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

[KYRON45]

"I do what I feel like.".....Bartholomew J. Simpson.

 

[KYRON45]

This is what I meant when I said that the metagame is the game and it relates information in a way that is important to actual game play.
Does it harm immersion? Maybe, but immersion has never been high on my priority list for TTRPGs.

Does the cheese dust on my fingers and spilled soda on the table harm immersion? You bet it does.
Does the use of the word immersion come up at the table*? Not where i'm from.
Are we still telling stories about the nonsense we pull 26 years later...hells yeah.

I'll see myself out.

*lack of buzzwords is a direct result of our limited attention spans and poor vocabulary.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd like the time-coded URL to proof of this. Because I can't sit through an entire Matt Colville video.

Here you go. This is from the moment he starts talking about the work he does to prevent the players from knowing that he has fudged the roll. Verbatim of the important part (which comes about 15-20 seconds after the linked time, for context I guess you could say), "I will even go so far--and, hopefully, none of my players are watching this--I will even go so far as to have a pre-rolled result behind the screen, so that if the players challenge the reality of the roll, which they often do when thingss get incredibly tense and dramatic, I can lift up the screen and show them the result of the fake roll."

Providing these "major benefits" would be nice.

The vast majority of reasonable concerns about fairness cannot apply, because no participant has the ability to fiat declare anything.
Players who value overcoming challenge (be it OSR fans, "powergamers", or whatever else) can know that the DM pulled no punches.
PC deaths, if or when they occur, cannot create friction as a result of feeling unfairly treated; the dice "fall where they may."
As @Crimson Longinus said, having information like the die roll can provide an avenue for potential improved immersion, as a skilled combatant (which essentially all D&D characters are) can work out an enemy's strength, which is a real skill.
It's significantly easier to implement in any digital tabletop, especially if you've cobbled together your solution from disparate sites/apps/etc.
Pursuant to the Matt Colville thing: I disagree with his characterization of players as viewing the dice as "fate." Instead, I see it as the players viewing the dice as impartial. A GM may be highly partial; the dice, if unweighted, cannot be.
At least for me, it makes GMing more challenging and stimulating, as I have to learn to work with results that are known to be good or bad even if one of those paths is more difficult to answer.
The DM is appropriately discouraged from invoking dice where they genuinely aren't needed. I find too many DMs invoke dice constantly and then ignore the results anyway; better to learn good ways to just not invoke dice in the first place.

I'm sure I could come up with more but I'm a joyful mix of sleep-deprived and groggy from sleep meds.

Oh, thanks. I wanted to see these, being in the No camp, myself:

1. This is a good idea, if for some odd reason the GM needs to establish trustworthiness.

What person does not, when they first initiate a new relationship with others? Even at a table exclusively drawing from a friend group, I would not necessarily give unreserved trust to a DM I have never played with before. Trusting others is not a total binary, and it's not a single scale, either. You could trust someone to never knowingly bear false witness, without necessarily trusting them with your car, bank account, or children.

2. The DM's job is to "interfere." Monte Cook calls it an "intrusion," though.

No. The DM's job is to provoke. Interference, in the way I intended the term, means the DM rewriting the world, often invisibly, to ensure the "right" outcome happens. I find that the vast, vast majority of the time DMs have this temptation, it is bad and should be ignored.

You may also not be shocked to learn that I absolutely, positively HATE the "intrusion" mechanic in Monte Cook's newer systems. It is one of my like top ten most disliked game design choices.

3. Needing examples, here. If this means "PC died," a good DM would own it. #gygaxlives

Oh, all sorts of things. PC died--plenty of DMs are tempted to fudge to prevent that. Other examples:
1. DM keeps making encounters that are too easy, so they lie about the monsters' performance, rather than admitting that they've been soft-balling things and trying to actually do better.
2. DM keeps making encounters that are too hard, so they lie about...you get the picture.
3. DM has no idea how to actually set DCs for actions, so they ask for checks and only then decide success/failure, meaning PCs investing into their skills or the like is completely pointless, the DM will decide regardless of their effort.
4. The DM protects an "important" NPC from unexpectedly quick death because the PCs outperformed the DM's expectations. This is a particularly pernicious one because it's so, so tempting to do it to preserve a "satisfying" outcome, without recognizing that a sudden, riotous success is a satisfying outcome so long as it's a sometimes food.
5. Rescuing players from the consequences of their own bad/foolish actions. (Note that "consequences" here don't need to include story-ending death in all cases. Sometimes, suffering under sustained problems is much more interesting.)

4. Nothing encourages me more than knowing there's a fair-rolling DM behind the Great Oz's curtain.

Roll your eyes and be sarcastic and mocking all you like. This is a real factor that has applied at my own table, and I know for a fact I'm not the only person who has skittish players that need encouragement in order to take any risks at all.

Judgy, yeah. But you seem to be talking about Role-Playing-Not-Games. RPG Players compete against GM challenges, the dice, and even each other (hence all the cries for "balance").

RPG players do both that and story-making. You are gaming by way of roleplaying, and you are roleplaying by way of game. That is what differentiates it from freeform RP (which I have done and enjoyed) and from pure, non-RP gaming (which I do frequently, mostly via computer games). The roleplaying cannot be separated from the gaming without harming both, and the gaming cannobe separated from the roleplaying without harming both. If the two are not actually interfacing with one another, I hesitate to call the experience RPGing.

