How Difficulty Class and the D20 engine ruined roleplaying

The D20 engine didn't change roleplaying for the worse. If anything, having a universal system opened TTRPG to people who might have otherwise avoided giving it a shot.

If you're a DM and you let players steamroll you by demanding rolls for everything, that's on you. If YOU are calling for rolls for everything from (in the author's example) tying knots to (in mine) kissing your partner, that's on you. Assuming that you NEED rolls for everything is the issue, not the system.

Mechanics have always been meant to resolve critical conflict, add tension to situations. A commoner should be able to untie a basic knot without issue... but can they do it quickly while a pack of angry gnolls are bearing down on them?

THAT is where DC checks are handy.

I don't agree with the overall view there.

The example the blog gives is: "I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner." The mistake in the reasoning is assuming the GM must call for a roll.

From my point of view, players don't call for rolls, the GM does. Players just say what they are trying to do. While the GM can call for a roll in a situation, they don't have to. Something might just succeed or not. What if the barkeep likes gossiping with anyone who walks in the door, no matter how persuasive the other person is?

It's also odd that they state in the d20 version of the example "the roleplaying doesn't actually affect the outcome" right after suggesting the GM give a +2 modifier to the roll for the roleplaying.

How the fuck are my players doing all of this roleplaying then ??? Sorcery I tell you !

Nah

Proper shit assumptions here, the writer is doing the exact opposite of the D&D nerds who pick up pbta and say "well how am I supposed to do anything?"

Probably most egregious though is how they're arguing against them self: they claim that the mechanic driven exchange isn't influenced by the roleplay, but had the DM give an explicit bonus for their roleplay. Likewise, they think the means to roll mean you have to roll, and presumably hasn't understood commoner's get Use Rope as a class skill, which is what the "who should be able to complete a task" is based on.

Balh blah "Other people are having fun wrong!"

I can only hope that this blog post was satire.

It's certainly a good opinion piece that makes you think about the underlying state of the game and the inner workings of any D20 game.

I don't agree with most of the assumptions, though. For example, the author says that, in previous editions, you could enter a tavern, roleplay your best interaction, and have the DM decide if your roleplay was good enough to make a good impression on the barkeep.
The author then compares that to modern day DnD, where the player would be required to roleplay their interaction, and then roll the die to determine if they make a good impression, taking in account the roleplay to decide whether they gain some form of advantage or bonus on the roll.

Somehow, the author decides that the first scenario is much better, because it incentivizes roleplay, while the latter uses the d20 roll to determine the success of the action, and the roleplay is only used for flavour (or, as they put it, to "gatekeep" the ability to roll a d20 behind the necessity to roleplay).

Needless to say, I wholeheartedly disagree with the above assumption, for a multitude of reasons.
In the first scenario, there's no rule to determine whether or not the player has succeeded on the attempt, so the DM is forced to come up with a decision on the spot, which the player may not agree with. On the one hand, this makes the DM responsible for everything that can or cannot happen at the table, without any outside help to assist them in their decision, which is kind of overwhelming for beginners; on the other hand, it robs the player of the ability to shape the world around them, as they have no way to reliably doing so without asking their DM. It turns the entire game into the so-called "mother-may-I" game that lots of people despise.

Additionally, without dice rolls involved, suddenly you are not able to roleplay whatever you want anymore. You can only roleplay within your abilities. I bet no DnD player in existence would be able to fight off a dragon with their sword, or cast spells with a piece of wood, but the game allows them to roll for it. Yet I am not allowed to give a good impression on people, just because I frequently stutter in real life?
The game is make-believe. I describe what I want to do; When I roll, the outcome decides how well my character does what I'm trying to accomplish. I shouldn't be required to be charismatic in real life to play a good bard in the game. I love good roleplay at my table, but I'd never gatekeep character archetypes just because the player is shy in real life. Otherwise I'd have to stop the barbarian mid-fight and ask them to punch the wall, and then decide if the strength of their punch is enough to convince me that their character is able to fight off the orc. That's stupid.

Despite this, I agree with some of the shortcomings of the D20 system as underlined by the author of the article. First of all, the linear distribution of outcomes is too restrictive, and makes skill checks way too swingy. A trained burglar shouldn't fail a lockpicking check 5% of the time, for example, and frail characters should not have 5% success rate on powerlifting checks. On top of that, the linear distribution of difficulty levels (DC10, 15, 20, etc...) makes for very arbitrary stop-gaps.
A bell curve, achieved by rolling multiple dice at the same time, would solve this issue, making the middle outcomes more frequent and the extremes (1, 20) much rarer.

