cbwjm
Seb-wejem
And that is what I find weird. I trust my friends, they can roll behind a screen if they want and I have no issues with that.
D&D General Should the DM roll in the open?
- Thread starter Skyscraper
- Start date
Autumnal
Bruce Baugh, Writer of Fortune
Many of us need more physical activity than we get, particularly as we age. Perhaps the dice should be hurled at other players, and read when they embed themselves in a forehead, ear canal, nostril, fleshy chest area, or wherever. I realize this might be immersion breaking, but a GM who can’t improvise a meteor shower, judgment-minded mob reenacting Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, etc, needs more preparation anyway.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
And had I also been talking about those people then it would be a dishonest framing of what people have said, but I've literally only been talking about the ones who don't trust their DMs to roll behind a screen. It's like I'm talking about waffles and you somehow think I'm misrepresenting pancakes.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
Which is fine, I'm not against rolling in the open, when I DM, I tend to roll in the open. The thing I find weird is not trusting your DM/friend to roll behind the screen.
Skyscraper
Adventurer
(double post. Can I delete?)
Last edited:
Scott Christian
Hero
That assumption is unproven, and at the least, unwise. The player really wanting to look the part of the hero while running a gauntlet with excessively hard skill checks, all to impress the significant other they adore in character isn't fudging the acrobatics check just for self-interest. They are doing it for the overall health of the game - to be able to play their character with their own agency. I mean, this is especially true if they know the "love connection" will be negated if they failed. This is the exact same thing as if the DM instantly lowered the standard to run the gauntlet, or worse yet, had the gauntlet roll opposing rolls, and fudged those rolls.
Either the DM and the player are fudging rolls for the overall health of the game they want to see run, or they are both doing it out of their own self-interest.
Again, people keep trying to piecemeal this or partition it with semantics. There are none. You are either fudging, and you like it that way. Or you don't like it that way so you keep the rolls out in the open.
To be blunt back, if a string of rolls creates a circumstance where an entire group, who has access to incredible feats, powers, and an abundance of game mechanics that prevent them from dying are killed off, you didn't do your work as a DM. (You as in a DM, not you personally.) Could one PC die. Sure. If that is unpalatable, then once again, you didn't discuss it during session zero like you were supposed to as a DM. So as DM, you didn't do your work you were supposed to.
Then a question you would have to ask yourself in relation to Fiasco is "Does working together with players to tell a cohesive story?" count as a challenge to overcome... with the goal being to create a narrative roleplay experience in the style of a Coen Brothers movie (the standard story style that Fiasco attempts to recreate)?
If we were to look at typical game metrics one might use to determine the "gaminess" of something... one could be "Are there winners and losers?"-- to which the answer in Fiasco is that most certainly most characters will "lose" in that they won't get what they want narratively (their big score will go wrong, they'll get arrested, they'll get killed etc.)... with maybe only one or two characters getting what they want in the story (and thus being considered the "winners" in this narrative.)
Another metric might be "Is there a randomized element players need to react to?" to which the answer is Yes and No-- there's no random element during play that shows up for all players to react to all at once (like a die roll or a card draw would be)... but rather like in all improv (or a DM talking to players), one person says something during the roleplay scene that is unknown to everyone else (and thus random from their perspective) and then they all have to react to that in character.
If there are other metrics one might have to determine whether something is a "game" or not... that's up for them to decide and they determine whether something like Fiasco fits (or Ten Candles or many other of the typical Indy RPGs out there right now).
Skyscraper
Adventurer
Interesting discussion. Unsurprisingly people that prefer different playstyles provide a different response to the original question.
(Mis)trust of players towards the GM has been named abundantly, but I must emphasize that to me this reason is not the primary one for preferring open die rolls. It is to live the tension of the die rolls by the GM. To see that 20 fall and realizing that my PC is going to take a crit from the giant. Some contend that the GM storytelling that crit is the same thing. I beg to differ, that die falling simply has the table roaring when the stakes are high in a unique manner. It's like watching a sports game. When the ball/puck enters the net, everyone jumps at the same time. When someone else watches the game and at some point tells you that the ball/puck entered the net, maybe their storytelling is good, but it will never be the same thing. The storytelling will come after the die roll anyway. Yesterday we had a great game, PC's were fighting a BBEG and at the end only the dragon was left. PC's were heavily battered, the mage was at 2 HP, the dragon goes against the mage in melee, and as GM I roll 3 attacks against the mage with the dragon and miss all three in a row. The players were cheering! The mage followed on his turn and dealt an unusually high amount of damage to the dragon and that led to victory about a round later. When did the players cheer most? When the dice fell.
On a different note, one thing that was not discussed yet regarding trust, since this topic seems to be the hot one here, is whether the GM trusts the players. By that I do not mean whether the GM believes the players fudge die rolls - they normally dont and can't since they roll in the open. It has been stated by many that fudging is sometimes desirable for the GM's intended outcome, but why not trust that the players will like the spur of the moment story twist of the unintended die roll?
