You're running a game in a fantastical setting and your players are getting into roleplaying elements of the game. But the world replicates an entire real place with countless details to track. How do you decide which details to enforce? It's a delicate balancing act--you want your players to engage in some kind of realistic gameplay, but do you hold them to regularly going to the bathroom? Decisions like these can be vexing, but fortunately, there is a simple test you can use on details like these to see whether they're worth roleplaying, and that test goes like this: does the rule add fun? If not, ignore it. If so, keep it. Read on for more.
To begin with, there are effects that replicate reality in biological ways. Sleeping and eating are necessities in real life, but are they important details to play out in the game? That depends on your players. Most players I have run games for take these details on themselves. When it's getting late at night, they'll prepare for bed, and when it's about time to have a meal, they get some food. But is this process fun? You could easily eliminate the need for player characters to eat or sleep--some players don't treat these moments as special. But for a lot of players, the opportunity to order food is a fun roleplaying exercise. And the act of cutting a line of adventuring short in order to go to sleep for the night can be a fun limit on how much players can accomplish in one sitting.
To test it, gauge how your players seem to react to limitations like food and sleep. Do they regard these slowed-down moments as opportunities to express themselves? Or do they seem to resent being slowed down? Different people in your party may feel differently, but generally you can tend towards the majority opinion and either highlight or minimize the effect of biological necessities. I can anticipate the cries of some GMs: "But if the party doesn't sleep, that breaks the game!" Does it, though? Sleep is tied to regaining spell slots and hit points, but you could have other mechanisms for that, like the passage of time; midnight automatically refills the party's missing slots, for instance. The disruption of the game is so minor that it's absolutely worth tweaking the rules if your players are not having a good time.
I mentioned another biological necessity at the beginning of this article to illustrate that we already have agreed as gamers not to address certain details in our roleplaying. I have been a GM for over 15 years now, and never have I witnessed a player character go to the bathroom. Not once. We don't pay attention to the detail of bathroom visits partially because it's gross, but also because it doesn't really add anything to the game. I could imagine scenarios in which players poison someone who is forced to go to the bathroom immediately, but even this isn't about the bathroom issue so much as it is about the distraction. The simple fact of the matter is this: we don't roleplay going to the bathroom because it isn't fun. And that lesson should carry over to other details as well.
So if the bathroom example proves that we don't have to pay attention to non-fun details, what other details can we consider removing from the game for our players' benefit? I personally have always advocated for the ignoring of ammunition counts. A melee combatant can deal consistent damage with their weapon regularly and without any stipulation about limits on that damage. But archery specialists have to contend with limits on arrows and bolts, even though their damage is generally below that of melee weapons thanks to the lack of a bonus to damage. This imbalance is presented to counteract the advantage of not being in melee striking distance. But in my experience, this means that archers both have to worry about ammo and dealing less damage in combat. I don't care for that; it makes archers less powerful than their melee brethren and adds a boring stat to keep track of (how many arrows the character has left). I would argue that in a fantasy world where anything is possible, counting arrows is not a fun use of time or energy. If you're running a hard strategy campaign, feel free to count your arrows, but for most players, this is not a fun detail, and it should be ignored.
If you thought my arrow count elimination idea was a radical imbalancing of the game, wait until you read my next suggestion: you can get ready of counting spellcaster's spell slots in the right conditions. Yes, you read that right. If you have a party of all spellcasters, what is to prevent you from removing the limits placed by spell slots? They will become more powerful, but proportionally more powerful to each other. As long as you compensate by upping the difficulty of the adventure, there should be no issue. You can also remove spell slot limitations in a mixed party if the spellcaster(s) is/are consistently coming up as less powerful than melee combatants. The big question is, does the limit on spell slots create fun? If it doesn't, it's time to move forward without those rules.
Spell slots can be somewhat inconsistent in lots of games, anyway. Consider your average campaign where the players are playing roughly three sessions to get through a day in-game. How many days pass where player characters cast more spells than they have slots simply because the player hasn't tracked their spells across days instead of sessions? Does this break the game? Or does it simply grant the spellcasting characters the ability to remain as competent as melee characters? Obviously, if your challenge to the players is tactical rather than story-based, you want to keep these balancing efforts in mind, but if you're telling a story or guiding roleplaying, there is no major drawback to letting spellcasters cast more spells than the game explicitly allows.
These are all effects that we can ignore if the situation is right. But what about details that we should think to roleplay to improve the game? I think that one often-overlooked detail is pain from attacks. Let's say you have a party with a big bad barbarian; the barbarian gets hit in combat with considerable damage. The barbarian loses the appropriate number of hit points. End of story, right? Wrong. Your barbarian should roleplay the pain of the attack. If they were practically sliced in half, they should respond with an emotion (panic, terror, anger) and a signal of the damage (moving more slowly or quickly, breathing heavily, holding a damaged limb). If the player doesn't roleplay the damage, we're suggesting that a heavy blow would have only a numerical effect on the character, and that doesn't add up. We want our players to roleplay getting hurt.
Likewise, story moments that affect a player character should be given the space to have a narrative effect. Let's use an example from my mystery campaign. I use an NPC named Dirk St. Patrick to antagonize my player characters, investigating them and trying to set them against each other. When Dirk targets one of the player characters, I give them space to react. I could just use Dirk to deliver a narrative beat and move on, but it's important that the player be able to develop a reaction. This happened recently when one of the player characters got so mad at Dirk that he threw a punch at the NPC; this is a vital moment that we can't ignore. This is worth roleplaying because it furthers the story and lets the players have fun reacting to the gameworld.
The last detail I'll suggest actually roleplaying that could otherwise be ignored is traveling. When players move from point A to point B, they are opening themselves to possibilities for story to be developed. You can use the time it takes to travel to introduce NPCs, storylines, and events for the players to react to. I recommend using my traveling events table, which has a wide variety of events which can make traveling more interesting. After all, it isn't strictly fun to simply decide to be somewhere and then be there; you need to handle the journey of it. So hunker down for traveling and be ready to point your players in the direction of new story events.
This is just a sampling of the details you can use or ignore to make your game more fun for your players. Remember that you should choose to include or ignore a detail based on whether your players enjoy it, and remember also that you can always change your mind and reshape a rule if it proves better for your campaign. There is no penalty for changing directions mid-game, and your players will appreciate your efforts to improve the game.
That's all for now. Coming soon: how to avoid overpreparing, how to describe setting, and how to involve player character relationships with NPCs in your game. Until next time, happy gaming!
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