Six Design Continuums in Roleplaying Games

The phases of the moon.

Where in the cycle is your game?

When designing a roleplaying game, many elements are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Instead, they exist on a long scale, or continuum. Going towards one end or another of that continuum has both advantages and disadvantages, as does sticking to the middle. Where a game should fall on these continuums depends largely on what kind of game it’s trying to be.

Understanding these continuums is vital if you wish to design a game, or just evaluate a game you’ve bought. Join me in examining six of the most important continuums, providing insight into how roleplaying games work.

1. Lethality

An armored figure upon the ground. You got knocked down, but can you get back up? Dead in Battle by Jakub T. Jankiewicz used under CC BY-SA 2.0

Most roleplaying games will feature some kind of violent conflict, which means PCs have a chance to die. Once a character is dead, they can’t be played anymore.* Some systems even have other mechanisms by which PCs can be rendered unplayable, such as Call of Cthulhu’s permanent insanity. How easy it is for PCs to become unplayable is what determines a game’s lethality.

A low lethality has obvious advantages. For one thing, when it’s difficult for a character to die, you don’t risk ruining your story because some damage dice rolled too high. It’s incredibly frustrating to lose a PC when they were critical to your ongoing story. Players don’t love losing their characters either, so low lethality often keeps everyone happy. Many systems, like 7th Sea and Legend of the Elements, even make it explicit that PCs cannot die from random damage rolls.

Another advantage to low lethality is that players who are less frightened of losing their characters are more likely to engage in the action. It’ll really take the wind out of your sails if you build a cool boss fight and the PCs refuse to engage because they don’t want to die. But herein lies the weakness of low lethality. When players know their characters can’t die, there’s less incentive not to engage in combat. Players may not see any reason to avoid violence when that violence carries little or no risk to their precious characters.

High lethality, on the other hand, is critically important to games with a scenario of disempowerment. Most such games are in the horror genre, and it’s difficult for a player to invest in the fearful atmosphere when they know nothing bad will happen to their character. That’s why characters are so fragile in games like Delta Green. The risk of dying at any moment is important to the fun.

Fragile characters are also important in games that encourage players to avoid violence. In Burning Wheel, for example, the mechanics send an important message: If you’re going to fight, it had better be worth risking your life, because characters can die of even relatively minor wounds.

One option for those who want a happy middle ground is to make PCs relatively fragile but require a player to give explicit permission before risking their character’s life. The GM doesn’t ever kill a character with random falling rocks, and the player recognizes that by drawing steel against the dragon, their character could become a tasty snack.

2. Character Customizability

The dissembled pieces of a car. Just put these together however you feel like. Disassembly of a Car by Paul Hudson used under CC BY 2.0

Character customizability is a measurement of how many different mechanical options players have to create their characters. This isn’t about roleplaying flourishes or deep backstories, only options that affect the rules. The more options there are, the more players can customize their characters.

At first, customizability sounds like a completely positive value. Why would anyone want fewer options when making their character? But it turns out that low customization has plenty of advantages. Consider a game like Primetime Adventures (PTA). Characters in that game are nearly identical, mechanically speaking, with a handful of traits that have the same effect on the rules, so characters differ only in the way they are roleplayed.

In PTA and systems like it, character creation is very simple. Players don’t have to wade through a sea of options; they can pick from a small number and be ready to go. Once play starts, learning the rules is easier because everything is standardized. Games with low customizability are also much easier to balance. When designers have fewer options to worry about, they can focus on crafting a tighter experience rather than spreading their attention out.

Of course, the disadvantages to low customizability are considerable. Many players will chafe at being told their character must choose from a limited set of abilities, especially if the options don’t match what the player wanted. Dungeon World is particularly bad in this department; the rules don’t allow players to make something as benign as a halfling bard. Another hazard of low customizability is that every character can end up feeling the same. 4th Edition D&D has this problem in spades, with every class feeling like a slight variation on the same set of abilities.

