Playing a game

Your turn#

The boxes at the bottom are what you send. All of them are optional:

  • Says (top left): what your character says aloud. Text in parentheses is a direction, not speech: (to Ines) Give it back. or (quietly) I know.
  • Does (below it): what your character visibly does.
  • Events: something that happens that nobody controls: a sudden noise, the lights go out, a bus arrives.
  • Audience: a remark from the audience.

Click Send or press ⌘ Return. The boxes are cleared right away, so you can already think about your next turn while the characters answer. If the turn doesn't work out (you stop it, or something goes wrong), your text comes back into the boxes.

What you type is kept with each game until you send it, even if you switch games or close Roller.

Stop#

While the characters are answering, the Send button turns into Stop. Click it (or press Esc) to halt the answer. Whatever already arrived is kept.

The stage#

Each turn is one row on the stage:

  • On top: what you said and did, the events, and the audience's remark.
  • Below: one card per character on stage, with what they do (in italics) and what they say.
  • The small number in the corner of a card is the order in which the characters acted in this turn.
  • Sometimes a character speaks an aside: a remark to the audience that nobody on stage hears.
  • A line in blue marked impulse is a sudden impulse Roller gave the character; see Nudges.

Change what was said#

Everything on the stage can be changed: click into any text and type. Your change is saved a moment later, and the model sees your version from then on. Hover over a card to see empty fields you can fill in.

Changing a line is often the quickest way to steer the play: the characters build on what's on the stage.

The ⋯ menu of a turn#

Next to each turn's number is a small ⋯ menu:

  • Fork from here: starts a new game with all turns up to and including this one. The original game stays as it is.
  • Patch notes… and Undo patch: for a patched turn; see Patch.

Back#

Back undoes the last turn: its row disappears and the boxes are cleared. Each click undoes one more turn.

Who is on stage and where the scene is aren't undone: they stay as set in the left column.

Pass#

Pass sits your turn out. Your character steps into the shade, out of the scene, and the others act among themselves; nobody on stage sees or hears you, and they may even talk about you.

Events and the audience's remark are sent with a pass, but what you typed to say or do stays in the boxes for later. Your next Send brings you back into the scene.

Patch#

Patch gives the last turn a second, more critical look. It looks for lines that hand the initiative back to you, wait, simply agree, repeat what we know, or stay vague, and rewrites only those, so the characters push the story forward. Good lines are kept word for word.

It may also give one or two characters a hunch: a feeling about what's coming ("It occurs to Ana that this will end with someone leaving."), which the next turn can pick up.

While Patch works, the status line counts through its steps. A patched turn gets a small ✎ under its number. In its ⋯ menu:

  • Patch notes… shows what Patch thought each character wanted, and what it did with each line.
  • Undo patch brings back the turn as it was before.

If you stop Patch, or it fails, the turn stays unchanged.

Nudges#

Before each turn, Roller may give a character on stage an impulse: a sudden thought or decision, which the character must act on in that turn. It shows in blue on their card, marked impulse. Nudges keep a scene from going flat: they're the little push a director might whisper to an actor from the wings.

Two rules come built in:

  • Silence: after three turns in which nobody said a word, someone feels they have to say something.
  • Outrageous: now and then (one turn in ten), a character decides to do something outrageous.

You can change these rules, switch them off, or add your own in Config, under Nudge rules.

What a rule is made of. Each rule has:

  • When it may apply: on every turn, or only after a number of turns without a spoken word (nobody, you included, said anything out loud — stage directions in parentheses don't count).
  • A chance, in percent: how likely the rule is to fire when its condition holds. Think of it as rolling a die. 100 % means "always, whenever the condition holds". 10 % means "about one turn in ten": it might happen two turns in a row, or not for twenty turns — on average, once in ten. Low chances keep surprises rare, so they stay surprising.
  • Who gets the impulse: one character on stage, picked at random, or every character on stage.
  • The thought itself, in up to three versions. Each time, one of them is picked at random, so the same nudge doesn't always sound the same.

What happens under the hood. Just before your turn goes to the model, Roller looks at a few plain facts about the game so far — for example, how many turns in a row nobody has spoken. Then it goes through your rules from top to bottom. For each rule whose condition holds, it "rolls the die" with the rule's chance. If the roll succeeds, the chosen character (or every character on stage) gets the thought. A character gets at most one impulse per turn: the first rule that hits wins. The thought is added to the instructions for this turn, and the model is told that the character must act on it right now. The model decides how — the impulse says what the character feels, the model writes what they do about it.

Nudges are stored with the turn, so if you use Back and send again, a new roll decides afresh. Patch keeps the impulses of the turn it improves.