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

[soviet]

The "game" is a distant second to the story we are generating.

If the GM is fudging, the 'we' here is under question. Depending on the extent of the fudging, either the GM is generating a story themselves, or the group is generating potential story elements that the GM can veto.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If the GM is fudging, the 'we' here is under question. Depending on the extent of the fudging, either the GM is generating a story themselves, or the group is generating potential story elements that the GM can veto.

You are free to interpret things however you'd like. But your views are not the only interpretation. Even if you personally believe otherwise.

 

[soviet]

You are free to interpret things however you'd like. But your views are not the only interpretation. Even if you personally believe otherwise.

Stop fudging me!!!one!!!eleven

 

[Reynard]

It's the DM's world, not the players, the DM is there to create a story for the players to explore in.

No thank you.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

I roll in the open as DM. I feel like it engenders a little more trust with the players. And takes the sting out of enemies repeatedly making saves a little bit if the PCs can see the rolls.

I don't really care that much when I'm just a player.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

While it is inherently a bit skeezy regardless, on the rare occasion that I've made a gross miscalculation of encounter strength and feel an imperative need to rebalance mid fight, there are better methods of increasing or decreasing enemy power than by fudging rolls or changing stats post hoc. For example:

• Upgrading/Downgrading enemy tactical expertise.
• Telegraphing danger with descriptions
• Focusing or not focusing attacks on particular characters.
• Sending in a wave of reinforcements from a nearby guard room or patrol - provided the party hasn't taken reasonable actions to prevent this.
• Increasing or decreasing the rate at which distractions arise - such as fires starting from wayward fire spells - that might draw enemy attention away. Or villain monologuing.

It is crucially important never to use these methods to undercut player strategies, of course. Nor to shield the party from consequences. But I feel that they are occasionally justified as DM in the face of major power miscalculations on my part or a succession of excessively bad rolls on the players' part. Or...because the session needs to end in five minutes...

 

[Zaukrie]

The judgementalsim about a game that isn't a competition is stunning to me. Wow.

 

[Staffan]

In theory, my preference would be to roll in the open (barring certain checks that should be secret like perception-type things). However, in practice I usually have a GM screen of some sort up to hide notes and have easily accessible info on it – and since that's already in place, establishing my "table territory", it's pretty convenient to roll behind the screen as well. In a better world I'd have a bigger place in which to run games, which would include a side table for that kind of stuff so I could interact more directly with my players without a screen in the way.

But even so, I rarely fudge rolls, particularly not in combat. When I do fudge rolls, it's usually because the game system gives ridiculous results and I need to make a Nick Fury-type call.

 

[Clint_L]

I don’t think DMs should secretly fudge rolls to produce desired outcomes. Experienced players know that you are doing it, and it undermines the cooperative nature of D&D. It disempowers the players, full stop.

If you’ve made a mistake and feel the need to alter a dice roll, why not have a conversation about it? I altered the result of one dice roll last year, and it was to spare a brand new player insta-death on a really unlucky roll during their first ever encounter. We discussed what should happen according to the rules, and then we agreed that in this case the character would merely be rendered unconscious…and then we learned about death saves.

I feel very strongly that it is unfair for the DM to secretly overrule the dice to serve their own story agenda. As a player, I hate it and would probably quit the campaign if it was an ongoing thing.

 

[ezo]

For many years, I played with DM's who rolled secretly behind screens, and one DM who rolled openly. After a particularly harrowing encounter with pirates on the high seas, my roommate's character was left bleeding out. After the session, he was in a bad mood, and I asked him why.

"I don't get it. What am I doing wrong? It feels like every battle, I go down, no matter how much I build up my AC."

"Well, what is your AC anyways?" I asked.

He told me, and I engaged in a thought experiment, crunching the numbers to try and figure out what the enemy's stats likely were. I quickly realized, however, that something was very wrong.

Either A, the pirates were way stronger than anything we should be fighting, or B, the DM had rolled nothing lower than a 17 every time he attacked my friend! The next session, I did some investigating in game- did the pirates have masterwork or magical weapons? Were there any spellcasters, like maybe Clerics with bless or Bards who could have granted bonuses to the group?

