D&D General Should the DM roll in the open?

[soviet]

How does it make it a better game that has nothing to do with trust or fudging?

See my other posts in this thread. Basically, rolling in the open (and announcing modifiers, DCs, etc to put that roll into context) makes play more exciting because it builds a group tension over the outcome of the roll. We all see it happen together rather than have one person see it and then narrate it afterwards. I likened it to the difference between being at a live sporting event or hearing it described on the radio.

 

[Xamnam]

Let say you removed all forms of adjustments the DM could do on the fly. What does that actually accomplish? Well it puts the outcome back on the encounter design. It is only when that encounter design fits a narrow balance window that the dice actually matter. A window that is a moving target based on player decision making. A window that the prepping DM is, at best, taking an educated guess at.

A quote from Brennan Lee Mulligan in adventuring party that really re-adjusted my framing of this issue in a similar sense:

Brennan: I went, what is the difference in the authorial integrity of something I made up at the table in response to a question you asked, or something I made up on my couch eating Oreos yesterday? Like, what is so much more valid? People put this magical importance on prep work as though, because I came up with it in my underwear, at my computer at one o'clock in the morning the night before, now it has this air of authority and integrity to it. Why? Based on what? And I said I think something that I make up at the table has just as much integrity and validity as something that I made up a week or a month prior. And Taylor looked at me in my eyes and said, “No. it doesn't.”

Branson: Yeah, no, he'll call you on that man.
Brennan: He was like "The stuff you made up ahead of time is it matters more." And I was like, I just think you're wrong.​

Their framing is about confidence in improvisation, but it feels very applicable.

But, I did leave in Taylor Moore's disagreement, because it's personal, and I get why people'd disagree, especially given it does mirror how I personally feel as a player when asked to world build.

 

[Scott Christian]

i would disagree, because while they're all participants in the same game this does not mean their roles in that game are the same, a GM has a specifically different role from the players, a GM ideally does not fudge to achieve desirable outcomes but to prevent undesirable ones, and the subtle nuance between those two motivations is important, those three player motivation bulletpoints you made are all IMO 'fudging to achieve a desirable outcome.' (i would classify adding tension in the first point as a 'desirable outcome')

I never said their roles or motivations are the same. But the GM that rolls behind the screen is still doing the exact same thing as the player who does. Using the words "desirable" or "undesirable" to try and piecemeal a difference is silly. An "undesirable" outcome specifically implies there is a "desirable" outcome. Therefore, the GM is doing it for the same reason - to curate the experience how they wish it to go.
People overthink this way too much. You either are fudging the die rolls or not. Trying to explain it off with roles in the game, motivations, etc. is ridiculous. You either want fudging or don't.

Of course there are players that are going to say they want the DM to fudge sometimes. To me, those are players that often have a DM that doesn't know how to put in the prep work to balance encounters.

 

[soviet]

If the GM decided in their prep that Suspect B is the murderer, and I figure this out in play, I feel like I have achieved something.

If the GM decided in their prep that Suspect B is the murderer, and I guess C, but the GM decides that C makes the better story or it's easier to finish the session now, and so changes it to C, I have been pandered to and my achievement is hollow. The goalposts have moved.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Whereas I consider it as just them wanting to roll behind a screen. Maybe you've played with a bunch of randos over the years that have burnt you, but I tend to play with friends, and I tend to trust those friends. Hasn't steered me wrong so far.

I've played with nothing but friends for decades now. That has not changed my opinion, and again "trust" covers more than one thing. Like I said, if someone wants me to trust their judgment without limit, they'll be waiting a long time; I don't trust my judgment without limit, why should I trust other peoples?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Is adjusting monster HP on the fly also wrong? Should monster stat-blocks also be public? If we want real ability to verify DM behavior we should consider encounter design by committee as well.

Yes, there is other information a GM has access to that players don't. Yes, I don't usually consider fiddling with that on the fly best practice. No, I'm not going to get sucked into a reductio ad absurdum about it meaning there's no reason to do any work here because you can't do all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It isn't about trust, it's about player agency. A GM that fudges entirely for positive reasons, such as making things an 'appropriate' level of challenge or mitigating extreme swings of luck, is still placing their own sense of what should happen above the say of the dice and the rules. I do not want that experience. As a player I would rather have outcomes determined by arbitrary impartial forces that I can see - win or lose, live or die, succeed or fail, including the anticlimactic too-quick victories or the long drawn out struggles or the shocking defeats. As GM I want that too, I don't want to curate the experience I want to be surprised by it.

Actually, I think that still can be about trust. The whole point is that even positive fudging can be misaimed even if its well meaning.

At the end of the day, have faith in your dice or don't roll them. If you conclude you've made a significant mistake in how you've set up difficulty in either direction, whether in combat or not, just tell people and fix it. Be honest about it.

(Just to save some steps, if that's what your player group actively wants to avoid--because, say, it disrupts their engagement--then obviously it needs adjustment, but make good and sure that's what they want and not just what you want to think they want. The world is full of GMs who think they know their players wants better than they actually do for a number of reasons, and "lie to my players when I think its best" is not a thing you should be doing as a default without enough information).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I find it odd that so many people are obsessed about how the GMs run the games. I care about it in a sense that I care about the experience I am having as player, but that's it. Exact processes used to achieve that experience are not my concern, as long as the experience was a good one. Now if there are issues about how the game feels, if we are not having fun, then we might want to think about why that might be.

Well, in my case I don't care about the process in theory, but in practice I find the likelihood that a GM who feels an overwhelming need to hide his rolls (as compared to just doing it out of habit or because they've internalized that's how its to be done) is unlikely to be produce the best experience, because they're baking in their ability to make bad decisions without any real external check.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Interestingly enough, this is a rather dishonest framing of what people have said. The majority of posters in favour of open rolling have said that they prefer to roll openly as GMs because it builds trust with their players (or it reduces their own temptation to misrepresent rolls).

In fact, multiple times I've made it clear the issues I think open rolling address are ones I'm not immune to as a GM; across my gaming career I've probably GMed three sessions for every one I've played.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Same, minus the “I can see” part. As said before, I roll behind a screen but no matter what I stick with the rolls, even when they create an arguably less entertaining result. The first 5e campaign I DMed to a finish, the BBEG fell flat and died without doing much of anything and years later when the players mention the campaign, they talk about how cool the fight right before the BBEG was because they were close to losing before pulling off the victory. I could have easily fudged some rolls to make things more interesting so they remember the BBEG instead but that defeats the purpose of the game part of TTRPG to me.

Out of curiosity, do you roll behind the screen for some practical reason? Because its what the players expect? Out of habit? I'm only asking because it seems no obvious reason given your post above to do so.