Listen to this episode here.
For the two year anniversary of Dice Exploder, my first ever cohost Ray Chou returns for what starts off as a brand new episode about Stoneburner by Fari RPGs and that game’s oracle mechanic: a way to use dice, random tables, and the careful framing of stakes to adapt the game for solo play.
But at some point the conversation morphs into a deserving sequel episode to our first go around on rolling the dice in idie rpgs more broadly. When do you roll dice? Are partial successes good? And how does all of this change for solo and GM-less play? We didn’t ask all these questions last time, and we didn’t have great answers to the ones we did. So let’s check in on the state of rolling the dice!
Further Reading
Stoneburner by Fari RPGs
Apocalypse World by Meguey and Vincent Baker
Blades in the Dark by John Harper
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Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take one mechanic and check in with it like an old friend. We haven't called up in a while. My name is Sam Dun Walt, and my co-host today is Ray Chou.
He's back. Ray is one of the co-founders of Myth Works, publisher of games like Slug Blaster and The Wild Sea, and he first joined me just over two years ago for the very first episode of this show. Back then we talked about lasers and feelings, the iconic one page RPG from John Harper, and specifically rolling the dice, not just how it works in that game, but across all games that we play in this weird hobby of ours. When does it make sense to roll dice?
And today Ray joins us for what starts off as a brand new episode about Stoneburner by Fari RPGs and that game's Oracle mechanic. A way to use dice random tables and the careful framing of stakes to adapt what is usually a gMed game for solo play. But at some point, the conversation morphs into a deserving sequel episode about our first go around and rolling the dice in in d RPGs more broadly. Like when do you roll dice? Are partial successes good? And how does all this change for solo play and GM list play.
We didn't ask all these questions last time, and I'm not sure we had good answers for the ones that we did. So let's check in on the state of rolling the dice.
Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon, and here is Rachel Chou with stoneburner's Oracle Resolution System and rolling the dice.
Sam: Ray Chou, welcome back to Dice Exploder,
Ray: Thank you for having me, Sam. It feels good to be back.
Sam: So what are we talking about today?
Ray: today? We are talking about the question oracle from Stoneburner by René-Pier Deshaies, and I'm sorry if I butcher that name. But Renee Pierre is a fabulous designer and stoneburner is a really, really cool system with an open license that has a ton, a ton of hacks to it, but specifically there's a lot of really, really cool, what I think is, is next gen tech in the indie scene. And part of that is the Oracle questions which actually I think is an adaptation of an older system from a mythic emulator. There.
Sam: There's like three different threads I wanna pick up on there and like, let's start all the way at the back. So like, tell me about what Stoneburner is like on a flavor level and when it was published.
Ray: Yeah, stone Birder is essentially Deep Rock Galactic, the TT RPG. So you play as a space dwarf going out into various asteroids and other kinds of dangerous places, looking for treasure, looking for loo. And you essentially go and you build your community. It uses a system called Breathless, which is a step die system.
So essentially you roll. And each time you roll, whatever skill that you roll, it steps down to a lower dice. So if, for instance, your strength is a D eight to begin with, if you roll, regardless if you succeed or not, you go down to a D six. So your odds increase of not succeeding or succeeding with complications.
And that's meant to simulate the kind of survival horror aspect of it, or dwindling resources. And yeah, pretty cool. There's all sorts of stuff in the game. Besides the core system, there's also a community building aspect to the game, and there's also this Oracle system that is part of a trio of mechanics that supports solo play in a really, really robust way.
In a way, sorry,
Sam: getting so far ahead of me, man. Like I got, I wanna, I wanna do more context first. So like so stone burner. Cool. your dwarfs. You're doing mining stuff. we got the Step Die core resolution mechanic system. We're gonna get into the Oracle thing in a second, but you also mentioned that there are a ton of hacks of this game, and I'm curious to set up like what that looks like.
Like what, what is the community around that? Because this is not the first I've heard of Stoneburner, but it is the first I've like really took a good look at it was prepping for this episode.
Ray: Yeah, so there's, so breathless is a. Maybe 500 word game. It's, it's a, it's a single page game that, that is essentially a zombie survival game. It's super simple, super stripped down, and that core system has a bunch of ver different horror hacks on it. So, you know, like Friday, the 13th, the hack I don't know, some sort of like alien invasion hack and, and it's so easy to, to write.
