# RPG a Day 2026 - 09: Privilege tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2026 ![[RPG a Day 2026 (illo).jpg]] You've probably read a lot of RPG A Day entries about how certain people have the privilege of free time and the attention to play tabletop TRPGs. That somehow it needs to be limited, or it has been limited, or not everyone can, or — you know what? Just ignore all those people because they're not writing about the game. We are going to write about "the game." By that, I want to talk about how systems privilege characters to take actions. This sounds like a bizarre setup, really. Of course, your character can take an action, right? That's what your character is there to do. That's the whole purpose of the character. Any character can try to achieve any action that they would like; the system exists to resolve the implicit question of "how well does that work?"[^1] However, some systems provide particular gating before your character can do something particularly special. Sometimes that gating is pretty aggressive, and what is considered "particularly special" isn't particularly special. Let's start at the top of what I consider to be pretty heavy gatekeeping for system abilities and move on down. ## D&D Top of the pile is **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D]]** and **D&D**-adjacent games. There's no real way around it. Class-based systems are inherently structured to block off access to specialized abilities and even quite general abilities behind possessing a specific class. Wizards can't backstab, fighters can't throw fireballs, and clerics can't use swords. You know the drill. It's baked into the assumptions of a vast number of the RPGs on the market right now. Class-based systems are literally designed for this purpose. They provide very little privilege to characters beyond a very specific, narrow, quite powerful scope. I find this particularly constraining myself. It's not my favorite style of play. It's not my favorite way to approach characters. While it does simplify matters for the GM by not having every character have the potential powers of every other character, it also makes the world a bit more boring and simultaneously adds to the third-party forest of things like **300 New Character Classes to Spice Up Your Dungeons and Dragons**. The surest path to bloat is narrow definition. ## Call of Cthulhu How about we go somewhat in the opposite direction and talk about **[[Call of Cthulhu]]**? CoC's core system, **[[Basic Role Playing|BRP]]**, has been part of the gaming landscape for almost as long as **Dungeons and Dragons**, although it doesn't get nearly as much talk in the West. In Japan, on the other hand, it's the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and you wouldn't know that any other RPG exists unless you were a ludophile like me and a few others. You know who you are. **Call of Cthulhu** goes in the opposite direction from how **D&D**'s class system works. Instead, it has a skill-based system whose skills form a fairly fine mesh. Skill-based systems mean that any character can theoretically possess any skill for the most part, as long as they can justify it as their background, which is great. The problem comes in when you notice there are dozens of tiny skills that don't necessarily have significant overlap. That means that a particularly hard-nosed keeper isn't going to let you drive that car unless you have the driving skill at all, even though you grew up in an American city where everyone drives all the time and you would have been taught how to drive a car by the time you're 16. Nope, if it's not on the sheet, you can't do it. (I'd like to note that this is an extreme example of interpretation. In theory, there is a whole architecture of being able to roll against a stat if you don't have a skill at a significant decrease, but it's significant enough that under stress, you're probably *never* going to want to do it.) In this case, the privilege is withheld if you don't have the skill, no matter what. It might be more accurate to say that the privilege of success is withheld if you don't have the skill. *"You can certainly try, but it's guaranteed to fail"* is not a motivating statement to make. ## Ironsworn Let's go a bit broader. That always helps things, right? Let's take a look at **[[Ironsworn]], which makes a significant change by citing right in the text that you should assume that your characters are generally competent and have at least some decent chance of succeeding at whatever they put their hand to unless it's particularly difficult. Characters are defined by a set of stats and a group of assets, which really are kinds of competencies. They allow you narrative access to certain behaviors, activities, or abilities. Most of these you could try without access to the asset, but they are made considerably better by possession of the asset. > [!abstract] Archer > *COMBAT TALENT* > > If you wield a bow… > > - [x] **1.** When you **Secure an Advantage** by taking a moment to aim, choose your approach and add +1. > - [ ] **Trust your instincts:** Roll +wits, and take +2 momentum on a strong hit. > - [ ] **Line up your shot:** Roll +edge, and take +1 momentum on a hit. > > - [ ] **2.** Once per fight, when you **Strike** or **Clash**, you may take extra shots and suffer **-1 supply** (decide before rolling). When you do, reroll any dice. On a hit, inflict **+2 harm** and take **+1 momentum**. > > - [ ] **3.