Taking dice away from the players

[nightspaladin]

We have been tossing around a similar idea in our group, but we haven't tried it yet.

Players roll combat dice. Thus they know if they hit, and have the fun of seeing big numbers come up in the way of damage. But like monsters, the players aren't tracking their hp. All of that is done by the DM. Thus players don't meta game manage their hp and resources. In a real battle, a cleric won't know the fighter is at 1/3 hp left, they would know that "he is gashed all over, staggering slightly, and finding it hard to catch his breathe"

For 4e, which is what we play, they will get descriptions of their general condition, and know mechanically when they are bloodied. But whether they are at 49% hp or 1% hp, they won't know for sure. Only the DM will have that info.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

If you mean 'the GM rolls all the dice' then, yes, I tried it back in the early eighties.

It was quite possibly the most annoying and ill considered thing that I have ever done as a GM. The game was slowed way down, and the players really didn't like being told whether they hit or missed with someone else rolling the dice, even if it is the GM. And it felt a Hell of a lot like I was playing by myself, so I wasn't having a good time either.

Two hours in I threw in the towel, apologized to the players, and rewound time - it was a total suck fest, with no one happy. I highly recommend not doing this. Worst of all, it was my own idea to try it, and I have no one else that I can blame for a truly miserable game.

If on the other hand you mean 'GM rolls Sneak, Spot, Search, and Listen' then I do that all the time, and no one has any problems with it. I have also used a 'roll against' system - I roll a D20, and the number rolled becomes '1', flipping over for the numbers above 20. So if I roll a 3 then a '20' becomes a 17, and a '2' becomes 20. Annoying, and I haven't done this in a decade or two.

The Auld Grump

 

[Wolf1066]

I run a mixture of roleplaying vs dice rolls - if the players roleplay their characters well enough (and I have a good enough idea of the motivations of the NPCs), various interaction dice rolls can be omitted and we just get into the story, the players interact, deal, convince, fast-talk etc and the story progresses.

Occasionally dice need to be rolled to see if the players have observed something or if they elect to take an action that they may or may not succeed at (such as combat).

Sometimes I will roll the dice secretly so they cannot know if their failure to detect something was due to a failed roll or the non-existence of what they were looking for - the team is pretty good at not meta-gaming but it can add to the suspense if they have no idea whether or not they brilliantly detected no threats or failed miserably to spot the danger.

As we use Friday Night Fire Fight 2013, the damage is very description based "you have a flesh wound on your upper arm." "you have a critical wound on your left thigh, the bone is shattered and you can't bear your own weight on that leg" "you have hit the ground". They also get similar descriptions of those they've hit - if they can see them - tangible observations but no metagame knowledge of what's happening. The villain's gone down - is he dead or merely stunned for a round? Do you really want to break cover to find out?

I try to limit dice rolls to the bare minimum required to resolve things that can't be role-played - did you manage to jump that chasm? - and role play wherever possible.

My players seem to enjoy working out the buttons to push to get what they want from diverse NPCs - they're quite skilled diplomats.

If we actually have to roll for persuasion/fast talk, then something's failed in the role-playing.

 

[malcolypse]

long story short: we played an evening of poker in character, with no dice rolls.

long story long:
back when i was a teenager, i ran a superhero story where the villain seemed to have nearly unlimited power. the party got stomped pretty good when they tried to go toe-to-toe with him.

when they tried to go at him from different directions, they found that he seemed to have unlimited resources, too.

then they tried talking to him.

he told them (amongst other things) that he was the earthly embodiment of satan (not true though he did have a reality shaping power that was on par with what most would consider a divine being, but he believed it and they did, too) and that they had made him smile, so he was going to send an emissary to them so that he wouldn't have to destroy them.

the next session of the game started with them coming to breakfast in their secret base and finding a man sitting at their table shuffling a deck of cards. a business card appeared in his hand and he introduced himself. when he finished, the card disappeared and each pc had a copy of it in their hand or pocket.