High customizability has its own pitfalls, of course. Systems like Eclipse Phase can hit players with analysis paralysis when they look upon endless pages of options. After players sift through their countless choices, free-form character creation often leads to hyper specialization. Instead of spreading their points out, players will invest them all in being really good at one or two things, creating lopsided characters. And of course, more customization means more balance issues, because the more options exist, the harder they are to balance.

The main advantage of high customizability is letting players make the character they want to play. This should not be underestimated, as it’s vital for a healthy campaign. Players stuck with characters they don’t much care for will not be happy. Games with high customizability can also achieve high levels of depth, provided the extra complexity is put to productive use.

3. Skill Granularity

Different types of rice. No, not that kind of granularity! Diversity of Rice by IRRI Images used under CC BY 2.0

Ever-present questions in roleplaying design: How many skills should the game have, and how broad should they be?* To build a house, should characters need Carpentry, Bricklaying, Electrical Wiring, Plumbing, and so on? Or should those skills all be combined down into Construction? Systems that choose the first option have high granularity, while the second option means low granularity.

A system with low granularity will have fewer skills that cover more situations. Chronicles of Darkness* is one such system. In Chronicles, a character doesn’t need to invest in rifles and pistols separately because it’s all covered under the Firearms skill. Similarly, any kind of theft-related activity is covered by Larceny, and Drive lets the character operate anything from a motorcycle to a semitruck.

In general, low skill granularity is easier on everyone. When skills are broad, it’s simple to make a character that does what the player wants it to do. There’s less risk that an engineer PC will end up missing Jury Rig because they thought Repair would be sufficient for hastily patching up a broken vehicle. At the same time, low granularity helps avoid absurd situations like a character being an expert with rifles but not knowing which end of a shotgun to hold, or a character with max ranks in Scuba Diving but no ranks in Swim. Because humans in real life tend to learn skills in groups, broad skills feel more realistic.

Still, broad skills are not without their pitfalls. Any system with a Science skill, as Chronicles has, opened itself up to some serious head-scratching. This skill covers anything science-related, which means it stretches across hundreds of degrees and fields. Imagine:

PC 1: What kind of scientist are you?

PC 2: The Science kind.

Feels a bit silly, doesn’t it? Language skills are similar. Investing in individual languages is usually a waste of time, but having a single skill for all languages is obviously absurd.

Of course, high granularity brings plenty of problems as well, such as players pouring through endless lists of skills or finding out halfway through the second session that the skill they really needed was buried in an obscure chapter. But high granularity can be very useful, particularly if a system is focused on a narrow field of play.

Riddle of Steel, for example, is about sword fighting. You can do other things with it, technically, but flashing blades and stabbing points are where the game shines. Because it focuses so heavily, it makes sense to differentiate between a rapier and a saber, when most games would file both under the Sword skill. This method can work with any highly focused system. If a game was all about bread making, it would be useful to split Baking into skills like Yeast Growing and Dough Mixing so that players know which element of the primary activity they’re good at.

4. Structure of Play

Metal structure on the roof garden of Les Halles, Paris, France None of this free-form storytelling for you! Metal Structure on Roof Garden by Procsilas Moscas used under CC BY 2.0

Does the game you’re playing have rules that tell you when to do something or in what order? Does it track how many actions your players can take in a scene or limit the number of scenes you can have per session? All of those are examples of structured play, when the game steps in and tells you how and when to do things.

Outside of combat, most roleplaying games exist on the unstructured side of this continuum. For the majority of systems, especially older systems, the GM decides nearly every aspect of the narrative by fiat. The obvious upside is that the GM can tell the story however they like, without running afoul of any rules meant to govern their behavior. Unstructured play is also easier on designers, because it allows them to leave more in the GM’s hands.

Despite its popularity, unstructured play has serious downsides. Without any kind of structure, GMs have to spend a lot of their energy just maintaining the pace of their game. New GMs in particular often flounder, unsure of how quickly they should move the narrative forward, or they panic and skip ahead. Resources are also very difficult to track in an unstructured system. Few players are interested in manually counting each arrow they fire or every credit they spend.

Highly structured systems, on the other hands, have entirely different problems. If the structure rules are poorly implemented, following them can absolutely ruin a campaign. Burning Empires and Legend of the Elements both have scene management rules that make it extremely difficult to tell a good story. They restrict what the GM can do so severely that the narrative suffers.

