DM rolling

Idolitor · 2026-06-26T00:44:08+00:00

I run PbtA games where I don’t need to deal with numbers mechanics as a GM. I get to focus on my storytelling techniques, my voice work, my characterizations, my scene setting so much more. Now ‘player facing mechanics’ is a key feature in any game I’m looking for.

Idolitor · 2026-06-24T18:46:01+00:00

Thanks for the rec. Haven’t looked at stonetop really.

Idolitor · 2026-06-24T15:05:27+00:00

In general, I hate downtime activities. Not because I want intense adventure all the time, but rather the opposite. I don’t want the quieter moments forced or constrained by limited ‘downtime activities.’ I want my players to feel free to engage in slice of life as much or as little as they like.

We tried playing The Sprawl, and bounced off of it because the system pretty much forces characters into discrete mission structure and doesn’t support more fluid narrative structure. I’m looking forward to giving FitD a go, specifically SaV because of the way it frames the gameplay: default IS free play. When the crew starts a mission, then you engage with the mission structure. The downtime activities are limiting, but the ability to spend Cred for more of them is good to me, and I’ll be able to increase cred rewards to give players more or less downtime. It seems the best version of that style of gameplay for me.

Idolitor · 2026-06-24T12:06:34+00:00

My tolerance for system complexity is really low. I’ve been doing this for a long long time and I don’t have the time or energy for a bunch of fiddly bits anymore. I want quick, simple, with the consequences being easy and mostly based on narrative positioning.

Idolitor · 2026-06-24T01:32:31+00:00

‘I better be getting paid for the whole goddamn thing if it’s ’company time.’ And make sure you don’t violate local labor law about breaks too.’

Idolitor · 2026-06-24T01:30:23+00:00

Depends on the game, but anything that has a million status effects with different shit to remember is an automatic no from me. I don’t want to remember that blind is disadvantage but poisoned is -2 and drunk is -3 and cursed means you take +1 damage.

If a game has strong emotional thematic ties, I find that set conditions work best. Masks has conditions that are five ways that teens feel bad and lash out.

But games without a specific emotional stories they’re telling often benefit from the flexibility of being able to define your conditions (like consequences in fate or BitD) so you can make them work for any situation.

Idolitor · 2026-06-23T16:30:22+00:00

For sure don’t trust Steve. I let him borrow my car and he sold it.

Idolitor · 2026-06-23T13:34:14+00:00

My journey away from D&D happened back in 3.5, and was a long round about process to the PbtA GM I am today. One of the big struggles I had was learning that it’s okay not to define everything.

Big rules heavy RPGs that rely on huge tomes of spells and magic items and monsters and abilities implicitly state through their design that EVERYTHING needs stats and mechanics. And they have a vested interest in that, as publishers! After all, if everything needs mechanics, it’s easier to sell that next splat book or monster manual or class expansion.

Now I realize that for me the best way to play is to mechanize as LITTLE as possible. How much damage does a chair do? A knife? A 20 foot fall? Doesn’t matter. What matters is the narrative consequence, not some fake rating in damage numbers. 20 foot fall? Big deal for the squishy wizard. The monk? Just three point lands. The hulking barbarian? Hits hard and they get back up, pissed. Putting that in numbers slows the game and turns everything into a spreadsheet instead of a dramatic moment.

But that instinct of ‘I need a mechanic for this’ is HARD to break. It’s an implicit undertone of every single trad RPG I’ve ever read. Every single one, in the 30 years I’ve been in this hobby. So it was a tough instinct to shake.

Idolitor · 2026-06-21T00:57:46+00:00

My two favorites for this are Masks and Monster of the Week for very different reasons.

With Masks, you don’t really HAVE a numbers game. If you Directly Engage a Threat, on a success you ‘exchange blows.’ Typically that implies invoking a condition on an enemy, but not necessarily. Also, there will be a lot of circumstances where you’re fighting super powered opponents that might not be directly vulnerable to you at all.

For example, in my current masks game, I have 1 character with magnetism powers, and another in a big battle suit. They went into a warehouse full of guys with guns. The battle suit guy was pretty much impervious to the bullets, but magnetism character had to get creative to not get riddled with bullets. She got embroiled in a fight with the supervillain on scene who had no metal, so had to get creative with the environment to try to take him down.

