an overview of the whole.

I went looking for the image of a scholar, and found… a knight!? But the picture is too gorgeous to ignore, and that’s why it’s the feature image of this article. Image by MythologyArt from Pixabay

I worked on the next post in the Trade In Fantasy series until it became clear that it was not going to be ready to publish in time, and then switched attention to a backup post, which is what you are reading right now.

I have several of these in various stages of prep for publication. This is the one that’s likely to need the least work, so it was the first choice for a backup. Also in the pipeline (a deliberate tease, i admit) are:

• “Decision Fatigue in GMs”
• “The Best: 2015 Part 1”
• “Quora Answers By Mike – Part 4” (and more to follow)
• “The Best: 2015 Part 2” (and then 2016 [2 parts], 2017 [2 parts], 2018 [2 parts], 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 – I’m of the opinion that 2023-2024 [2 parts] are currently too recent to permit objective comparison, but that might not be the case by the time get to them!).
   
• “Goals In Conflict”
• “The Sixes System Part 9: More Genres
• “A Collision of Aphorisms”
• “Fuzzy Plastic Memories IV”
• “Disease At The Speed Of Plot” (may be split into 2 parts)
   
• “The Value Of Material Things VI” (and VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI to follow)
• “Lessons From The West Wing VI”
• “Lessons From The West Wing VII”
• “The Mists Of Fear: Orrorsh Revisited 3” (and more to follow)
   
• “An Analytic Approach to Altered History”
• “A New Mechanic: Looping Rolls”
• “An Old Aysle To Run Down 3” (and more to follow)
• “The Diversity Of Seasons: Pt 5: Winter (cont)” (and more to follow)

 
…plus various odds and ends and other unfinished series, and anything else that I think of in the meantime. (Some of these have been in the pipeline for quite some time, as regular readers will have noticed!)

You may have noticed that these have been divided into four groups. Each group is roughly comparable in terms of how much work is required to bring them to a publishable state – so the first group are fairly quick, maybe half a day to a day. These are fully outlined in bullet-note form and possibly even partially written.

The next group are longer, perhaps a day to a-day-and-a-half. They are in the same condition as the first group, but the list of bullets is longer.

The third group need 1½ – 3 days work. These exist in note form, or – in the case of “The Mists Of Fear” – need a lot of transcription.

The last group are expected to need more than 3 days of effort. They may be partially written or in note form, but research is needed, often substantial, or extensive image editing, or both.

These assessments are a direct indicator as to their suitability as a ‘fill-in’ post, given that I generally have only 3-4 days in a week to work on Campaign Mastery posts, often less.

A couple of other takeaways from the list. First, several items on the list are ongoing series, sometimes defined, sometimes indicated by a vague “and more to follow”. These will either slot into the same places as the earlier parts already listed, or drop down one category, at most. And second, I may artificially force them down the list so as not to be too repetitive.

And so, to today’s post….

A Ubiquitous Fundamental Premise

The rule mechanical specifics differ from one system to another, but the bottom line is this: Characters represent abilities and knowledge with numeric values assigned to a relevant item in a framework of game mechanics; to employ that skill, the character rolls one or more dice and needs to achieve a result dictated by the assigned numeric score and the scope of the task to be completed.

Wow, but that sounds formal, doesn’t it? Even experienced players would need to unpack it before nodding in agreement.

Let’s simplify it a bit. Every game system breaks what characters can do down into categories. Sometimes these are very narrowly defined, and there are a lot of them; sometimes they are very broad, and there are comparatively few of them. Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium, but where it lies depends on a host of factors that aren’t relevant right now.

When constructing characters, the totality of that character’s level of competence is divided amongst these categories, represented by a numeric score describing competence in that specific field of activity..

Players quickly learn that it’s very hard to be good at everything, and they will get more mileage out of specializing. With a diverse group of characters, most of the important abilities will be covered by one or the other (this invariably and inherently means that there will be a few things that no-one knows how to do, creating challenges for the group to overcome).

When the time comes, the game mechanics dictate the interaction between the assigned score, the difficulty of the task, and a die roll, to determine (at its grossest level) success or failure. Some mechanics nuance these outcomes to uncover degrees of success. Some also throw critical successes and failures into the mix, the principle being that anyone can get lucky (even in ignorance) and anyone can make a colossal mess of things (even in areas of expertise).

In my superhero system, the die is a d%, there are modifiers of up to ±150, and skill levels can be anywhere from -100 to +250. Characters add the modifier to their skill level to determine what number they need to roll, or less, to succeed. Critical failures happen on a 00 (“oh-oh!”) and critical successes on an 01 (“oh wow!”). Nuanced outcomes are standard for the system mechanics.

In the Hero system, which we use for the Pulp campaign I co-referee, there are modifiers of up to ±5, and skill levels can be anything from 6/- to 15/-. Again, characters add the modifier to their skill level to determine what they need to roll (or less) on 3d6 in order to achieve success. Sometimes box cars produce a critical failure, sometimes not, and the same can be said for snake eyes. Sometimes the results can be nuanced, usually not.

In the Sixes system, used for my Dr Who campaign, character abilities (including skill levels) determine the number of d6 that a character has to roll, and the GM assigns a target or more that the character needs to roll on those d6. There are complications to this simple picture – the GM can’t use ALL the dice that the player gets to roll in setting the target, but does need to account for some of them, and there are mechanisms for setting criticality (number of 6’s greater than 1’s needed for success), and the player may not get to count all the dice that they roll, but that’s the simple description. Sometimes these results are nuanced, usually not.

And, in D&D, the die is a d20, the DM sets a difficulty target, and the character adds his skill level of the d20 result. Natural 20s are sometimes critical successes (often defined as a success that is otherwise unwarranted by the targets), and natural 1’s are the counterbalancing fumbles. There are normally no other nuances within the official mechanics, but they are too useful to be completely ignored even if they aren’t official.

Chance, Difficulty, and Competence – the skill roll is the intersection point of all three.

But there is a fourth lobe to that Venn diagram: Modifiers, and those are the subject of this article.

The Six Modifiers

There are six classes of modifier that I routinely apply to any skill check. As a general rule, I’ll spend no more than a second or two assigning numeric values within each category, and as much as is possible, I’ll determine what the modifiers are going to be as part of my game prep / adventure write-up. Not that I hold those decisions sacrosanct; if the in-game situation is slightly (or overwhelmingly) different than expected, they will be nothing more than a guideline, and sometimes not even that!