But highly structured play isn’t all doom and gloom! When done properly, it can take a lot of weight off the GM’s shoulders. Mouse Guard, for example, has a scene management system that promotes a narrative of rising action followed by brief periods of rest followed by more rising action. A GM can let the rules take care of the game’s pacing and instead focus on making the best story possible.

Structured rules can also facilitate specific types of play that are difficult to run by fiat. No player wants to track every bit of resources by hand, but systems like Torchbearer have rules that make the process much easier. With Torchbearer’s food and light management rules, you can run a dungeon crawl where the number of rations a character has will actually matter.

5. Power Scaling

A fist with chalk energy lines around it. Hadouken? Leadership and Power by NeetiR used under CC BY-SA 4.0

In your roleplaying system of choice, what’s the difference in ability between a low-level character and a high-level one? Is it the difference between amateur and professional or the difference between mortal and god? That difference is a system’s power scaling, and it has a huge effect on gameplay.

In systems with a small power scale, a high-level character isn’t that much stronger than a low-level character. This scale inherently makes more sense most of the time, because as humans we have a decent idea of human limits. One system that uses such a scale is Legend of the Five Rings (L5R). In L5R, a rank-five bushi* is a real badass but would have serious trouble defeating five rank-one opponents.

In addition to being more realistic, small power scales also allow for more competent starting characters. One way systems like Pathfinder achieve a large power scale is by making starting characters so weak they can be killed by an angry housecat. When the power scale is smaller, starting characters can have greater ability, since they don’t need to contrast so heavily against higher level characters.

Of course, it’s possible for a system’s power scale to be too small. Players like their characters to improve and can get cranky when that doesn’t happen. Sometimes, systems have such a small scale that it can be mechanically advantageous to start a new character if the old one suffers some kind of permanent stat penalty or depletes their resources. In Call of Cthulhu’s 7th Edition, characters advance their skills in such miniscule amounts that even a character who’s lived through several sessions will barely be any better than one starting out fresh. Characters also have a limited amount of powerful Luck points, which regenerate very slowly. Once the character runs out of Luck points, it’s better to retire them and make a new one.

Meanwhile, games with large power scales often make characters too powerful to contain. A 20th level D&D character is practically a demigod, able to survive falls from great heights and shrug off hits from trebuchets.* It’s difficult to tell stories about characters with this type of power, because they’re so far removed from human experience as we know it.

Another issue with large power scales is sudden upticks in ability. In Mage: The Ascension, a character with three ranks of Life magic can’t heal others at all. But the moment that character ticks up to four ranks of Life magic, they can heal someone from near-death to completely healthy in seconds.

You may have guessed that, in general, I don’t recommend games with large power scales. This end of the continuum doesn’t have much going for it, except one thing: meaningful advancement over long campaigns. In systems with small power scales, PCs can quickly hit the upper limit of advancement, and after that there’s nothing to look forward to. But if the game’s power scale is sufficiently large, PCs will have room to grow for much longer, which is great if you want to avoid experience points piling up everywhere.   

6. Narrative Control

Um, which button turns on the plot? Um, which button turns on the plot? Control Room of NS Savannah by Acroterion used under CC BY-SA 3.0

Narrative control is anything players can do to influence the story that doesn’t come directly from their characters’ abilities. Meta currencies are one example. In Fate, spending a fate point to boost a roll is exercising narrative control, because it’s a choice made purely by the player. The character doesn’t know they just spent a fate point.

Some systems offer players no narrative control at all. In most editions of D&D, players are limited entirely to their characters’ abilities and nothing else.* Call of Cthulhu’s older editions are the same way. The next step up are systems like Legend of the Five Rings, which give players a small number of points to spend on boosting rolls.

