When Did Rolling Dice Become Tedium?
Lately, a wave of new RPG systems has tried to cut back, or even remove, the dice rolls that have long been a staple in RPGs. Various articles and YouTube video call it a “new era” of role‑playing, but let’s be honest: when you toss out the classic roll‑to‑hit or roll‑to‑damage because “my hero wouldn’t really miss” or “it’s faster,” often it’s not streamlining, it’s removing depth. Dice rolls don’t always equal crunch; in the right system, they provide suspense and depth to consequences, with a dash of chaos, and drama that keeps RPGs from turning into “how awesome is my character story hour.”
“Missing” or Failing is a Part of the Game
There’s a misconception about RPGs: “My character is heroic, and should rarely, if ever, fail.” Even experts make mistakes, and dice keep any possibility on the table. A system where you always succeed — just with varying degrees of awesomeness — isn’t heroic, it’s boring. Skip the mundane stuff, sure, but every roll of the dice provides opportunity to let the story veer off-script. That’s what makes a game, a game, not just group fan‑fiction.
Experts in every field make mistakes and mitigate risks of failure. Jumping a gap you’ve cleared a hundred times? Tie a rope around your waist first — just in case. That way a single bad roll isn’t the end; your party can make a strength roll and catch you, instead of scraping you off the canyon floor.
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For the GMs out there, failure due to circumstances outside your players control shouldn’t mean instant, unpreventable doom. Traps, stealth checks, and other hazards work best as multi‑stage challenges. Roll badly sneaking into the enemy lair? Maybe you snap a twig, but instead of “you’re caught, roll for initiative,” you should call for the guard to roll a perception check. Suspense builds, and things hinge on the next roll, suddenly everyone’s leaning in, and it’s not down to one roll, it’s at least two maybe even three, and each bad or good roll impacts the next.
“Rolling Dice Slows the Game”
Critics say, “We’re not anti-rolling dice, just reducing them. Why roll to hit, then damage, then saves, etc.?” And that’s a fair point — if every roll means digging through charts or calculating whether you did 50 or 52 damage, that’s tedious. The problem isn’t the number of rolls, it’s the math homework attached to them. Rolling should be quick to resolve, not a spreadsheet exercise.
Take one of my favorite RPGs — Middle‑earth Role Playing (MERP). A single attack can feel like doing taxes: “86 minus 41 defense, plus 15 for flanking, plus 7 for the sword… wait, was the defender stunned?” Crunchy, yes. Tedious, yea. But I love MERP because there’s a chance for a large and cool payoff — the critical table. Roll high enough and suddenly you’re chopping off arms, breaking bones, or decapitating an orc in one swipe. And it’s not narrative fluff like it is in many other games; ‘you reduce the orc to zero hit points, describe how you killed him because it’s narrative, but not mechanically important.’ In MERP it’s not fluff, it’s baked into the mechanics. And that’s why more rolls, when they are meaningful, are actually good.
Play the Game
If rolling dice feels slow, ask yourself why. Some systems are just clunky enough to warrant a VTT just to crunch numbers. Thats the system’s fault. If you hate rolling because failing sucks, then you aren’t playing a game. Failing to “game over” in most RPGs is extremely difficult anyway. The mitigate risk part we talked about earlier — Do you have a Cleric that can cast revive? Easy button provided. Thats a topic for another day. Role-playing Games are a game, it’s in the name. and dice are the engine that mix risk, strategy, and storytelling. Fail, have fun with it.
And let there be more dice rolls. Lean into the cool stuff. If your game doesn’t provide that, then add it! Or find one that does.
Hot Take
If you never died in a role-playing game, you haven’t been playing a game.
