There is a conversation happening over in the 5E and Critical Role communities about, "When you should roll a skill roll?" A Critical Role GM said a bit of roleplaying was so good, he said, "No skill roll needed!" Some OSR types got angry. How could he "not roll?" That is an OSR rule, not 5E!
I sit over here in GURPS-land and wonder, "Really?"
How is this hard?
What are they even talking about?
I will shorten all of this and point out the obvious: anger engagement is engagement, and this is probably something about nothing. People are riding coattails again and finding silly things to be angry about. Also, mind you, if any of them played a true skill-based system, which some of us have been doing since 1980, they would have figured this out decades ago.
GURPS has had this figured out for the last 40 years.
This all stems from the bad habit of 5E players, and the game encourages it with passive skills: when characters enter a room, every player says, "I roll perception!" Instead of convincing an NPC through roleplaying, the player shouts, "I roll persuasion!"
We have it nice and clear. From GURPS, Campaigns, B343, the first page of that book:
To avoid bogging down the game in endless die rolls, the GM should only require a success roll if there is a chance of meaningful failure or gainful success.
It is simple. From the D&D 5.1 SRD, page 77:
The GM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.
Oh, that is simple too. So, if I search the statue and tell the referee I am pressing the third button on the statue's jacket, just like the clue we found earlier said to open the secret passage, no roll is required?
Yes, if you hit a bullseye with your roleplaying, searching, interaction with the environment, or the referee says "don't roll" because "the outcome is certain," you do not need to roll. Both D&D 5E and GURPS are crystal-clear on this.
In fact, if, in GURPS, a player says their character "searches the room" but doesn't say any of the W's (who, what, where, when, why, and how) - or gives me any clue where they are looking or what they are looking for is probably staring at a -4 to -8 modifier in GURPS as my ruling. I'd say "looking for anything" in that large an area is a very hard skill roll.
Yes, searching a large area is more difficult than searching a small area, especially when time is a factor. But, again, only roll if there is a chance of meaningful failure or gainful success. You may just say they find it after an hour of searching, mark a torch off, roll for some wandering monsters, and move on. On the flip side, searching a very small area will be easier. GURPS covers this with the universal difficulty modifiers. The referee makes the call.
Tell me, are you searching the desk or the bookshelf? For that, I may give you a 0 to -2 modifier, depending on how well it is hidden. Well, you are searching for the key that was taped under the top desk drawer? No roll needed. Bingo. You hit the jackpot.
What am I making anyone roll for that?
Even in GURPS, that is silly.
Same thing with roleplaying. "I roll intimidation" is going to get you a pretty hefty negative modifier since you aren't telling me anything. What, are you leering at them? Come up with a great one-liner? Make my day, +4, easy task. Or maybe even automatic success. Give me something specific to work with here, and I will take that into consideration.
This is GURPS; there are ways to make a skill check easier by narrowing your focus and telling the referee exactly what you are attempting. The risk is that if you focus on the desk, and the passage is behind the bookshelf across the room, no roll is going to help you find it. Maybe someone "searches the room in general" while a few of you each take an area of the room?
Then again, give me a reason to roll. You come up with a search plan like that, and I may rule after 5 minutes of looking; the person searching the bookshelf finds the passage. Mark off some time and move on. Why are we rolling?
Also, whether a player has a skill or not may be a factor in GURPS, "if you roll," and "can you even attempt this?" If a character is a pilot, they will generally know the procedures for landing a plane and how to talk to the tower. No roll needed. What? You are going to fail the roll, and the tower says, "No, you can't land here, land somewhere else, jerk!" Characters without the skill won't know, and they will need help from someone with the skill (likely the person in the tower) to know what to do next.
There are a few factors playing into the confusion. One, BX and these old-school D&D-style systems never had skill systems to roll against, hence the rise of skill-based systems to give players games with task resolution based on skill use. There was a lot of houseruling in those days, too, where you could say "rolling under and ability score" was the "default skill check system of BX." I had BX groups in the 1980s who rolled under ability scores for everything as much as some 5E players do today.
This is not a new "problem" if it is even a problem. Nor is it new.
In old-school games, it is a problem. The rules are not all that consistent across the games, and almost every group had a different way of handling the exact same thing. Houseruling was so common that two groups could handle things in completely different ways.
In the modern OSR, things tend to be clearer with suggested ways of handling "skill and ability checks."
There is another source of confusion for 5E players: those who play D&D video games expect the skill roll to pop the magic d20 up on the screen, animate it, make a Price Is Right-style sound, and give them a pass-or-fail result. Real pen-and-paper games don't work that way, and there was always the role of the referee in deciding if a skill check is needed, or if one can even be attempted.
There was no "I persuade the king to make me king" with a skill roll back in the day; you were laughed out of the castle. That sort of silliness doesn't even work in GURPS either, not without mind control, and even then, everyone else is going to look at you like you just mind-controlled the king's mind.
Video games do not have a referee. All those skill rolls need to be scripted and pre-created. Live games at the table are not like that. Too many D&D players are trained to shout out a skill name when they are presented with anything by the GM, reducing it to this type of interaction:
- The referee reads a long paragraph of description.
- The players look at their character sheets.
- Everyone picks a skill and says, "I roll this skill!"
- Ugh.
This was made worse by many live-play shows, where the players shortcutted a lot of that back-and-forth for a quick, deterministic, pass-or-fail skill roll. Live play shows did a lot of damage to how D&D 5E is played, due to shortcutting the non-combat parts for time and speed of play. Those of us who rarely watch live-play shows have no clue why this is a problem.
You get this feedback loop where those who expect 5E to be a tabletop videogame will expect pass-fail "shout the skill" rolls, and those who watch live play want to shortcut interaction for time. 5E combats are long enough, where are we mucking around searching a room by describing where we look? This is 30 minutes off the 3 hours we'll need for the boss fight! I can't stay here late!
Sometimes, shortcutting those skill interactions in 5E is justified. This has nothing to do with game choice, new versus OSR, or any other pretend argument. It has everything to do with game design.
Combats in 5E run long.
Groups speed up the skill checks and roleplaying to save time.
In GURPS, combats are often quick and deadly.
We have more time to spend interacting and roleplaying with the environment.
And our skill system gives us near-infinite ways to interact with it.
If we need to roll.
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