In games with minimal or no narrative control, players are more passive in the story. While active players can still suggest alterations to the narrative, nothing in the rules supports them. The immediate drawback is that with less ability to influence the story, many players won’t get very invested. They might even feel that their contributions aren’t valued in a system that, by default, places so much emphasis on the game master. The upside is that low narrative control can make it easier to get into character. When players don’t have to worry about thinking as storytellers, they can focus entirely on who their character is. Like high lethality, this is valuable for any game with horror elements, and works well with players who just want to relax and be told a good story.

Systems with high narrative control grant players more meta currency and give them more ways to spend it. In Burning Wheel, players can spend points to completely change the outcome of rolls. In the Serenity roleplaying game, players can spend plot points to add new elements to the world, completely outside the GM’s control. Some systems go further. In Primetime Adventures, players have the same power that the GM has to establish scenes and determine their outcome.

High narrative control gives players some recourse when the dice fail them. This aspect is very popular, as most players don’t enjoy failing rolls. Anything that adds bonuses or allows a reroll will go over well. Complete scene control is more complicated. Some players won’t be interested in exercising it, and others may introduce story elements with no thought to whether or not they fit in the greater narrative. Even so, having the option means that players with something to contribute are more likely to put themselves forward, adding to the collective experience.

There’s no absolute right or wrong place for a system to fall on these continuums.* It depends entirely on what kind of game the system is trying to create. Cosmic horror games will want high lethality, low narrative control, and a narrow power scale. High action anime games will want just the opposite. As a GM, understanding these continuums will help you decide which system is right for your campaign. If you branch out into design, understanding these continuums will be even more critical, because you must adjust each one carefully so that your game does what it’s supposed to do.  


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  1. David S

    On 3), the best solution to this that I’ve seen is a homebrew system I play in. There’s low granularity for the skills, but then the skills have specializations, so there’s a mix of low and high granularity. For example:

    Stealth (Hide, Sneak, Trail)
    Combat (By Weapon Type, Maneuvers, Mounted Combat, Tactics)
    Leadership (Command, Inspire, Oration, Politics)
    Observe (Listen, Memorize, Smell, Spot)
    Skullduggery (Conceal, Forgery, Lockpicking, Traps)
    Perform (By Instrument, Impersonation, Singing, Theatrics)

    For ones like combat with “by weapon type” you can specialize in a particular weapon area (i.e. long blades would cover side swords, broadswords, and greatswords), giving you bonuses in that area, but if you picked up, say, an axe but were most familiar with swords or hammers you could only roll the Combat dice.

    The specialization dice, d8s, also have the added advantage that if you roll an 8 you get to add another d8. Should that one land on an 8 as well, you add another, with continues until you roll something other than an 8.

    Overall it makes it easy to have a generalized character with a number of skills, but then be particularly good at several specialized things.

  2. Alverant

    My issue with skills is trying to balance between the need to round out your character and not putting points into skills that will never be used. Systems like GURPS double down on this problem by having higher point costs for more specialized skills. Like say you want your character in a modern campaign setting to have a good understanding of quantum mechanics. However for the points spent doing that (between other required skills and how much more that skill is than normal skills) you could buy a more practical skill at a higher value.

    I can under stand why learning QM is harder than auto mechanics, but charging more for it will discourage players from taking it. That leads to a negative feedback look since GMs don’t want to require skills the characters don’t have so even if someone purchased the skill, the GM would be hard-pressed to come up with a time where it would be used.

    That leads to the downside of skills, the failed roll. The dice aren’t always in your favor and if the GM was able to make your skill roll on Expert: Illuminated Manuscripts, you can still fail. Maybe the GM will give you a partial success. My solution is to not roll the dice for a skill unless you’re ready for what happens if the roll fails. Also, for skills that may get used a handful of times (if that) in a campaign, have it succeed automatically. For example if a character from NYC has Expert: Musicals let the character recognize the executives of a company they’re investigating all have names taken from the Producers musical – given the players the hint this is a dummy company.

    I wonder if anyone ever tried a system where you just have a skill without quantifying how good it is; a system where if it helps the plot – you succeed.

    • Oren Ashkenazi

      The Gumshoe system has something similar to what you’re describing in the last paragraph, or at least Knight’s Black Agents does. If you take the Biologist skill, you automatically get useful information whenever you investigate something biological. You can invest more points in it for special abilities.

