THIS is why I roll in the open...

[Amal Shukup]

I don't generally use a screen, but the table is really huge and I generally roll behind my hand so nobody really sees the numbers.

However, on the really important dramatic moments where it's 'life or death'*, or a real long shot, I'll actually toss the required die right out into the middle of the table and let the players tell me what it is.

Sometimes I'll even say what number I'm looking for: "he needs a 7 or better or he's goping down..."

* The fleeing 1HP Rogue blew a Tumble Check and provoked a quite likely to be fatal AOO...
* The BBEG that needs to make the Ref Save or be taken out of the fight. Saves on a 4 or better...
* The Frost Giant Blackguard with huge Greatsword, using full Power Attack. Almost certainly going to provoke a massive damage save if not kill the PC outright... Only needs an 8 or better to hit​

I love the tension that creates... And when the Frost Giant Blackguard 'to hit' roll turns up a 1, right there in plain sight, the whole group cheers aloud or slumps in relief... I love that stuff.

A'Mal

 

[Hodgie]

I roll behind a screen not because I desire to cheat, but because sometimes I make mistakes. I don't have the time to stat out everything, sometimes stats change, sometimes I forget player ACs (and I don't like asking every round)... so I may be off by 1 from time to time. It isn't that this necessarily hurts the game, but the game would be hurt if players felt the need to spend brain power double checking me. This way they are just told what happens--delivered as fairly as I can while still retaining my sanity.

For those who dislike the height of DM screens, try the horizontally arrayed screens, I like them much more.

 

[MonsterMash]

When GMing I do roll behind a screen and keep my maps and notes there.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I roll in the open when it is convenient and roll behind the screen when it is convenient. There is something fun about rolling out in the open where everyone can see. Each time a big number comes up (or a low number) the level of excitement just soars through the roof.

 

[diaglo]

What do you mean? I do this and when I roll very high or very low then the players always look exceptionally terrified.

Ha.... d02 got rid of the low mechanic. always roll high is the motto.

semper fidelis or something like that. booyah.

 

[swrushing]

The rub lies here: If I was rolling behind the screen then I would probably have been more tempted to fudge for the Rogue/Cleric who is somewhat more integral to my plot than I would have for the Barbarian who was a more casually played PC. Thankfully I roll in the open, with big dice, and everyone can see that I'm not fudging for anybody. I enjoy that this takes some of the pressure off of me to be impartial and I also think it heightens the tension for the players to be riveted to the results of my giant dice as they tumble out whatever fate has in store.

This is perhaps a good reason to roll in the open. certainly, for Gms who feel they are incapable of being impartial, this alleviates the "did you screw him on dice" issue.

However, one thing that comes up is, the Gm makes decision after decision that does NOT involve dice rolling that are just as important or more in how they impact characters. So, if the Gm has accepted "i wont be impartial.", "i wont require of myself when GMing that i be impartial." or "Yeah, it would be nice to be impartial, but i know i am not able to be so lets go anyway." then "fixing it" so he is neutral only for the dice-determined cases and leaving himself fine being impartial in all those other meaningful cases is kinda like putting the band aid on the gaping chest wound.

I mean, from your post, the part that made my bells go off wasn't anything to do with dice, but was this:

By contrast to the Rogue/Cleric, the Barbarian was a less developed character who had a decent backstory but was played by a more casual player who simply doesn't spend a tremendous time working up additional plot hooks and so forth. I knew that it would be less damaging to my storyline in general to have this character die but I was still hoping he would make it.

See, this shows the partiality in a major issue... whether you plan to involve all the players equally, whether they are the guys who go for long backstory or the guys who show up to have you story them. The decision to prefer some dying to others shows a whole lot more IMO "GM danger signs" than whether you fudge dice or not.

For me, in my games, if i don't intend to give a player or his character "an equal share" of my investment, i wont let that player/character into the game. Whether you hand me a 20 page background (and expect a background oriented character) or hand me a bare bones thing (and expect a new developing character) you deserve my attention and effort every bit as much as every other one.

Case in point, there was a Gm once who had characters handed in for his scifi game. One was a royal-on-the-run with a rebellion going, one was a spacefaring wheeler dealer rogue type wanted by any number of guys and a long history of trouble, while the last was a farmer who had never been off his little dirt farm and had little in the way of past, contacts and so forth.

Now, of course, the Gm could have decided that the latter character was less important to the storyline and not so critical and not worried so much about developing him and if he dies so what kind of things... but instead he developed that character FORWARD with his story not being on rooted in his known past but one which slowly unravelled as new stuff came to light.

As it turns out, that farmer guy ended up being the big hero and central to the theme and in a big way.

At least, i think that was a campaign... could be mistaken. A TV show maybe?

