2d20 Is different than other TRPGs 

> The Spam It is the GMs responsibility and task to let a lot of things happen without a roll at all. Difficulty zero rolls, especially in Conan, and things that aren't a task at all, don't get rolled at the GM's perogative. With regards to Doom I don't know what to say. That sounds like an isolated incident. It could have been a lot of difficult tasks on top of each other and the Characters not using Fortune to work through them. I suspect it is GM error about what costs doom and what doesn't. My experience is that it is hard, and feels like an accomplishment, when the players are in mortal danger and I have played fairly with Doom/Threat. A lot of GMs who are lukewarm on the idea of Doom "restricting" them are very generous with themselves in this system, which leaves these guys with more Doom for NPCs to buy dice. Regardless of how one feels about Doom, however, it's not one's "job" to kill the players. The Doom/Momentum has led a few people to percieve an adversarial later to this game that isn't there.

Yeah I'm aware the DM is supposed to restrict rolls, but it still had issues with that kind of gamey thought process where you always felt like you wanted to find the difficulty 1 roll with minimal consequences on a failure to farm momentum. I mean, I didn't actually do that in play but from a game theory standpoint it seemed like the optimal strategy by far, with the only real consequence is being shamelessly cheesy for employing that kind of metagame tactic. As for the TPK, basically what happened was that a character got wounded pretty early in the adventure, and wounds in Conan pump up the difficulty of all his future combat rolls. The wounded guy effectively became a momentum sink, since he needed more dice to accomplish anything, and generated less momentum when he did succeed. Eventually the group had to start tapping into doom for extra dice since he drained all the momentum. To add on top of that, every parry added doom to the pool as well, and you absolutely had to parry to avoid taking wounds. So the DM had a lot of doom. He barely spent any of the 15-20 in the pool and we still got killed. It was even worse given that looking at the doom pool it became pretty apparent to me that we could have been pretty easily obliterated if the DM decided to even spend 25% of the doom he had in there. Pretty much the entire game felt like the GM had to pull his punches and it was pretty obvious he was doing so. It really took away the heroic feel for me. The Star Trek game I played was fairly similar in that regard. While it didn't end in TPK like Conan, it still had that feel that we only succeeded because the DM didn't spend much of his threat pool.

Well, hmm. It seems I have to do a threat and Doom tutorial. This seems very much apart from my experience and may be part of the GM not spending Doom when enemies appear suddenly, when there are traps, or Changes in circumstances. What kind of a game were these guys coming from before coming to 2d20? W/r/t difficulty 1, an important element is create problem: at a cost of the GM spending 2 doom, the situation is momentarily more complicated than You bargained for, and difficulty plus 1. I am really puzzled about the deadliness, for that to happen in my experience takes buying a lot of dice for NPCs and for damage rerolls.

Yeah, I'll check out your doom tutorial, maybe we were doing something wrong there. Our group plays a variety of systems, Pathfinder being the most popular, though this Conan game was our first foray into 2d20 for DM and player alike. It's possible the GM made some mistakes that led to the situation, I can't really say. At the time, I knew very little about Conan 2d20 so I was just following instructions on what to roll. Later on I read the book a bit, but couldn't find any obvious things the DM did that were against the rules, but I'm far from an expert on the system. As far as deadliness, I wouldn't really describe it as super deadly in the sense that one blow kills you, the issue was mostly the death spiral coming from wound penalties. The first wound came from a 5 stress attack and once your character received that, all your attack rolls and parry rolls had the difficulty jumped by 1. This meant that to do anything reliably you had to spend momentum (or gain doom). Since parrying was harder too, it meant even more spends to not take more wounds and make it worse. At 2 or more wounds and +2 difficulty , you were essentially a non-factor in the fight unless you borrowed ridiculous amounts of doom from the pool. Even the simplest combat check was at 3 difficulty, making it near impossible on only two dice. That's where the GM doom pool really started to skyrocket, since the choices turned to either creating a bunch of doom to parry the blow or having the wound penalty go up again and making everything even worse. And if the DM was spending doom on enemy attack rolls they'd easily make short work of us. It felt like we were missing something, like maybe one of our group was supposed to have healing abilities we didn't have access to or there was some mechanic to mitigate wound penalties that we didn't know about.

The problem with players who like to game a system is largely a mindset problem. I've tried playing 7th Sea 2nd with one of my "gamey" groups and it was pretty miserable since the game is already mostly about telling a story about how awesome your success was, rather than IF you succeed. I guess what I'm saying is, if your players really need crunch to keep them at bay, they are looking for a more DM vs Player situation anyway.

There is a little bit of a zeitgeist working on how to get fighter wings to work. B5 and its LOTR inspiration are totally within 2d20's vocabulary, for sure.

You are in for a treat: it is different in a lot of the right places to bring on a different tone.

Thank you 🙏 ! I think this is the last video I put together in Sony Vegas (shows how long ago, before DaVinci was free).

