I was listening in on an exchange between @phf@tabletop.social and @kyonshi@dice.camp. They were talking about Traveller and Peter noted that he didn't like the "somewhat mysterious difficulty classes of some tests". I don't like this, either! It's exhausting. I feel drained when I do it.
I started thinking about this for a while and maybe the following provides for an interesting way to talk about rules in role-playing games.
Note that the problem shows up in many places. For example, I don't like "the ladder" in Fudge and Fate games where I as the referee need decide whether opponents are "good" or "very good" at fighting the player characters. For me, this is the same problem, except it happens behind the screen. Player's don't know about this.
Using classic D&D or similar rules and running a megadungeon is comparatively easy, because the monster hit dice are tied to dungeon levels. Once I know the dungeon level, I can pick appropriate monsters and their stats automatically determine "the difficulty classes of some tests." This might be one of the reasons that makes it easier to run D&D with self-made dungeons.
So this is the first solution to the problem of having to assign difficulties to rolls: The game can have a small number of actions that require a dice roll. Each roll has clear conditions of success. The referee doesn't have to assess the difficulty as soon as the situation is established. D&D would be an example of this kind of game. You roll to hit, to do damage, to save, and all the target numbers are known once the monster is on the table. In classic D&D, traps have only one difficulty setting so thieves only need to know a single number. Hidden doors are either concealed or secret. Those are the two difficult settings for finding the hidden door and thus the referee only needs to know two numbers (1-in-6 or 2-in-6). Of course it breaks down sometimes when a module tells you that a particular door is harder to find ("1-in-8") or that a lock is harder to pick ("add 20% to the check"). But generally speaking, as a referee, very little thought is required. The trade-of is that characters don't have many "skills". They have their attack rolls, their saves, the thieves skills, some other d6 abilities like opening doors and listening, but that's it.
As soon as skills are introduced, the situations in which dice can be rolled explodes. One way to solve the problem of having to decide the difficulty of every single roll is to a provide a long list of examples from which to extrapolate. I haven't played any game that does that well. Zweihänder provides seven example uses of the skill, one for each difficulty rating. That is amazing.
A game that has a single roll for every skill (great idea) but then provides a lot of help adjudicating the rolls in general isn't helping. I found this to be the case for the few Basic Role-Playing, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rolemaster and HARP games I tried. I didn't try many of them. I just checked HARP again and there are examples for some of the skills and not for others, so I'd have to play it again to remember whether this was even a problem.
Perhaps one possible solution is to just ignore difficulties and to assume all skill rolls at the default difficulty to be appropriate for adventures. As far as I can remember, this is how we often played these games.
Mongoose Traveller isn't helping, either. There, the target number is always an eight. Almost all the modifiers appear to obvious and well explained, but with the Task Difficulty Dice Modifiers the "somewhat mysterious difficulty classes of some tests" is back.
Classic Traveller is worse it leans into the referee making up the roll. Sometimes an examples of a skill is provided ("navigation expertise can be used as a DM of +1 per level on a throw to determine the needed information") but most of the time it's simply a description of where the skill might be applicable and it's up to the referee to call for an appropriate throw, if at all. At the very beginning, skills are explained as follows: "The acquired skills table provides four basic types of results: characteristic alterations (such as +1 strength), weapons expertise (such as blade combat), transport skills (such as ATV), and basic skills (such as navigation)." That is to say, sometimes the skill simply means that something can be done. The example that comes to mind is how to recover from serious wounds: "Recovery is dependent on medical attention (a medical facility and an individual with medical-3 skill; recuperation to full strength without medical attention is not possible)." The medic doesn't have to roll at all. Having the skill is all that counts.
This brings me to the last category: negotiation. This what I learned from Burning Wheel: Before a roll is made, players declare what they want and the referee determines the difficulty of the roll and explains the consequences of failure. Then players decide whether they want to make the roll. Implicitly, they can change their mind, declare a different goal and see whether they like the odds and consequences better. I like this a lot.
Of course, turning every skill roll into a negotiation can be tiresome. If people remember what the previous result of similar negotiations was, the system takes on aspects of case law. As soon as the people of the table realize that a similar situation was resolved using this or that, and there are no circumstances that warrant a change, then the negotiation is skipped.
Then again, a long lists of conditions and modifiers can also take on aspects of case law.
So perhaps this is what I think all these rules texts evolve into: Any rule system where referees set the difficulty imply a system where players can enter a short negotiation. In order to avoid future negotiations, the table remembers the outcomes and uses them as shortcuts for future situations.
Once you know this, the approach by some games to simply do a fixed difficulty roll such as 50% rate of success makes sense if you assume that there is some sort of negotiation and case law powering it all. Sometimes the penalty of failure is scorn and insults, sometimes it's death. It depends on the situation but there's always a way to negotiate for the two outcomes that seem acceptable to the table.
I haven't found a perfect solution, for me. I like it both ways. A game like Halberts & Helmets is much like D&D where as a game like Halberts is one where all effects outside of combat have to be negotiated but it's not as wild and free as Classic Traveller.
#RPG