Roleplaying games are, at their very core, a conversation. This is what separates them from other interactive media like video or board games. A player describes what their character does, prompting the game master (GM) or another player to describe a reaction. This might prompt another player to perform an action, repeating an endless cycle of actions and reactions. This part of the game is fairly easy to grasp, and often the thing that keeps players going and motivates them to learn the rules for the rest of the game.

Conversation vs. Die Roll

In principle, one could play without rules, using the conversation as the only tool of communication. Many games of the Old School Renaissance (OSR) strive off this style of game, using only the conversation for the majority of the game. Having to roll dice is sometimes seen as a fail state, with people preferring to just converse amongst each other and with the GM. This is where they differ from modern D&D playstyles, which often rely more heavily on die rolls to resolve situations.

Resolution through Conversation (OSR)

Let us first go through an example of an investigation in an OSR style game.

GM: As you enter the office, you can see a desk with a drawer, as well as a bed and a half open window.

Player: I open the drawer.

GM: There are countless notes scattered about, but none of them seem to relate to your quest to find your father.

Player: I compare the depth of the drawer on the inside with the outside. I am suspecting a hidden compartment.

GM: Indeed, the inside is much shallower than the outside would suggest.

Player: I try to pry open the bottom of the drawer.

GM: You reveal a hidden compartment, containing a blood stained letter directed at your father. It is a threat.

As you can see, the conversation went into great details about the world. A player wanted to find evidence and found it, without the need for any die rolls. All that was required was a mutual understanding of the logistics of this world, created through questions and answers (a conversation, if you will).

This has the effect of drawing the players into the world and taking it seriously. In order to "win", they need to actually gain an understanding of the world. Scenarios are not won by your characters statistics and the whim of a die, but through deep understanding of the world. On the other hand, this takes time. The basis of resolution through conversation is a mutual understanding of the scenario you are playing in, which can lead to a lot of back and forth.

In addition, this style of resolution can lead to some GM fiat. Instead of a neutral third party (the dice), the GM decides if the players succeed. While this is supposed to happen based on fair and neutral judgement, some scenarios are just pretty tough to gain a mutual understanding of. Sure, investigating an office is pretty straight forward, but how would a GM judge if someone got hit by the thrust of a sword?

Benefits of Resolution through Conversation:

• Immersion: This style of resolution motivates your players to imagine your world and its specifics in great detail.
• Flow: The game becomes a natural conversation, creating a flow state that is not interrupted by the meta game of rolling dice.

Downsides of Resolution through Conversation:

• Time: Resolving any scene purely through talking will require some back and forth between the GM and the players.
• Hard judgements: Depending on the scenario, a GM might have a hard time deciding if an action succeeds. While opening drawers in an office is straightforward, gaining a mutual consensus if someone falls while balancing on a rope is tough.

Resolution through Die Rolls (Modern D&D)

Let us first go through the same example of an investigation in a modern D&D style game.

GM: As you enter the office, you can see a desk with a drawer, as well as a bed and a half open window.

Player: I roll for Intelligence (Investigation)! 15!

GM: After searching the room, you find a hidden compartment at the bottom of the drawer, containing a blood stained letter directed at your father. It is a threat.

Firstly, we can observe how much faster this method CAN be (let us put a pin in that). Instead of a long back and forth, a single die rolls decides the scene. While this can make the scene feel less tactile and immersive, it speeds up gameplay quite a bit. It also takes the players character into account, usually through some bonus being applied to their roll (in D&D, that would be Intelligence (Investigation). The GM does also not really get to decide if the player succeeded or not. While there is some wiggle room for adjusting the difficulty of the roll, generally a high roll means a success, creating a neutral judgement from a third party (the dice).

Benefits of Resolution through Conversation:

• Speed: This style of resolution is (USUALLY) very fast, way faster then talking about the scenario.
• Character Expression: If the player's character has a high bonus on a skill, this is taken into account, rewarding their choices during character creation.
• Fairness: The dice play the role of a neutral third party, making it easier to reach a mutual understanding of the success or failure of a roll.

Downsides of Resolution through Conversation:

• Reduced Immersion: Rolling the dice to decide the outcome of a scenario can lead to a lot of the juicy details getting left on the plate, creating a world that can feel nebulous and floaty.
• Arbitrary Results: Rolling dice can famously lead to some hilariously dumb scenarios, like a rogue being unable to pick a simple lock. Especially with d20 systems, the variance on each roll can be quite high, sometimes leading to characters being portrayed as incompetent in undesired ways.

Which is better?

While my example might seem to skew in a certain direction, I do not have a general preference for either. It depends on what your game wants to focus on, instead. Which elements do you want to abstract by rolling dice, and which elements do you want to examine in a more tangible way?

Conversation

The resolution through conversation tends to work best in slow pasted, deliberate scenarios with a low chance in variance. Since it can take long and revels in the details of a scene, it is best to employ it in whatever kind of scenarios your game wants to focus on. Are you playing a game about political intrigue? Do dialog exclusively as resolution through conversation. Are you playing a game about investigation? Do all of the investigation through that back and forth from the earlier example.

