(ttrpg) rolling for interest - how I run games
this is my first post about ttrpgs! I'm playing them a good bit again since having started this blog, so expect more ttrpg-related posts in the future. for now, I'll tag them in the title!
I've been making some observations about my playstyle when GMing a tabletop game. none of this is even as much of a personal code as it is habitual and intuitive, and this will be my first time putting words to it.
what I've noticed is that I don't "roll for risky actions" or "roll to resolve uncertainty" as often as I do "roll if I would find it interesting to do so." (or ask for a roll) I suspect many GM's do similar in practice, but that becomes another discussion!
this, of course immediately places me in an OSR-FKR continuum, or at least those labels would be suitable descriptors. but at the same time, I find that my ultimate priority in doing so is "telling the story I hope will be the most interesting to everyone." quite un-OSR/FKR-like, I see myself more as in service to my players and the story we tell together rather than prioritizing my own authority or authorship.
there are caveats to that, because it doesn't mean going against reason or established rulings/rules for the sake of drama. maintaining believability and fairness when role-playing is fundamental, and that means meeting and aligning everyone's expectations for how the game world works. in a sense I'm still deferring to realism or internal consistency, but rather than aiming to approximate some kind of objectivity, I'm working subjectively directly in that conversation between mine and my players' imaginations.
in practice all of this means that even in group play, I place a high value on (effectively) using dice as an oracle. to me the joy of dice in tabletop rpgs is the way uncertainty takes a story in interesting directions and restricts authorship from any one person having too much influence (including me!) I weigh this consideration against interest and pacing as much as I do as fiction and rulings/rules. it can be a lot to mentally calculate all these things in the moment, but I find that to be the nature of GMing regardless. often, though it is a lot, ultimately it's a continuous process of asking myself "what next step excites me that also matches the fiction/rules."
I focus quite a lot on "the conversation" itself and on mediating the game as an extension of a shared social experience. I pay a lot of attention to what everyone seems to be feeling, imagining and working towards, and synthesize that as best I can manage into telling a story we hopefully all find interesting. my goal for every session is that everyone walks away delighted, energized, connected and eager to play again.