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Welcome to Episode 25 of ‘What Is Roleplay?’
This episode CM Lowry is joined by Steph Windross to discuss Crits
- To start the conversation CM Lowry asks Steph to define what the meaning of a Crit in roleplay games
- Crit is short for Critical Roll, either a Critical Success or a Critical Failure. In short that means you have a rolled either the highest (success) or lowest (failure) number on the dice. These usually have interesting results which impact on the game as you continue to play.
- CM reminds us that if your unsure about dice you can revisit Episode 1 of What Is Roleplay
- Most games and systems will require that the dice actually land on a natural 20 in order for that to be considered a Crit Success – so if you roll 18 and add some sort of bonus that makes your score 20 that would not count as a Crit.
- Steph shares some about a brilliant Crit Success from her real life adventures in roleplay games such as DnD and Blades in the Dark.
- In Blades in the Dark Crits create narrative currency for collaborative story telling moments
- CM & Steph chat about some of the things that can happen when you roll a critical fail – a sort of doubling down on the things that go wrong.
- CM asks Steph to chat about some games that don’t use Crits. Steph mentions lots of the current batch of OSR (Old-School Renaissance) games
- CM chats about the exploding dice mechanic, in which a Crit Success means that you get to roll again and add further details to the game story.
- Steph brings up ICRPG (Index Card Roleplaying Game) as a game that has a set of really interesting mechanics for dice rolling and crits.
- CM & Steph totally nerd out on MOTHERSHIP and the Panic Engine System that it’s built on.
- CM asks Steph if there are any card games that use Crits
- They discuss The Wretched by Chris Bissette and it’s use of a Jenga Tower. If the tower falls that’s a huge Crit Fail and ends the game!
- CM and Steph agree that they enjoy the rolling dice and allowing chance to determine how the game processes and how the story unfolds.
- Listen as CM and Steph enjoy an actual play involving Crits, the city of Manchester and trying to park your car without getting a fine from a civil service demon!!
- Steph chats about her latest project, CALPINI, which is based on the rules light A Dungeon Games by Chris Bissette, which is also compatible with MORK BORG
Links to things we discussed:
Games:
- Dragonbane
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Blades in the Dark
- OSR
- GURPS
- Cairn
- Mausritter
- Savage World
- ICRPG
- Mothership
- Call of Cthulhu
- The Wretched
- Bloody & Alone in Appalachia
- Dread
- The Sealed Library
- MORK ORG
- SOLO BORG
More about Steph
- Fistful of Crits on ETSY
- Fistful of Crits on BlueSky
- Fistful of Crits on Instagram
- Fistful.ink for all your printing needs
More about Us
- Beyond Cataclysm on Bluesky @beyondcataclysm.bsky.social
- CM Lowry’s website – All About Chris
- Website – beyondcataclysm.co.uk
- Patreon – Patreon.com/beyondcataclysm
- Our most recent project is Mork Org
- Our upcoming project is Lucky for None in Space
Actual Play Quick Map drawn by Jog Brogzin
- Jog on Social Media:
Patreon – patreon.com/jogbrogzin
With music generously provided by:
Powerplant & Imploders
Actual Play Soundscape by Traveling Light