The six categories are

1. Conditional,
2. Character/Genre,
3. Synergy,
4. Roleplaying,
5. Player, and
6. Metagame.

I’ll give an overview of each and what they represent in due course.

For simplicity and applicability, I’m going to use the Hero System and d20 system as the foundations in the main text – these are so close (d20 vs 3d6) that they are interchangeable in terms of modifiers. Other game systems will need to interpret the contents of the article “in principle” and come up with their own scales. In some sections, I’ll drop in a subtitle for clarification or example.

There are a couple of related articles, to which I’ll drop in references here and there. The first two of these are:

• The Black Meta-Art Of Setting Difficulty Targets
• “How Hard Can It Be?” – Skill Checks under the microscope.

The second of these was written way back in 2010, and its content will have been at least partially superseded by later articles.

I’ve carefully cropped this to make the focal point, the incredible skill of the artist, more dominant within the picture. Image by Peter H (Tama66) from Pixabay

Direct vs Opposed Rolls

In a direct roll, the target is defined by the task. In an opposed roll, its the total generated by another character using an appropriate skill check.

As a general rule, and for efficiency, modifiers should only be applied to one of the latter rolls – sometimes, it will be the opposing character’s check (results in a simple target), but more usually it will be the player’s roll.

Modifier Announcements

That’s so that I can recite a brief (and incomplete) list of the modifiers taken into consideration, for the purposes of informing the player that these (and other factors) have been taken into consideration. This achieves two things:

1. It tells the player that the GM is paying attention both to what they are trying to have their character achieve and the circumstances under which they are making the attempt;
2. it tells the player that in future, he can improve the odds of his character’s success by doing whatever he can to make the circumstances more favorable to such success.

However, I never enumerate exactly what value has been assigned to a particular modifier; that, in my experience, leads to nothing but arguments and bogging down. I may relax that rule in post-game discussion, but even that’s rare; I’m more likely to put it in relative terms (“the handicaps were always going to make it almost impossible to succeed”).

The Scale Of Modifiers

Anything from -5 to +5 is possible, but by far the most common result is going to be in the center of this range.

±2 is going to be at least twice as common as anything more. ±1 is going to be at least twice as common as ±2. I can’t say definitively that this holds true further out in the scale, though the principle certainly still holds true – ±2 will be more common than ±3, and so on. I also can’t state that +0 will occur twice as frequently as ±1 – it’s going to be about the same frequency, in fact, perhaps shading a little towards the “net nothing”, perhaps not.

Zenith-3 rules:

The previous iteration of rules is as described earlier. We’re currently transitioning to a minimum-zero system (basically, add 97 to whatever your old score was) but the modifiers are more or less unchanged – multiply the above values by 30. This provides a lot more scope for nuance – I can use steps of 5, 10, 15, 20, or 25. The difference between +75 and +80 might be small, but it’s still a 5% better chance of success. The consequence is that skill checks are more dramatic and outcomes are more melodramatic, which suits the genre. There are also inbuilt mechanics for ‘eventual’ success or for changing circumstances without a reroll required, as well as mechanisms affording a limited number of mulligans or hefty bonuses if the player really wants to succeed.

Sixes System:

Every +1 subtracts +0.5 to the average required, as a general rule of thumb, based on 10d6. If the character has only 5d6, that would increase to about +1; if the character has 20d6, that decreases to about 0.25 or 0.33 average. EG: the equivalent of +4 on the d20 / Hero scale with 20d6 countable by the GM would be (3.5 – 0.33) × 20 = 3.17 × 20 = 63.4 = a target of 63. With only 10 countable dice, that would be (3.5 – 0.5) × 10 = 3 × 10 = a target of 30. In both cases, the modifier is about the same, but the context of its interpretation changes.

1. Conditional Modifiers

There are four separate considerations lumped together in aggregate to determine this modifier: Circumstances, Distractions, Environment, and Tools. Although the same cause can appear in multiple categories, it normally doesn’t. For example, attempting to read a map in an intense sandstorm – the circumstances are bad, the sand is a definite distraction, and the environment is doing its best to both destroy the map and wrench it from your hands.

The benefit of lumping these four considerations together is that the only thing I care about is the net total of the modifier, permitting a more holistic approach – a general sense of the conditions is enough to generalize into a net score without taking every detail apart, while at the same time I can be as granular as I want to be.

Circumstances

Anything that makes the task easier or harder. But this is a little bit trickier than it seems at first glance – there’s the question of what standard do you use for the assessment? This is something that few game systems actually spell out for you, so it becomes necessary to pick the standard that seems most appropriate to you – just be consistent most of the time!

• Is it “easier or harder for the average person”?
• Is it “easier or harder for the average professional?”
• Is it “easier or harder for a person of the character’s skill level”?
• Is it “easier or harder for an expert”?

Those are the four standards that are most commonly applied, and which one or ones you employ is entirely up to you. There is absolutely nothing wrong with considering a character with 4 ranks in a skill to be a “professional” and applying the second standard, while a character with only 2 ranks is not, and is subject to the first standard – if that’s what seems most reasonable to you.

‘Everyman’ skills

In any system that enumerates cultural norms in this way, usually as ‘free skills’ that everyone gets to a low level, I would always apply the ‘average person’ standard.

Zenith-3 System

“Skills” in this system get grouped into four groups: Fundamental Skills, Basic Skills, Common Expert Skills, and Advanced Expert Skills. Usually, Fundamental Skill modifiers are assessed on the ‘average person’ standard, Basic Skills are assessed against the ‘person of the character’s skill’ standard, Common Expert Skills are assessed against the ‘average professional’ standard, and Advanced Expert Skills are assessed against the ‘expert’ standard – but at least one time in three, a fifth standard is employed, based on the minimum expertise that would normally be needed for attempting that specific task.

That doesn’t mean that I make it up as I go along; it means that I regard the standard against which the circumstances are to be assessed as just another parameter of that task and those circumstances. It’s a nuanced approach that won’t suit everyone.

