I had an intense conversation with my best friend about our search for the perfect roleplaying system. He’s very into game mechanics, and I’ve been thinking I’m more of a narrativist. I’m not.

Rules are important for a game. Rolling dice, using skills and feats or attributes and quirks is necessary to resolve actions. I just don’t want to do it myself. It interrupts the flow of the story for me when I have to stop and roll dice and use math.

My character has just encountered a mean goblin, looking for a fight. In a PBeM, it would look like this:

I write: Jocasta grabs for her sword and lunges at the goblin. Ooc: dice rolls sent, bonus for initiative, yadda yadda.
The GM writes: Jocasta lunges at the goblin and trips over the rock in front of her. The goblin moves in and rams his sword into her belly. Ooc: you rolled a 1 on initiative and a 3 on attack, sorry! Yadda, yadda.

I don’t like it. I don’t mind dying, but I don’t want the mechanics getting in the way of the writing. Leave my 4th wall up! I propose my GM do all the mechanics behind the screen. I’ll write what the character is trying to do and (s)he can do all the rolling, figure bonuses and determine the outcome.

More work for the GM? Sure, a bit. But it would make the perfect game – for me.