Taking dice away from the players

[Ravenshroud]

I wonder...

Has anyone ever attempted to DM a game session where the players JUST roleplayed? They don't roll dice at all. You roll all the dice, do all the math for them, and just roleplay it with them?

I am just starting to use Combat Tracker and I was wondering if a tool like this could play the whole math game and just let the players roleplay.

Would it even be fun for them then? Do they need to feel the luck of the die roll?

This is not an idea....just a what if.

So many die rolls: perception, saves, initiative, etc seem to go better under the purview of the DM, without player interaction. Particularly with easy to use tools like Combat Tracker.

 

[Infiniti2000]

"Then why the hell do I have all these dice?"

 

[Varchild]

I have played that way. Not so much in D&D but in GURPS and vampire. It works well for getting people into the game who wouldn't normally be attracted to pen and paper games but it does limit them in that they don't learn the system.

Sent from my T-Mobile G1 using Tapatalk

 

[Maximilia]

As a player, I say "What's the point of playing then?" Yes, roleplaying and all that, but when it comes down to combat, having the GM roll everything just seems like... he can do anything he wants. He can roll dice and say "Oh, you hit!" I have played Amber many MANY times before, but that game was designed as a diceless RPG. 4E is not.

As a GM, I say, "WTH?! I'm not rolling all these dice!!"

 

[keterys]

I've played a story-heavy game of Earthdawn that the DM took care of everything. It went fine, but it was a lot tougher on the DM and I think one of the other players objected.

I don't know that I'd pick 4E to play that way, though.

 

[OnlineDM]

My personal take on it is that rolling dice is inherently fun for the players (at least for those that I've played with). In my online game using MapTool I once created a slick macro that would roll initiative for everyone on the board, including the monsters. It was quickly clear that this was less fun for the players, though - they wanted to roll their own initiative (even though "rolling" in this case just meant clicking on a button in MapTool).

I'm sure some groups would love to not have to worry about dice, but my groups are full of players who enjoy the dice rolling in the game. And I know that there are some "diceless" systems out there, too, which is a completely different concept from what you're describing, I think.

 

[Umbran]

This isn't an edition-specific idea or discussion, so I'm moving it to General.

The very first AD&D (1e) game I played was like this - back in the day, we referred to this as "playing blind". We didn't have character sheets - just qualitative descriptions of the characters and their abilities.

We had a blast!

This kind of play would probably feel like a loss of control to anyone used to making their own very detailed tactical decisions. A game like 4e, where it matters very much precisely which round you're in precisely which square using some specific power is perhaps a poor choice of rule sets for such play.

A game where it is easy to play without minis and a battlemat, where the qualitative description of what you do has neat correspondence to the rules for the same, so that the player doesn't need lots of game terminology to tell the GM what he or she wants to do, it works a lot better.

 

[S'mon]

I always run pbems this way, for the sake of speed - it works fine, but for other formats I prefer the player roll the dice. Even playing with my 3-year-old I say eg "roll these dice, you hit the goblins on a 9 or more". Admittedly he seems to prefers d6s to d20s as I think he can count to 6...

 

[MortonStromgal]

No - I have never had a game where the GM rolled all the dice
Yes - I have played a few games with no dice rolls. I also had a marathon halloween game (over 12 hours of play time) where there was 1 dice roll by a player who fired a pistol at a vampire and then died.

 

[IronWolf]

For some groups it might work. You can always run it by them and see what they think.

For me though, I like the thrill of rolling my own dice, hoping for that natural 20 or sometimes just hoping not to roll a 1! It adds and element to the game and I like to be rolling the dice. I suspect many other players are this way as well.