The Sixes System

A different system with subtly different nuances, leading to a sixth standard, one that’s more conceptually rooted: “Easier or harder for this particular individual”, regardless of whether or not the game mechanics properly simulate that capability of the character. So if I’m convinced that the circumstances would make it easier for a Dalek to succeed, Daleks get a bonus. If I think that the titular character should find something easier, he gets a bonus. And vice-versa, of course.

This is far more subjective and requires that the GM be at least as familiar with the character in question as the player. But it results in better simulation of the source material, which I deem important in a media spin-off. I’d do the same thing (or, at least, something similar) in a Star Wars campaign, for example.

Distractions

Whatever the circumstances are, if the character is going to be distracted by them, the modifier should shift a point or two toward negative modifier territory.

Environment

This is normally anything not covered under circumstances. So the fact of a dust storm would be covered under that category, but desert heat might not be. And if the character is dehydrated, I’d normally put that under “distractions”.

Tools

Reasonable-quality tools make things easier – up to a point. Really good tools not only have a higher threshold, i.e. make more tasks easier, but they give a bigger bonus to boot. Really really good tools aren’t any more functional than “really good” tools but they can actually mitigate some negative circumstances, effectively giving a better modifier under adverse circumstances.

At least, that’s my usual take on the question, if I stop to analyze it.

The second prior article to bring to reader’s attention is Conditional Modifier Magic: Combating Power Creep in RPGs.

And, tangentially related to all of this is Anatomy Of A Save, which shows just how much can flash through your mind in reaching a holistic decision.

Image by Alina_G_Photo (the actual Greek name wouldn’t display properly) from Pixabay

2. Character/Genre Modifiers

This modifier suite aggregates modifiers from three different sources: Character History, Character Concept, and Genre.

Character History

If a character has been established within campaign canon as skilled in a particular area, unless there is a solid plot-related reason to dispute that established fact, I will often throw an extra +1 in that character’s direction when they attempt to use their established capabilities.

Why? Because the player is attempting to play their character, as that character has evolved in-game, and I want to encourage that sort of thing. The alternative would be to permit the character that’s supposed to be good at whatever to fail or risk failing when there is no compelling reason to do so – and that can only discourage such behavior.

Way back in the day, I played in a couple of Ian Mackinder’s Traveler campaigns. One of his house rules was that if you succeeded in a roll, that was what was expected of you, and you got nothing beyond the usual rewards for doing so; but if you failed, you could make a second attempt and if the second attempt succeeded, you might just get a partial success. But the real juice was if you got a critical failure – again, a second roll with success not only serving to mitigate the catastrophe, but earning you an instant +1 rank in the relevant skill, over and above anything that you might earn in the usual way.

Why? Because the “crew” were a diverse bunch, usually generated entirely independent of each other, and the Traveler game system often left significant skill voids with essential skills missing from the line-up. Rather than concocting an NPC who just happened to have those vital skills, he wanted PCs to step up to the mark and outside their comfort zone and define a particular role within the campaign as “theirs”.

He wanted the players to eliminate the handicaps that would hold them back from playing in the campaign, in other words by taking a risk, and having a go. He also pointed out that oftentimes, you’ll learn more from a failure than from a success. I never forgot any of the lessons contained within this one simple House Rule, especially those related to encouraging player behavior.

Character Concept

This is also usually only going to be worth +1 or +2, usually, or -1 / -2. Certain characters are envisaged as having a particular Schtikh, something they should be good at. In fact, something they should be better at than a character with a different Shtick who just happens to have dumped skill points or have high stat values in exactly the right area.

Equally, there are character concepts which should be especially hopeless in certain situations. These are defined as foreign territory to them, and they should be worse in such situations than another character who is not so defined but who happens to have the same skill score.

Sometimes, especially in the Hero System, or in the Zenith-3 game system derived from it, or in Dr Who for that matter, a character will take a deliberate flaw of being ‘bad’ at something. When that’s the case, that -1 or -2 becomes a -3, -4, or -5. Why? Because the character has earned build points that make them better somewhere else in return for this Limitation.

Genre

This is often the dominant modifier from amongst the three. The Genre of the game may imply that characters are generally good (i.e. ‘better’) in certain situations. simply to reinforce the look-and-feel of the genre. This sort of thing is rarely defined explicitly anywhere; you need your own genre knowledge to decide when it’s appropriate and when it’s too much.

There is, of course, also the downside, when a character is attempting to do something that knowingly violates genre. That should be discouraged, and earns an immediate -2 modifier or worse.

My favorite example is from another of Ian Mackinder’s campaigns, 7th Sea, when he once said “You want to swing from the chandelier? Make your acrobatics roll, you’re at +2. Everyone gets a +2 at swinging from the chandeliers, it’s a genre convention.” – or words to that effect. Again, careful mental note taken.

Aggregate these three together – again, something you can usually do in the blink of an eye if you know the characters, the campaign, and the genre – and subtotal with the aggregate from the first group.

3. Synergy Modifiers

There’s a paradox at the heart of every RPG system’s game mechanics in this area.

If you’ve got a lot of very precisely defined and detailed skills, it’s near certain that another skill will be related to the problem at hand. In a pinch, with a negative modifier, it might even be an acceptable substitute for the actual skill desired, which this particular character does not have.

(This has actually come up a number of times in the Dr Who campaign as well, to the point where I have been known to state “The character should have [Ability X], let’s pretend that you do and I’ll let you pay for it later.”)

So this gives rise to the principle, “the more granular the system, the more likely it is that there will be fringe overlaps between skills.”

Here’s the paradox: by definition, the fewer the skills in a game system, the more broadly-defined they have to be, and that creates fringe overlaps between skills.

No matter which extreme you look towards, every defined skill within the game system is going to have related skills that could at least contribute to solving a problem or completing a task.

Manifesting the paradox – without the primary skill

It’s quite often the case when creating an adventure that a specific skill check is called for in response to a specific trigger, or to unlock another chain of events that the character can choose to pursue.

What if the character doesn’t have the skill in question? Do you let the game bog down, even come to a complete standstill?

The answer, in my book, comes from the genre of the campaign. In some cases, the plot must move forward, one way or another – pulp and superhero are like that. In other cases, the result might be frustration until the character thinks of something they’ve overlooked and uncovers a new path forwards. And in some cases, genre is mute on the subject, leaving it to the style of the campaign that the GM wants to run.

