Getting Things Done

A Deep Dive Into Your Resolutions

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2026. Let's talk about Resolutions!

Don't worry, I mean resolution systems in TTRPGs. I'm not a masochist...usually...

Overview

Generally, TTRPGs narrate events until something happens that could significantly affect the characters or the story, at which point they use some sort of systematic method to resolve success or failure and offer a guideline on the results. There are a lot of niche variations, but in general they use a randomizer, typically dice... 

Words, words, words! Hey, there could be someone out there that didn't know this stuff, AND was still kind of interested, right? (Hi, Mom! Look, no hands!)

Ok, ok, yes, you knew all that, but it's important to take a minute sometimes to set it down in front of you and LOOK at it. Bear with me, alright? 

"I attack the ogre" seems pretty simple in context, but that's often because you are making some assumptions, probably using the system of your favorite game in your head. You roll dice and the GM tells you whether or not you hit, but what just happened, really? 

You probably knew what dice you had to grab based on the game you were playing. That one factor alone created a whole framework of odds, a process, and an overall feel. Was it one die or several? If several, is it always the same number of dice? Are they all the same type? Are you adding them up or counting successes? Did you need to roll high or low? If you succeeded, did you already know how much damage you did, or do you have to grab more dice? Did the ogre get to roll to do something about it, or does he just have to take the results and wait for his turn? Does he even get a turn?

Every one of those details is different in some systems, and every detail of system and process makes an imprint on the gameplay. Some are light, fast, and easy; others are tactical and sometimes tedious. Some give you fine-grained options for actions, some are freeform, and some just gloss over such administrivia to get on with the story. How the dice work are a large part of how the game feels in play, and it matters.

Let's do a little comparative overview, shall we? Settle in, this just is a quick bird's eye view survey of several systems' rolling mechanics without really digging into the systems at any depth aside from that. 

"Roll-High Against a Target" Systems

This is just what it sounds like: grab your dice and roll as high as possible. There's generally a Target number that represents how hard it is to do what you are trying, and if you hit or go over it you succeed.

D&D

The elephant in the room - D&D is by far the dominant market share, so let's take a look at it first, shall we? By D&D I mean all versions; there are significant variations of mechanic from TSR AD&D to WotC and Pathfinder.

Early D&D was pretty much table-driven. If you are this class, look at that table; at this level, against that "armor class"(AC), roll this number or better after adding all your modifiers to a flat d20 roll. Later versions where armor was switched to a simple target number were a BIG improvement...give the devil his due. 

The target has little input in this. PCs might have a better AC from high Dexterity, or a Feat that let's them roll to evade or reduce damage, but usually it just is what it is. Damage is determined by the weapon or spell used, and is typically expressed as a roll of more dice, which is only affected by the to-hit roll on a "crit". You can roll a good hit and still roll crappy damage, or barely succeed the hit and them roll devastating damage. "Damage" is expressed as "hit points" like a video game. 

The d20 breaks down easily to 5% increments when thinking about odds, and the range is enough that it doesn't feel too clunky. Modifiers make you feel more capable as you level up, and increasing hit points can make you feel powerful by being able to take a hit. Abilities and tactics affects the average of those rolls over time, giving a bell curve across the memory of many otherwise isolated and separate rolls, even if the odds on any one roll are flat. Over time, success tests for most everything have been migrated onto the d20, though hit points and damage dice still use a variety of smaller types. Depending on which flavor you play, you can roll a "crit" that guarantees success (a 20) or failure (a 1) at equal odds of 5% of the time each... PF2 also crits if you succeed by 10 or more.

Modifiers to the roll include high stats, magic items, active spells, and a huge grab-bag of predefined moves and Feats that tweak things.

It...well, obviously it works well enough that it's been around in one version or another for nearly 60 years now, and is still the king of sales. I was born in this system, so it can't be all bad! Still, other systems used very different mechanics, so let's check a few.

