It depends on your medium of play, the members of the table, on how much trust there is, and on how crunchy the entire experience is allowed to feel. These days most of my D&D is in play-by-post discord servers, and I tend to stick to ones that are roll-then-go. It lets the player run the mechanics of their actions through avrae and find out successes and failures, and then describe how they do what they do. There is a strong onus on everyone understanding the game mechanics, and only engaging the DM in “can I?” Questions when pushing the envelope with improvised actions. The result is a faster (IMO) game with better writing (which starts to read like collaborative storytelling, especially if everyone uses a literary style).

In a go-then-roll world, the burden falls on the DM to “ratify” each character’s intended actions. “<Char> would try to do an acrobatic flip” would need a “The floor is slippery, and <char> falls flat on their face” followup, and this is just really slow in an async format. Inevitably, this is the most common way of sharing out the results of Perception and Investigation, though I appreciate pbp DMs who rely on passive stats and give things out in preemptively spoiler tags (that’s whete the trust comes in).

“<char> would try” is also a grating construction that feels terrible to read in general–it’s just not a common tense signature. That said, in a low-latency live game, where the DM can roll immediately after learning of the player’s intentions, go-then-roll(-then-go) is much more viable, and is probably preferable for new players who are new to the system.

I feel like Go then Roll is more typical in (at least modern) d&d, which is my primary experience with role-playing. I’m actually really drawn to giving players more creative control over the scenario but I’ve found it’s not uncommon for players to be reluctant to assume that kind of control. The one exception is when there is a critical success with an attack or an otherwise crazy high roll on some skill check; in those cases, they universally seem to appreciate narrating their over-the-top accomplishment.

But when you start handing over the reins of the larger narrative? Or inviting them to have some creative control of the setting and world? That seems to be challenging to some players’ suspension of disbelief, like they’re seeing the man behind the curtain (indeed, being invited behind it themelves) when they wanted the wizard. Obviously d&d doesn’t really have a ton of support for these kinds of interactions at the table, so it’s perhaps not too surprising that players feel like they’re in uncharted territory when I spring it on them.

I prefer Go then roll as I prefer to have the player understanding reasons and risks. Then the roll decide if the impact is met or avoided.

It also permit something that I try to do which would be Go, do your things, then roll. It’s easier explained with an example: in the case of creating a bomb. Is it a well build bomb or a one which will never be predictable? In fact, the character thinks it’s a good one. So I try to let the bomb being built without rolling. When the bomb is planted or ignited, then the player has to make the skill check to know if the bomb was correctly set. We experienced it as more fluid and more dynamic.

This sounds like the concepts of “Fortune at the End” and “Fortune in the Middle” that were part of the Forge discussions. Fortune at the End is what you might expect from decades in the hobby: Describe what you do, tally the modifiers, and roll to see if you succeed or fail. This usually involves specific actions: I wanna hit him with my sword. Fortune in the Middle calls for modulation after the roll was made, in specified action and/or mechanically. FitM often involves broader conflicts: I wanna beat him in a sword fight. Here’s a link that goes into a bit more detail: http://indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=442.0

To give a more contemporary example, Powered by the Apocalypse uses Fortune in the Middle. You set your character in motion with fictional description. If that triggers a move, the establishment of fiction is guided and constrained by the rules and usually a dice roll and – often – choices made after those dice are rolled. Then chunk of fiction effected by the roll is established according to those constraints – we more find out what has happened rather than what does happen.

For instance, in Masks (a PbtA game) the move, “Directly Engage a Threat,” (triggered when your teen hero comes to blows with a villain) you roll and add your modifier, and if you do okay, you both trade blows. So, we describe how you’re both wearing each other down – wailing on each other with mighty punches, or martial arts moves, or laser blasts, or whatever. But, you get to pick one item from a list, which includes resisting or avoiding their blows; if you pick that, you get to describe how you’re blocking their punches, dodging their bullets, or slipping between their laser blasts, whatever. You might not choose that option. You might do really well and choose two options from the list, so you might slip their laser blasts and take something away from them – their gun, maybe? Now you get to describe a disarm. After that stuff has all been described, we go back to describing stuff normally.

I haven’t heard of a game that uses “Fortune at the Beginning” or full “Roll then go,” as you’ve put it.

IMO Go then Roll is the only way to handle it with any sort of fairness. The player decides what their character is trying to do, then the GM tells them what to roll and we all see what happens. The player should commit to what they’re attempting, otherwise there’s a lot less excitement when they can just back it down to “could I have tried something easier?”

We have dice in the game to add risk. If you remove too much of that risk it’s not as exciting. Maybe that’s appealing to players who can’t stand to not have things go their way, but to me the thrill is in the unknown.

I prefer an even more extreme version of “Roll then go.” I prefer randomness of inputs rather than outputs. So before you choose how to respond at all, you first see what you roll, (or more commonly, what cards you draw). Then, you decide how to spend your results.

Maybe your result is better suited for taking a stealthy approach. Or perhaps it’s better suited to socialization rather than combat.

Many modern tabletop board games have embraced this design paradigm. I think structurally avoiding “roll and whiff” as an outcome is good design. Missing is fine, but when you go a whole session without succeeding meaningfully, that sucks, and it’s not fun.

I’m having trouble seeing the distinction. In your “Roll then Go” example, the PC already chose the course of action before engaging the ogre. ‘I deal with the ogre offensively’ is just more vaguely worded than ‘I attack the ogre’, isn’t it?

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I think both approaches are good for different type of mechanical avenues.

I prefer “Roll then Go” for combat, as you try your best to fight and spend whatever amount of successes you gathered for whatever result you deem best in the situation, avoiding “you just missed” scenarios where you fail cause you wanted a very difficult, specific outcome and the DC was set high accordingly. Same for investigation and perception, cause I want to know what your character, with its qualities, makes of the situation, not what you make of it, this is not a puzzle game, your wits can’t surpass your character’s.

On the other hand, I prefer “Go then Roll” for social tests, cause rolling first just breaks conversation flow, so we use the roll to determine how convincing your character was; his body language, eye contact, demeanor, cadence; these are all things that, altho you can be a great actor and do perfectly, still come down to your character’s charisma, not yours; same goes for outside influence, like horror stuff, as it might not scare you, the player.

I think what works best depends a lot on the system and the style of dialogue that it wants for itself.

With “Go then Roll” you are declaring what your character intends to do, which may or may not correspond with what it ends up happening, and the game master is the one responsible to detail the outcome looking at the result. The reason why it’s the most common option is probably because it allows setting the difficulty according to the details of the action described by the player, or in other words, it allows the player to influence their chance of success by doing things well (offering a good argument when persuading a target, attacking an enemy’s weak spot, etc), or badly (saying something ridiculously unconvincing, attacking an enemy in an obviously ineffective way, etc).

With “Roll then Go”, you just indicate the approach without adding details, roll, and then have the game master give you a result. Only after knowing the result you describe what actually happens. This prevents certain situations that, while they aren’t problematic for my understanding of “Go then Roll”, can be frustrating for some (like the character describing an epic attack, or giving a great speech, knowing that their chances are high, only to then fumble the dice roll and having their action fail). Here the difficulty depends exclusively on the character’s stats and the “what” of the situation, and not the details of the “how”, which can be good or bad depending on how you like to play RPGs. On the other hand, it allows the player to describe their successes and failures as they actually happen, and not only as their characters intend them to.

Personally, I tend more towards “Go then Roll”, and it’s how I have always played, but I can see how some games can take advantage of “Roll then Go”, and wouldn’t mind trying it sometime.