I have even seen this principle applied selectively to help give different areas within a game world a unique and singular nature – in particular, distinguishing between Dwarven and Drow tunnels, or between an ordinary forest and one that’s been “Awakened” by Elves.

If your answer is that the world cooperates with the character being able to do something, even if they normally couldn’t, then they get a second bite at the cherry – a pre-nominated and predefined backup skill that they can apply at a -2 modifier (or -1 or -3 or whatever) in an attempt to do something ‘close enough’ to what the primary skill would have permitted them to attempt. And, often, a second backup in the form of a stat roll at -4 or -5 or whatever if they don’t have the defined ‘fringe’ skill, either.

Of course, if it’s an important plot point that the characters not be able to do something, so that they are forced to go somewhere else and negotiate for the assistance of someone to plug that gap, that’s a whole different ball of wax – but outside that, this is normally the default premise under which my campaigns operate. Even to the point where, if I have failed to nominate a particular backup skill, or the character doesn’t have it, they may suggest an alternative. And if I like the suggestion, on with the game!

Manifesting the paradox – with the primary skill

It’s a corollary of the basic principle that having a related skill as well as the primary skill makes the problem posed slightly easier to solve. What then? Do you require a character to roll against the related skill in order to access that knowledge/ability? What if there are several of them?

It’s astonishing how quickly this can bog a game down. “I have three skills that might be relevant,” says a player (referring, of course, to his character). “A at X, B at Y, and C at Z.”

Sometimes, I will rule that a particular skill is NOT tangential to the problem at hand, based on my understanding (or misunderstanding) of the subject of the skill, or of the problem / task at hand.

Rather than bog the game down, as a general rule, having a reasonable skill level in a related skill gets you a +1 on the main skill roll. Bang, done, move on. I may or may not permit these to stack – again, that’s a look-and-feel thing. You had better believe that if I do, players will notice it.

Sometimes, I may require a single roll against the best or most relevant fringe skill. If so, any synergy bonus is doubled – and that gets noticed, too.

In terms of when these particular house rules get applied, I have never really analyzed it before, but on reflection, the more it can be assumed that a character is able to function without specialist assistance, the more likely it is that a synergy bonus will be assumed / incorporated if relevant, and the more likely it is that I will permit them to stack to some extent.

In a modern-world or futuristic campaign (including Pulp), where characters are more expected to have their areas of expertise and be hit-and-miss regarding what they can do outside of that area (so that another area of expertise opens up for some other character), I am more likely to define Everyman skills instead of offering automatic synergy bonuses. But, the more granular and detailed the game system, the more likely I am to do both.

In a fantasy campaign, where characters are able to go off into the wilderness equipped with nothing but a sword and their wits and be expected to be able to get from point A to point B, there is going to be more overlap in general capabilities and less demand for Everyman skills, and so I am more likely to offer synergy bonuses and a package of Everyman skills by dominant cultural experience – so Elves might get one package, Humans from the south another, Humans from the East something else, and so on. These packages will always be a lot smaller and more limited than those of a modern / futuristic campaign world.

Stacking Synergies

On very rare occasions, I’ll let a synergy bonus stack numerically. It’s happened, I think, twice in forty-odd years as a GM. You have four synergy bonuses coming your way? That’s +4, go for it.

It’s far more usual to do one of three things: either synergy bonuses don’t stack, or additional ones have to be rolled taking up more time in-game to do so, or – most common of all – I employ a non-linear stacking protocol.

There are two that I like for the purpose. The first is harsher than the second.

Option 1: Exponents of Two, minus 1

2 ^ 1 = 2; 2 -1 = 1.
2 ^ 2 = 4; 4 -1 = 3.
2 ^ 3 = 8; 8 -1 = 7.
2 ^ 4 = 16; 16 -1 = 15.

To get a synergy bonus of +1, you need one related skill. No roll needed.

To get a synergy bonus of +2, you need three related skills. No roll needed.

To get a synergy bonus of +3 you need seven related skills. No roll needed, but good luck – very few game systems will permit this, even if they define hundreds of skills.

To get a synergy bonus of +4, you need fifteen related skills. Not going to happen.

To get a synergy bonus of +5, you would need an absurd number of related skills – I didn’t even bother to calculate it.



Source Image cropped by mike. Uncredited, via Pixabay

The alternative route to a +4 synergy bonus is to have three related skills (a +2 bonus) and to make a successful roll against one of them, difficulty the same as the main task. If you succeed, you get double the synergy bonus – so +2 becomes +4. If you fail, that skill provides NO synergy bonus, so you might not even qualify for the +2 anymore, you might be down to a +1.

Option 2: Fibonacci Sequence

#1: 0 + 1 = 1.
#2: 1 + 1 = 2.
#3: 1 + 2 = 3.
#4: 2 + 3 = 5.
#5: 3 + 5 = 8.

or, perhaps,
#1: 1 + 1 = 1; 2 – 1 = 1..
#2: 1 + 2 = 3; 3 – 1 = 2.
#3: 2 + 3 = 5; 5 – 1 = 4.
#4: 3 + 5 = 8; 8 – 1 = 7.
#5: 5 + 8 = 13; 13 – 1 = 12.

or even:
#1: 1 + 1 = 1; 2 – 1 = 1.
#2: 1 + 2 = 3; 3 – 2 = 1.
#3: 2 + 3 = 5; 5 – 3 = 2.
#4: 3 + 5 = 8; 8 – 4 = 4.
#5: 5 + 8 = 13; 13 – 5 = 8.

To get a synergy bonus of +1, you need the number of related skills after the equals sign next to the relevant #1 line. In all cases, that’s a 1.

To get a bonus of +2, you need the number of related skills after the last equals sign next to the relevant #2 line. In the third example, that’s in addition to any already allocated.. So that’s 2, 2, or – well – 2.

To get a bonus of +3, you need the number of related skills after the last equals sign next to the relevant #2 line, and you already know about the third progression. So that’s 3, 4, or 4.

To get a bonus of +4, you need – well, you know the drill. 5, 7, or 8.

To get a bonus of +5, you need 8, 12, or 16.

Note that if I’m taking a more ‘generous’ route by using a Fibonacci sequence, I normally won’t permit the double-for-a-risk-of-failure rule.