But we have not reached a definitive conclusion just yet. There are at least a few examples I can think of that do fit this description, but are rarely resolved in that way. Let us think about crafting, for example. There is nothing more slow pasted, deliberate and with less variance up like crafting. Sure, if you are just starting out, you are still messing things up, but if you know what you are doing, you usually get to your goal quite reliably. But smithing, alchemy and cooking are usually hidden behind some (often quite milktoast) mini-game. Why?

In addition to being slow pasted, deliberate and with a low chance in variance, scenarios resolved through conversation also need a mutual understanding about realistic outcomes. To put it bluntly, the average table understands if someone made a good argument or opened the right drawer. But it does not understand how to judge if someone let the stew simmer for too long, or hammered on a piece of metal in the right way. There can be the odd scenario where most of the table has an understanding about such niche scenarios, in which case, please go for it! Being able to talk through such scenarios using your niche knowledge is every nerds wet dream (or at least mine).

None of this is a hard rule, though. I recommend viewing it more as a list of benefits and trade-offs. You can decide if some scenarios are worth to play in this way for a variety of reasons, some not even covered by this article. For example, the Mothership RPG uses the conversation to resolve stealth. It does so because it wants to focus on stealth and revel in the excitement of hiding in the air duct, while the alien creeps below you. In doing so, it is still slow pasted, deliberate and harbors a roughly mutual understanding of realistic outcomes, but forgoes the low chance in variance. I would say that while hiding from a scary monster, there is a quite high chance of variance (you could step on a creaking metal plate, it could just peek around the corner, in both scenarios you get eaten). Mothership circumvents this problem by using other die rolls during the stealth (like for deciding if you were able to climb up the vent), creating the necessary third party judgement by outsourcing it to micro situations within the bigger conversation.

Die Rolls

Rolling dice is optimal for high stakes scenarios with many variables. They usually are what you want for a fast & neutral resolution without leaving too much space for discussions. They have a high tolerance for a muddy understanding of the details in a scenario, thus being perfect to use when the GM feels insecure in how to judge a situation. Balancing on a rope, swinging a sword or casting a spell are scenarios where you might want to consult a third party opinion: The dice!

Die rolls are not always fast, though. Bringing back some ominous foreshadowing from earlier in the article, there is one scenario where die rolls arguably take longer than just talking it out: Combat! While each individual roll is quite quick, many systems chain a large number of die rolls in order to determine the ultimate outcome of a fight, reveling in the second to second details.

Die rolls are also not always about high stakes. Knowledge checks fall into that category. Here, the question of "Does my character know A?" usually does not have any important impact on the immediate situation. But a GM might feel ill equipped to judge the character's backstory up to that point, thinking through their whole life to determine if they would know a specific piece of information. In this scenario, the rolling of the dice represents more of a weighted coin toss, taking the characters History, Religion or Nature skill into account while determining if the character has heard of A.

Hybrid approaches

As so many things in life, it is often not so black & white. Many resolutions are actually a hybrid between a conversation and a die roll.

Conversation with a Roll at the End

The classic example are many GM's approach to social encounters, where they will play out most of the dialog and then ask for a die roll to judge how persuasive the argument was. Why they might voice their own opinion about the persuasiveness of the argument by applying advantage or disadvantage to the roll, they do not want to take sole responsibility for judging the outcome.

Conversation with Micro Rolls

Another example is one we touched upon earlier, the (lack of) stealth mechanics in the Mothership RPG. There, the whole process of hiding is resolved in a conversation, by asking about places to hide and then choosing the best option. Mothership introduces die rolls by letting players roll for micro scenarios within the stealth conversation, like climbing up to an air duct or squeezing into a small crate.

Conversation with Skill Expression

The Burning Wheel RPG solves the lack of character expression in the conversation based approach, the issue where a characters +13 bonus on investigation rarely comes into play since the dice are not really used that often. Instead of playing Sherlock Holmes, you kind off play yourself with a hat on, with might not hit the same way. Burning Wheel finds a solution. Instead of using die rolls to determine the outcome, so-called Wises are used to introduce new elements into a scene. A character could be street-wise, book-wise, bird-wise or any other kind of wise. Characters that are wise in an area are allowed to introduce new elements into the worldbuilding, as long as they relate to their wise and do not contradict established lore.

For example, a bird-wise character may use their Wise to introduce the existence of carrier pigeons into the world in order to send a letter. If we stick with our example and change investigations to be more about the conversation, we could use the Investigation skill in a similar way. Instead of using the skill to abstractly search the room, a player might use the skill to introduce the existence of criminal records in the guards garrison. Maybe this way, other hints can be uncovered!

Conclusion

There are many advantages and disadvantages you introduce by resolving scenarios without a die roll. As always, there is no clear right or wrong when it comes to when to apply this technique. By understanding its nuances, it might help you to make informed decisions about what resolution mechanic to use in what situation.