When Darkness Falls, players don't roll?

[JohnG]

So I'm working on my Horror RPG When Darkness Falls, heavily influenced by ghost hunters, hauntings, and games like Clive Barker's Jericho.

My main idea for creating tension is that players do not roll for resolution, the GM does, so until you're told what happens you have no idea what happens to you.  You tell the GM what you're doing but then he rolls, etc.  This also allows the GM to spring things on people without saying "oh roll perception" randomly and basically letting everyone know something might be coming.  Of course I don't want all control taken from the players so I'm figuring out ways for them to affect the roll like points to spend for bonuses or something along those lines.

I wanna know what people think of this idea and what, if any, ideas they might have for ways that the player can affect outcomes.

[Will]

You already seem aware of the danger of taking the rolls out of the players hands. Many players will feel railroaded in a system where the control has been taken away, even when that control was over the generation of a random number

Some sort of bidding system perhaps? A measure of the effort they are willing to put into the task with penalties for putting too little, or too much? This would keep the feeling of the unknown going with the added paranoia as they watch their resources dwindle.

[Ron Edwards]

It's kind of interesting - starting in the early 90s, a number of games independently arrived at the idea of the players rolling but not the GM: Legendary Lives, The Whispering Vault, and as time went on, others. My game Trollbabe was deliberately designed that way based on my experiences with them.

The other way 'round should work fine, actually. I think that the whole issue of "control" is a red herring, because it implies that physically rolling dice = authority over what happens, which is not at all the case.

As food for thought, it's possible that the sense of control associated with physically rolling dice is a kind of defense mechanism, an illusion one must foster in order to feel as if one is contributing to play in any authoritative sense at all, when one isn't. Take away the need for that defense, and the illusion vanishes too.

Therefore I think you'll do well to consider how it's determined when to roll, and what is established via rolling that is not subject to any negotiation. If players enter into that sort of authority in some constructive way, then who rolls becomes irrelevant by comparison.

I recommend checking out Dead of Night, because in that game, who rolls is subject to some very interesting rules, which are highly situational. Resolution of actions is handled by one person's roll, always, but who that person is shifts around all over the place. This works because a given action (say, an attack) can be handled either as a standard attack roll or as a defense roll, in which failing means you get hit - but never both at the same time. Actions are established basically in order of free-form announcement, but just because Bob calls out "I hit him!" doesn't always mean that Bob rolls. What governs that is a series of interesting concepts including whether Bob is going twice in a row, and other stuff.

That's probably the most ambitious design I know of which decouples dice from the "control" illusion in a very, very playable way.

Best, Ron

[JohnG]

Both are excellent points, I'll see about looking into those games you referenced Ron and seeing what they can teach me.  I like the idea of a bidding system, I can only think of watching people frantically sitting at Ebay waiting to see if they win their auction or not.  Perhaps an entirely diceless system would be fun to experiment with for this now that I think of it, something to the tune of the following.

Players attributes and skills give them a pool of resources to use for various actions.  When they take an action they make a secret big on the action against an unknown difficulty or a bid from their opponent.  The bids are taken by the GM who compares them and determines who succeeds and so on.  Maybe some people would have powers or things like luck that allow them to make a second bid after they find out if they failed or see someone else's bid or something along those lines.  This is just what's off the top of my head, nothing that I've done any work on but I think it could be fun, especially if people make their bids all at once in combat situations and  the GM then describes the round of combat based on what people attempt and who wins the bids.  I think something like that could give the game a smoother narrative flow than pausing for turns as well as allowing the suspense to build until your turn is reached.

[Ron Edwards]

John, are you familiar with Pace, by Fred Hicks? It's the best system I've found based on these principles. Others that come to mind include Epiphany from BTRC in the mid-1990s and the Marvel Superheroes game from a few years ago.

Best, Ron

[JohnG]

Ron, Pace looks a lot like what I had in mind, I'm liking this system style more and more as I think about it.  I might try and get in touch with Fred Hicks to pick his brain lol. The reference was big help, thank you.

[FLEB]

I'd been working on an "attention points" concept that could come in handy for something like this. It's only at the napkin-sketch point, so go ahead and pick out aspects you like.

The general gist-- players' stats are "maximums" for each aspect, and players have a finite pool of generic "attention points" (far less than the total of all max. stats) that they can allocate as they wish before any given turn (I was thinking of using stacks of chips or coins.) Conflict rolls or comparisons are made against the attention points the players have allocated before that turn. Characters, in essence, have a limited amount of attention, and devote it to the tasks at hand. When a conflict comes up, roll against the current allocation of the stat. It makes for quick conflict checks, eliminates need for players to vocally declare anything, and allows for surprise attacks that work into the standard system without messy modifiers. (And it restores that new-car smell!)

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Rudy, that is a really interesting idea. I think I'm filing that one into the "use soon" stack.

Best, Ron