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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9541362" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><a href="https://youtu.be/zKN0xPyxu2Y?t=713" target="_blank">Here you go.</a> 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."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 [USER=7025508]@Crimson Longinus[/USER] 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.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.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.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.)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.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.</blockquote>

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