The DM, apparently thinking that I was looking for better treasure, was like "haha, no, they were all level 2 Warriors, that's all." And he showed me their stat blocks.

I was floored. Instead of being highly optimized or powerful NPC's, none of these guys had any real chance of hitting my roommate's character, let alone taking him to 0 hit points!

The DM had fudged his rolls the entire encounter, gleefully "critting" people simply based on his whims of how deadly the encounter should be. Suddenly, every time an enemy "hit" one of us, made a saving throw, or we "missed" an attack, I knew that the numbers didn't matter, our character builds didn't matter- the entire game was based on DM fiat.

I had a talk with the DM I knew that rolled openly, and he admitted that this is very common behavior. Many DM's, he claimed, have no real idea how to balance encounters, as the guidelines are often terrible. So they select monsters but adjust difficulty on the fly- if the enemy is too hard, you softball their attacks and damage. If too weak, the opposite.

I thought back to every time I had a DM ask me how many hit points I had left in battle, and I was dismayed to realize what they were really asking was "am I about to kill your character?".

I lost all my trust in DM's who rolled behind the screen for awhile. I realize that sometimes, yes, fudging might be necessary to keep your game running smoothly- it is hard to build an appropriate encounter. I usually find my encounters end up much harder or easier than I think they'll be, because there's a lot of factors involved, and the swinginess of die rolls doesn't really help matters.

What I decided to do, however, from that moment, is stop using a DM screen entirely. Yes, I was inviting disaster by "letting the dice fall where they may", but ultimately, I felt that this was a necessary concession, so that my players would know they can trust me to be fair. I embraced being as transparent as I could be- for awhile, I would let my players make checks to learn pretty much everything they wanted to know about a creature, inspired by 4e and Pathfinder- though since then, I've learned that players can only retain so much information, lol, so I usually only provide information if the player asks me outright, or it would be fairly obvious in-universe- the enemy was easy to hit, or it took less damage than expected.

I answered yes, DM's should roll openly, but I will concede that each group is different, and that it is entirely possible that an individual game could be improved by having secret information. But for me, I'd rather have less barriers between me and my players, because I find that the transparency greatly facilitates everyone having fun at the table. The players know I'm neither a control freak or out to get them, and thus I earn some goodwill for when encounters I've designed go drastically wrong, lol.

Ultimately, though, I've found there's something more important to the player/GM relationship than rolling dice openly or not. Being able to admit your mistakes. Yes, I overtuned that encounter. Yes, my ruling on a spell/ability/corner case wasn't ideal.

I made a mistake, and I'll do better in the future. I'm a hack DM who sometimes focuses on the wrong things. I've seen many DM's who refuse to admit they are wrong left wondering why their games implode or they start hemorrhaging players. And just being able to admit you're not perfect has gotten people back to the table more often than anything else.

I don't know. Some DMs probably do this, others don't and get on hot streaks. I once rolled seven natural 20s in a row... The odds are 1:1,280,000,000 of that happening... but it happened. I once had a d10 land on IT'S EDGE and stayed like that for over 10 minutes until a player finally bumped the table.

Now, something I currently do, and my players know I might do this because I've told them, is ramp up solo BBEG HP during the fight. Why? Not to kill the PCs, but it becomes almost comical and anti-climatic if the BBEG goes down in round two and only acted once, barely doing anything.

Once they're normal HP max for their stat block is hit, I might take them into "overdrive HP". Their HP basically reset completely, BUT any critical hit, etc. might take them out at that point. Also, if a PC goes down, the next damage the BBEG takes will finish it off. I do this because, since the normal HP max was exhausted, the players should "win" because they already have. But keeping the fight going until an exciting moment happens, etc. keeps the encounter more memorable than just "What? That Ubermonster? LOL we thrashed it in under two rounds!" (FWIW, that is ok now and again, but feels lame when it happens more often than not...).

Now, I'll often ask a player how many HP their PC has left. Not to try to take them down or keep them up by fudging rolls--the dice fall where they will--but to gauge more how the encounter is going. Many times I ask because the player is being wreckless. Their character is at a point where they should consider disengaging, dodging, or something other than attack. The player doesn't realize the danger their character is in or doesn't appreciate it, anyway.