QuasiWizard

Rolling in OSR is an Encounter Story Prompt

I think I get one of the roles dice play in OSR games, that I didn’t get before.

I used to think dice were for randomly deciding between things a human  [at the table] couldn’t fictionally determine, or it would be wrong for one to do so: e.g. does an attack hit in combat? Hard to say in the fiction if all that is said is “I swing my sword” and not super fair for any one person (GM or player) to simply declare. I though this philosophy was also valid for random encounters, reaction rolls, open door checks… but I think there’s something else dice can do.

I re-read this blog post, this one too, and watched this Bandit’s Keep video. The first discusses “the oracular power of dice,” the central point being that dice are “game oracles,” giving glimpses of the abstract question. The second looks at random encounters and suggests you take an OD&D wilderness encounter roll, and turn it into an interesting situation on the fly, using the usual rolls (reaction, distance, surprise, etc.) as prompts for forming this. The last discusses what “getting lost” in a hexcrawl means: is it realistic? How do we fictionally justify this?

I think all of these point to the same idea: dice provide abstracted (in the game sense) answers to exploration questions, though not a full answer. The structure of rolls, the questions they answer, fill in blanks the GM might have about, say, an encounter, in a way that promotes creativity (by making compromises of apparent roll result paradoxes).

The natural conclusion of dice being oracles then, is that the GM is an interpreter, one who must make sense of the seeming paradoxes and deliver the news to a wider table. This will involve some improvisation, creativity, and a feel for the world and its inhabitants. It also sounds very fun. I can brainstorm a couple of reasons why a group of bandits might be friendly towards the party (did they mistake them for comrades? Are they on the lamb and looking for genuine help, or to exploit?).

GM-procedural dice rolls are then worldbuilding prompts, ready to be riffed on at the table.

I read once in a Marc Miller interview (creator of Traveller), that early on when making games, he didn’t want someone else to do the imagining for him. I like this idea. Give me some leads, and I will make do with however many bandits, at any distance, with any sort of attitude.

 

<;">

And I think I'm starting to think this idea can be applied more broadly. I want to explore the idea of "riffing off procedures and numbers" in two different contexts.