I generally torn between the first two options; the simplicity of the first is appealing, but the difficulty of achieving medium-high synergy bonuses seems a little too easy. If I can get around that by being a bit more of a stickler, that’s fine; but otherwise, the middle option is more likely to get the nod. I’ve only ever considered the third in a theoretical context; if you’re going to be that extreme. use the powers-of-two and be done with it.

4. Roleplaying Modifiers

I detest it when players “Roll-play” instead of “Roleplay”. If a player says “[My character] is going to [do X]”, the next words out of his or her mouth should not be “I have a skill of Y”.

(Time for another of those ‘related articles’ links: Two ways to play: Roleplaying and Rollplaying).

At the same time, I have to accept that not everyone at the game table is an actor, and some roles are more difficult than others, and that the abilities of the player can be completely irrelevant to the attributes of the character.

An example, four approaches

Consider a situation in which a PC is bartering with an NPC over the price of something, it doesn’t matter what, and that there is a skill within the game system called “Bartering” which is used for this specific purpose. It’s normally an opposed roll, so the NPC makes a bartering roll and the results define the target that the PC needs to get the better of the deal.

Some players can immediately launch into in-character dialogue – straight roleplay. I will normally translate what they say and how well they say it and how they maneuver the conversation and how well they express their character’s personality and so on as though it were the die roll, scoring the performance out of 20 (or whatever) with no need to roll. This inherently burns through a fair chunk of spotlight time, though, and I might not be as adept at interplay as this player, so I might not respond in kind.

The second option is to employ third-person narration. This doesn’t tell me exactly what you are saying, but it describes the approach that the character is going to use. “He probably thinks that I am an arrogant and entitled gringo, so I’ll start by playing into that persona. After a minute or two of confirming his worst opinions, though, I’ll drop my tone of voice and ask if he’s had enough of that performance to let him brag to his his friends and compliment a couple of the things he’s got on offer. I’ll make sure that he realizes that I’m not really like that, and was play-acting for his benefit, so that everyone could see he wasn’t a walkover. Then I’ll make an offer on the piece that I want that’s about 80% of the price he’s put on it and see how he reacts.”

In this case, i would happily let the character use an Acting or Bluff skill roll in place of Barter if those had higher scores. He’s trying to set up a situation in which the NPC leans pushes against a door, hard, only to find that it wasn’t locked in the first place; by the time he gets back on his feet, the deal will be done on the terms that the player considers acceptable. This approach burns a moderate amount of spotlight time but not an unreasonable amount.

Another acceptable compromise might be to make an initial in-character opening statement and then switch to third-person direction.

The fastest, but worst possible option is to announce “I have a Barter skill of X” and wait for me to tell them what they need to roll to succeed.

So, with that example as a template, let me unpack that earlier list of caveats.

Some players are less gifted at putting on a role; they have to do it through direction or through using the dice. No shame in that, and the player shouldn’t be penalized for it.

Some roles are more difficult than others. If the personality is a complicated one that’s difficult to convey, failing to do so is not a sin. If the personality is a simple one but the character is not the loquacious type, having him launch into a smooth spiel is actually inappropriate to the character. In neither case, should the player nor character be penalized.

If a player is a used-car salesman or politician or radio announcer in real life, they would naturally have advantages in the ‘acting’ department over someone whose job doesn’t involve public speaking. They should not get a character benefit for being gifted in that department because of their real life.

Players who do make the effort to embody their characters, however, should be rewarded with a roleplaying bonus, because they are contributing to the entertainment of the day’s play. Any of the approaches – full dialogue, full direction, or a compromise between the two – is enough to qualify for such a bonus.

But – and it goes along with the statement ‘not everyone’s an actor’ – there is an elephant in the room. Some people are shy, some are handicapped, and some are simply new to the game or less comfortable with their characters. The standard of expectation needed to qualify for that bonus needs to alter with the ability of the player and their capabilities.

There’s one player I know who struggles with decisions. He has a lot of difficulty making up his mind, sometimes. Present him with a limited number of options, and he’s fine; present him with something as vague as the setup for the example encounter was, and he might not be sure of what he’s going to have his character do, or how, for several minutes. Sometimes, you can give him extra time by moving on to someone else and coming back to him, sometimes you can’t because his choice will shape the options available to others.

For that individual, making an effort to come to a quick decision is just as hard as mapping out that full plan of attack would be for a more decisive person of limited roleplaying experience.

Under this heading, I’ll give a character a bonus if it seems warranted according to their roleplay relative to their natural abilities (or lack thereof) and the roleplaying challenge presented by the combination of that character in that situation. It usually won’t be a big advantage (but exceptional efforts deserve an exceptional reward) but it will be an encouragement.

On the other hand, resorting to a die roll – even to the point of announcing “I’ll Barter with him, I get 63” – that’s probably worth a penalty of -1 or -2 if the player is capable of better. That caveat is important, i think.

5. Player Modifiers

But it’s usually easier to break all of the preceding section into two separate issues: How well was the character interaction roleplayed or described? and What are the player’s abilities in this respect, and how close to their best did their efforts get?

That means awarding a bigger roleplaying bonus and then reducing it if the process of earning it was easy for the player, or maybe even increasing it further if it was hard.

As a general rule, it’s best to avoid judging the people at the game table, but sometimes there’s an elephant in the room.

This picture has been chosen to represent alchemy etc. Image by Kathrin (hollywut) from Pixabay

6. Metagame Modifiers

Ah, now we get to the biggest and probably the most controversial modifier, what’s generally referred to as “the speed of plot”.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the plot demands that a character succeed or fail in a skill check. When that happens, you have two choices: let the plot collapse and improvise, or apply whatever modifier is necessary to ensure the required outcome. And, I should add, it’s not always the PCs who have to succeed or fail – sometimes the villain opposing the PCs can occupy just as critical a position.

I refer to such a modifier as a Metagame Modifier, for obvious reasons. And yes, it does smack of plot trains a bit. The question is, how can this be made fair for the characters?

In service of game balance

Let’s say that when the character makes his die roll, a modifier of -6 (or +6) is needed to achieve the plot-required outcome. Divide this by 2; the character’s next (result) rolls should be at an opposing modifier of +2 (or -2), until the books are balanced. These are also described as Metagame Modifiers.

