I have a desire to expound on this and, as it turns out, I have just the medium to do it in!

Folks, let me tell you about rolling to smell the flowers… https://twitter.com/Epidiah/status/1265303009149554689

Back in the heady days of the '00s, a significant portion of the game design talk revolved around "conflict resolution."

Now, I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth here, so I'll just describe my experience of the conversation as a bit short-sighted.

It felt like the assumption was that dice existed in ttrpgs to help us decide who wins in a conflict. You could stretch the definition of "who" and "wins" right up the their breaking points. Could be they were deciding which PCs won an argument or which players won narration…

…or do the whole PC vs. Nature or PC vs. themself deal.

But the point was, or rather, assumption was that the narrative comes to a crossroads and the dice tell us which way to turn.

Somewhere in my own corner of these discussion I said that sometimes I enjoy rolling to smell the flowers.

See here's the thing, die-rolling draws our eyes. It draws our focus to a particular moment. It's perhaps very natural to assume that these moments are important to the plot. Pivotal. Moments of crisis. But they don't have to be.

Some of my favorite lines from all of fiction have nothing to do with the plot.

"Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dreams the ancient world of Nehwon with its towers and skulls and jewels, its swords and sorceries."

[Insert just about any famous line here, really.]

In fiction, it's the language that draws our attention. In film, it is perhaps how the shot is framed? I'm sure there are wonderful tricks in music to pull in focus at the right moment.

In ttrpg, we have some tricks, but dice…

…oooh, dice are powerful.

You can throw together a table of wild flowers, roll on it every time the PCs come across an open field, and everyone at that table (or in the Discord) will await the results.

So here's a lazy analogy to illustrate the point:

• Just like you don't have to be a stunt coordinator to draw everyone's eyes to the action when a natural 20 is rolled,

• You don't have to be a writer to get your fellow players' attention when you roll to smell the flowers.

This is why the focus of a roll in Swords Without Master is about the tone of the narration.

Furthermore, each phase in that game plays with this idea in different ways.

The Discovery Phase is perhaps the most straight forward 'roll to smell the flowers' phase, but…

…the Perilous Phase is very much about saying even in an actual, violent conflict, deep down, what we really care about is what those flowers smell like, damn it.

At this point, I'm contractually bound to tell you that…

Swords Without Master
is in
Worlds Without Master, issue 3 https://www.worldswithoutmaster.com/bazaar/worlds-without-master-issue-3

But hey, I've got another game to sell, & how it plays with this concept has me bursting with pride.

I'm not sure, have you heard of Wolfspell? With the adventurers who turn themselves into wolves? You know, the one printed on a freaking album cover? https://epidiah.itch.io/wolfspell