Triumvir
Legendary Pubber
- Joined
- Oct 30, 2021
- Messages
- 473
- Reaction score
- 1,313
Enough friends and acquaintances of the wife's have disclosed an interest in RPGs (independent of me) that she finally sat me down for a discussion of WTF they are. We had to go right back to the fact it isn't wargaming (which she knows about), "there isn't necessarily a board", and "nobody wins except in the sense you win if you had fun".
I remembered the play example in CoC ("I'm shooting at its face! Help! Help!") and dug it out for her to read, which helped a lot.
Except that she was flummoxed by the idea that you had to roll under your skill. "Isn't rolling higher always better?" She seemed genuinely quite annoyed by the idea of roll-under.
I was kind of astonished at how she went from ground zero to immediately taking a very strong position on one of the oldest design debates going. I don't care one way or the other so long as a game is well-designed, and I certainly like BRP/CoC etc. But roll-under clearly does not work for the way some people's brains are put together.
I remembered the play example in CoC ("I'm shooting at its face! Help! Help!") and dug it out for her to read, which helped a lot.
Except that she was flummoxed by the idea that you had to roll under your skill. "Isn't rolling higher always better?" She seemed genuinely quite annoyed by the idea of roll-under.
I was kind of astonished at how she went from ground zero to immediately taking a very strong position on one of the oldest design debates going. I don't care one way or the other so long as a game is well-designed, and I certainly like BRP/CoC etc. But roll-under clearly does not work for the way some people's brains are put together.