It's essentially like writing lasers and feelings. It's, it's at, at that level. Of hack. So super accessible, super, super easy for, for people to get in there and just change a couple of things and have a fully flesh system to, to run whatever game they have. And, and, and it has a pretty unique mechanic too.
I think that like steps dice really does something that I haven't seen done in other role playing
games before.
Sam: Yeah, you see it in like Elf game, OSR, kinda like inventory systems sometimes is like a place I've seen it happen where, you know, you kind of like roll to find out like how much gold you have. Like do you have the money? Okay. And then you spend something, okay, your step die comes down or whatever.
Or like, it's ammunition you'll sometimes see, right? Like you roll a D eight and every time you fire an arrow, you roll a D eight. And if you roll a one, now you have a D six of arrows left. And like, that's how you're tracking ammunition. I think it's like an interesting way to do that kind of inventory thing, but also like inventory things are inherently kind of uninteresting to me and so it's like a lot of business for something that I'm like not particularly interested in myself.
And seeing it taken from that context into this context where it's the core resolution mechanic is much more interesting to me because, like you were saying earlier, like it, it feels like it hits that survival, horror thing of your slowly running out of luck and resources really well.
Ray: Totally. And, and there's a couple of I guess skews, for lack of a better word for it. So breathless is the core system. There's stoneburner, which adds, you know, like robust community play, like I mentioned, but also position and effect in, in a kind of interesting way. There's also a another fork.
forget the main game, but I played a hack slash full, fully developed game based off of that, that license system called Substratum Protocol by Pandion Games. And that is essentially a journey to the center of the earth. But the center of the earth has a anomaly, like a triangle, anomaly slash kaul esque horror, which is kind of cool.
And that one uses cards too. So, you roll dice, but then you, you also draw cards. And the cards set the difficulty level. And if you, if you succeed it, you keep the cards as inventory that you can then use for other things in the game, which is kind of a neat twist.
Sam: Yeah, sure. That's kind of neat. Okay, so we've got this core resolution mechanic. We've got this like core system. And how does this oracle fit into this then? Like, tell me about the Oracle. Tell me about the main mechanic we're here to talk about today.
Ray: Yeah, so I'm just gonna read the actual mechanic. So it says, the Question Oracle allows you to disclaim decision making on a particular question. When using the Oracle envision the scene and how your character is acting or being acted upon within it. Then ask a yes or no question imagining the potential outcome. To get your answer, roll a dye based on the odds of it being positive, and it has a value here. So it goes from very unlikely, which is a D four to almost certain, which is a D 12. And then you interpret the result on a one to two, the answer is no. And on a three to four the answer is yes, but, and on a five plus, the answer is a yes, and, and that is essentially the entire mechanic.
Sam: Yeah, and so this is very similar to a like classic powered by the apocalypse style, like full success, partial success, failure, kind of spread of options, but it's phrased very differently. And it's also being you're pulling this out and using it in a really different context than a kind of standard ability check, right? Because the game has a core resolution mechanic that feels a lot like a standard ability check. Do I have all that right?
Ray: Yeah, it does. So, you know, it has the core mechanic, and I think specifically this question Oracle is designed for solo play, which is a really interesting space, I think, because it's very popular right now. There's lots and lots of games that are coming out that there solo only games, which I think I've heard you talk about on the show with, with other guests.
But there are a lot of more trad games, for lack of a better word, with, a gm that say that they support. Solo play, but kind of do it in a like loosey goosey way. And in my opinion, don't really support what you need to fully play as a solo player or, or writer or whatever it is that you do when you play solo.
And I think that this question, Oracle is a huge component of being able to truly play solo. and I think the core consideration for me in that is, okay, when do I disclaim decision making and how do I generate new content basically?
Sam: Yeah. Yeah, so this is primarily a tool for solo play you're saying?
Ray: yes. I
Sam: But I feel like you could also use this in the kind of like risk roll situation that a Blades in the Dark would call for. Like in, in that game there, sometimes you're like GM ing and you're just like, I don't know. Do I think Lord Stratford like, will it figure it out that you're onto him by now? Like, I guess I should roll dice and like find out. And I'm gonna just like, make a fortune roll and figure it out. And it feels like in the same way you could do that here as a GM of like, at, sometimes you're like, I don't know, I don't know what the answer to that is gonna be. I'm gonna roll so dice to help me figure it out. And that.
