Figuring out the “best” way to handle arithmetic in a game is my least favorite part of playtesting. I obsess over it anyway because I want to save myself—and GMs/players who feel similarly about math—some trouble down the line.

Figuring out the finer points of dice rolling in a D&D-alike is, of course, basically reinventing the wheel … but hey, even my least favorite parts of playtesting are still what I do for fun in my spare time. So please pardon me while I nerd out for a bit.

Armor (a brief detour)

For a short time, we tried how it might feel if armor provided damage resistance, reducing damage by a flat amount. There is a reason we attempted this for only a short time, though.

As a player, it feels great when your armored character gets hit, but avoids nearly all of the damage thanks to their armor. It feels cruddy and makes fights take forever, though, when your attack hits and the target avoids nearly all of the damage due to armor.

Even with a rule stating that armor could never reduce damage below 1, and even with low HP totals, if you’re facing a group of enemies, and your attacks never hit, the best you can do is whittle them down 1 HP at a time.

I was not a fan of having to do addition and subtraction on every roll, anyway, in addition to separate attack and damage rolls. We went back to the old armor rule (armor as extra HP, which I’ve written about elsewhere).

That earlier note revealed a potentially more significant issue to come back to: The players’ attacks almost never hit, even in fights that seemed reasonably well matched. Why was that?

The Zero-to-Hero Journey

At early levels, players miss rolls a lot.

+0 is the starting ability score. 15 is the default difficulty to beat. 10+(enemy level) is the difficulty if you’re opposed.

The maximum ability score is +10.

You’ll recognize the range of scores from Knave, which I’ve cited as an influence for Wastoid. Actually, much of the system and content—including that original armor rule described above—predates Knave, but Knave’s release is what got me to dust it off and give it another whirl.

And now I’m realizing why I did not have a problem with these rules pre-Knave, but have had a problem in this playtest: My early rules started players with much higher ability bonuses so they didn’t miss so darn much. It’s punishingly, frustratingly difficult at low levels—if players rush into situations expecting to get out of them by just rolling dice, anyway.

I’m divided, though, on whether that’s actually a problem.

One popular “maxim of the OSR” is that “the answer isn’t on your character sheet”: Players are expected to think about the fictional world and context more so than the mechanics of the game. As Chris McDowall says on the Bastionland blog, “Ability scores are secondary to your choices.”

In other words: It’s not wise to treat a certain strain of OSR games like modern iterations of Dungeons & Dragons—3rd, 4th, or 5th edition, basically—which typically encourage the DM to serve up monsters the players can beat in a fair fight.

Wastoid is supposed to be the other kind of game, though—the kind that encourages you to think outside the box, to figure out how to make the most of a vestigial tail, a football team mascot costume, and your predilection for telling knock-knock jokes in combat.

Except … in a nod to one of its greatest inspirations (a callout to Fallout, if you will), Wastoid has 7 ability scores. Why put all that on a character sheet if you’re not going to use them? I used these more to group special abilities and upgrades, and don’t actually call for rolls especially often. I wonder, though, whether having so many scores might signal to players that they should expect to roll—and dive right into combat, D&D 5e-style—quite a bit.

I’ve been blessed with a number of friends who are happy to playtest whatever I bring to the table, whenever we happen to have time. Some don’t even really care to know what’s going on under the hood. Just let them know which die to roll and what number to add, and they’re happy to describe a mutant luchador piledriving a cow-sized crab. I think this makes it easier for them to get used to the idea that they need to pay attention to what’s going on in the fiction of the game more so than what’s on the character sheet—but we’ve all played more modern-day D&D than anything else, and in every game, I think the instinct to just wade into combat might need to be unlearned anew.

So: I could just start beginning characters out with higher ability bonuses (and not give special “tricks”/perks/feats to match) to help meet players’ expectations about how rolling should work.

Now that my own group’s characters are a couple levels higher, though, they seem to be rolling just fine. They’re steamrolling enemy gangs, even, thanks to the morale rules and smart use of situational advantages and tricks at their disposal. If I’d started them even higher, they might be unstoppable. This makes me wonder whether the answer isn’t a tweak to math, but better advice and reminders for players and GMs.

Next steps

As I mentioned earlier, playtesting is something I do in my spare time, so I’m not inclined to not rush that process—but still, running a campaign takes so long that I’m unlikely to playtest minor tweaks to early-to-mid-game progression anytime soon. If you’ve run Wastoid and have thoughts on how dice-rolling felt, I’d be curious to hear.

Meanwhile, I look forward to continuing testing of the mid-level experience and seeing how various tricks, travel rules, faction rules, and denizen rules work in play. I’ll continue working on writing and layout where I can—on this, and on a couple other projects I’m still actively trying to wrap up from the back burner.