Traveller

A classic that used a "roll high" 2d6 + mods against a target number ranging from 2 to 16, usually 8. This introduces a probability curve, with the unmodified rolls landing around 6-8 almost 45% of the time. Modifiers are typically stats (-3 to +3) and/or skills (-3 to +3) with situational modifiers (-4 to +4), for a possible total modifier of -10 to +10. In some cases the GM would add a 3rd d6 and require the player to take the best two, or the worst two.

Damage was determined by the attack used, and generally wouldn't do more than three dice (always d6) and targets could go on full defense to mitigate, but otherwise skill wasn't used defensively. Armor either negated dice (hard armor) or reduced it to an automatic roll of 1 (soft armor), and damage was applied directly to stats like Strength, which was brutal. 

Adding 2d6 only gives a range of 11 possible values. Success is generally pass/fail, though each is rated as marginal, average, or exceptional based on how far above or below the target the roll is. Rolling doubles is relevant: snake eyes (ones on both dice) is always a critical failure, boxcars (both sixes) is a crit success, and if the dice are the same on any other number it creates a narrative add-on according to success or failure. While the 2-12 base range of the dice feels tighter, the curve caused by using two separate physical dice makes those crits just over half as likely as in D&D. 

Comparison

The settings are VERY different, and the mechanics for absorbing damage are pretty different, but the success/fail mechanic is actually very similar. Traveller's 2d6 offers a more nuanced feedback system, but the smaller range of possible numbers feels less dynamic, even though it really isn't. As with everything, being familiar and comfortable with the system makes a big difference.

Stormbringer

An old percentile system that wanted you to roll not more than the relevant score on a d100. How high or low you rolled didn't matter as long as you didn't go over - no curve, no crits, and no relevance other than pass/fail. Damage was rolled separately by attack type, and armor rolled similarly. 

This one is mentioned mostly to round out types and a dozen examples, but it's worth thinking about how it feels to roll percentiles rather than a d20 or a few d6's. Keep that in the back of your mind as you read through these...

GURPS

This is a 3d6 point-based system, which creates a stronger curve. The target number is the character's skill, and you must roll at or below it, with LOW rolls being better. 

A character's skills are based on their stats, which start at a default of 10 and can be raised by spending character points, or lowered to get extra points to spend elsewhere. Skills are Easy, Average, Hard, or Very Hard, adjusting their starting value and the cost of improving them. Difficulty modifiers lower or raise the target number from that. 

Damage is rolled separately, based on your attack, and is taken directly from your HT (Health) stat. Rolls of 17 or 18 always fail, even if your score is higher. Skills can have default values if it makes sense, based on their difficulty; -4 for Easy, -5 for Average, -6 for Hard.

On a melee hit, targets generally get a chance to roll a defense - a block (shield, or unarmed), parry (with a weapon of unarmed), or dodge (the only one you can usually try against firearms - don't kill me, I'm just the messenger.) If that succeeds, the attack doesn't hit. If it still hits, armor can reduce the damage, with a bunch of rules for types of armor vs types of weapon damage. 

GURPS is setting-agnostic, which means you can play almost any setting with these rules. It works quite well, but has a particular feel to it. Traveller translates pretty well. Playing D&D characters reproduced in GURPS can work pretty well for a rogue, but playing a fighter-type can feel underpowered because you can't just stand and take hits all day. Playing a spellcaster feels weird because you can just keep casting the same spells over and over, but you don't get many, and they don't scale up the way D&D spells seem to. It's different.

One of the great things about GURPS is that you can reproduce a truer representation, but going through and recreating every spell from scratch in the Advantage system is incredibly tedious, and sometimes the point costs simply do not translate. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; if you just want to play D&D, then don't waste your time trying to do it in GURPS. Make something that fits the system, or grab a different system...

Champions/Fuzion

Another 3d6 system, this one adds a stat and a skill and tries to roll high. 