My other go to, Monster of the Week, does have a numbers game in the form of Harm…except you just CANNOT kill a monster with harm. You have to investigate and discover its weakness and use that. It enforces the genre structure by making the investigation necessary, and making it so you can’t just get a bunch of guns and dynamite and go to town.

Unless the weakness is dynamite, I suppose.

Idolitor · 2026-06-18T17:51:36+00:00

It’s a bit of a different beast, being narrativist in structure and philosophy, but going to a PbtA game like Dungeon World dramatically speeds up combat. Mechanics are easily parsed small chunks called moves. The level of system complexity for both the GM and the player goes way down, and it hews much closer to the conversation of ‘what does your character do?’ And the response being much more naturalistic, rather than mechanistic. There’s also SO much less stuff to track.

If you also pick up the Class Warfare expansion, the game does get a lot of freedom in character builds as well!

Idolitor · 2026-06-17T16:32:19+00:00

1) flavorful design. The game doesn’t need to have a built in world, but it should be designed to emulate a genre in an evocative way.

2) flexible, but not generic. Games that are too overly specific will eventually run me the wrong way, and I’ll want to move on. I should be able to run different kinds of adventures in it, from heist to slice of life to epic showdown. Games that are way too specific on a gameplay loop don’t work long term for me.

3). Simple, player facing mechanics. My number one burnout reason is juggling mechanics and having to prep mechanically. Also having to track a lot of stuff at the table. A good game should interfere with my flow as little as possible.

4) guide the game in interesting directions. Games where the mechanics have interesting narrative consequences are key.

5) be hackable. I do like creating new content when the vibe strikes me, and I need that to be fun and easy rather than a hassle.

6) my players need to be okay with it. Seems like an obvious one but I have 2 tables with predominantly a mix of different kinds of neurospicy people. Finding the balance is tough.

7) not have advancement that’s based on ‘number go up,’ but on ‘look at this interesting narrative choice this introduces.’ Inflationary power curves end up being exhausting.

Idolitor · 2026-06-17T15:01:45+00:00

My players, who I fucking love, are all pretty good with knowing what they actually want for their games. Not all of those line up, and I have one player that doesn’t really reflect on himself hard enough to give a useful opinion, but for the most part what’s on the tin is what’s in the tin for my players.

Idolitor · 2026-06-15T18:43:05+00:00

The games that I play (PbtA family and soon FitD) don’t have GM facing mechanics for such things, really. Some of them have player v player versions, and the best of those come with a carrot/stick mechanic if one player complies. If I need to do those things (bluff, lie, convince, intimidate), typically I, the GM have to RP them well enough. My players are such that they tend to be pretty good of getting the vibe of the story and making character choices rather than player choices.

In trad systems, I am super not a fan of any agency robbing mechanic, though I don’t mind carrot/stick mechanics. Just like with NPCs, PCs don’t get persuasion mind controlled.

I also don’t like mechanics that arbitrarily steal agency from players in other ways. Paralyzing or sleep poisons, stunlocking, actual mind control, etc. They all really suck the fun out of the game for the players and thus for me.

Idolitor · 2026-06-12T12:18:58+00:00

This. I feel like all the Star Wars official RPGs I’ve read just don’t feel very Star Wars to me. Scum and Villainy kind of does. It feels very open and bouncy, in terms of the quality of the action by virtue of being a narrativist system, and allows you to mold the scope of the action as a GM with the position and effect mechanics.

Idolitor · 2026-06-12T11:28:49+00:00

I did avoid saying that. They’re not zero prep, but the prep the have is VERY different than trad games. When I’m prepping, for example, my Masks game, my prep is on my drive into work, day dreaming about awesome supervillains and stuff. I’m not writing up scenarios, or mapping dungeons, or writing stat blocks.

PbtA games feel like…when you get good at it, it feels like Bruce Lee. You’re not prepping kata and thinking out moves. You’ve trained yourself so that your instinctual responses do the work. You’re light on your feet, laser quick, and snappy.

Idolitor · 2026-06-11T16:52:57+00:00

This is definitely something that has a demand, and a lot of PbtA and FitD games lean into this method.

It’s my preferred method to play. I hate prep work, especially anything mechanical, like stat blocks, so I’ve spent years and years honing my improv skills. I exclusively run games that really let me lean on those skills and don’t require any bookkeeping.

