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Every Roll Doesn’t Need a Mechanical Outcome

by Mike on 27 April 2026

Not every roll needs a mechanical outcome. Sometimes a successful or unsuccessful roll can, instead, result in a fictional outcome without a mechanical component.

As GM's we're drawn to the mechanical outcomes of the rolls players make in a game. There needs to be a consequence for a roll – good or bad – and that consequence needs to matter. Mechanical outcomes feel like they matter.

Let's look at overland exploration and travel. Lots of RPGs have some form of overland exploration and travel systems. The characters take on roles like pathfinder, scout, quartermaster, leader, and potentially others. When the characters travel, you have your players roll checks to see how well they do. If they roll well, they succeed in their job – traveling without being detected, finding potential dangers along the journey, following the right path, and not getting dehydrated along the way.

If they fail, we're drawn to include some sort of mechanical detriment. Maybe they suffer a level of exhaustion. Maybe they can't rest. Maybe they get some form of toe-fungus that affects their movement speed.

Sometimes, though, we can just describe what happens based on the roll – good or bad. If they do a good job, we describe what went well. If they do a bad job, we describe what went poorly. It doesn't need a mechanical result. We're telling stories in our RPGs – not just doing math and filling out simulated income tax forms. The story matters. Players feel it when their characters fail even if they don't get a -2 to their attack rolls.

The idea of story-focused results on rolls goes beyond travel scenes as well. Maybe you have a character who wants to climb to an upper story window. It's not the most superheroic activity but it can be challenging. So you ask the player for a roll. Typically you'd say if they fail that they crash to the bottom and don't make it up. That just steals their action, though. They can likely try again the next round but is that really interesting?

How about instead using the results of the role to determine how well they make it up there. On a high roll, they hop right up and smash through the window like an action star. On a low roll, they scramble up, kicking at the tiles and pinching their pinky in the window jam. But they still make it up either way.

There's a concept in RPGs called "failing forward" in which, whether a character succeeds or fails at a task, the story still moves forward. Focusing less on the mechanical outcome of a successful or failed check and more on the outcome in the story gives you ample opportunities to fail forward. A thief might have trouble picking a lock (after their player rolled a failed check) but they still get it open. It just took longer and some noise might have put some nearby guards on notice.

One way to think about whether it's worth tying a mechanic to a roll is whether it's actually fun for a player. Using rolls, particularly bad rolls, to flavor the story is often more fun for players than just applying a mechanical punishment for their bad luck. This feeling is especially true if it takes away from a character's ability to do something. Not being able to climb up to a window isn't particularly interesting or fun. Succeeding, but not with a lot of grace, is funny and doesn't take away their agency.

Use the dice to change up the story as it unfolds at the table and let go of the need to continually tie mechanics to every roll the players make.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

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Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Play Solo RPGs – Lazy GM Tip and Ossuary of Mot – Dragon Empire Prep Session 63.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Avoid detrimental effects players had no chance to avoid.
Bring back long lost NPCs and villains.
Reward magic items that extend a character’s breadth instead of depth.
Let the flow of a battle follow the story taking place.
Use a mix of theater of the mind, quick sketches, more detailed battle maps, and fancy terrain to fill out different combat environments.
Prep the tools to help you run improvised combat encounters.
Spend time understanding how monsters work in your game and tweak them to suit the fun at your table.

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