Then once you're in a solo play mode, you like really need that all the time because you don't have the sort of randomness the new story infusions that you get from other players at the table, right?
Ray: Totally. Yeah, I mean, that's a great point that it can be used as a better version, in my opinion, of a fortune role because it, it gives you more interesting outcomes. And definitely in solo play. It it, because solo play is kind of this weird thing, right? Where you're kind of feeling out the room as well as trying to interact with it at the same time.
So it's like, it's sometimes difficult to. just figure out what is actually going on. So you need a really, really easy way to be like, well, I don't know. Let me defer to the rule mechanics.
And I think that's why that this particular mechanic is framed as a yes or no question. And I do think that binary of yes or no is really, really important to the way that it functions.
Sam: so why do you say that? Say more.
Ray: it kind of goes back to the thing I, said in that first Dice Explorer episode we did where, it kind of comes down to like the, the first decision that you can make is, is always this kind of bicameral thing, right? It's like yes or no is one way of splitting it. It's like, is it there or is it not? And by forcing players to frame it as a yes or no question, you're essentially you're making a lot of this. Decision making for them. Basically you're, you're doing a lot of the cognitive load because then it's now open-ended.
It's simply a matter of Yes. No, and then you have the, and, but, and to add onto it, which, which allows for the constraint that I. Hopefully is enough to generate something interesting. Like in the way PBTA reintroduced with mixed complications that Blades in the Dark uses. And then if it's not enough, if the yes and no, but no, and is too difficult, which, which also I'm hearing a lot these days. It seems to be sort of a trend where people are fatigued by the complexities of a mixed complication. There are a lot of uh, I know that's a huge Meguey, right? huge huge topic.
Sam: like Finish your thought here. Finish your thought
Ray: Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
Sam: I'm, I'm trying, I'm desperately like typing down all the things I wanna follow up on, but
Ray: Yeah. Yeah. So uh, so if it's still too much, there are a lot of other mechanics that are in breathless that are designed to, to work in conjunction with this question, Oracle. One of them is called a world spark. And essentially the world spark is two separate D 66 tables. The first D 66 table is a list of themes. And the second D 66 table is essentially used with MPCs and is a list of verbs in past, present, and future tense that you can use to sort of inspire what may happen.
So for instance, you have retrieved retrieving retrieve on there. On the theme table, you have something like equality, deception, or legacy. So the idea is like if you're yes and no budding, and you're like, oh, I don't know what to come up with, well let me, let me roll a theme and maybe that'll help me. Or maybe let me roll a verb and maybe that'll help me.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. So I want to go back and like continue to provide a bunch of like historical and cultural context around all these pieces that we've put on the table here, right? So we've got the game itself and the cool step, die resolution mechanic core thing that's going on. We've got this Oracle thing that you're talking about that originally like I think Iron sworn is the real originator of using this kind of oracle for solo play.
Iron sworn is this like big fan sort of standard fantasy RPG that has become really famous, I think for its tools for solo play in exactly the kind of way that we're describing and it has a oracle that works very similar to this, but only has that binary yes or no option, right? So when you're unsure what should happen, you roll some dice it either gives you a yes or a no, and then it also has these sparks tables that are sort of flavorful setting little details that you can roll on to add in to help with your answer, just as you were describing.
Ray: So this is, this is where I do the, actually, Sam. So actually I do believe that both Iron Swarm and Stone Burner, this game, get it from mythic Game Master Emulator, which is a rule supplement that allows you to emulate a game master that came out, I wanna say like early two thousands. If you look at the, the layout of the first edition, it's pretty old school. It's, pretty drive through RPG for lack of a better world. So, sorry, drive through RPG. Don't, don't tell me I love you,
Sam: Yeah, so then the other piece of sort of historical gaming lineage I wanted to put out here is that, that like, yes and yes, but no and no but kind of system, and this doesn't use no, but, but I think no, but is a really interesting outcome here that could be included in the mix for this kind of oracle where you have like, no, it doesn't happen, but something else kind of nice happens for you, or something like that.
But that. To my understanding comes from a game called Archipelago three, which is a GM list game that it's written to do like Earth, sea, like fantasy, wandering, an archipelago kind of thing. That's the name. But it's really setting in system agnostic. You can do whatever the hell you want with it.
