The D100 Manifesto
I had this idea during the TTRPG manifesto jam, but never got around to writing it down before the jam ended. The OSR famously has its Principia Apocrypha, and Irving Benitez put together this neat lyric game manifesto.
If thereās a kind of RPG I really enjoy and understand, itās the d100 kind. Iāve written three of them. Itās a terrible name, because itās mostly not about the type of dice used, but there is a distinct and recognizable type of game that can be called d100. While there are lots of designers writing incredible adventures for d100 games, nobody really gets together to write manifestos or wave banners. I donāt think there really needs to be one, but I thought it would be fun to write up what a d100 manifesto might look like.
Rolls resolve quickly and the chance of success is obvious. If a character has a 40 in a skill, then everyone knows their chance of success is exactly 40%. Rather than asking a GM, ādoes a 19 succeed?ā, everyone at the table can see the result immediately as seen as the dice stop moving. Itās a very small reduction in time and increase in drama for each roll, but it adds up over a game.
Itās not really about the d100. First principle aside, using a die with one hundred outcomes is not what makes these games exciting. D100 games are a body of work and a culture of play that happens to have emerged around games that use the d100. The dice arenāt even necessary; Pendragon uses a twenty-sided die, but itās definitely a d100 game.
We have always been shamans and storytellers. D100 games were first popularized in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Chaosium, a company lead by a practicing and influential shaman. While I want to avoid idolizing a single individual, I do think d100 games descend primarily from the eternal tradition of people gathering to tell stories and consult oracles together. This is distinct from the tradition of military wargames that some other RPGs look to as their origin.
Game mechanics can be a unique and artistically interesting way to depict characters. Common design elements in d100 games include long lists of skills and numerical representations of abstract mental and spiritual qualities. These create a detailed portrayal of who a character is, how they have lived their lives so far, what things they value and choose to spend their time on, and who they might become. They are not approximations or shorthand for another method of depicting a character. They are their own form of artistic description, parallel to other media. For example, to say that a character has a 60% chance of betraying their friends in a time of panic is different than to say a character is a traitor or a character is reliable. It is different than writing a novel in which the character commits an act of betrayal, or painting a portrait with an untrustworthy face.
Oracles simulate outcomes, not procedures. D100 games do not try to simulate reality in great detail, nor do they mechanically emulate genre. When success or failure are both interesting and both possible for a character, a roll of the dice gives an answer, but the how and the why are up to the GM and the player to describe.
Itās okay for the answer to be on your character sheet. D100 players are here for a good story. Problem-solving is fun and we do it all the time, but there is also the option to defer to the fictional expertise of the characters. If a character is playing a botany expert, they may roll their botany skill to come up with a reasonable set of tests to run on a botanical specimen and execute them competently. When creating or choosing characters, the player decided to play an expert botanist, and that decision is meaningful.
Scalable complexity is useful. A GM can always default to a simple skill roll in any situation, but a game can attach complicated subsystems to more deeply explore particular subjects of interest in the game. One good use of subsystems is to guide players towards choosing to act out the conventions of a genre. This is a lighter approach to genre emulation than the one taken by games that build it into their core mechanics.
Be creative and bold with settings and adventures. Set adventures in lesser known historical eras. Set them in the present, dealing with serious modern issues. If you set a game in a fantasy world, make it weird, evocative, and unique. Get weird with the structure of adventures. Play with perception, time, and the nature of reality. Create adventures without absolute victories. Create adventures where player characters have different and potentially conflicting goals.
And thatās the manifesto! I canāt say every d100 game ever published follows every principles, but I hope it can be entertaining to anyone working on a d100 game right now. If youāre not familiar with d100 games, hereās a list of highlights: Call of Cthulhu, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying, Unknown Armies, Delta Green, Eclipse Phase, Mothership, Runequest, Pendragon, Battlelords of the Twenty-Third Century, Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Imperium Maledictum, Rivers of London, Mythras, Crucible of Aether and Cthulhu Eternal.