I also agree that skill checks are sometimes called for way too frequently. The thief should not roll to lockpick that simple padlock at all; players should not be able to call for an Insight check to discern if a person that they don't know and have never met or talked to in their life is lying to them; the bard should not roll to intimidate the bugbear unless they give me convincing reasons to do so through their roleplay.
I feel like the D20 system as currently implemented is trying too hard to simplify things by assigning arbitrary "difficulty levels" to everything, and making players randomly roll one D20 whenever they feel like. DMs should try to find some balance between the roleplay aspect of the roleplaying game, and the mechanical benefits of having precise numbers and skills that decide the outcome of the players' actions.

In a way, this is not a shortcoming of the D20 system per se, but inexperienced DMs that don't know when to call for a roll, and how to determine failure and success.
An expert thief rolling 1 to lockpick a simple lock, for example, is not unable to accomplish their task; Maybe they just take a few minutes instead of seconds. The DM could say that the cold is stiffening their fingers, that the lockpick unexpectedly breaks, or that the lock is very old and rusty and it jammed, requiring a bit more time to unlock. These are all flavourful descriptions that take into account the roll to decide the outcome of the player's actions, without robbing them of agency by hiding basic actions that their character should be able to accomplish while blindfolded behind a neutral roll that has 1 in 20 chances of failing them.

This article is so full of strawmans that that the DC to find a needle inside is your mother's circumference

The author may have a good point--though I'm honestly not entirely sure they do--, but even if the D20 vs DC turns the experience into a gamist simulation, what is exactly the problem? Personally, I'd rather play a game of dice than "mother may I" with the DM.

I've been playing since 2e, and I very much enjoy the mechanical aspect of the game, to the point that I grew tired of 5e lax and vague rules and moved to PF. That doesn't mean 5e is bad, it's just something different from what I want, and that is ok.

As someone who is new to ttrpg this made my head explode but i see where the author is coming from. From my little experience i gotta say the roleplaying experience is really in the hands of the dm and the group of players. Not sure one could make rules to ensure these two "factors" are optimal 😉. I also feel like a dm can gauge himself how many rolls they accept. I had my dm step in when people were overeager to throw d20's. D20 seems like a neat tool for scenarios the dm did not expect at all but is willing to see if luck opens something up. I am willing to be schooled on my newb-thoughts.

In short - the d20 mechanic enables you to resolve everything. If everything you encounter becomes something you can interact with mechanically and assign a DC to, a widget, then you are no longer actually roleplaying in a fictious world. You are just interacting with the mechanics of a game with a thin veneer of fiction layered on top.

This is true iff you think that having the ability to interact with mechanically means you must interact with it mechanically.

I've played coherent games with flexible, (almost) universally-applicable core mechanisms since the 1980s. This is not a thing that is new to D20. D&D3 didn't invent having coherent, flexible, universally-applicable core mechanisms. Weirdly enough we didn't at any point devolve into just interacting with the mechanics of a game because, well, we understood what the point of the game was and just appreciated having a way to adjudicate things neutrally when we needed it.

So first error: assuming that because you can adjudicate almost everything with dice you must.

Old School: "I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner."

DM considers the scene and factors in the fighter's 14 charisma and decides that a good impression is made.

Now let me strip the rose glasses from this and give other alternative outcomes that I have actually seen in those sainted "Aulde Skhoole" days:

• DM considers the scene and factors in that the player took the last slice of pizza and gets churlish. Bad impression is made on NPC.
• New DM freezes as something he didn't prepare for happens and spends a half-hour flipping desperately back and forth between the PH and the DMG to find out what to do next.
• DM makes up a reaction mechanism on the spot without thinking it through, throws 2d6, has them come up snake-eyes and decides the barkeep goes berserk and tries to murder the PC.

And so on. Because, get this, DMs are human too and sometimes have brain farts where ideas belong and stupid things happen. Having rules that offer guidelines, even if you don't actually roll for a situation (more on this later), can lessen those brain farts and increase reasonable outcomes.

D20: "I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner. Actually a Persuasion roll. I roll 12, +2 from Charisma and +2 from Proficiency, so 16."

The DM gives another +2 for the handsome tip and decides 18 is good enough to make a good impression.

I have, as I've said, been playing with (non-D&D) systems that have consistent, universal game mechanisms since the 1980s. I have never, not even once had any but the newest, greenest, most inexperienced players of any game do what he says is normal here. (And new, green, inexperienced players do stupid things in any system, OSR or modern!)

Here's a more common outcome in my experience. (YMMV naturally, and if it does, I'm so sorry you have terrible fellow players surrounding you!)

Player: "I flash the barkeep my best smile, order a cup of ale and pay with a handsome tip and try to get him talking about the local rumours in a chatty friendly manner."

GM: ...

OK, let's break down the GM actions by things I have seen once again.