And the way that game works, it's GM less and it has these really interesting ritual phrases in it, like the one in question here is just, that's not so easy. And at any time when we're just sort of in the conversation doing the role playing game, someone can say, ah, I don't think, I think that's not so easy. And then you draw a card from a fortune deck that just has in it yes and, yes but, no and, a no but. And maybe a couple other options too, and.
Then that's the result that you get and you like incorporate that into the fiction in a very similar way to the thing that's being described here. And so I find it really interesting that like that part of this mechanic is coming from a GM less group experience and being adapted for a solo experience here in a way that I think is very effective and also sort of speaks to the way that using this kind of oracle in a group GM list game is filling a really similar role, right, of like needing some sort of authority figure, not authority figure, but some sort of, yeah, authority to appeal to, to say what's going to happen next.
And like when you take away the central authority of a game master, like bringing in chance and a rule book to help you with that is really effective and really helpful I think.
Ray: Yeah, it's permission, right? It's like permission to create, to story tell. But, but just that little bit of prompting you know, just the, and the, but gives you so much, or at least it, it, it eliminates so much. So you're like, oh, okay. Like, let me just come up with the ends or the, but et cetera, et cetera.
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Okay. I want to go in on a tangent that you brought up in there, which is this partial success thing. So you were touching on it, but let's reframe it again. Like I agree with you. I have been seeing a larger and larger part of the community, like talking about the difficulties people have with the open-ended partial success kind of mechanic.
Like, let's take Blades in the Dark, right? You roll some dice, you take the highest eye, and then it either tells you, you got a full success, you've got a partial success, or you've got a failure.
let's start from that example. tell me as you understand it, what are people having trouble with?
Ray: well, is a double-edged sword, at least for me, because the whole idea of, of mixed successes. You do it with a complication. That was the breakthrough moment for me when I read Blades and I didn't read PBTA before that or Poly World. And when I read that mechanic, I, I, I realized, I was like, oh, wow, this is brilliant, right?
It takes the, the prep away from the game and it makes it more improvisational, but that prep still has to go somewhere. Right? That work has to go somewhere. And instead of it going into the GM before the session, it goes into the GM a lot of times during the session or, or the play table, depending on the culture. And there's a lot that can ha happen with you do it with, with a success.
And I think what, what I feel a lot of times, or what I'm thinking a lot about in TT RPGs is the veil, the, the illusion, the suspension of disbelief because at the end of the day. Why are we playing these games, right? Like, why do we have a system in the first place?
why are we playing this game versus that game? Why aren't we just making stuff up? And because we think that the, the system matters. Because we think that these things that we're interacting with, whether it's like HP or DC or your attributes, your special abilities, whatever, they matter. And we care about what's written down in front of us on our character sheets and we want to collect things. We want to collect loo.
But it's, it's all a little bit of a, of an illusion because we're, we're not playing a game that has a wind condition of any sort. These are storytelling games. These are, these are games that don't have that, that are open-ended. But we assign weight to these systems, these rules.
But sometimes, and, and I'm sure you've experienced this, I've definitely experienced this. You get to a point where you're, you're rolling dice and you're kind of like. Why are we doing this? Like why, like why, like why, why? Like, we're just kinda rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice. It kind of pierces the veil a little bit.
Sam: Okay, so there's a couple of things I wanna cut in here with. 'cause I basically agree the thing that I am seeing people struggling with is that like open-endedness for the GM in that moment of like, okay, we've rolled our partial success. Now what? I don't know, and I wanna talk about a couple of examples first of games that I think are doing this well of like, of modifying this to handle it well, and we'll get to how Stoneburner, I think is one of those games in a second.
But first of all is Apocalypse World. I think Apocalypse World handles this really well In almost every apocalypse world move, that mixed success is giving you really specific ideas of what happens. Like it is telling you pick from this list of like four terrible things that might happen to you. And like some of 'em won't always be relevant, so you just pick a different one. And so when you have that specificity baked into the rules itself and you're just picking from a list of options, that makes this process easy. In a way we're coming up with something whole cloth does not.
And the second is I think Blades in the Dark Deep Cuts did a really good job reframing how to think about rolls in a way that helps with this a lot too. And so the way it reframed roles was like instead of coming in and being like, can you accomplish this thing? It says, instead of an action role, we're gonna have a threat role. And I want you to say upfront like what is the threat? What is the thing that is going to happen to you if you don't avoid it?