On top of that, as GM, you go out of your way to do something nice (or nasty) for / to the character. For some inexplicable reason, henchmen overlook the character when it comes to their initial attacks – maybe their coordination isn’t all it should be (or for some reason, they all pick on the character). Or maybe the character gets an in-game reward of some kind, something they will want (even if they don’t know it at the time).

If the net is ±6 or more, then an alternative is to present the character with something that gives a permanent bonus to something they do reasonably frequently, but that isn’t going to be game-breaking. As a rule of thumb, modifier/5 and round down gives the scale of an appropriate permanent compensation. So a -10 to ensure a failure can earn a permanent +2 in something else.

Going in the other direction – a permanent penalty – is more problematic. That tends to create player resentment. A semi-permanent penalty that can be bought off may be acceptable, depending on the genre and style – in particular, the more grit, the more tolerable it will be to have a wound of some sort that is going to impair the character for a while.

Again, in compensation for putting up with that compensation, I will often treat the character a little more gently for a while, even in a gritty campaign. When assigning difficulties, I may say that I’m taking their diminished capabilities into account, when in reality, I’m hand-waving those and letting the character use everything he or she would normally have available to them. Ultimately, the game mechanics should favor the PCs ever so slightly without ever obviously doing so.

Poor design

I want to make it clear that I consider it poor adventure design to end up in this situation in the first place, but we all have lapses from time to time, and the game should not be hostage to your failures as GM, either. And, arguably, if you have made such a design error, this may be the worst possible time to try and improv an alternative route through an adventure that has just run aground.

It should also be absolutely clear that if you can map any route out of the mess that stems from letting the chips fall where they may, you are obligated to take it. When confronted with such a circumstance, I will often call a five-minute break just to give myself some additional thinking time. My players have learned to recognize that they have bested me at such times and that I am scrambling to put humpty-dumpty (the adventure) back together rather than letting everyone’s fun be ruined; this gives them ego-boosting kudos in place of the pleasure they would get from making that die roll (or failing one they should never fail). That substitutes a player victory for a character victory – which is very metagame.

When this happens, it’s useful to actually admit that they have found a weak point in your planning, confirming those kudos and making the others at the table aware of them. Let the player celebrate for those few minutes while you look for a solution to your plot problem.

I would say that at least 19 times in 20, I have found alternatives that permit the character to succeed or fail on the merits, even if the plot itself completely changes shape as a result.

An absolute rule

It must also be emphasized that you should never, ever, describe what you are doing in relation to metagame modifiers to a player. Doing so is a deliberate tweak of the players’ noses and an admission that your adventure couldn’t cope with actual play, and the resulting loss of confidence in your abilities as a GM will only worsen any damage that results.

A broader perspective

With the compensation package in place, these modifiers are not being plucked out of thin air; they can be seen as borrowing advantages or penalties from the future, and repaying that debt.

But this should never be seen as excusing poor adventure design. It’s a failure on your part as a GM and should always be acknowledged as such. Whatever short-term humiliation that you experience will help motivate you to do better in future! This is a last-ditch Hail Mary deus-ex-machina to rescue you from a mess of your own making.



Image by satchuset Raungdessuwon from Pixabay

A better alternative

This alternative approach won’t always be available to you, but when it is, it’s worth considering: at the start of the day’s play, tell the players (all of them) that you have realized that there’s at least one path through the adventure that leads to a critical die roll that the players absolutely cannot be permitted to fail (or to succeed at) or it will derail the plot train that you’ve inadvertently set in motion.

To get around this problem, on every skill check prior to that critical point, characters can – before they roll – choose to ‘stockpile’ advantage or penalty to be applied to the critical roll.

Let’s say that you need +12 to be absolutely certain that the roll will succeed – characters can choose to take -1 or -2 on a prior roll to contribute the matching +1 or +2 to the pool. Or, if it’s a roll that absolutely has to fail, they can take a bonus of +1 or +2 and contribute the matching -1 or -2 to the pool. These adjustments can be made on any roll – an attack, a skill check, whatever.

There are three big benefits to this approach.

First, it makes the compensation a group activity instead of putting the whole burden on the shoulders of one focal character.

Second, because it places the choice of ‘stockpiling’ into the hands of each player, and the amount likewise, it maintains player agency. In effect, they become co-conspirators with you in an effort to wallpaper over the plot failure.

And third, players can scale their contribution according to their confidence in success in the earlier rolls – there’s not a lot of difference between succeeding on 2 or better and succeeding on 4 or better, the odds are still overwhelming that the character will succeed.

But all this will only work if there are enough rolls required between now and then to accumulate all (or most) of the required modifier.

Furthermore, if the only reason a roll fails is because of the stockpiling, I will rule that the character succeeds anyway, but can’t make the intended contribution to the pool.

Luck Pools

It’s a short step from the above concept to the notion of players accumulating a pool of advantage modifiers without a specific purpose in mind, just as a general resource that they all have access to. Such are often called a “Luck Pool”. If it then arises that there is a roll that the adventure can’t afford to have succeed, the GM simply pays into that Luck Pool whatever is needed to achieve that end.

This is an even fairer approach because it means that players can draw as deeply as they want in rolls that really matter to them.

It actually increases player agency overall – not the outcome usually associated with a plot train.

Divine Assistance

There have been times when it’s been more than just the current adventure that’s riding on the outcome – the entire campaign might hinge on the outcome, or the very life of a pivotal character. At such times, and when all else fails, a character may invoke Divine Assistance.

This sets a process in motion in which there is a chance that some passing improbability provides a literal deus-ex-machina escape. There is a 1% chance of this taking place – characters need to roll and get an 01 (it used to be a 00). Any assistance will be of the most humiliating and excruciating form possible, so that there will be absolutely zero temptation to use any leftovers in future adventures.

For example, there’s the time that the team strongman in my superhero campaign, generally known as a ‘brick’ within the genre, found himself inadvertently in a decaying orbit above the earth, with an opposing direction of motion. The earth orbits the sun at a speed of about 67,000 mph, so the two were heading toward each other at 114,000 mph from a height of 32,500 miles – giving him about 14½ minutes to think of a solution. Except that significant atmosphere starts about 6,200 miles up, and the thermal effects of reentry start at about 40 miles up. 6200 is about 20% of 32500, so he actually only had 80% of that 14½ minutes, or 11½ minutes.