** When you **Resupply** by hunting, add **+1** and take **+1 momentum** on a hit. As you can see, the asset starts with a conditional — 'if you wield a bow'. If you do and have this asset, you can then do what it says. The first option is usually marked, and that effectively lets you do something you wouldn't normally be able to do as well. It doesn't keep you from trying, but it does enhance your chances. I find this a far more satisfying approach than completely cutting off your ability to do something. Giving you the ability to do it better if you put some time and effort into it strikes the right balance. ## Ironsworn: Arcanum Let's compare by looking at the Arcanum asset from **[[Thoughts/Ironsworn - Arcanum|Ironsworn: Arcanum]]**. > [!abstract] Arcanum > *HOME* > > After you **Fulfill Your Vow** to find a home — a place of rest and safety where you can study magic, perform experiments, store tomes, house companions, and more — you gain this asset. Then set the **Resources** track at the bottom of the card to **0**. After that, you have access to both abilities below. > > - [x] **Raise Funds:** When you **Fulfill a Vow**, you may **Secure Resources**. > - [x] **Build:** When you **Advance**, you may spend **Resources** to install Facilities in your Arcanum. Envision the people who are willing to live near and work for a Mage to help maintain the Facilities. > > **Resources:** 0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 This is somewhat different because it only has two abilities, and both of them are activated when you actually add it to your sheet. It does provide a conditional and explains exactly what and how you can do things and implicitly why. This is unsurprisingly my favorite way of dealing with things when I want a certain level of detail. That is, when it is straightforward and easy to understand that the mechanics should feed back into the fiction and the fiction should feed back into the mechanics. You can attempt anything, but having the right thing on your sheet can make you more likely to be successful or represent that you've already achieved something and now can do more things, additive rather than subtractive. ## Loner Let's take this to what is probably close to the ultimate example with **[[Loner]]**. Here, there are no quantifiers. There are no numbers. Your character sheet does not contain a list of abilities, skills, attributes, or anything else that is designed to tell you how many dice of this type and what number to add or subtract in order to resolve a question. On the contrary, characters are defined by qualitative traits, which aren't necessarily pre-created or pre-designed. You don't get a long list of things that you could put on your sheet, and those things aren't the *only* things you *can* put on your sheet. At best, you get suggestions, and the character is creatively your own. > [!info] **Sloane** — *the one who shoots the lord's deer* > **Skills:** > - **One-Arrow Bargain** — every arrow she looses has to earn its keep; she knows to the half-penny what a clean shot is worth. > - **Unmapped Paths** — cattle trails, dead men's routes, the gaps in the lord's fences — she walks the country the map forgets. > > **Frailty:** > - **Can't let a lord's smugness go unanswered** — a sneer gets an arrow or a sharp word back, even when staying quiet is the smart play. > > **Gear:** > - **A yew bow with a brass-wound grip** — her trade tool, worn and patched, worth more to her than gold. > - **A dead gamekeeper's badge** — she took it off the last man who caught her, and it opens gates that don't belong to her. > > **Goal:** To lift enough off the lord's land to buy passage out of the shire before the price on her head doubles. > **Motive:** She's got a week's start, and the gamekeeper keeps gaining ground. > **Nemesis:** Rafe, the lord's gamekeeper — the one hunter who might actually take her. > > **Luck: 6** Here's a fine example of a Loner character thrown together without thinking much about it. Any character in Loner can attempt any action with effectively a 50-50 chance of things going all right or things going terribly, assuming there's no frailty they have that gets in the way, nor is there an environmental tag that would act as a detriment. Ragnar the Mercenary Swordsman can pick up a bow and pop a shot at a deer when out hunting, but he's going to roll one chance die and one risk die. He'll also probably add an additional risk die because deer are fleet of foot and hard to hit. That's going to make it more likely to have a negative outcome. > [!warning] **No, but…** > *Question:* Does Ragnar get a clean shot at the deer? > 🎲 Chance **2** · Risk **3** · *(disadvantage)* > Failure — but something positive happens. Ragnar actually gets a little bit lucky. While he doesn't get what he wants, which is a clean shot at the deer, something good does come out of this. The deer runs toward his herd, leading Ragnar to perhaps more prey. We'll just have to see. Sloane here, on the other hand, out to take the same shot, is going to get an advantage from her One-Arrow Bargain skill, as well as from her yew bow with a brass-wound grip. Even with the deer getting a risk die on this roll for being quick, that's canceled by either the skill or the bow. This means that Sloane still has the advantage and would very likely come out on top. ## Hand It Out, Not Lock It Up Just to wrap things up here, there have been a lot of developments over the decades in tabletop role-playing game technology. I honestly do refer to the mechanisms of play that we have in role-playing games as their technology. It is an evolving, refining process that forks many times in order to explore new parts of the problem space and solve different problems for different people in different ways. For me, giving characters privileges is far more effective in terms of ultimate gameplay quality than limiting their privileges. But no matter what my personal inclination is, there are tens of thousands of takes on what characters should be allowed to do, how often, and what they have to do in order to do it. What is it that you like when it comes to character privilege? What do you want to see more of? What do you want to see less of? Let me know down below. Maybe we can work something out. [^1]: See [[RPGaDay 2026 - 04 - Charm|RPG a Day 2026 - 04: Charm]] for some conversation on implicit questions.