Like, you can basically always do the thing, right? Right. Like you're a competent, you're a good person. You can always do the thing. The, the question at hand is, can you avoid the trouble? And once you get to a partial success there, it becomes much easier because you have this focus of what is the danger I was trying to avoid? And the partial success is either like, ah, it sort of nips at my heels, like three of us are able to get away, but one of us is not. Or, you know, whatever the thing is. Or it can be like, what is the thing that you give up in order to avoid the trouble?
I, it just, it's very helpful to like have that, that focus. Of trouble to build a partial success or partial avoidance of the threat around.
And that is, I think then what makes Stoneburner really effective here too, is that framing of that yes or no question up top makes it so that you have something to build that partial success around. It's yes, but it's not just like, okay, what happens now?
It's not quite a yes. And that, that framing's really helpful.
Ray: Yes. And even in the core mechanic for stone burners, so the core mechanic, there is a, a mixed success. On the three of four you succeed, but there is a minor complication, but also on a one to two, on a failure role, you fail or succeed with a major complication. And uh, when I first read that, I was like, that's weird.
Is, is that right? That seems, seems very, very strange. But in play coming up with a major co complication, when it's anchored to a failure, almost seems easier, right? Like it's, it's that kind of bargaining thing.
Another great example is uh, Acosta's. Exile, I think has similar mechanics similar to deep cuts where it has like the trade off, right, where you can almost always succeed, but then it becomes about layering on the complications or, or constraining those complications and discussing really what's at stake more. It frame frames the conversation to what's at stake.
And I think that's a very, very. Powerful paradigm shift because the broad problem with, you succeed, but with the complication is there's nothing constraining that. So it can be anything, it can be as big as like, oh, you know, I, I have a fatal injury to, oh, you slipped and fell on a banana peel. Right? Or, which oftentimes kind of becomes the case when the table is, mentally tired and, and can't seem to come up with something good.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, I think this goes a lot back to the thing you were saying about sometimes you're just rolling dice to roll dice and like throw 'em around a little bit. And you know, on our first episode of this show, we talked about how just rolling the dice is like fun. You can just go clickety clack and like, that's great, you know?
But also. this is another thing that I feel like I have been thinking about a lot in the past couple of years is like, and, and you can hear me really wrestling with it in our very first episode, like I ask in that like, I wish there were better guidelines on when you are supposed to roll dice.
Like when are you supposed to roll dice? And I've seen some really interesting theory that has probably been around forever, but I specifically read this post called What Dice Do by Graham Wamsley that is about like what dice do in role playing games and like kind of sets up like don't roll dice unless all outcomes from them are gonna be interesting, not just whenever you feel like it, because that's where you really run into problems with the partial success is it's like what was at stake at this role? We don't even know.
And so now what like. Success means we're like moving on with our lives. And failure means like, ah, I guess the, you're whatever. We're a little sad now, but like the partial success, it's like, what does that even mean? And the thing that the threat role in deep cuts or the way it works in exiles right, is you can, you're basically negotiating yes, you can do it, but this is gonna be the cost before you ever pick up the dice. Like that whole conversation means that everyone really understands like, what is this roll? What is this moment going to be about before we pick up the dice? And then resolving the role is so much easier.
Ray: Yeah. And that image is kind of coming to my head of like, back in the day with Dungeons and Dragons, right? The only time Uh, you really roll dices during combat. So it's, it's almost like if we, if we map it to, to a video game, it's like, okay you press X to attack. Right? But like.
Recently, especially with the type of games that we like and we talk about on, on the show, it's almost like a QuickTime cut scene, right? It's like, okay, you're pressing X in this specific moment. and that can be really, really fun and cinematic. But, but I think you're right.
Where When you're not sure when to do it, when you're just kind of pushing the button randomly. It, it's really tough. And the commonality does seem to be defining the stakes beforehand.
Which has always been a feature of Blades, right? I mean, I think in the GM's advisor or somewhere, John writes like, oh, okay, it's, it's good to discuss what could possibly happen, which he later really codified in deep cuts.
And I, Think that that is really, really good and, and maybe even feeds into like, okay, what is position in effect, right? Like, the whole reason we have those rules in place is just so everyone's on the same page, right? That like, we're not, going off the walls with the fiction.