A brick is tough, and this one was a lot tougher than most, but unprotected reentry was way outside his capacity, and he knew it.

The diameter of earth is roughly 12,700 km (7900 miles), so to avoid reentry until he could be rescued, he needed to change the angle of his approach by half that plus atmosphere, or 3950+40+510 for safety margin – 4500 miles. Drawing a quick sketch of the situation:



Man, I remember something like this from my HSC – which means nothing to most of you and all too much to the rest. Final exam, three-unit mathematics, year 12 – college for those in the US (I scored 103/150, for what it’s worth).

We need to know c. To get that, we need to know a and α; to find which, we need to know b.

What we do know is that d = 4500, and that a+b also = 4500, because we have defined them that way. It follows that a+b+28000 = 32500. We also know that because angle d-e is 90 degrees (by definition of the geometry), both angles d-c (= α and e – 28000 (= β) are the same. That means that we can set up a couple of simultaneous equations with c in common – solve them, and we have our answer.

I always start trying to solve such problems by listing everything that I know from the geometry, then looking for ways to put them together that get me to the answer.

     a+b = 4500 = d. (1)

     c / (b+28000) = opposite over adjacent = tan (β). (2)

     a / c = opposite / adjacent = tan (α) = tan (β). (3)

     a / d = opposite / hypotenuse = sin (α). (4)

     c / (a + b + 28000) = sin (β) = sin (α). (5)

     d^2 = a^2 + c^2 = 4500^2 = 20,250,000. (6)

     e^2 = c^2 + (b+28000)^2. (7)

I could also do some things with cos (α) and cos (β), but I don’t think I’ll need them, even though tan (α) = sin (α) / cos (α).

So, let’s see…

     c / (a + b + 28000) = sin (β) = sin (α) (5)

seems like a good place to start, since I know that a + b + 28000 = 32500. So that becomes

     c / 32500 = sin (β) = sin (α) (8)

I also know that a+b =d, and that a^2+c^2=d^2. If I put those together:

     a^2 + c^2 = (a+b)^2 = 4500^2 = 20,250,000. (9)

Not sure that’s helpful.

How about the two sin functions? Divide one by the other and see how we go…

     (a / d) / (c / (a + b + 28000) ) = sin(α) / sin(α) = 1 (10)

…so…

     a / d = c / (a + b + 28000) = c / 32500 = a / 4500 (11)

     c = (32500 / 4500) a = 7.2222 a (12)

Hmm, do we have any other relationships between a and d, or a and c? Do we ever – the one that I just dismissed as unhelpful!

     a^2 + c^2 = 20,250,000! (9)

     c^2 = (7.2222 a)^2 (13)

…and if put those together, I get:

     a^2 + (7.2222 a)^2 = 20,250,000 (14)

     53.1605 a^2 = 20,250,000 (15)

     a^2 = 20,250,000 / 53.1605 = 380921.9251 (16)

     a = 617.1887 (17)

     c = 4457.4741 (18)

     c / 32500 = sin(α) = 0.137153 (19)

     α= β= 7.883° (20)

and the pieces have all started falling into place.

This was quite doable by the character, or so I thought. The whole point was that the character had just obtained something that I thought potentially game-unbalancing – well, created it, actually, after much effort and ignoring all GM hints that he shouldn’t be doing this. it was massive enough that if hurled fast enough, the old equal-and-opposite should launch the character to safety, at the expense of the item.

How fast? c / 11.5 is what his movement needed to be, so c / 11.5 × his weight / object weight. From memory, 2000 kg & 4,000,000 kg, respectively – so 0.01938 miles / minute = 11.6282 mph. While there were no rules for determining it, I had no problem believing that this character could throw the object much faster than that.

Backup plan – I like to always ensure that there’s more than one way out of such conundrums – the object was massive enough to serve as a heat shield – though it would be completely ruined in the process. Same answer: character survives, object does not.

Second Backup Plan – the character had created the object by undertaking a “scientific study of sorcery” in an alternate plane of existence. He could consume it for enough arcane energy to teleport himself to safety, compensating for the velocity difference, with a successful spellcasting check. Net result: character survives, object gets confiscated by fate.

So, not at all an insuperable problem.

To my surprise, the player failed to think of any of these despite numerous hints (his character was supposedly a super-scientist/inventor, so the different solutions should have fairly obvious to him). At the last possible minute, I even gave him an INT check (1 chance in about 10 million of failure) – and he flubbed it.

As his costume began to smoke from atmospheric friction, he decided to seek Divine Intervention. Fine, a 1% chance. He rolls an “00” (which is what you needed at the time). And so he was gifted a pretty pink parasol (hot fuchsia, actually), 18 inches in diameter, with purple lace decorative trim and covered in pastel roses in a style suitable for a Victorian lady, something a bit like this one: lace-embroidered-flower-sequins-fold-ultravioletproof-lolita-princess-umbrella. To be seen with it would be an instant challenge to his masculinity.

Oh, and it was virtually indestructible, a perfect heat shield.

As you can see, this example ticks all the divine intervention boxes. With it, the character survived reentry, crashing into the Andes and burying himself several miles deep – in fact, punching a hole deep into the planetary crust and creating a climatic disaster, which another character subsequently cleaned up (at a profit). Oh, and the impact destroyed the offending object on the way….

Boosting the chances of DI, Boosting the price

Depending on the circumstances, I have been known to boost the chances of DI – all the way up to 100%. I have also been known, under other circumstances, to have a Devil (or reasonable facsimile) pop up and offer a Faustian Bargain as the price of their intervention.

Time for a couple more “related article” links.

• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power, and
• Good Storytelling Technique Or Bad? – Chekhov’s Gun and RPGs.

Readers may be uncertain as to the relevance of the last one – but I would suggest that the “Better Alternative” offered above is possibly a deliberate manifestation of a Chekhov’s Gun, which makes this discussion of the literary truism relevant.

The choice of a game of Jenga as the final featured illustration is not accidental, but I’ll leave interpretation to the viewer… Image by Katharina N. (Kathas_Fotos) from Pixabay

Simulations As Die Rolls

Okay, so that’s the six modifiers. Some are small, some are potentially large, and one is defined as “as big as necessary” – but, overall, the average will usually be fairly close to a net neutrality or small modifier one way or another.

I can simulate the probable outcomes by using die rolls to represent each of the six types.

