Yes, I know there are hundreds of these and I guess I don't know most of them, but just read. There are some rants and some solutions I find they might be useful. And I'd welcome some comments. Thanks.
First of all, I think RPGs should have less dice and more roleplay, as two initials of the abbreviation indicate. And I think we roll some unnecessary dice. Let me explain;
When we see an orc, we roll a dice if we could hit him or not. Both our attack rating and orc's defense rating is constant. And then, the next attack and we roll again. Did our attack rating change? No. Did orc's defense rating change? No, again. So why the hell did we roll again? I can hear some say, "Dummy, don't you know the chaos theory? Probabilities always change." I know, but we're not doing quantum physics, we just want to play a game. And this game is about roleplaying, not roll-playing. (Sorry for cliche.)
What I've been trying to tell is, most of the time we roll a dice to resolve the whole action, so why not with the combats? Of course, a battle centric game would have more detailed combats, but there is one more thing, I'm not done yet. In most d20 using systems, you roll a dice and add your modifiers. And most of the time, these modifiers are something between 1 and 5. (If you're not epic, and epic is simply exceptional.) That means, all your efforts of becoming a warrior is 1/4 effective what your result of dice is. It's just unfair.
So, what about my solution? Less dice, more roleplay. And by less, I mean d6 instead of d20. d6 is easier to find, has a nice shape and you can roll it on ragged surfaces. Enough missionary. And roll only when there are undetermined things. An enemy appeared? Roll attack. If higher than player's defense, attack successful. Player attacks? Roll defense. If player's attack is higher, he hits. If your player's attack and defense is higher, your NPC is doomed. And don't roll again for what you determined just a minute ago. Their attributes don't change at every attack. (Imagine a warrior, first he drops his sword, then after he grabs it again, he slays the evil monsters gracefully. Or the poor paladin, who unfortunately got killed by a stray orc just because he was dead unlucky at that fateful day.)
No more cheaty critical successes. No more slaying-dragon-at-first-attack tales. If something is determined, no need to roll again. If something changes, represent this with modifiers. If margin is far enough, no modifiers can change the situation, sorry.
Then how we can change our doomed fate, if a monster is stronger than us? Easy answer; roleplay. You know your strength, you can see your enemy's strength. (If you didn't see, you can understand after first blow.) So you can use your brainz, make up some tactics, or if you're the berserker type, show your GM your angst and fury with your eardrum-destroyer-battle-cry. I'm sure he'll give some bonuses after he can hear again. I hope I got my point clear. (If I didn't, please comment and I will.) And I hope there aren't more grammatical errors than I expected. Thanks for all reading.
Cool, why not roll it all at one time?
I just read John Harper's Ghost/Echo, and that reminded me of Vince Baker's Otherkind (used to be a free download, but can't find it online anymore, sorry), because Ghost/Echo uses a simplified version of the Otherkind mechanic.
You could do something similar.
Player rolls all the dice at the same time, one die for hurting his opponent, one die for beating his opponent (two different things), one die for not getting hurt, and maybe one die to win storytelling rights.
So for example:
You roll 4d6 for your hero, and get 1, 3, 4, 5.
I, the GM, roll for the villain, getting 1, 1, 3, 4.
The princess is watching so you distribute your dice like this:
5 to win the fight
4 to tell how you won (or lost)
3 to defense
and 1 to hurt your opponent
I assign my dice to:
1 to win the fight
3 to tell how I won (or lost)
1 to defense
4 to hurt you.
So you win the fight by 4. The villain is totally outclassed by your hero.
You can say how you won, but only by 1 point, so I get to add one embarrassing detail to the fight that the princess witnesses, so you tell how your skill and strength was too great for me, but then I say how the princess was scared by your ferocity.
Your hurting me, and my getting hurt were both one, so the villain took a solid hit.
My hurting you was one more than your defense, so in the fight you did take a significant wound. Some blood flew, but you beat the villain anyway.
Armor or weapons or circumstances might add bonuses to the rolls to avoid injury or to hurt your opponent, or to win the fight.
Superior skill or talent might let you roll more dice, and keep the 4 you like best. (Sometimes you want to keep one low roll so you don't accidentally kill the assassin before you can ask who sent him.)
Other tasks might have more variables.
Getting through a hall of traps in the Sultan's palace...
1. Do you get through or have to turn back?
2. Do you get hurt dodging arrows fired from spring loaded holes?
3. Do you get tired or use up some other resource? (The Sands of Time!)
4. How long does it take you?
5. Do you set off any alarms, summoning guards?
Some tasks might have less variables.
Picking a lock...
1. Dose it come open?
2. Does it take a long time?
3. Does it break or leave some other sign of being picked?
Every time a character tries something new, have a short talk with the players about what might be interesting to know about the task. What could go right or wrong in interesting ways?
Then write down the questions and do that kind of task that way from now on. The GM gets bonuses for stuff that could go against the heroes. The heroes get bonuses for being clever or well equipped. And the heroes get to roll extra dice that they don't need for being amazingly good at whatever they're good at.
Of course, mean scary villains might also roll extra dice.
You can see what I rolled, and I can see what you rolled, but we don't peek at each other to see how we assign the dice to defense, injury, victory, etc.