      • SunlessNick

        Pedantry: It’s Night’s Black Agents.

        All the Gumshoe games have that. Skills categorised as “Investigative” (which is about two thirds of them, and the rest can be used that way too) always work: if there’s related information to be had, you’ll get it.
        The skills still have varying points, but instead you spend them to get extra bonuses that other systems would accord to special levels of success (GM’s sections caution you to make sure that clues you *need* to have to solve the mystery of the scenario never need points to be spent).

  3. Roleplaying Nerd

    In regards to skill granularity and the fact that having just a single languages skill would be absurd but investing in a single language would be a waste of time: you could use language families instead. So instead of having a Speak American Sign Language, Speak German or Speak Warlpiri skill or just a Languages skill you would instead get the Languages (sign) Languages (European) or Languages (Aboriginal Australian.)

    • Oren Ashkenazi

      Oh, that’s a good idea, I like that.

    • Leon

      I will use it : )
      You could do the same thing with firearms;
      FAHG – Hand guns.
      FAR – Hunting/sniper rifles.
      FAAR – Assault rifles (which would include SMG’s and bullpups).
      FALMG – Light machine guns (you need special training to handle ammo-belts and jamming).
      FAHMG – Heavy machine guns (it’s own unique skill).
      FASW – Special weapons♤ like flame throwers, grenade launchers, gattling guns, with backpack magazines and energy weapons*.
      ♤ a person who knows specialist weapons, likely knows alot of them.
      *unless they have been in service for some time and are user friendly.

      For science you might be stuck with choosing an industry, in a field, some hobbies and a passion, then just eyeballing the transferrable skills.
      Science isn’t “the thing” you are interest in, science is what you do to “the thing” you are interest in.

      • Michael Campbell

        It’s better to find a system with a table (or build your own) where related skills get a penalty based on the level of relationship between the skill you want to use and the skill you are using.
        Directly Related, Generally Related, Vaguely Related, etc, all having an appropriate penalty.

        This is similar to the way GURPS defaults to a more general skill with a penalty.
        Astro-naviagtion defaults to navigation at -3.
        Navigation defaults to mathematics at -3.
        Mathematics defaults to the attribute I.Q. at -3.
        So a really smart character can attempt to do Astro-navigation at -9 penalty without an skill.
        But in GURPS you need to flip through the rule-book a lot to calculate the penalties.

        Having a table for related skills gets past the problems of:-
        “I need to make a Geology roll but I put way too many points in Petrology” or “I need to make a History skill check but I put all my skill in Egyptology” or “I can’t sow up that bullet wound to the shoulder:- I’m a brain surgeon, damn it!”

        Plus overspending on skills is a bit of a player whinge. They still have their applicable attribute so it’s not impossible. Although that depends on the relative effects generated by skills and attributes.

        • Leon

          That would be a lot of very big tables.
          A cop who’s skilled at hand guns can figure out how to use an assault rifle, but a half trained conscript couldn’t just pick up a pistol and be effective with it. Anybody who works with flamable gas could figure out how to operate a flame thrower, anybody with good mechanical aptitude could figure out how to load a machinegun and clear jams (though they would brobably continue to have problems and eventually melt the barrel), and a heavy weapons specialist may not have touched a rifle more than 5 times in the last 5 years or he could hunt every other weekend.
          I think the best way to go about it would be to work back from character concept to skills rathar than trying to build a character from a list of skills. Especially when some jobs require a few highly specialised skills and others call for a vast array of minor skills.

          • Michael Campbell

            Well what you’re now asking is, how does the player go from “a character concept” to “a filled in character sheet”?

            Part of that is knowing the system (and you can learn a lot about that from reading a blank character sheet).
            And part of it is asking the Game Master what s/he thinks is going to be needed in the game.

            Building a character from purchases of skills is a little like organising a party while standing in a supermarket aisle.
            You’re supposed to take the time to look at the contents of your wallet and then have a bit of think about what your party will be like…and then walk inside.
            And in an extension of that metaphor:- Asking the GM for some help during character generation, is about as embarrassing as asking a member of staff for some help at the supermarket.