I'm not sure if that answers your question or, or gives you any clarity as to like, when you do wanna roll dice. but I feel you. I mean uh, it's like the, uh. I don't know the passion of Ray, I guess, or like, sometimes I'm like, yeah, let's just roll some dice. And other times I'm like, why are we rolling dice? Right? Like it's, it's, there's always this like, this weird thread that we're trying to, to achieve when we're playing roleplaying games, where, I don't know, it seems like it, it is always constantly changing based off of like how we're feeling, who's at the table, and so on and so forth.
Sam: yeah, sorry for anyone listening at home, it sounds like my neighbor just started playing a lot of music, but you'll live, Another thing in this that I wanted to talk about I recently played this little mini campaign of primetime adventures, which is this old game. You can hear an episode with me and Maa Baker talking about it last year. And a big part of that game is it's using cards instead of dice as a resolution mechanic. But so before, every time you draw cards, you sit down and you set the stakes for the role.
Like everyone who's involved in the flipping of cards has to say like, this is, what is at stake for me and my character in this moment? Like, am I going to succeed in trapping the vampire? Am I going to succeed at convincing this guy that he loves me? Am I going to succeed at not embarrassing myself?
And. Those stakes are sometimes external. Like, am I gonna catch the vampire? And sometimes internal, like, am I going to resist the call of drinking blood and turning into a vampire myself, right?
Then the way that game is set up, like anyone can both succeed or fail at their stakes in the conflict. Like everyone's flipping all at once. And so you end up with these really interesting. Outcomes where like some people have gotten their stakes like I did get the guy to like me, but you were embarrassed in the process. Or maybe I didn't get the guy to like me, and you weren't embarrassed. You came out on top of the process or any combination there.
And I have found that It was really hard to like make everyone slow down and like go through this process and like retrain our brains to approach the game like that. To think about the game like that, but that in practice it was so great. It made every flipping of cards so, so good to just like set up ahead of time what is at stake in this moment of chance?
Ray: That's super interesting. how did you like prime type adventures?
Sam: I really loved it. Like I'm hoping that within the next couple of weeks of this episode coming out, I'm gonna do another episode with Maa Baker, like revisiting it after I had a chance to play the game because you can go back and listen to me talking with her about it.
And I liked it. At the time I played a couple of one shots and it was fine. And, I felt like there was potential there, but it also wasn't really clicking. And after playing a five six session campaign of it, I found it magical. Like Chris Chen is a guy who's a regular on the dice, exploiter, discord. He writes the deeper in the game blog, which everyone is probably familiar with, even if you don't know it, he goes around all the time. But he, he talked talks about like how when he is sitting down to play a game, his first question is like, why am I not just running this in primetime adventures?
And like, I think he's right. Like I think this system is really, really good. But I also think that the learning how to play, it was not well... like learning how to, how the rules worked was very clear from the book, but the like actual important things that you need to do at the table to make the game sing were very, we really had to learn those through like practice and trying to figure out what this game wanted from us. And it took us probably three sessions to get there.
And that that brings me to another thing about this whole, like the partial success conversation and the like, when do you roll dice conversation and like all this other stuff that we've been talking about. This episode that I've been thinking about is just like,
I think we're really bad at writing role playing game books still. I think people just like really suck at like, identifying, this is actually when it is most fun to roll dice. Like I think everyone who plays these games for a long time develops an intuitive sense, but then that intuitive sense is about their table. And it is not about like games at large. It is not about like players at large.
And then Because it's so ingrained in their mind, it's really hard to pull out and identify. It's so slippery and it, it's so hard to put into text. And that's something I'm really like looking to in the next couple of years is both like, how can we design games like I think the Stoneburner Oracle thing where like, you know, the position and effect conversation in Blades is such a fucking mess. Like it, it's good in some ways, but also a lot of people don't like it and don't understand it. It's clearly not a home run of an implementation. Right?
And I think this like phrase it as a yes or no question, and then these are the results that you get out of that. It's like a step in the right direction of like trying to bake some of this framing into the mechanics. But I don't think it's all the way there.
And over the next couple of years, I'm really hoping that like I and the people I am in community with spend some more time thinking about this question than I asked on the first episode of Fucking Dice Explode of like, when do you roll dice?
And like trying to both design and write better answers to this
Ray: Yeah. I, the story of Gary Ax uh, meeting the West Coast D&D players for the first time kind of comes to
mind
where, yeah, so I heard this anecdotally, I can't remember where, but essentially, you know, he, he writes the D&D, the white box, and, you know, the rules are a mess. They're, they're all over the place, and he has a certain way of playing it with, the people at his table and he writes it in sort of like a loosey goosey, interpretative way and it spreads throughout the nation.