the card had his name on it, and that was followed by a listing of his credentials: professional card sharp
metahuman
notorious cheat

he explained that he was on a simple enough mission from his master. all he needed from them was their souls. the only drawback was that he had to give them a chance. to that end, he was told to play fair and offer them equal value in the event that they should win.

the party was wary, and offered to start out for lower stakes.

one party member had a time travel power that let him rewind a few seconds and attempt a better outcome. he had no compunction against cheating.

so they took this guy for everything they could. given his master's powers, that was quite a bit.

they were starting off with information exchange (we'll tell you our secret identities if you'll tell us your masters weakness, sort of things), then things started getting wierd. one of the characters was a conspiracy nut, so he started betting things like "if i win this hand, you have to tell me all about area 51." somehow the whole group got on this kind of kick and eventually when the pot started to get into the "now what can i offer you for your souls" spectrum, they asked for area 51.

now, area 51 wasn't real. the guy had told them that. they assumed he was lying, and he was very confused when he agreed to the bet when he was told that he couldn't cheat them. his master had built area 51, complete with everythig that the players expected in it, because he could and then he could keep track of the players.

so after a couple hours of poker, the players explored their new secret base and never questioned anything about it.

a fun night with nary a roll, and area 51 ended up taking over the long-term plot of the game as they found new things in, and dealt with the problems that area 51 produced.

 

[Herobizkit]

Most of my gaming over the past decade has been one-on-one Solo campaigns. In such games, narrative is paramount to keep the game interesting in-between the hack and slash. In many cases, we did spend whole gaming sessions for 4-8 hours with no die rolling whatsoever because the improv between the PC and various NPC's was going so well.

 

[Twowolves]

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?

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

I did almost exactly this when I ran 2nd ed 15 years ago. The players were new to roleplaying games, and the only dice they rolled (after character creation) were initiative and hit points. There was a lot less info to keep track of back then, and I had their character sheets mostly memorized anyway.

They certainly never complained, in fact they often waited with baited breath as I rolled the die behind the screen and then described in detail the results of their actions.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

You can take my dice from my cold, dead hands!

 

[Sunseeker]

Tried it twice, once as a player, once as a DM, frankly, I got tired of rolling that many dice as a DM, you take 5-6 players, 10-12 mobs each with 2 or 3 attacks, not to mention that mage with his AOE fireball that happened to catch 6 of them all at different ranges and yeah, I was just burnt out, couldn't really concentrate on giving them a good world to RP in.

As a player, I just found it boring, on the RP aspect was fine and dandy, but I'm a fairly good writer and I don't really feel the need to exist within somebody else's world as a character.

Some of the people not so good at the rules enjoyed it, our sessions were shorter but more active RP-wise. People who enjoyed casting big dice attacks seemed to get bored quickly.

 

[Umbran]

You can take my dice from my cold, dead hands!

Yes, but unless you're some form of undead, that's hardly a challenge

Tried it twice, once as a player, once as a DM, frankly, I got tired of rolling that many dice as a DM, you take 5-6 players, 10-12 mobs each with 2 or 3 attacks, not to mention that mage with his AOE fireball that happened to catch 6 of them all at different ranges and yeah, I was just burnt out, couldn't really concentrate on giving them a good world to RP in.

The method does call for a bit of a change in encounter design, or a change in how you resolve encounters with many characters, NPCs, or monsters in them. If you try to run a mass combat by standard rules rolling all the dice yourself... you get what you ask for

 

[Stormonu]

Way back in the early 80's my friends and I used to play D&D (basic) without dice; they weren't allowed in school, so we just used "common sense" to determine the outcome of the things we did. Overall, I enjoyed it at the time, but I don't think I could do it again these days.

I've had a few game sessions where dice simply didn't come into play, the players had their dice, but the way things were going, they just didn't need to be rolled. Some of these were in my old 2E D&D game, others in my VtM game.

Also, it was quite popular in older editions for the DM to roll "perception" checks, Find Traps rolls and other checks secretly. I don't do that much any more and just let the players roll.