As for the judgementalness, I don't know what to tell folks. I don't like being lied to, and I especially do not like being lied to and told it's for my benefit.

 

[Lanefan]

Unfortunately, my experience is that he is absolutely correct. Many DMs do this. Some even say they do it openly--outside of the game, of course. I was absolutely furious to learn that Matt Colville not only fudges dice, he pre-rolls dice to ensure that he can lift the screen, point to a die, and say, "See? I rolled it, fair and square" despite this being a total lie.

Fudging is, in my not-so-humble opinion, one of the very worst tactics a DM can resort to. I won't say that it's 100% always a bad idea, but it is something that should be avoided very nearly all of the time, and any time you feel you genuinely, absolutely cannot avoid it should be taken as a very serious DM wake-up call.

I agree with this, and yet still roll in secret. It's up to me to self-police, I guess.

 

[Lanefan]

I think that as experienced combatants the characters could assess the power and skill of the enemy and knowing the numbers could simulate that.

After the first few rounds, sure. But for those first few rounds when you and the foe(s) are still getting to grips with what each other can and can't do beyond what simple observation* can tell you, knowing the numbers would ruin it.

* - as in, this guy's in plate mail, carrying a large metal shield, and has a very shiny longsword; so you know he'll be hard-ish to hit and that the sword might be enchanted...but that's all you know until you fight him and find out what else he might have going on, if anything.

 

[Velderan]

After the first few rounds, sure. But for those first few rounds when you and the foe(s) are still getting to grips with what each other can and can't do beyond what simple observation* can tell you, knowing the numbers would ruin it.

* - as in, this guy's in plate mail, carrying a large metal shield, and has a very shiny longsword; so you know he'll be hard-ish to hit and that the sword might be enchanted...but that's all you know until you fight him and find out what else he might have going on, if anything.

There's that and also what level do you consider PCs to be experienced combatants? That can probably vary based on the edition since this thread is D&D General.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

In games I play in, heck yeah GM show me those dice please. I don't trust you further than I can throw you, and maaaaybe you've had too many doritos and 2am pizzas, capisce?

In games I run, I'm here to make sure you have a good time, or at the very least I have a good time. To that end, I'll hide the dice from you and just tell you the outcome I want to make the story entertaining to me, the most important person at the table. Feel free to find another table to play at - HAH! No other DMs in a giant's league, so too bad so sad, you are stuck with me - the most trustworthy and entertaining DM around

But, since I couldn't choose both, I chose "Do what you want, I ain't your mom" (Oh, did I mis-read it? Or maybe I didn't mis-read it lol lol lol. ).

(hope it's clear I'm kidding, but if not, I'm kidding. Seriously kidding. Except the part about your mom. Really, no joke, I am NOT your mom)

 

[Lanefan]

In games I play in, heck yeah GM show me those dice please. I don't trust you further than I can throw you, and maaaaybe you've had too many doritos and 2am pizzas, capisce?

In games I run, I'm here to make sure you have a good time, or at the very least I have a good time. To that end, I'll hide the dice from you and just tell you the outcome I want to make the story entertaining to me, the most important person at the table. Feel free to find another table to play at - HAH! No other DMs in a giant's league, so too bad so sad, you are stuck with me - the most trustworthy and entertaining DM around

But, since I couldn't choose both, I chose "Do what you want, I ain't your mom" (Oh, did I mis-read it? Or maybe I didn't mis-read it lol lol lol. ).

(hope it's clear I'm kidding, but if not, I'm kidding. Seriously kidding. Except the part about your mom. Really, no joke, I am NOT your mom)

Oh, hi Mom - didn't see you there.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I’ll preface my comments with this: there’s more than one way to have fun with this game we all love. I’m not judging any playstyles here, I’m just stating what I prefer (and what our table prefers) and why. Based on what I’ve read, I wouldn’t be a good fit for many tables and many others here may not be a good fit for our table. But that is ok. I’m glad people are enjoying themselves with this game!

We roll in the open at our table. For everything. Transparency and trust are certainly part of it, but are not the only reasons.

IMO, there’s already plenty of mystery and hidden information in the game world - much of it intentionally created by the DM for the players/PCs to discover, some of it unintentional due to the imperfection of human communication. I don’t believe in adding yet another element (ie the results of die rolls) to that list for the players and their characters.

We’re also a table where the DM is not enforcing any kind of separation of player and character knowledge. We don’t believe it is the DM’s role to enforce how the players choose to portray their characters. In fact, we view any effort to tamp down metagaming by the DM to be an additional burden to an already full workload. That said, a player’s knowledge may not even be correct in the game world and the only real way to know is to test that knowledge via their PC. The DM at our table will adjudicate die rolls and the players, on behalf of their PCs, can choose to interpret that adjudication any way they wish.

As for fudging die rolls, when I am a player, I truly can’t stand it. I’m sure some DMs use fudging sparingly and are very adept at it but, IME, those DMs are few and far between. When it is obvious, it feels to me like a real infringement on player agency. I just believe that if a DM cannot accept the result of a die roll one way or another, then that die just shouldn’t really be rolled in the first place.

TL;DR: we roll in the open for everything and it works for us. If your table doesn’t and it works for you, that’s great too.

 

[cbwjm]

I find it weird how so many people don't trust their DM.