D&D General Do You Use a DM Screen?

[Clint_L]

Never. We roll in the open.

Johnathan

So do we. Mostly. There are some instances where it is important for the players not to see the roll, because knowing whether they, say, succeeded in deceiving the guard or not affects what choices they make next, and it is way more fun to role-play it without the metagame knowledge of whether or not their attempt was a success.

Besides which, there are a lot more uses for a DM screen than hiding dice rolls.

 

[Richards]

Yeah, but I don't need a DM screen for any of those other reasons, either. I print out my homebrew adventures and monster stat sheets and keep them on a clipboard, with my PC tracking sheet on the top so nobody sees anything. I have a little table on wheels nearby to hold my books and the plastic bin I pre-load with the minis I'll need. And if I need to roll a die without the players knowing the result, I'll just do it in the open and not let them know until afterwards what it was for. The system's worked for us (my current group of players) for 20 years now, and even as a kid we played without DM screens. I just never saw the need.

Johnathan

 

[payn]

I used to use them and always made my own. I stopped using one when I switched to a lectern.

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The ipad is for using Zoom when I run my remote game, not for notes or to look stuff up. I have another camera pointed at the table.

Edit to add: There is a usually a dice tower in front of the lectern, where I roll in the open for in-person games. For online games, there is no camera pointed at the dice, but then again everyone is rolling with their own dice on the honor system.

I like it. I work on PC all day and last thing I want to do is sit for hours more. I prefer to stand which has become the norm in my F2F gaming which is currently a lot of Battletech.

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm running online most of the time, but when I run in person, such as last week for the "season finale" of my AD&D game, I definitely use a screen, but not for the tables or anything like that. Just to cover my notes my dice rolls. And, of course, for tradition.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

If I was using a system that had different, situational outcome tables, it would be nice to have those all up at the same time... But DnD's not like that.

Maybe if one of the panels on the screen was actually a screen, so I could change what image it's displaying over Bluetooth. So that's two use cases.

I wouldn't ever hide anything behind it. Certainly not the dice.

 

[Clint_L]

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?

I make most rolls in the open. All combat rolls, saving throws, etc. However, let's say the players are spinning some cock and bull story to get past a guard, and I ask them to make a deception check against the guard's insight check. I would keep the guard's roll secret, and role-play him based on the result. The players have to infer from what happens next whether or not they were successful. Because maybe the guard knows they are full of crap but is going along with it until they can be in a more advantageous position to summon help or something. Or maybe the guard bought it and the party is in the clear. It's much more fun, IMO, if the players are having to decide based only on the information their characters have.

There's a fair number of events that happen in game where the characters would have no way of knowing the result of their attempt, and other events that the characters might be wholly unaware of. How do you handle those without rolling secretly?

 

[Stoutstien]

How're you with immoral eyes?

I said what I said lol.

Shifty eyed buggers.

 

[cbwjm]

I don't bother with a DM screen nowadays. I have my notes on my laptop which keeps them hidden and I just roll the dice in front of my players instead of behind the screen.

 

[Xamnam]

Even if I moved to rolling everything in the open, I would still use one in games like 5e, Trail of Cthulhu, or Monster of the Week, but I never have with games like Blades in the Dark, Honey Heist, and Starforged. 100% vibes thing at this point for me.

 

[ezo]

I used to, but everything is on my laptop now (and the adjoining screens). My rolls are off to the side away from the players, so I am not really worried about "hiding them" anyway.