Post originally by Jay at 2003-08-19 15:15:04
Converted from Phorums BB System

I have to disagree with you here. Let's suppose a character wants to make his hostile (normal human) audience a bit easier to manage. He tells a few creative jokes and has his fellow players at the table laughing. Some obtuse GM tells him to roll his Perform or Orate or whatever. He doesn't make his roll. The GM deems the members of the crowd have stony faces despite his role playing performance.

Did good roleplaying determine his fate?

no

Did a dice roll determine his fate?

yes

Was this an example of realistic and gritty play?

no

If the character really does have a high charisma and some perform skills...and he had the players at the table laughing...he most probably would have made an impression on his audience as well. This would have been more "true to life" and therefore more realistic and gritty. In this case to be "realistic" the GM should ignore the dice roll.


Dice are a convenient way of determining the natural element of random chance in a game. How much random chance is there interfering with your day to day activities? Are you fairly sure that you can do most things you are trained to do? It is realistic to expect that you would be successful at most routine tasks you have been performing successfully for long enough to consider yourself a professional? A role playing game doesn't give you this much probablity of success. If it did, the game would quickly get boring. In fact, it would probably cease to be a game at all. Rolling dice does not increase a game's "realism" or suspension of disbelief or whatever, it actually decreases it. This is why RPG rules often state that if there is a reasonable amount of a chance that a character can perform a task, don't roll. Why not roll? Because if you roll, you might not make the roll and you would unrealistically fail.

Does good roleplaying in a "roleplaying" group give you more control over yourcharacter's fate? Not necessarily. The character may be expected to not notice things, or not know about things that the player does notice or does know about. Is this less realistic and gritty? No...it is the reverse. It makes the character more believable to have him roleplay both his strengths and his weaknesses. Therefore, good roleplaying in a "gritty" setting would make the character more like a normal character of that setting and less like a hero. It doesn't really have anything to do with task resolution. It has to do more with acting and portraying your character faithfully to the setting.