The Real Problem With Risus

Get it? It's a pun! This article is about conflict resolution as defined by RPG theory models. What? It's funny damn it!!

Antecedent to a Problem

There is an article about Risus that has some notoriety in its corner of the hobby, known as the Risusverse. It originated on a mailing list and has since been redistributed willy-nilly by those who seek to understand the game better. I will copy the article here.

"Risus is a game of beauty. Sublime. It was built for comedy, but serves just as well for serious gaming. Ah, but therein lays a nasty issue, the so-called, “problem”. Built for comedy, it plays to its strengths. Take it out of its natural niche, and it requires effort from the players. It becomes a horrific hybrid of old school gaming and indie narrative style that can be a shock to the system, unless you have a penchant for horrific hybrids. Lemme’ explain.If I were to play a D&D, I would dare say that nearly EVERY situation imaginable has some kind of rule that attempts to address it. I could reference stats versus rules, and tables; take into account listed advantages and disadvantages; situational modifiers and more…perhaps even spread over multiple books. By God, by the time you roll the dice you know EXACTLY what the result means, and can apply the various stats, rules, tables, advantages, disadvantages, modifiers and more as appropriate. I’ve nothing against D&D, it’s a style of play some prefer, but here’s the point…it’s all spelled out to leave nothing to ambiguity or vagueness.Risus on the other hand challenges the players and the GM to essentially generate all those rules D&D has, on the fly, in our heads, hand waving what you don’t have time to contemplate or is really unimportant, and then rolling a some dice where even the results are not hard or fast, but vague and unknown. In Risus, you could lose for winning, and vice-versa. It requires players to think not of rules, but of story, and the dice results are not end conditions but rather variables that guide the narrative. My character lost a die in combat. Was he wounded, or just pushed into a corner? What if he was pushed into a corner, but now another character has distracted the enemy allowing my character to get free of the corner. Does he get the lost die back? Risus is not black and white, but rather many shades of gr…er…purple.Risus demands more from its players than most games (oh yeah, I said it!), and that’s the “problem” with getting new people to play, or those familiar with lots and lots of rule books. For such a simple comedy game, it requires intelligence, thoughtfulness, and awareness. I know people who can’t play Risus simply because they cannot grasp that those dice can mean nearly anything.For most of the Risus converted though, it’s not a problem… it’s a challenge, and opportunity, to explore some really fun ideas without limits.Thanks for reading,"-Brent

Sounds like a pretty solid article, right? The writer certainly has a solid grasp of the Risus system. Unfortunately, this article is actually rather heavily off its mark for 2 reasons.

1. That's not the actual design flaw in Risus.

2. That's not how HP in D&D works.

Let's address those, starting with Risus.

The Real Problem With Risus

In Risus combat, a player acts on their turn. If they attack a target, they describe how they do so and the DM decides which of their cliches best fits that. There's a rule to cover inappropriate cliche usage. The player and the enemy then do a contested check, rolling a number of dice equal to their ranks in the cliches the DM chose. Whoever rolls higher wins.

The super weird thing about that, though, is that the loser loses a rank in the cliche they used- even if the loser is also the attacker. While this makes combat pretty quick, it also makes it tactically bland. If you are a gamer who enjoys tactics, you will find Risus pointless and boring. It doesn't matter who attacks who, only that attacking is happening between people. This is a flaw in that it invalidates the entire turn order system. It doesn't really matter whose turn it is, so why bother with turns at all? Just have everyone declare what they do and roll it all at once!

The second flaw is the defeat spiral, and this is a blatant design flaw. The power you use to attack stuff is also the resource enemies drain from you to cause your defeat. That means you could attack an enemy on your turn, lose the roll and a die, then get attacked by that same enemy on your next turn with a higher chance of losing. Stack it up with multiple characters acting per round on both sides, and basically losing once sets off a chain reaction of continuous loss until defeat. It uses dice, so it's kind of random, but because it's a dice pool system, the average tendencies push the first loser to defeat very quickly.

The final flaw is the hairpin defeat system. A character is defeated if any ONE of their cliches is reduced to 0 dice. So, you could have 5 dice in one cliche, but if the DM decides your defense description warrants the use of a 1 die cliche you have, you are automatically defeated if you fail that roll. I can not think of any other game system where defeat is completely arbitrary the way it is in Risus.

That's why I almost always mod an HP system in. It just makes more sense, even for non-physical or abstract combat. Speaking of...

What is HP?!

Let's go right to the source. This is a quote from the father of the RPG hobby himself, Gary Gygax, as he described what hit points really represent in the AD&D Player's Handbook, the closest thing anyone will ever get to playing D&D as Gygax designed it.

"Each character has a varying number of hit points, just as monsters do. These hit points represent how much damage (actual or potential) the character can withstand before being killed. A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors. A typical man-at-arms can take about 5 hit points of damage before being Killed. Let us suppose that a 10th level fighter has 55 hit points, plus a bonus of 30 hit points for his constitution, for a total of 85 hit points. This is the equivalent of about 18 hit dice for creatures, about what it would take to kill four huge warhorses. It is ridiculous to assume that even a fantastic flghter can take that much punishment. The same holds true to a lesser extent for clerics, thieves, and the other classes. Thus, the majority of hit paints are symbolic of combat skill, luck (bestowed by supernatural powers), and magical forces." 

The distinction matters. What Ben described above is what happens at the table, not in the game. At the table, yes, it's just attrition of numbers. However, those numbers are supposed to be roleplayed and described in much the same way as what you would see in Risus.

So cliche dice are absolutely HP! The only difference is that UP isn't tied to your attack effectiveness. This is why we used to see those weird optional rules that used HP outside of combat.

What is described as "the problem with risus" is actually more appropriately termed "the problem with gamers". Basically nobody plays the D&D Gygax and Arneson invented. Im not sure how or why, but nearly every aspect of the game is overwhelmed by assumptions and misunderstandings that were nearly universal across the hobby. These standard mistakes have since been absorbed into modern versions of D&D and other games after Gygax left the scene.

Now, today, we have countless videogames that use HP to track physical harm. Guess What? Gygax was right! It IS ridiculous to watch the punishment videogame characters take!

I can't imagine what it was like to be Gary, looking out at the hobby he started around a game nobody else actually plays. It must have been surreal.