 

[Rel]

Ha.... d02 got rid of the low mechanic. always roll high is the motto.

Yes but they don't know if I'm rolling for the bad guys or making rolls on behalf of their characters. Hence the terrors of me rolling very high or very low.

 

[Rel]

See, this shows the partiality in a major issue... whether you plan to involve all the players equally, whether they are the guys who go for long backstory or the guys who show up to have you story them. The decision to prefer some dying to others shows a whole lot more IMO "GM danger signs" than whether you fudge dice or not.

For me, in my games, if i don't intend to give a player or his character "an equal share" of my investment, i wont let that player/character into the game. Whether you hand me a 20 page background (and expect a background oriented character) or hand me a bare bones thing (and expect a new developing character) you deserve my attention and effort every bit as much as every other one.

I understand why you would draw some of your conclusions and some of them hold a certain validity but I'm not sure I see the "equal share" issue from the same philisophical point of view. Let me 'splain...

I started this campaign differently from how we've done things in the past. Historically we do a character creation session sometime between a couple weeks and a month prior to campaign kickoff. We make our characters (more or less) and start putting together background ideas, not necessarily in that order. For the next few weeks we would e-mail the GM, fleshing out the backgrounds even more until we finally all came to the table with very complete ideas of our PC's backstory, personality and goals. This started to become a total pain in the butt.

The problem was that each player had built these guys up so much in our minds that we had very firm ideas of what they would and would not do. And these ideas did not always work well with the rest of the party. One guy would decide that his character's goal was to strive for peace between the Orcs and Humans and another would swear vengeance against the Orcs who killed his family. It would seem to take forever before we could get over our PC's personalities to actually function as a party.

So this time around I told everyone that we would spend the first two hours of the session making characters and then start playing. Anybody who wrote more than half a page of character background would be given an XP penalty (this was mostly a joke but it made my point). The characters got made and played and their personalities were established in game instead of prior to the game. This has worked very well for us.

But this change in the start of the campaign has not changed who the players are and how they function. The Casual Gamer types (the Barbarian's player is one of them) sit back and just enjoy the game taking place at the session. And the Storyteller/Method Actor types (I'm using Robin Laws' player type designations) are e-mailing me every other day about what they are doing during the downtime or how they are trying to construct new allegiances to various power groups and so forth. These are the players who drive the campaign and the Casual Gamers are more than happy to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Does this mean that I'm more likely to build plotlines and story around the Storyteller and Method Actors than the Casual Gamers? Hell yes. But it isn't because I like the Casual Gamers less than I like the other guys. Quite the contrary. I like them and value them as players and (perhaps most importantly) consider their playstyle valid. And what they don't want is to have the story revolve around them. If it did then it would force them to work more and think more and make decisions that they don't want forced upon them. That's not why they are at the session. They're just there to hang out and have fun.

Now, geting back to my original point, this doesn't mean that I'm going to capriciously kill their characters. I would never fudge against a character. And, in fact, I don't fudge for them either. But if I were the type of GM to fudge rolls in favor of the PC's then I admit that I'd probably be more inclined to do so for a PC that I'd built a lot of the campaign around than one that was just along for the ride.

The final point I'll make is that I'll just bet this wouldn't be a big deal to the players involved either. When the Barbarian got killed most of the other players (particularly the Storyteller/Method Actor types) said (essentially), "Dude, that totally sucks!" to which the player of the Barbarian said (essentially), "Oh pshaw! It's just a game! Besides, now I get to make another character."

 

[amethal]

I make all my rolls in the open. I find it easier that way (otherwise I'd have to buy a DM screen ...)

It doesn't stop me cheating constantly though, either to even out a particularly good run of the dice, or to improve an encounter that in my inexperience I have made too easy or too hard.

The aim is to have fun, and just because I have a scribbled note saying the goblin leader has 12 hit points I don't see why I can't change my mind and give him 10 or 14 if it improves the story.

However, I'd be perfectly happy to play it "by the book" if my players wanted it that way. So far, they haven't complained.

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I always roll in the open. While I think there's an interesting argument for rolling and keeping the dice mechanics hidden, I think that the fact that there's a complex character sheet of numbers in front of the player plus hundreds of pages of rules (or more) makes hidding the dice rolls almost silly - might as well keep it out in the open and let the dice fall where they land. Not like making the dice rolls hidden allows the players to "get into the game" that much more, at least in my experience. (And they can always not look at the rolls, as well).

As a player, I'd go with a DM who rolls in the open over someone hiding the roles any day. Rolling behind a screen seems to inevitably lead to the DM cheating for/against the characters at some point - at that point, my character's fate is less in my hands and much more in the DM's, so my interest in the game fades quickly.