And specifically it spreads to I think like the college communities of California. And it's not till he like visits at a con or something that he sees these West Coast D&D players playing and he just goes like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, what are you, what are you guys doing? Like, what are you doing? They're like, oh, we're playing judges and dragons. We're playing the game that you invented. They're like, no, that's like not how you play at all.
And there's like a shift in, in the tone of, of his writing, right? Like Gary Gag becomes more and more of the stereotype of the, DM is God over time. But he didn't start that way. He, he started out very much as a, oh, you know, like as the gm, you, you, you make the rules up as you go. You're the, the arbiter of the rules, which I think really comes from that war gaming tradition because you know, the, there's not a lot of like clear rules and it, it does have like a referee.
But he sees these people like playing this game that in a way that he thinks is like, you know, it's not to his liking. And, and I, I could be wrong, but I think they like, you know, are like acting more and, and, and embodying per personifying more or something. And so, you know, he starts writing the, Advanced D&D DM guide and, and that becomes very, very prescriptive. And this is the way that you play this game. And this is the only way that you should play the game.
So it's, it's like this weird thing. I, I think about how often are games actually taught via the rules? versus like the GM learning the rules and then teaching at them to their players. And there's four players and one gm, right? So it's like a one to five ratio at best. Right? And it's probably even less than that. So like, what are, what are the rules anyway and what is the game? and like, what is Or like how Uno like, everyone has a house rule for Uno,
right?
Like they, they're
always
Sam: No one plays Monopoly,
Ray: right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like, I, I don't know. I, I think I, I kind of pondered the same stuff. Last time we, discussed this topic, but it's like, is there a way, like, can you nail it down? Like, what, what is it? and.
Sam: first of all, we'll have to come back in two years and see if we've cracked it yet. Uh, but, um, the, the state of rolling the dice, we could do a state of rolling the dice episode every two years. But one example I wanted to kinda like leave people with on my side anyway is like this game that I put out a couple years ago called Couriers, and it's basically doing Blade Runner 2049 where you like, you know you're an Android and you're running around and you're an Android cop killing Androids who have decided that they're real people.
And it's very bleak, right? And you're playing a cop, like obviously people, it's not a game for everyone. But like the thing I decided in this game was like the, the game is supposed to be about you, like developing empathy over time, right? Like the stat, it's a lasers and feelings hack where you like your stat, your number is emotions, the number of emotions that you have goes up over time.
And the thing I decided in this was like I'm gonna just say you roll dice whenever the players wanna roll dice. Like whenever they do something that they think they could fail at, that's when you roll dice and like, because the idea is that these players are like terminators, right? They are fucking cops. They have like the authority of the whole system behind them if they never want to fail then like they'd never fail. They just go in there and they fucking do their thing and like, that's it.
And if you want to just like live the fantasy out of like doing that over and over and over again, like your character will never question themselves. But like we all know that that's not what the game is about. We all know that what the game is about is like gradually realizing that like you are complicit in fascism, like gradually realizing that like your job sucks and you hate murdering people, and like you wanna go do something else with your life.
And the only way to mechanically get to that point is to start rolling dice and taking risks. And so I, I found it really interesting and thematic for this game to just turn the choice of when to roll dice over entirely to the players so that it becomes part of that like thematic framework of the game rather than this like question that we're always asking about. Like, is this the right time? Is this gonna be fun? Like it's gonna be fun when you think it's gonna be fun, when you think it's gonna be a character moment for you.
Ray: Yeah, that, that sounds like a beautiful mechanic and a beautiful game and, and I love when a game has mechanics that enforces a central theme like that where, where it so clearly has a message to say, and, and you can, see what the message is through play and, and that, that's beautiful.
But like, while you were saying it, like in terms of, you know, saying, oh, you can roll whatever you want. 'cause I too have done radical things in my design philosophy, right. Where it's like, oh, like you come up with the complications, or, or you do this. Like, you ever wonder though that like, you know, like why we're on, I guess like, for lack of a better term, the indie side of things is, is it like this idea or this, this belief that like, ah, the rest of them will figure it out in like 10 years.
