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Are players always entitled to see their own rolls?
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<blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6727793" data-attributes="member: 45197"><p>Hiya!</p><p></p><p>IMHO, no, players are not "entitled" to roll <em>all</em> the dice for their characters.</p><p></p><p>Why? The DM's job is to run a fun and exciting game. To do so, the DM is "allowed" to overrule <em>ANYTHING</em> in the game. This includes normally "player allowed" dice rolls. How often and for what reasons he does this...that's what will determine if he has any players left at the end of the week.</p><p></p><p>We've all played with, or heard about, "control freak" type DM's that simply don't let their precious NPC's, monsters, plots, or what have you get "wrecked" by those pesky players (y'know, those other human being sitting around the table with them). Those are the ones where if the NPC bad guy is running away, and the player rolls his Disadvantaged long-shot...and gets two 20's in a row, then rolls max damage for his critical...and the DM says "Uh...no. You miss him anyway. He's too far and with the wind and everything...". Those DM's just find themselves out of a DM job, really.</p><p></p><p>Now, if a player gets all huffy when a DM says "What's your characters Perception bonus? I'll roll to see if you find anything...". In my mind, that's the same kind of "control freak" mentality, but in Player form and not DM.</p><p></p><p>IMHO, if the DM calls for a roll, then there is uncertainty in the outcome. If a DM doesn't want something to happen...he shouldn't allow the roll in the first place. "We search for secret doors", and the DM says "No. No way of finding them; you have no light, the noise from the howling winds, the dust and dirt being blown around in the room, the chilling cold making your fingers numb...sorry". That is perfectly fine. But, if the DM feels like it, she can also just roll a secret d20 behind the screen and say the same thing, regardless of outcome. Personally, if I feel the PC is likely to know that some endevour is doomed to fail, I just tell them. But if there is a chance, and they wouldn't know if they succeeded or failed, I'll roll for them.</p><p></p><p>Benefits of rolling for a player? It gives the player plausible deniability. The player can try and persuade some guard to do something. If the guard agrees, the player can always change his mind and say "<em>You know what? Forget it. I just don't trust you. Sorry....you're a guard and all that. Forget we even had this conversation</em>". But if the player rolled his dice and got a 5 total, and the guard still agrees to do it...if the player says the same thing? Now it <em>looks</em> like the player is metagaming. Everyone at the table gets that uncomfortable feeling, like they just witnessed what <em>looks like</em> someone "cheating"...and want to speak up, but they have no actual proof; it just <em>looked like</em> cheating. If they speak up, and the person wasn't cheating, the person speaking up looks like a jealous dingleberry trying to stomp somebody down for 'no reason'.</p><p></p><p>And, as many others have said, if you don't trust the people you are bellying up to the table with...then you should find other people to play with, IMHO. Untrusting people in an RPG group is about as much fun as that guy on your sports teem with serious anger management issues who takes anything that goes against them as a personal affront and then proceeds to scream, threaten, swear/curse a blue streak and then starts blaming other team members for his own failure. Yeah, we all know those guys. Just don't play with them.</p><p></p><p>Bottom line: Players are NOT entitled to roll every dice roll for their character. Trust the people you are playing with. Don't sweat the small stuff, just play the game and have fun!</p><p></p><p>^_^</p><p></p><p>Paul L. Ming</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pming, post: 6727793, member: 45197"] Hiya! IMHO, no, players are not "entitled" to roll [I]all[/I] the dice for their characters. Why? The DM's job is to run a fun and exciting game. To do so, the DM is "allowed" to overrule [I]ANYTHING[/I] in the game. This includes normally "player allowed" dice rolls. How often and for what reasons he does this...that's what will determine if he has any players left at the end of the week. We've all played with, or heard about, "control freak" type DM's that simply don't let their precious NPC's, monsters, plots, or what have you get "wrecked" by those pesky players (y'know, those other human being sitting around the table with them). Those are the ones where if the NPC bad guy is running away, and the player rolls his Disadvantaged long-shot...and gets two 20's in a row, then rolls max damage for his critical...and the DM says "Uh...no. You miss him anyway. He's too far and with the wind and everything...". Those DM's just find themselves out of a DM job, really. Now, if a player gets all huffy when a DM says "What's your characters Perception bonus? I'll roll to see if you find anything...". In my mind, that's the same kind of "control freak" mentality, but in Player form and not DM. IMHO, if the DM calls for a roll, then there is uncertainty in the outcome. If a DM doesn't want something to happen...he shouldn't allow the roll in the first place. "We search for secret doors", and the DM says "No. No way of finding them; you have no light, the noise from the howling winds, the dust and dirt being blown around in the room, the chilling cold making your fingers numb...sorry". That is perfectly fine. But, if the DM feels like it, she can also just roll a secret d20 behind the screen and say the same thing, regardless of outcome. Personally, if I feel the PC is likely to know that some endevour is doomed to fail, I just tell them. But if there is a chance, and they wouldn't know if they succeeded or failed, I'll roll for them. Benefits of rolling for a player? It gives the player plausible deniability. The player can try and persuade some guard to do something. If the guard agrees, the player can always change his mind and say "[I]You know what? Forget it. I just don't trust you. Sorry....you're a guard and all that. Forget we even had this conversation[/I]". But if the player rolled his dice and got a 5 total, and the guard still agrees to do it...if the player says the same thing? Now it [I]looks[/I] like the player is metagaming. Everyone at the table gets that uncomfortable feeling, like they just witnessed what [I]looks like[/I] someone "cheating"...and want to speak up, but they have no actual proof; it just [I]looked like[/I] cheating. If they speak up, and the person wasn't cheating, the person speaking up looks like a jealous dingleberry trying to stomp somebody down for 'no reason'. And, as many others have said, if you don't trust the people you are bellying up to the table with...then you should find other people to play with, IMHO. Untrusting people in an RPG group is about as much fun as that guy on your sports teem with serious anger management issues who takes anything that goes against them as a personal affront and then proceeds to scream, threaten, swear/curse a blue streak and then starts blaming other team members for his own failure. Yeah, we all know those guys. Just don't play with them. Bottom line: Players are NOT entitled to roll every dice roll for their character. Trust the people you are playing with. Don't sweat the small stuff, just play the game and have fun! ^_^ Paul L. Ming [/QUOTE]
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