I'm going to handwave the rest - there are a lot of secondary stats and types of damage, but it's a supers setting. You can look like a supermodel in a thong but toss a battleship without putting a supermodel sized hole in the hull, or driving yourself into the ground like a pin. I will admit that I love it, and move on. Have fun.

Fate

This one's interesting, because the dice are just plusses, minuses, and blanks. You roll 4 of these "Fudge" dice for a value from -4 to +4 and add your relevant skill, which is usually 0-4, to match or beat the target number. A target can actively roll against you, cancelling successes 1:1. It's a roll-high system, but it's the only one I can think of off the cuff where the dice can and do roll negative numbers...

Fate handles damage with Stress boxes, which you check off the absorb damage, and Consequences which do the same but can be leveraged by an attacker to improve subsequent rolls against you. Stress comes back the next scene; Consequences must be handled in the fiction, and take longer to clear the more severe they are. When you can't absorb damage, you're Taken Out. It's a beautiful, elegant system.

Fate is also setting-agnostic, and built to be hacked, but honestly, I have seldom needed to do it. It's consistent and rules-light, with a great online community, but the change in thinking, from traditional games heavy in simulationist mindset to doing things cinematically, is a big step for some folk.

"Roll More Successes" Systems

These systems generally use pools of dice to roll against a reasonably static target, but measure how well you do by counting how many of the individual dice succeed. They also often feature "exploding dice" that let you roll them again if the highest number comes up.

Shadowrun

PCs roll pools of d6's based on their ratings. A Shaman with Will 6 and Sorcery 6 casting a spell rated at 6 could roll a pot of 18 dice, and it's possible to get even higher ratings. 

Older versions still used a target number system, and individual dice that rolled that number or better were counted as successes. 6's "exploded" letting players roll that die again and add it, making it possible to roll successes against high target numbers with enough dice and luck, but later versions just use 5 as a success and 6 to roll again for possibly more than one success from the single die. What matters isn't how high you roll, but how many dice count as successes. Tasks are given difficulty ratings which require escalating numbers of successes; and easy task only needs one, but Extreme tasks might take 8-10.

In early rules, 1's cancelled successes, but recent versions makes them cause "Glitches" - negative side effects that don't alter the pass/fail state, but have unfortunate results in addition. If more than half the dice rolled are 1's, there's a Glitch whether or not the roll succeeds. If it also fails, the Glitch is considered critical.

Characters have Condition Monitors for Health and Stun; everyone has the same track of ten boxes. Attacks have a base damage rating, and extra successes add to that, while characters get to roll resistance. As of 3e (not as familiar with later) attacks were rated as Light, Moderate, Severe, or Deadly base damage, filling respectively 1, 3, 6, or 10 of your 10 available damage checkboxes on one success, but staging up by a category every two. Successes on resistance staged it back down, so even if you got hit with Severe damage you could stage it down to Light or even shrug it off entirely by making sufficiently good rolls to resist. An armored Troll rolling 15d6 to reduce damage had pretty good odds of ignoring minor hits.

Storyteller System (WW/WoD)

PCs roll pools of d10's based on their ratings. A Vampire might add his Strength 2 and Brawling 1 scores to roll three dice. Individual dice are considered successes if they roll a target number or higher. Older versions usually (but not always) used 6 and required more successes for harder tasks; later versions standardized on 7. Rolls of 10 "exploded" adding the possibility of more successes from the same die. 

More 1's than successes on a roll was a Botch, or in later versions a 1 and no successes at all; botches cause negative side effects such as a gun jamming, instead of just failing to hit.

Damage was generally represented as moving up a progressive set of labelled Health levels, each with associated penalties. Damage was divided into Bashing, Lethal, and Aggravated, which affects whether/how they can be resisted and how long they take to heal. Anyone can "Soak" Bashing damage, and it is relatively easy to shake off; Lethal requires appropriate armor and takes longer to heal. Aggravated damage implies something grievous, such as sunlight to a vampire, and is hardest to recover. Specific rulebooks added others that were setting specific.