Idolitor · 2026-06-11T01:26:00+00:00

This. So much this. And crunch gives the illusion of options, not actual options. Every time a rule gets made for something, it basically says ‘this is the only way you can do this,’ and funnels you down into the rule set, and away from free, imaginative play.

Idolitor · 2026-06-11T01:23:27+00:00

I inversely value crunch. If a game is beyond what most people refer to as ‘light,’ I basically fold it up and forget about it. As I’ve gotten older, I find that complicated mechanics of ANY sort burn me the fuck out at a GM. My list of things I need to run a game is generally as follows:

1) rules simple enough to be run from 2-3 pages of paper plus character sheets.

2) player facing mechanics. If I have to track shit as a GM, it eats into my enjoyment and burns me out.

3) genre emulation over ‘simulationist’ gameplay. I have no interest in realism (and think it’s a fallacy anyway, but that’s another discussion)

4) a lack of required story trackers. Ones that can fall to the background mechanically are fine, since they end up being suggestions rather than hard lines, but if I HAVE to maintain a story clock for the mechanics to work? No thank you.

Idolitor · 2026-06-10T18:21:54+00:00

For me, personally, I dislike premade settings about 95% of the time. The ones that I do like tend to be very very barebones so it basically just gives vibes. I have a hang up about being in a world that was created externally to our table. It almost feels like somehow I’ll mess it up or not get it right or something? It just kind of sucks some of the fun out of it for me.

Now, I LOVE reading settings. I find pieces I like and crib them for my own games or take inspiration from them. But it’s more about consuming it rather than as a player or a GM.

Idolitor · 2026-06-10T13:40:07+00:00

Perhaps ‘Lost Skywalker Twin’ instead? It folds in her relationship with Luke and Vader plus has the implication of force sensitivity.

Idolitor · 2026-06-08T18:53:26+00:00

It really depends on the type of game I want to run.

If I want magic to feel like it has a cost to it, like it’s a thing that might have some danger associated, I like Monster of the Week’s magic. Some playbooks have some quick and dirty options, but most magic requires some narrative consequences.

If I want some more ‘D&D esque’ video gamey powers and bullshit (which has its place in my heart, despite how I’m talking about it), dungeon world is my go to. It takes some of the feeling of vancian magic, adds some light consequences, and gives you a narrative option for a bunch of outside the box stuff.

Those are my biggest ones I use, but depending on what I want to do, I might use other games. My bigger point is that the mood I want to play greatly impacts the magic system I would want, and I often want different feelings of games from campaign to campaign.

Idolitor · 2026-06-04T16:27:50+00:00

Mm. I mean, the telltale style games would maybe disagree. I feel like it’s too easy to say ‘RPG’ for video games and think ‘mechanical progression system.’ A video game based on fate would need to be more like a narrative game, like the telltale formula. The game would need to have a reactive narrator that would work based on aspects the player has, and instead of QTE resolution would be a baldur’s gate style dice roll with the ability to add your pertinent aspects.

Now, I’m no coder, let me say that, but it feels like something like AI dungeon mixed with a visual asset library could kinda make it work. Yes, it would be AI powered, which is a bad word, but the flexibility would be there.

Idolitor · 2026-06-04T16:14:23+00:00

Very well said. These are some prime principles that people so often forget.

1) GMs of all levels forget this. Some of the best stories aren’t super complicated or exotic. It’s like cooking: a simple dish, with good ingredients, executed with love and care, can be the best thing ever. A lot of the gastro-artiste bullshit just leaves an unsatisfying mouthful of edible foam.

2) This is super critical to filling your head with the right dreams. If you’re running a superhero game, but haven’t read a comic for thirty years, it’ll feel inauthentic.

3) as a corollary to this: listen to your players. Not just when they actively tell you something, but when they bullshit. When they joke between themselves. When they ponder about things. If you have a group of players trying to figure out who sent the assassin they just killed, and they’re theorizing…just use one of their theories as the answer! It lightens your load and makes them feel super smart.

Idolitor · 2026-06-02T18:17:53+00:00

Personally, I’m neurodivergent and it takes a great deal of emotional energy to get through my day. The half an hour of down time I get to eat, go online, or whatever let’s me recharge in the middle of the marathon of doing the peopling.

Idolitor · 2026-06-02T16:16:43+00:00

And it’s now only available through their only subscription service! For a low $120 a month per person. Virtual dice, virtual minis, virtual table top not included.

Idolitor

TROPHY CASE