          • Michael Campbell

            On a big table.
            Not really.
            In the same way a GM closes her eyes and for a few seconds imagines the character attempting to do the task and then chooses the difficulty level that the Game Master announces for the player.
            So too the G.M. closes her eyes and imagines a character trying to use an assault rifle with a pistol skill* and announces the modifier for the player.

            “Let the difficulty sensation flow through you.
            And then put a number onto that sensation.”
            It’s the same area of the brain that you’ll use in both situations.

            *or whatever skill mismatches with whatever activity that is currently the subject of the character’s attempt.

            Leon:- don’t let the fear of choosing a wrong number stop you from being a Game Master. That’s just as poor as not ringing your friends for fear of dialing up a wrong number. Sometimes a wrong number is a fun thing to encounter.

  4. Quinte

    One thing about skill granularity to consider is setting. So for example in a Star Wars setting there is a handful of skills that are used. It might be more effective to think up a setting and decide what skills you think would be used.

    • Roleplaying Nerd

      I absolutely agree. I am a fan of closed skill systems (where there is a limited number of skills to choose from) as it avoids a lot of problems that are in open skill systems (where players come up with their own skills) such as the difficulty of enforcing a level of granularity among a potentially infinite number of skills, but you’ll have a hard job trying to come up with a complete list of skills if you don’t have a clear setting. A list of skills to cover literally an entire world of possibilities would be hard to keep from being long and rambling, but in a setting like Star Wars you could easily think of a much more reasonable list, such as:

      Know (Criminal)
      Know (Force)
      Know (Politics)
      Know (Space)
      Know (Technology)
      Languages (Ewokese)
      Languages (Galactic Basic)
      Languages (Huttese)
      Languages (Mandalorian)
      Languages (Sith)
      Use Force (Dark)
      Use Force (light)
      Vehicles (Planetary)
      Vehicles (Space)

      This list doesn’t include everything, but it covers most things pretty well considering there are only 18 skills in it.

  5. Arkady

    Would it be workable to have a skill specialisation pyramid, where you work from the top down? For the science example:

    First five skill points are “Science”. For the next five you specialise into “Physics”. After that you have to specialise again into “Astrophysics”, and then “Cosmology”, or something. (Or until you hit the bottom of the pyramid, at which point you either keep ranking that skill, or you are considered the world’s leading authority on that skill, and can rank it up no more.)

    If I’d chosen that path then I could use 20 skill points to work out the origin of the Universe from a map of the cosmic microwave background; 10 skill points to answer a question on quantum mechanics; and 5 skill points to identify a particular chemical.

    My main concern is designing this sort of system, although I guess it wouldn’t be too hard to allow players to name their own specialisations.

    • Oren Ashkenazi

      That’s similar to how the Cortex System does it (Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, etc), although it only has two levels.

      You invest up to six points in “Pilot.”

      Then you can put more points into “Pilot: Starfighter” or “Pilot: Freighter.”

  6. Greg

    Pelgrane’s 13th Age RPG has done away with skills lists entirely. Players get Background points to spend for made up backgrounds like “Attache to the Emperor’s Diplomatic Corps.” or “Demondlands Border Patrol Officer.” Players can spend a lot of points on a couple backgrounds, or spread their points over several. Any time they need to make a skill roll, the DM and Player decide which backgrounds apply, and then make a skill roll.

    I like this system because any skill that makes sense for my background is already baked in. My “Greywood Forest Druid” doesn’t need to worry about having enough points for Firebuilding, Survival, Herb Lore, and Orienteering. And my druid who is also “Former Courtier in the Elven Court” doesn’t need to worry about having Etiquette and Fashion Sense on top of that.

    Another benefit of this system is that you can use it to determine other factors like Contacts.

    • Scott

      Barbarians of Lemuria and Risus use this type of design as well and I like how it eliminates the need for a long list of skills while letting you create a very unique character in a very rich setting. The only thing I don’t like is that it makes the character creation process (at least to me) feel a bit unsatisfying. I’d like to address that, because I absolutely love this design otherwise.

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