D&D General Do You Use a DM Screen?

[el-remmen]

I'm curious - are there folks who never hide any rolls whatsoever? Even the ones the player characters would have no way of knowing about?

Not as often as I used to but I still do sometimes. Occasionally I have a player roll a die in a cup, so they are rolling it themselves for a stealth check or whatever but don’t know the result until it matters.

 

[Yaarel]

Do I use a DM screen? Does a laptop screen count?

 

[g00se99994]

Do I use a DM screen? Does a laptop screen count?

I think so.

 

[g00se99994]

I open roll almost everything. Certainly all attack rolls, damage and saves. Really makes combat spicy.

 

[jdrakeh]

Sometimes. I usually just use a laptop these days, as that allows me to pull up all of the info (and more) that is typically printed on screens. But there's nothing like a classic screen for atmosphere. So, sometimes, I throw up my vintage AD&D 1e screen.

 

[Jaiken]

I use a DM screen when playing with my family group. It was a gift from my nephews so I make good use out of it.

 

[Laurefindel]

I don't use a screen.

I could say that I don't like how it puts a barrier between me and my players, or else that I like the thrill of rolling in the open, or that my players could see all the important information from my notes but who would i be kidding?

I prepare my games on my off days and improvise when the night comes...

 

[greymist]

For 40+ yers, I used a screen when I DM’d. Usually my old orange AD&D screen with the current edition rules paper-clipped on it. I only ran 2 or 3 sessions of 5E in-person before COVID struck. The next 35+ sessions of that game were online. I have not DM’d since, but should be taking the reins shortly.

I expect I will use a screen when/if we play in-person, from habit. But I will for sure use a laptop as I have grown accustomed to checking rules without opening a book.

I know when COVID hit I had started creating some custom sheets for the screen. I wonder if I can find the files?

 

[Xenophon223]

I tried multiple configurations but never found one I liked. Everything is on the laptop now. That also let's me control the screen the players can see for maps, images and our combat tracker spreadsheet.

 

[MNblockhead]

I did when I got back into TTRPGs in 2014, but the official ones met my needs. Not I use digital DM reference tools. When I used them, I didn't like any of the official ones. I felt that too much space was wasted, they didn't cover many of the things that I would need to look up, and the stuff they did have was often stuff that I had committed to memory pretty quickly. The only official screen that I used was the Curse of Strahd one. I ran that game 100% pen and paper. I mainly used it to reference the Barovian map printed on the DM side.

When I started, I had two 3-ring binders clipped together with a mixture of rule and campaign/adventure references inserted into page protectors held by the rings. I could flip pages and clip them in place with binder clips having what I needed. But I quickly became dissatisfied with this approach. I roll in the open, so having such a large DM screen was an inconvenience. Also, when I needed to flip pages to change what reference pages were showing, I would either have to move the stuff I can in front of my screen or lift up the screen to do so. It just wasn't convenient.

Next I used The Worlds Greatest Screen (TWGS) Mini by Hammerdog Games. I liked the page inserts on both the DM's and Players side. Using the mini was kinda a pain as instead of just printing 8.5x11 sheets, I would have to create a template for smaller sizes, print out my references on card stock and cut them to size to insert them. But I liked how I could change the references for different systems and with what I needed for a particular session. I liked the mini because it did feel as if I was separating myself from the other players and it was easy to roll in the open.

As I started to use more digital tools like Realmworks, Herolab, and D&D Beyond, my laptop was basically my screen. Anything I wanted to hide from my players I would put on a small side table with screens around it. But stopped having screens between me and the other players.

Now that I'm running games online, keeping things from player view is not an issue. For reference, I have a custom journal that I made that is cross linked to associated assets and rules. I pop it out in its own window and put it in a separate screen from battlemat. Beside the ability to search and cross link, another benefit of using a digital DM "screen" is that as my eyesight has gotten worse with age, I no longer have the problem of trying to read small print from a distance like I would have to deal with with most printed DM screens.