System-Agnostic Quick Start Guide

So you want to be a Game Master, huh?

Well, congratulations! You're halfway there and have completed the hardest part: resolving to do so. In this page, I'm going to break down ideas and concepts you need to craft your first game session in a broad range of systems

First up: Difficulty Checks and Magic Numbers

Identifying Magic Numbers

In many Tabletop RPGs with dice resolution mechanics, there are numbers that we'll call target numbers. Depending on the system, they can be called any number of things: Difficulty class, To-hit, challenge rating etc. This number designates the number your player needs to roll (after adding appropriate bonuses) to succeed in any given task where the outcome is uncertain. 

You probably won't ask for a roll to open a door or climb a flight of stairs in normal circumstances because failure is unlikely, but also uninteresting. Similarly, you probably won't ask for a roll to survive after jumping off a cliff or to jump to the moon. It typically makes more sense to resolve action with slim-to-no chance of failure or success narratively and save the dice for rolls that are most likely to be interesting, success or fail. 

Let's talk about those rolls, and how they relate to the topic at hand. Your magic numbers describe 4 tiers of tasks:

Let's contextualize these a bit, shall we? Bear in the back of mind that the scale of these feats can be pushed forward or back depending on how superheroic or struggle-filled your adventure is intended to be. 

Menial 

Average

Difficult Tasks

Heroic Tasks

In particularly well-designed game systems, these numbers will be laid out in a similar fashion near the front of the book. 

As a general rule:

D6 Systems:

Menial - Anything but a 1
Average - 3-4
Difficult - 5
Heroic - 6+

D20 Systems:

Menial - 9
Average - 12
Difficult - 15
Heroic - 18-22

Some time soon we'll put these numbers into practice and they should make more sense in context. For now, just keep in mind where these numbers are and what their names mean for your given system. 

Up next: Building Encounters and Locations