"NAT 20!" - Concerning Co-Creativity
How do you handle Natural 20s? Some think Nat. 20’s are overpowered. Some people think Nat. 20’s have laws and you should hold to those laws. I think Nat. 20’s are sacred and present the opportunity to be open as a Storyteller to submit to a player’s unmitigated control.
If someone rolls a Nat. 20 at my table, they can do anything they want. If they are looking for something, they can have anything they want of whatever quality. If they are in combat, they kill and kill however they want, as cool as they want and in whatever detail they want. If they Nat. 20 eating a bagel, anything can happen, they need only speak it into existence.
Philosophically, my Thought is that a Natural 20 is a moment in which Chance has determined that this player is no longer in a position of “striving”. Striving is anything that could be classed as an “attempt”; and success is only the end of striving, therefore included in it. A Natural 20 removes a player from any form of “striving” into a place of control. The story is now theirs - the events within, its ramifications, its consequences - the player is now in complete control of the space. For that one move, the Storyteller, the other players, and the physics of the world of our game, submits to the Natural 20 empowered player.
A Nat 20 is just another way that I try to incorporate co-creativity at the table. In general, the Storyteller tends to push the majority of the non-player world. It is their role in the role playing game. Players create within the boundaries of what makes sense in the world they occupy and the Storyteller does the same. To me, a Nat 20 should heighten this and empower the co-creativity at the table. With a Nat 20, anyone - and that does include the Storyteller - becomes the unmitigated, unlimited, and primary authority in the game space. They can do anything, even the impossible, with the justification that the gaming universe itself - via the Nat. 20 - has empowered them as such. Nat. 20’s are a sacred piece of the game space; it is one part the achievement of agency, one part luck, and one part destiny; it is a piece of real-world magic touching for a brief moment our fiction and we should respect it.