I've played a few, but I've yet to find one I "click with".
My preference is for full narrative fights. In one-on-one or small group RP (I'd say about 95% of my combat RP is like this), I feel like by the time you get to the stage of asking/allowing people to make their own character sheets, you probably trust them enough to make the jump to full narrative anyway. I like to think that, in such situations, I give my character a fair win/loss ratio without me having to struggle for hours to fit him into the constraints of a character sheet. I certainly feel that the other people I RP with in those situations give their characters fair abilities in each of those ways. Another concern I've heard is that full narrative PvP will take forever - but again, when the two parties know and trust each other, I find it actually resolves quicker than Grindstone rules bouts do.
For me, the place where roll systems come in handy is in larger groups such as medium or large roleplay free companies, or in pick-up-and-play groups where you're essentially roleplaying with strangers to start with.
With full narrative, the owness is on everyone in the group to get to know each other well enough to have a good feeling for where their character's strength is in various areas compared to the others', and to trust one another not to go overboard in a given situation; to give others a chance to participate. In a group like a medium or large RP FC, that's impractical to do for every single member all of the time, and unforgiving of people who need to take an absence. It's actually more inclusive to place the owness on every individual to spend 30 - 90 minutes making a character sheet, once, and then be good to go for most of the scenarios they'll be faced with in that group. The same with pick-up-and-play groups - it's impossible to know if that random stranger you're starting off the scenario with is going to be weird about their character not being omnipotent or not, so it's safer for everyone to agree beforehand on an objective system to determine what's acceptable. If they have a problem because the system won't let them be omnipotent, then they're eliminated before the RP even begins, and can never cause any trouble for anyone.
Those are the situations I think roll systems are a useful solution in, but... I must admit, I still view them as sort of a "lesser evil" compared to potentially allowing free power-playing and god-moding. As someone who "floats" between FC's in terms of whose RP I'm participating in, I've tried a few different ones - and they've all had the same problem for me. Rather than facilitating and enhancing creativity, they've limited it - people will come up with something cool to do, and the system won't let them through one mechanism or another. Honestly, my opinion is that that's a feature of using roll systems at all, and not a solveable problem with them... because as soon as you start trying to solve it by giving the system more verisimilitude, the time required to create a sheet rockets up, to the point where hardly anyone will bother. It's just something you have to bear in mind when reviewing the pros and cons of introducing one for the given RP scenario.
(Fair shout-out here to the DM's I've seen who intervened when the system prevented something cool from happening, by the way. I do believe DMing is an art in its own, and that knowing when to call Rule Of Cool is a very important skill to learn when becoming one. Back again to smudging or throwing the system out when you trust the people you're playing with.)
I do still use raw rolls occasionally in that small-group / 1-on-1 RP I mentioned before. It's typically because I can think of two scenarios that are equally compelling - usually in different ways - that are on either side of a decision my character makes, or an action he succeeds or fails. Sometimes, I'll ask the person (singular) that I'm RPing with which one they think would be more interesting. But other times, especially if the deciding factor is technically spoilers or meta-knowledge about my character, or if I don't want to stall the flow of a group scene - I'll roll. Those rolls feel satisfying, because all of the outcomes are satisfying... but that feeling is impossible to distil into a system, I fear.
TL;DR: I think roll systems are a fair compromise to use when in a large group, or with strangers. I preferentially opt for full narrative outside of these situations.
My preference is for full narrative fights. In one-on-one or small group RP (I'd say about 95% of my combat RP is like this), I feel like by the time you get to the stage of asking/allowing people to make their own character sheets, you probably trust them enough to make the jump to full narrative anyway. I like to think that, in such situations, I give my character a fair win/loss ratio without me having to struggle for hours to fit him into the constraints of a character sheet. I certainly feel that the other people I RP with in those situations give their characters fair abilities in each of those ways. Another concern I've heard is that full narrative PvP will take forever - but again, when the two parties know and trust each other, I find it actually resolves quicker than Grindstone rules bouts do.
For me, the place where roll systems come in handy is in larger groups such as medium or large roleplay free companies, or in pick-up-and-play groups where you're essentially roleplaying with strangers to start with.
With full narrative, the owness is on everyone in the group to get to know each other well enough to have a good feeling for where their character's strength is in various areas compared to the others', and to trust one another not to go overboard in a given situation; to give others a chance to participate. In a group like a medium or large RP FC, that's impractical to do for every single member all of the time, and unforgiving of people who need to take an absence. It's actually more inclusive to place the owness on every individual to spend 30 - 90 minutes making a character sheet, once, and then be good to go for most of the scenarios they'll be faced with in that group. The same with pick-up-and-play groups - it's impossible to know if that random stranger you're starting off the scenario with is going to be weird about their character not being omnipotent or not, so it's safer for everyone to agree beforehand on an objective system to determine what's acceptable. If they have a problem because the system won't let them be omnipotent, then they're eliminated before the RP even begins, and can never cause any trouble for anyone.
Those are the situations I think roll systems are a useful solution in, but... I must admit, I still view them as sort of a "lesser evil" compared to potentially allowing free power-playing and god-moding. As someone who "floats" between FC's in terms of whose RP I'm participating in, I've tried a few different ones - and they've all had the same problem for me. Rather than facilitating and enhancing creativity, they've limited it - people will come up with something cool to do, and the system won't let them through one mechanism or another. Honestly, my opinion is that that's a feature of using roll systems at all, and not a solveable problem with them... because as soon as you start trying to solve it by giving the system more verisimilitude, the time required to create a sheet rockets up, to the point where hardly anyone will bother. It's just something you have to bear in mind when reviewing the pros and cons of introducing one for the given RP scenario.
(Fair shout-out here to the DM's I've seen who intervened when the system prevented something cool from happening, by the way. I do believe DMing is an art in its own, and that knowing when to call Rule Of Cool is a very important skill to learn when becoming one. Back again to smudging or throwing the system out when you trust the people you're playing with.)
I do still use raw rolls occasionally in that small-group / 1-on-1 RP I mentioned before. It's typically because I can think of two scenarios that are equally compelling - usually in different ways - that are on either side of a decision my character makes, or an action he succeeds or fails. Sometimes, I'll ask the person (singular) that I'm RPing with which one they think would be more interesting. But other times, especially if the deciding factor is technically spoilers or meta-knowledge about my character, or if I don't want to stall the flow of a group scene - I'll roll. Those rolls feel satisfying, because all of the outcomes are satisfying... but that feeling is impossible to distil into a system, I fear.
TL;DR: I think roll systems are a fair compromise to use when in a large group, or with strangers. I preferentially opt for full narrative outside of these situations.
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
