Dice and the Shared Imaginary Space

Dice and the Shared Imaginary Space

(I was going to make a role/roll of the dice pun in the title, but I didn’t. You’re welcome.)

It’s easy—too easy, perhaps—to say that the GM “controls” the shared imaginary space. Players contribute to this space just as much by determining their character’s appearance, their actions, their emotions, and what they say. While the GM creates and populates the setting, the characters are, by definition, always in the scene. The GM can paint all the beautiful backgrounds they want, but without the characters in the foreground, it’s fairly pointless. That’s pretty much true of any RPG—and many give the players control over more than what their character looks like and does by granting them the ability to contribute to the setting and the narrative in meaningful ways.

A game’s design should certainly take this into account. If a game includes mechanics that often take agency away from the player regarding their character’s actions, we may start to question if it’s an RPG anymore. The control of the character on the part of the player is perhaps the most sacrosanct aspect of the whole process. Without character control, it’s storytime—not a game—for the players.

At this point, you’re likely thinking, “Yeah, Monte, we all know this.” And we do. And yet, we sometimes allow some very common aspects of our games to take away that control—that agency—from the players.

In this case, I’m talking about dice rolls.

Let’s say a player states that they’re going to talk to the cyborg commander and try to put them at ease. They pick up a die and roll a 1. “Well, I guess I called her mother a microwave oven,” the player says.

But wait a minute. Is that really what it means? Maybe in some game systems, but in others, surely the player doesn’t actually want some random occurrence to take away their agency. Yet that is what many games do, and even when they don’t, players still interpret such occurrences in that way.

In an RPG, a player states their character’s action and, with it, their intent. It seems incongruous to many playstyles that the dice effectively restate the PC’s action. If a critical hit from a great die roll means that the player character leapt up and did a flying kick that knocked their opponent to the ground, that’s cool. But what if that’s not actually what the player wanted their character to do in the shared imaginary space?

And this doesn’t pertain to just extremely great or poor dice rolls. If the die roll indicates that the supernaturally skilled archer simply missed their shot, and the game interprets that result as something along the lines of “They must have aimed too high,” or similar incompetence or ineptitude, the resolution system is somewhat undermining the place that character has in the shared imaginations of everyone at the table. Because if they aimed too high, they’re not the archer that everyone thought they were. Robin Hood (or someone who would be his equal) doesn’t just randomly screw up a shot.

Obviously, I’m not arguing against the use of dice. While some games eschew elements of chance altogether, most games require some kind of randomizer as a part of their resolution system—and that’s fine. More than fine, it’s a fun part of most gaming experiences. The introduction of randomness puts in a touch of the unknown, and that can be exciting.

But a game designer needs to be aware of what impact their resolution system might have on the shared imaginary space. If the dice can impose occurrences into that space that don’t really seem to fit or take away control of a character’s actions from the player, that can cause dissonance. And that’s what we want to avoid.

The way around the problem of dissonance is to intentionally design the role of the dice and openly state how they affect the game. Not just how the resolution system works mechanically, but how the resolution system applies to the imaginary space. 

For example, the game I’m working on now assumes the player characters are extremely competent. That doesn’t mean they always succeed, but it does mean that they don’t have to roll well to be cool. They’re already cool. The dice don’t indicate whether or not they chose aptly or performed an action well, because that’s assumed. What the dice indicate is the effect of the influence of the world outside the character. The incredible marksman doesn’t miss because his aim was off, he misses because the target was moving too fast or ducked behind the table just in time. The acrobat doesn’t fail to walk across the narrow beam because she took a misstep; it’s because the beam was unsteady or there was an unexpected gust of wind.

In other words, the game explicitly states the dice don’t dictate how well the player character performed the action, but that they instead moderate the circumstances out of the character’s control. This prompt is for both players and GM to properly maintain the shared imaginary space. In our mind’s eye, we don’t see the character botch what they’re doing when they roll poorly; we see something outside the character foil the attempt. Likewise, on a success, the character didn’t “get lucky”, they just did something they were good at and nothing got in their way.

Now, that’s not the right decision for the design of every game. Sometimes the setting, the genre, the story, or the style of game suggest that the dice should indicate how well the character performs their action. In such games, perhaps the highly skilled character has modifiers so high or so numerous (and the unskilled character does not) that they uphold the expectations in the shared imaginary space. And sometimes, you want a character “fumble” to add some levity to the game, or the results of that fumble to add to further fun experiences in the game. The character with a rented tuxedo who just fell into the punch bowl is going to have to deal with their appearance as they’re about to meet the Queen, and that’s interesting and entertaining.

So again, there’s no wrong answer here—or rather, the only wrong answer is to ignore how dice rolls will affect the shared imaginary space. You’ve got to know the role the dice play in the game you’re designing and you’ve got to communicate that to the GM and the players.