Like, I'm, I'm just like ahead of, ahead of my time, you know, or like, you know, they're like, it's. It's, interesting to me, and, and maybe part of the reason why you can't ever pin the tail on a donkey um, because like, who are you designing for, right? Like, who, who's gonna be playing your game?
Is it,
Sam: The culture's gonna be different in 10 years, like you're saying. But I also like the way I approach it is always just like, what do I think is right for the game? Right? Like in that game I was just describing the right choice for the game is just like players decide when they're gonna roll dice.
But that's absolutely not the right choice for I think a lot of other games, maybe like, like survival, horror games, like Stoneburner in particular. I feel like that's probably not the right choice. 'cause you want the world to be challenging. You, you don't want the option to be a superhero who always succeeds like that. It doesn't fit right.
And so I, as much as we were like exploring a culture of play out there I really think that the way I approach this as a designer is always what is best for this moment and this game specifically.
Ray: Yeah, I, I can't wait to see all these wealth of games that like, are you know, we write them and, and I, I would love to see, and I, I think Quin Quest is doing this is like, can you take an old game and like, interpret it Right? And like, like just play it cold, and play it to the rules and, and like see what the interpretation is and like how they, play the game just simply based off of the rules as written and learning as they go.
that would be super interesting to me.
Sam: yeah, yeah.
We've barely touched on Stone Burner itself in this episode, and I think that's totally fine, but I do want to give you the chance. Do you have anything else you wanna say about stone Burner, this Oracle system, or, you know, the state of rolling the dice in RPGs at large 2025?
Ray: I Guess just to say that you should definitely check out Stoneburner if you haven't already. There's , lots of cool tech. Like I alluded to. One last piece of tech I'll highlight. There's a mechanic in the game called Visions of Glory, and this is a codified stars and wishes system.
So at the beginning of the session, you pronounce that your dwarf has a vision of glory and it's something that you want to see come true in the game. And if it does come true, if, if, if you see out your vision of glory, you get rewarded mechanically with xb. Just a number of, one of a number of really, really cool systems in the game.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's God, I should do a whole episode on the boasts system from wolves on the coast, which is basically, you're like doing that and it's the only way to advance, you say like, I'm gonna go kill that guy, or I'm gonna swim to the shore and I'm gonna be the first one there.
And you like advance every time you pull off your, your. Thing, but also if you ever fail at one, you can never do it again. Never advance ever
Ray: Yeah.
Sam: And like I find that very interesting. But that, that kind of calling shots is really, really cool in what it does, both on a character and a player level.
There's a whole episode there for sure.
Ray: Yeah. And Sam, can I just say like, you know, we, started this podcast as part of the fiction first network in the Blades in Dark hack community, and it's so cool a couple of years later seeing how the design kind of zeitgeist is moving past Blades and, and exploring all of these different things, right?
It's like we've come maybe full circle now, where now instead of mixed complications that binary is back in, but, but binary with a twist, right?
For lack of a better word. So, so it's really, really interesting to see how TT RPGs have evolved in the short, short time span that, that we've been friends and that we've been part of the same community.
And I'm really excited to see where it goes from here.
Sam: Yeah. And I, and seeing honestly, like as long you're bringing up Blades, I'm really excited to see what Blades coming along with that. Right? Like Deep Cuts has changed things. and then, you know, you have Blades in 68 is changing things up. That Dagger Isles supplement is coming out too, and like.
It's really, it's more clear than ever to me, just how much. the world of Blades is the priority there, is the thing that makes that game cool more than the rules. And seeing, I hope, like that's the thing that we carry forward too into the future of like, yeah, who gives a fuck what resolution system you're using?
Like. I'm gonna go run Blades using Alis, right? Like, that's like, because who cares? Like the important thing is the lightning barriers. So I'm, I'm excited about uh, about that too.
Ray: for sure.
Sam: Ray, thanks for coming back to Dice Exploder.
Ray: Thanks for having me, Sam.
Thanks again to Ray for being here. You can find all things Myth Works, including Slug Blaster and Wild Sea At Myth Works or on Blue Sky at Myth Works. They got a newsletter and stuff too, and Ray's got his own games. Check him out.
Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Exploder, or on the dice Exploder Discord. And my games are at sdunnewold.Itch.io. Our logo was designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our ad music is Lily Pads from a Boy Travis Tessmer.
And thanks as always to you for listening. I'll see you next time.