• GM checks the player's stats and skills, realizes that on a Persuasion roll he'll succeed about 80% of the time anyway on a stressful task and, since this isn't a stressful task, and since the barkeep earns money by literally being friends with as many people as possible, decides the barkeep reacts well and is open to talk.
• GM insists on some actual in-character interaction and notes that the PC says something that is taboo in town. Asks for a skill role on local lore and, with its failure, decides that the gaffe happens and the barkeep clams up.
• GM insists on some actual in-character interaction and notes that the PC says something that is taboo in town. Asks for a skill role on local lore and, with its success, sidebars the player and lets him know and gives him a chance to undo the action. As a result the barkeep is friendly and aids.

And, naturally, if it turns out that this situation is critical for some reason, I've also seen:

• GM asks for a Persuasion roll against a target number.

See how in the first case that's almost identical to the so-called "Old School" case, and how in that first case having all the tools to do the roll helped make the decision without, you know, the actual roll? See how in the second and third the ability to do task rolls on anything gets some nuance in the RP, even though the actual persuasion attempt wasn't rolled out?

See how, in a case where it might be needed, the persuasion attempt could actually be rolled out in a way that is understood by everybody around the table instead of some poorly-thought-out ad-hoc thing?

So just to repeat this theme here: the fact that you can roll for almost any situation doesn't mean you should or will.

And I think any sane person who has read to the end would now agree that the d20 mechanic should die in a fire. It was an interesting experiment. Maybe we are all better off for having tried it. But we are not better off for persisting with it.

I guess I'm insane, because having read to the end the only thing that I think needs to die in a fire is OSR grognards who denigrate other styles of play. Who preach BadWrongFun™ because people are having fun with something other than the games they wear such deeply rose-tinted glasses for.

It seems the main complaint that the author has is resolved by playing different systems - if you don't want mechanical crunch and gamey die-rolling there are plenty of less die-focused games! Also don't mix roll-high for some rolls and roll-low for others, that's just confusing.

Interesting read though, just because you don't agree with their conclusions doesn't mean there aren't some good takes you can consider when running your own games.

Different GMs can handle the same system completely differently, even the same GM playing the same system but using different a adventure/modules might run the game differently. While one GM might have you roll dice just to cross the street, another won’t roll a single die for hours on end.

If anything, the biggest issue I’ve had with D20/D&D is how it seems to incentivize combat over most everything else, but that’s kind of what the system is for. Though that complaint is like trying to use a hammer for a screwdriver and then complaining that it doesn’t work that well on screws, from the beginning it was really made with one thing in mind, combat.

It may be that the system is too dependent on the GM to make things work and that it’s experience system pushes the players towards murder hoboing (XP-based) or just mild apathy (milestone). Just saying “These are all issues that can be fixed with a good GM,” kind of reinforces the point that the system is too dependent on the GM for people to have a good time. How it fixes that though, I’m not really certain.

Feels like a post written by someone who's only really played D&D and close relatives.

It is helpful to have a shared understanding of the world and how difficult things are. In real life I can look at a fence and judge if I think I can scale it. In some RPGs, I can't. Typically bad things happen when the DM's imagination diverges from the players'. Having consistent rules can help keep things unified.

Also, as others have said, don't roll for things that aren't interesting.

D&D and most of its relatives are lacking fail-forward and good succeed-at-cost mechanics.

Also 1d20+stuff means every result is equally likely. You're just as likely to roll a 1 as a 10 as a 20. I think that kind of sucks, and that's a bigger gripe I have with the popularity of 1d20 mechanics.

@copacetic DnD is not the same as RPGs. The kind of mechanic was there long before DnD3. And only a few years later, we got Forge games that had radically different takes on resolution.

The interesting thing is that this was posted 14 hours now and the user haven't posted any comments but Ukraine and Russia war ones 2 days ago.

Why am I getting the urge to post the "old man shouts at clouds" thing?

seems kinda...nonsensical. don't get me wrong, i prefer other systems, but they don't really identify actual issues. first and foremost, the system absolutely needs to be able to resolve anything that happens in the world because the dm doesn't need to take into account the millions of factors that will be influencing a seemingly simple interaction. the whole spiel about rolling under ability scores? adds absolutely nothing imo, if anything it takes away from roleplaying by giving you a set number to always be working with. a simple "this seems easy" or "this would be difficult in even ideal circumstances" or "the vampire is dancing around even in thick plate armor" and the like is all a player needs when questioning the difficulty of rolls. the only example i've been in where knowing a hard number for difficulty doesn't seem to detract is when you have already committed to a spell in mage the ascension, because you might need to make a lot of rolls and get a lot of successes (i had to get 10+ successes with a dice pool of 4 once to do something awesome in the traditional meaning of the word) and it's just annoying asking the dm every single time you get a success if it goes off.

Absolutely baffled by all the comments on that blog that are agreeing with that post. They've really honed in on their audience. Or they're wasting a lot of time on alt accounts