This weekend (that is, the weekend of 7/31-8/2/2026) at GenCon has seen the announcement of Vampire: The Masquerade V6. There has been some wailing and gnashing of teeth, as is often the case with the announcement of a new edition of a role-playing game. Of note with this edition of Vampire is a mechanical complaint that’s different from the usual – in the new edition the Storyteller doesn’t roll dice. This is not a new situation in tabletop RPGs these days – it’s a common mechanical trait of games that are Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark, along with other mechanical frameworks that have come after. However, I think where it’s notable here, and why I think games that were Forged in the Dark or Powered by the Apocalypse didn’t quite catch on when they were being so heavily promoted in the wake of the D&D 5E OGL catastrophe is that there is a tactile element that’s missing. Not Tactical – tactile. Allow me to explain.
Most people in the US, when they grow up playing board games, tend to play board games with some element of random chance to them, and the act of play in those games comes through interaction with those elements of random chance. You roll dice, you play cards, you pull a chit out of box, and you move pieces around a board. When players of those games, and I include the game master as a player (because they are), discover tabletop RPGs, often through Dungeons & Dragons or a similar (as in Dungeon Fantasy) “traditional” RPG, there are similar tactile elements. Maybe you’re moving miniatures or tokens around a battle map, but maybe you’re using Theater of the Mind instead. However, whichever you chose, every player rolls dice. Players like rolling dice. I’ve played in multiple games where players will just roll dice as a fidget at the start of the game. They get dice towers not only because of the way to confine the randomization but because of the sound the dice makes as it bounces down the tower. To play an RPG, in any position, for them, is to roll dice.
Which means that for a game where the Game-Master doesn’t roll dice, it can stop feeling like play, and start feeling like you’re a referee. But wait, you the straw commenter says, lots of RPGs refer to the GM as as “referee”, and that concept dates back to miniatures wargaming. This is true. However, to a lot of people, not unreasonably, being a referee is associated with being a job. It’s the thing you’re paid to do at a little league game, that leads to you getting shouted at by parents because what to you mean their kid was offside. What even is offside anyway. It’s not something you necessarily associate with the act of collaboratively telling a story with your friends.
This is not an unsolvable problem – but it does take a bit of work. Here’s a couple thoughts that came to mind, somewhat on my own, and through discussions on the Ranged Touch Discord (check their website for an invite).
Move Cards
This suggestion was made by Austin Walker on the Discord, and considering how long the Forged in the Dark and Powered by the Apocalypse game systems have been around, you’d think this would be a thing you could just get by now. Nope. There are Move Cheat Sheets, but not cards. I did find discussion of Move Cards in a Dungeon World Subreddit, but there it was for players, and the consensus from the longer term posters on the Subreddit were that it was a bad idea and you shouldn’t use it because it promoted rigid thinking among players.
Now, maybe for players, but I, and Austin, both think that if you’re a GM this can be a tremendously valuable tool for helping you learn the system, and give the GM that tactile feel of “playing” a card in a specific narrative context. I’d also add that if you learn things better divided up into smaller chunks, it would probably work better at learning the rules of a particular system by having the GM Moves on cards rather than on a cheat sheet, because you’re only looking at one move at a time, rather than filtering through them all at once. You still aren’t engaging with the randomizer necessarily, but you are interacting with physical pieces. Speaking of which.
You can’t spell Tactical without at least part of Tactile
You generally don’t have precise miniatures movement and tactical placement in a Forged in the Dark/Powered by the Apocalypse game. It’s not particularly necessary. However, adding a map and miniatures or tokens, in addition to any visual representation of ongoing clocks, provides an additional way for players (and that includes the Gamemaster) to visualize a situation. This can work for mapping where you’ve explored in a dungeon complex or other location. It can provide a visual representation of guard patterns in addition to using a clock on a heist or break in. It can just be to provide where enemies are in relation to characters in a combat situation so players can describe their actions accordingly. Consequently, it also provides the Gamemaster tokens or miniatures to move around or place on the board, providing that missing tactile element that the players have through rolling dice.
Are either of these perfect? No. But they might be the thing that helps you (and hopefully eventually me) as a gamemaster, and possibly also your players into trying less trad game – though to be clear there’s nothing wrong with trad games.
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