I have never paid too much attention to which of "d" or "die." I can say that in miniatures Wargaming, which I have a long background in, we say, "8 dice" or "+2 dice," and this language and way of speaking seemed to come through also in the culture of play of dice pool systems like WoD a d Shadowrun. "5d6" has always felt like a commandment to sum iny experience, while "5 die six" feels like a grammatical variation to imply a pool. Very subtle shades I had not given much thought to, and existing only in the verbal realm. When writing they would all still get to the page as 5d6. As for Conan, the presentation and the fandom are the gritty fantasy/sword and sorcery side of it, it is just a ruleset for Xena, Sword and Sandal stuff like Ben-Hur, and historical Pastiche to me. I am happy to play or run in the Hyborian age but I can take or leave it. The system rings true with an idiom of Cinema and TV. ..I am less a fan of the original stories, though I do think they are alright.

I hadn't thought of the wargaming origins of the phrasing, that very well could have a lot to do with why people say it one way or the other. Though I maybe should have because I played quite a few of them in the 'old days' when I had more time for gaming and more wargamer friends. Thanks for answering, you're literally the first person I've asked who didn't get offended or defensive, and I appreciate your input on it.

Connor - And thank you for asking. I've been curious about that, too, since I only started hearing it fairly recently.

This has been on my mind, too. I've always heard 3d6 as "3 Dee 6" or 2d10 as "2 Dee 10". Language is different in different places and changes with time and I'm interested in those differences and why one sounds natural to my ear when the other doesn't. Similarly, I've recently heard multiple people saying "dice" instead of "die" (e.g. "roll one dice") and I'd love to know more about that!

There was a similar question someone asked a while back in a forum like this and I did an audio answer about it... I'm thinking it might be worth a video. The short answer is no, and my experience with it is that in fact there is a more transparent and fair experience (for the genres) as "gotchas" like dogpile reinforcements and traps and the like come from Doom, so you can see it coming. And after they happen, there's that much less Doom, so there's a "safe window" after. However, the GM Really does need to spend Doom for things that "tilt" a scene suddenly from the characters expectations. Likewise, the GM needs to spend Doom rather than save it somewhat, or the players Don't know when the hammer will fall and Don't get a sense of what the doom represents (which spoils the anticipatory fun of the mechanic). Like all games, "you aren't here to kill the players" applies, and I suppose someone could forget that, but both the Conan and Star Trek GM advices in the rules are pretty well written. From the momentum side, I have heard some folks suggest that there's a metagame aspect where Characters try to "game," for the easiest difficulty 1 tasks with their Actions. I haven't seen that, and a careful reading of the rules shows that even the base 90% success rate of Difficulty 1 should be situations where the 10% failure is a meaningful risk. It's a fun topic to take on as a video and I believe it will be the next 2d20 video, talking about the doom economy and setting task Difficulties.

thanks!

I don’t know what you’re saying. Is this something specific about the rolls I pictured in the examples? I think you are confusing Doom with Fortune or Determination, when you spend fortune you get a “die” that is already a 1 without rolling. This is not the same thing.

There is indeed a “gambling” aspect where success can beget more success. This is especially the case in the Conan 2d20 game where dice are purchased at a 1:1 cost

Those Momentum and Doom mechanics seem like they'd work better in a diceless game anyway. Compare skill value to difficulty, excess goes into Momentum pool, shortfall comes from pool or Doom (or you could just accept failure).

The dice have their role. After all bets are on the table complications (20) and critical successes (1, any skill focus) can punctuate things.

If one looks at the GM’s role as a “results creator,” if it’s all about “producing” rather than “playing,” then I suppose you have a point. I do not look at GMing as a form of entertainment. I’m there to play a game of imagination and peril with fellow psychonauts. The system and the dice are like our spacesuits and starship. Different astronauts 👨‍🚀 have different roles, some go down in the lander, others go on spacewalks, and so on. So it is with the different roles of pc and GM at the table

I stitched this video together right at the beginning of when I was learning to do voice-overs with a grown-up microphone 🎤 next to my face, it was edited with Vegas when I had barely a clue how to use a NLE, but it remains something I’m proud of in terms of its information density and approachability.

@@The_CGA I'm starting with 2d20 Conan and this vid helps me a lot. I'm going to continue checking the series

Some games have had an “alert level” or “escalation die” which operates in a similar domain to Doom/Threat, though across smaller timespans. I think 13th age is an example?

“Limitations breed creativity” -pretty much every artist working in physical media -Synthesizer musicians -poets (meter)

@The_CGA normally I'd agree, but not in the case here. If it was a more stringent limitation maybe, but as the ultimate arbiter of difficulty in the world already, Doom doesn't seem like a true limitation.

I take it as the best kind of compliment that I can communicate a thesis (and an argumentative one, at that) in a way that a viewer can come away forming their own opinion, even if it is one of disagreement with the ideas. Cheers and happy summertime