Scale mapped to a roll

I fact, there are two different die rolls that would do the job: (d6-1)-(d6-1), or (d6-1)+d6-6.

I think – let me just double-check:

First: Minimum roll: (1-1)-(6-1)= 0-5 = -5, check.
Maximum roll: (6-1)-(1-1)= 5-0=5. check.
Average roll: (3.5-1)-(3.5-1)=2.5-2.5 =0, check.

Second: Minimum roll: (1-1)+1-6 = 0+1-6 = 1-6 = -5, check.
Maximum roll: (6-1)+6-6 = 5+6-6 = 5, check.
Average roll: (3.5-1)+3.5-6 = 2.5+3.5-6 = 6-6 = 0, check.

The last one is important, because (d6-1)+d6 is something that I can chart using AnyDice, and the -7 can be accommodated just by shifting the scale.

Compounding Six such rolls

To deal with six such rolls, we’re talking about either (6d6-6)-(6d6-6), = 6d6-6d6, or 6d6-6+6d6-36 = 12d6-42.

AnyDice doesn’t show results less than one, so the first one won’t work there, but the second one with an axis shift will do just fine:



Sorry it’s so hard to read. Click on it to get a far more legible version (1668 × 619) in a new tab.

Do Skill Levels Even Matter?

If you average ±1 over six modifiers, that’s ±6. That’s pretty significant – the best magic items only give +5.

Exclude the sixth modifier since it can be of any size necessary, but only when it matters. That’s still ±5.

But if you average ±2 over those five modifiers, that’s plus-or-minus ten.<./em> ±3 gives plus-or-minus fifteen.

If the GM is unfair, any result that he wants is possible, and that’s without counting the wild card that trumps everything else. So you could be forgiven for wondering if skill levels even matter at all?

I would reply to such a question, absolutely, they do. Look, if the GM is going to cheat, he’s going to get his way, regardless of what sophistry and mechanics he wraps around things, but even then, the skill levels signpost what you expect to be able to do, and what you are likely to try and do.

And if the GM is fair, and scrupulous, then – as shown above – the most common 1/6 of results are -3 to +3 over six modifiers, and the most frequent third, -5 to +5. That’s enough to make a difference – but not enough that skill levels don’t matter.

The Bigger Picture

I thought it worth stepping back, as this article rumbles toward a conclusion, and looking for a moment at a few aspects of the bigger picture, as they apply to the considerations voiced herein..

Making It Fun

I’ve seen suggestions in texts elsewhere that it’s not the GM’s job to ensure that the game is fun, because if it wasn’t already fun, people wouldn’t be playing the game.

You’ll get vehement disagreement from me in response. I’ve played in too many games that were not fun – and they didn’t last very long. Conclusion: “Fun” is not something that should be taken for granted.

Simulationism

I’ve seen – even offered, in the past – suggestions that the role of the rules, as modified for genre, campaign, and style, is to simulate an alternate reality in which the events transpiring actually occur.

These days, I’d offer lukewarm disagreement to that proposal.

Simulationism should always be a guiding principle, but I’m perfectly happy to sacrifice it on the reality of Fun For All.

Storytelling

There have been suggestions in different forums that the GM is not responsible for the plot, and should let the desires, intentions, and wishes of the players steer the vessel.

Again, I’ll offer lukewarm-but-vigorous disagreement. There are many hands on the tiller, but the GM is the navigator. His primary function, in a storytelling capacity, is to ensure that adventures are readily accessible – and not just any adventures, but ones that the players are interested in playing.

His secondary function is to ensure the flow of continuity to the desired standard. Without continuity, nothing the PCs do will make the slightest difference in the campaign world; what happens to player agency under such conditions?

The Big Picture

The limit of Authoritarianism is that you have no players. The rules may state that the GM is always right, is the lord and master of his creation, and that is true – and misleading, because the ‘creation’ being referred to is the campaign setting, not the actions that are performed within it. At best, in the latter case, the GM has an equal share of both responsibility and power. Yes, he can pull rank if he feels it necessary – but there’s a limit to how far he can go with that.

Within the scope afforded by the players, all of these factors have one or more essential functions to perform: Consistency. Predictability, Chance and Surprises.

A Game narrative is a shared narrative. Players have dominance over their characters, while the GM provides a context of circumstances, and the context of a broader story. His goal is to tell tale that satisfies the players.

The role of skill checks in achieving these things is of a mechanical interface between the Game Setting and the narrative; the latter will bend this way and that depending on the success of those checks. There are ways that the GM can impose his will on the narrative, within reason, and if the result is justified in terms of fun at the table, and done with balance and responsibility, the players will accept that imposition of control.

The GM is the writer, director, and producer, and part of his job is keeping the stars happy. But that’s not the whole of his job – he also has to coax a coherent narrative out of them in which they can all participate equally.

One way of doing so is to be a rules nazi who forbids absolutely anything not spelt out in black and white in those rules. The players may not like it, but they can at least respect it and know where they stand. It’s better all round if he can unwind and bend a little in the interests of a more satisfying experience.

When that happens, skill rolls matter, and the GM assumes the burden of responsibility for not letting them be hostage to the roll of dice. And that’s the function of modifiers.

Defined Quality Targets – one final wrinkle

Defining a specific quality of result as “the minimum acceptable” reduces the chances of success by 1 but increases the quality of result if you do succeed by the same amount. If this adjustment is the only reason for a failure, the result is something that most would consider acceptable but that does not live up to the standards being imposed by the character, and has to be treated accordingly.

Consider an art forger. He might produce a work that is definitely in the style of a famous painter, but is clearly and recognizably not by him; this is a failure from the forger’s point of view, he needs to be able to pass the work off as genuine. Its very existence poses a risk to him; he has to destroy it, immediately.

Consider a famous artist. He might produce a work that most would consider of salable quality but it would actually harm the artist’s reputation for quality (not to mention his ego) to have it seen. It falls short of the standard he expects of himself. It might be destroyed, or given away, or used to repair a chicken coop.

This approach won’t be universally relevant. But it can simplify and clarify a huge number of otherwise intractably-vague outcomes that are inadequately described by most game systems. It’s just another variable to tuck into your toolkit until you need it. I’m betting that it won’t be very long before you have to decide whether or not to use it!