Comparison

Again, the success/fail mechanic is very similar. Shadowrun gave players the chance to roll enormous pots of dice, which can be fun but also tedious. Storyteller kept the pools much smaller and used larger dice, reducing the odds of explosions, but anyone who played one would understand the other.

Outliers

These are a little different. Maybe more than a little. Decide for yourself.

Blades in the Dark

Another d6 system, BitD is interesting in that only the player rolls. You toss a number of dice determined by skill, but usually only the highest die counts. Rolls of 1-3 fail; 4-5 succeed, but with a cost, and only a 6 succeeds completely with no consequence. Rolling multiple 6's crit for some "additional advantage." If you have no relevant skill you roll two dice, but take the worse result.

If you roll a 4 in a fight, you win the fight but take a few licks too. A 6 dominates without injury. A 3 loses. You can make the whole fight one roll...or handle it an exchange at a time.

Very narrative friendly, smooth and elegant, but can be a little summary if you aren't careful. 

Cortex Prime

One of my favorites! Every roll uses a pool chosen from the one each of character's attribute groups, or prime sets. Each attribute is represented by a single die, with a d4 being pitifully weak, and d12 being insanely strong. Every roll will typically be at least 3 dice. You might add others if, for example, you have a signature item that applies, like a custom weapon.

The GM determines how difficult the task is by choosing the opposing dice. A normal, challenging task will roll 2d8 (he can choose smaller or bigger dice to vary the difficulty) plus one or more dice based on something(s) from the situation. He picks any two of the dice rolled and add them together for the number you have to beat, but just two (there are exceptions.) 

The winner picks one of the dice NOT used in their total as their "effect" die. The number rolled on that one doesn't matter, only its size. This represents how good a result they got. If inflicting a wound, this die becomes a Complication on the recipient, and can then be added to subsequent rolls against them because it's a "Bleeding Head Wound d8" which is very distracting, stuns him, and makes it harder to see. They can be staged up or down by subsequent hits or recovery. When one goes over d12, you're Taken Out.

Virtually every roll is opposed. It's a beautiful and dynamic system, and wonderfully flexible - everything is handled with dice and labels. It also has a ton of optional "Mods" that alter the base rules and let you customize your game, and the character attributes themselves are sets chosen to fit the specific setting and game you're planning. It's another setting-agnostic system that requires some mastery to really appreciate the depth and subtlety, but well worth the time to learn.

Marvel Superheroes

This one uses a custom deck of cards rated 1-10 instead of dice. Characters get a number of cards to represent their experience and grit. Most get four or five; really green heroes might get only three. The standard book gives six only to Captain America, Magneto, and Doctor Doom. Every character has an Edge and your hand is that plus two. You get to play one card on each action, and immediately redraw; you can also play as many as you like with values no higher than your Edge.

There are suits for Strength, Intellect, Agility, and Willpower, and powers are associated with one of the suits. A Doom suit is none of those, and acts as a GM mechanic; if you play Doom cards he gets to pick them up and use them against you later. When you take action, you can play a card and add it to your score, either a base attribute or a power, all of which have ratings of their own from 1-30. If the card you played is the same suit as the power or action, it's a "trump" and you get to turn over the next card from the deck and add that too, and if that's another trump you can keep doing it. 

Every round, the GM turns over the top card - that's the action score for all the bad guys. The card usually has a +, -, or blank on it: a plus gives you a recovery, allowing you to redraw a lost card. A minus recovers the bad guys. Regeneration also lets you recover a card if the face-up card is less than your score, or your full hand if the power is high enough. 

If you take a hit, you subtract your Strength and any armor from the damage, so Hulk and Iron Man are hard to hurt. If you are hurt, you have to discard cards totaling the damage or more. You don't redraw those until you get a recovery. If forced to discard all your cards, you're Out.