Also, it has been stated as a reason for concealed die rolls that players should not be allowed some knowledge about their opponents. But, perhaps GMs could trust their players with the metagame knowledge gained from die rolls that fall on the table. Where it matters I trust my players to play to their character's knowledge and not to the player's. It has worked well for years. In the rare circumstances where they are not certain, they ask me: would my character know X? I often ask them back: do you think your character would know? I probably accept their decision close to 100% of the time. Even if I would have initially disagreed. This is cooperative storytelling, why would their reason not be as valid as mine?
Yet another point: trying to conceal monster stats is kind of pointless, but moreover it's fun that the players can gradually learn those stats as the battle goes on. Players will relatively quickly learn the creature's attack bonus, and so what? Does that break anything? Would the character not be able to recognize a competent opponent that attacks at +10 or an incompetent one that attacks at +4? It seems to me like the players learning it attacks at +10 is pretty equivalent to the characters learning that the creature is competent when they see it fight. I even call out the save bonuses of my opponents to my players before rolling their save. Does it break anything? Not in years of play it hasn't. They learn if a creature has a strength or weakness. They might take advantage of that knowledge which is tactically fun. If you roll behind your screen, do you ever let on any clue to the players of whether the opponent appears to be powerful or weak vs. any specific attack type? It's the same thing.
In summary for years now in different groups me and other GMs that I play with have rolled in the open, and we've trusted our players to use that knowledge in a way that is positive for the game, including ignoring knowledge where it seems more fun - the GM does that continuously, the players are very capable of doing it also, but this requires trust also. Where meta knowledge such as actual stats of the opponents provides players with a tactical advantage as the fight goes on it is just fun. As GM I like it that my players figure out that their opponent was mentally strong to resist enchantments but was not agile and had a harder time jumping out of a fireball. And in the end, it's great fun to see the dice fall and all cheer or boo at the same time.
(Mis)trust of players towards the GM has been named abundantly, but I must emphasize that to me this reason is not the primary one for preferring open die rolls. It is to live the tension of the die rolls by the GM. To see that 20 fall and realizing that my PC is going to take a crit from the giant. Some contend that the GM storytelling that crit is the same thing. I beg to differ, that die falling simply has the table roaring when the stakes are high in a unique manner. It's like watching a sports game. When the ball/puck enters the net, everyone jumps at the same time. When someone else watches the game and at some point tells you that the ball/puck entered the net, maybe their storytelling is good, but it will never be the same thing. The storytelling will come after the die roll anyway. Yesterday we had a great game, PC's were fighting a BBEG and at the end only the dragon was left. PC's were heavily battered, the mage was at 2 HP, the dragon goes against the mage in melee, and as GM I roll 3 attacks against the mage with the dragon and miss all three in a row. The players were cheering! The mage followed on his turn and dealt an unusually high amount of damage to the dragon and that led to victory about a round later. When did the players cheer most? When the dice fell.
On a different note, one thing that was not discussed yet regarding trust, since this topic seems to be the hot one here, is whether the GM trusts the players. By that I do not mean whether the GM believes the players fudge die rolls - they normally dont and can't since they roll in the open. It has been stated by many that fudging is sometimes desirable for the GM's intended outcome, but why not trust that the players will like the spur of the moment story twist of the unintended die roll?
Also, it has been stated as a reason for concealed die rolls that players should not be allowed some knowledge about their opponents. But, perhaps GMs could trust their players with the metagame knowledge gained from die rolls that fall on the table. Where it matters I trust my players to play to their character's knowledge and not to the player's. It has worked well for years. In the rare circumstances where they are not certain, they ask me: would my character know X? I often ask them back: do you think your character would know? I probably accept their decision close to 100% of the time. Even if I would have initially disagreed. This is cooperative storytelling, why would their reason not be as valid as mine?
Yet another point: trying to conceal monster stats is kind of pointless, but moreover it's fun that the players can gradually learn those stats as the battle goes on. Players will relatively quickly learn the creature's attack bonus, and so what? Does that break anything? Would the character not be able to recognize a competent opponent that attacks at +10 or an incompetent one that attacks at +4? It seems to me like the players learning it attacks at +10 is pretty equivalent to the characters learning that the creature is competent when they see it fight. I even call out the save bonuses of my opponents to my players before rolling their save. Does it break anything? Not in years of play it hasn't. They learn if a creature has a strength or weakness. They might take advantage of that knowledge which is tactically fun. If you roll behind your screen, do you ever let on any clue to the players of whether the opponent appears to be powerful or weak vs. any specific attack type? It's the same thing.
In summary for years now in different groups me and other GMs that I play with have rolled in the open, and we've trusted our players to use that knowledge in a way that is positive for the game, including ignoring knowledge where it seems more fun - the GM does that continuously, the players are very capable of doing it also, but this requires trust also. Where meta knowledge such as actual stats of the opponents provides players with a tactical advantage as the fight goes on it is just fun. As GM I like it that my players figure out that their opponent was mentally strong to resist enchantments but was not agile and had a harder time jumping out of a fireball. And in the end, it's great fun to see the dice fall and all cheer or boo at the same time.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Again, I don't feel a need to trust someone's judgment unlimitedly to be friends with them. Perfectly good, well-meaning and amiable people can have bad judgment. To be honest, I'd find it very weird that someone needed to have unlimited faith in someone else's judgment to be friends with them. We're not talking about people who doing deliberately malign actions after all.
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