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

[soviet]

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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Regarding fudging. As a GM I do not fudge, because the game is more interesting to me that way. I too want to be surprised about what happens.

But as player, I really don't care about what the GM does. As long as it feels to me that I have agency, we're good. If they are actually some master manipulator fudging illusionist that just tricked me thinking that I had agency whilst having great time, then so be it. I don't care, I don't even need to know.

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.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It isn't unlimited trust, there's nothing wrong with thinking that the NPC the DM is currently running isn't up to something; it's entirely different to want the DM to roll in the open because you don't trust that they're being honest with the dice rolls.

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).

 

[Scott Christian]

The only question is:

Should the players roll behind a screen? This is especially true once they figure out a targets' AC. If you say no, then the DM shouldn't either.
All the same thoughts apply:

• The player could want to add tension to the story by failing their tightrope walk knowing they have feather fall as a backup.
• The player could want to add a climax to the fight and score a crit on the big-bad because they are low on hit points and about to die.
• The player could want to roleplay their character and show off their strengths by convincing the king with two consecutive 20 rolls for persuasion.

Of course, if you disagree that the players would use it for story purposes, then perhaps you should not be ok with the DM doing it for story purposes either.

 

[Oofta]

There it is. Like clockwork. Rather than fudging being an occasional tool to, as Colville puts it, curate the experience, the question ALWAYS comes up - why roll at all? Maybe because most of the rolls, most of the time are fine - but some aren’t. Simple as that.

But yeah, I LOVE the implication that I’m a cheater or some kind of degenerate DM because I don’t roll in the open or that I’m not doctrinaire about rolled results.

I don't fudge dice and roll attacks and whatnot out in the open. On the other hand I do design the encounters, make decisions for the monsters, decide what tactics I'm going to use. I recently ran a game where some heavy-hitting giants could have taken out a PC but instead of focusing fire they split up their attacks. Of course they also had a low intelligence (hill giant sergeants), so they were just smashing whatever caught their eye.

But people should do what makes sense to them, what they feel will make the game most enjoyable for the group.

 

[CreamCloud0]

The only question is:

Should the players roll behind a screen? This is especially true once they figure out a targets' AC. If you say no, then the DM shouldn't either.
All the same thoughts apply:

• The player could want to add tension to the story by failing their tightrope walk knowing they have feather fall as a backup.
• The player could want to add a climax to the fight and score a crit on the big-bad because they are low on hit points and about to die.
• The player could want to roleplay their character and show off their strengths by convincing the king with two consecutive 20 rolls for persuasion.

Of course, if you disagree that the players would use it for story purposes, then perhaps you should not be ok with the DM doing it for story purposes either.

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')

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not familiar with Fiasco. Where's the "game" part?

Without knowing what your particular definition is for something being a game, I really can't answer. Although @EzekielRaiden did an excellent job of explaining the core conceits of what Fiasco is and how it plays.

I'd assume people's opinions on what makes a game a game would be wide and mixed, so even if my opinion is that Fiasco is a game and thus rendered my point about it true... someone else could believe otherwise and thus claim the opposite. It's like the Strong National Museum of Play having put the stick, cardboard box and blanket into the Toy Hall of Fame... they did so because children have used those items as playtime objects for centuries, but many people have said they can't be "toys" because toys are "made" and not just 'found objects'. And no amount of explanation would convince them otherwise of that. Likewise... everyone will have a different opinion on what makes a game a game.

 

[Velderan]

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.

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.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Without knowing what your particular definition is for something being a game, I really can't answer. Although @EzekielRaiden did an excellent job of explain the core conceits of what Fiasco is and how it plays.

That's very heartening, as I've never actually played it, I was simply going off the rules and descriptions available online.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't fudge dice and roll attacks and whatnot out in the open. On the other hand I do design the encounters, make decisions for the monsters, decide what tactics I'm going to use. I recently ran a game where some heavy-hitting giants could have taken out a PC but instead of focusing fire they split up their attacks. Of course they also had a low intelligence (hill giant sergeants), so they were just smashing whatever caught their eye.

But people should do what makes sense to them, what they feel will make the game most enjoyable for the group.

I have no problem with a DM that doesn't necessarily play their creatures with 100% tactical perfection. Some creatures are clever, others aren't. Some are clever but cowardly, or dangerous but foolhardy, or whatever. Personality is already going to be a big vague X factor anyway.

But I really do very much prefer DMs that play by the rules they claim to play by. For me, both the "game" part and the "roleplaying" part are essential to "roleplaying game." A game where the combined referee-opposing coach is constantly rewriting the rules, hiding this revision, and denying players the ability to learn from that revision, is a DM who has denied their players the ability to game. I can get freeform RP anywhere, so an RPG with no G is not really appealing to me. Likewise, I can get focused numerical gameplay anywhere, and usually to a much higher design standard than all but the very best-written RPGs out there--and without any of the scheduling hassles that TTRPGs entail.

If I'm playing a TTRPG, it's because I want to roleplay by gaming, and I want to game by roleplaying. That's why fudging (and its mathematical equivalent, secretly altering stats or HP values after they're already in play) is such a problem for me. I would 100% always prefer the DM levelling with the players--or, for folks who find that too painfully immersion-breaking, at least using diegetic means to achieve their ends, rather than deceiving me and my fellow players.

And a simple reason why I essentially always roll in the open: I'm just not that good at deception. My players often see through my work ages before I expected, and I'm sweating bullets just trying to not give it all away and thus spoil the experience. I just don't have the personality or constitution to keep up a facade like that forever.