I love this game. It's fast, fun, and flexible, but it's also very focused and targeted on the Marvel universe, and has been out of print for a long time...

Amber Diceless

That's right, completely diceless. Doesn't use cards or a spinner or anything else, either. 

In Amber, there are only four basic attributes: Strength, Warfare, Psyche, and Endurance. Each of those has a rating which starts at Amber level, which is superhuman. You can downgrade it to Chaos level for a few character points, or to Human level for even more, but that's kind of suicidal... Every character starts with 100 points, and the game campaigns begin with a bidding war for EACH attribute. If you bid, your final bid is your score, and they are ranked. Any bid at all is ranked above the starting Amber level. After all the bidding, you get to buy Powers from the points left, and they range from 50pts for the "best" one downwards; without Powers you are a victim, and Powers also have a clear hierarchy like paper/scissors/rock. 

When characters come into conflict, the rules are simple - the better score wins. Period.

So... what if I have better Strength but you have better Warfare? Ah, that's the trick. That, and tactical application of delays, of situational modifiers, or Powers... the book is ~250 pages of discussion on how to cheat when you would otherwise just blatantly lose. 

It's a very different way of doing things, but it works, and can be glorious. 

Baker's Dozen

Our own system, Level One, might seem a little less radical in the company of some of these...

It's Blackjack rolling: figure your effective target based on modified skill, something like GURPS, but roll high without going over. How well you did is determined by that same roll. If your target is a 7, and you roll a 5, that 5 is your action score. Like Cortex, your roll is based only on your ability, but is opposed - the GM will roll against you based on how hard the task is, or how good your opponent, etc. If the opposition rolls a 6, they beat you by 1. 

If they were just resisting, they stopped you from accomplishing anything. If they were actively fighting back, that 1 becomes how well they actually managed to hit you around your attempts to hit them. Your attack was also your defense; their attack was also their defense. 

The interesting part is that we have several options for dice! 

The default is what we call Simple Pool, which plays like Shadowrun and WoD pools. If your target was 7, roll 7 dice and count the odd numbers. You can use d6s, d12s, d2s, any combination that has equal distribution of even and odd numbers. Want a little extra effort? Roll more dice! If your total goes over your target it fails, effectively giving you a roll of zero. You decide how much risk you want to take.

You can play it entirely diceless like Amber, where the game is really all about establishing an advantage and maintaining it. You can also just roll ANY dice you want and add them up. Simple Pool is really just a bunch of zero-base d2s. 

Each option gives a different feel. 

So What's Your Game?

What kind of world are you trying to make? All these are actually complex systems that can play one-shots, sure, but are also complete and robust enough to run long campaigns with deep character development, lots of advancement, and anything else your group really wants. 

There are a LOT of good games out there today. If what you really want is a quick get-together with a predetermined setting and stakes, Look at Fari Games - Breathless, Boundless, Voidlight, Songs and Sagas, Stoneburner... They have some really great games. Try Ten Candles from Cavalry, or Monster of the Week at Evil Hat, though I'm pretty sure you could run longer campaigns in most of these too if you just want. (Ok, maybe not Ten Candles.) If you want to try Level One, the beta is still available as pay-what-you-want at https://silentbardgames.itch.io/level-one-rpg. Let us know what you think.

What's the point of all this?

Take some time to think about what kind of game you want. 
Take some time to learn how various systems DO things.
Take some time to learn the system you choose.

I recommend you learn as many systems as you can, because virtually every one will teach you something about gaming that others never really helped you understand, and I don't just mean scan the net for a few comments and call it a day; actually read the rules, internalize what they do and why, hopefully PLAY more than one session, but most importantly, keep an open mind. 

Don't reject a system just because it's not D&D...
Don't reject a system just because it *IS* D&D.

Remember to learn something useful from all of them.