Tips/Tricks/Rituals to "bless" new dice?


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Yes, there is a problem in explaining the players your need for the screen, but if you explain it to them without any BS they should be able to understand it.

Personally i am a player in two campaigns and running another as DM and in all the campaigns we use the screen and EXPECT the DM to cheat once in a while to keep the game interesting. When i'm running the game i use my own rolls typically 17 out of 20 times. when i do cheat i purely do so in the interest of the game, more specifically making sure the creeps hit when it's going too easy for the players and they miss when they're close to dying (it's okay for one of the players to go down, but in a game with three PCs anymore could easily lead to TPK).

It's never enough for the players to actually know when i cheat, but they know i'm doing it and accept it, in the interest of the game.

A lot of GMs like the randomness of die rolls, and I think it's a fair thing to adhere to. Sometimes, it does mean that the game becomes less interesting for an encounter, as the PCs hit a lucky streak and trounce a well-planned encounter.

Sometimes it means that DM "boss encounters" don't work as planned, and the PCs prevail easily because the GM never rolled higher than a '6' on an attack roll.

And sometimes it means that the PCs are nearly killed by goblins. I've done encounters where 5 low-level monsters rolled something like 7 crits in two rounds.

The thing is, if you start modifying die rolls too often, it robs the players of chances to shine (if you raise the target numbers they need to hit to prevent a fight from being a "cakewalk"), or it denies them the opportunity to fail. Dice in the open means the players know you're being honest, and not trying to shoehorn them into things.

It means that their successes, and failures, are entirely their own. And I believe that's a good thing.
 

As far as DM'ing goes the solution is simple:

1: Get DM screen
2: Cheat

although be fair about it. the main job as a DM is to make sure that everyone has a good time, and if your is either continuously good or bad they will stop having fun. it's great to win a battle but if it's always easy then it looses it's shine.

as a player i guess you'll just have to get used to suck. i feel with you, i'm in the exact same position, but the only alternative is to get weighted dies and believe me you don't want to turn into that kind of player...

I disagree, The GM's job is to be the judge, impartial to the players from die-to-die rolls. It's the individual player's job to make sure they have fun individually.

This method makes for some more meaningful, authentic, campaigns, with more risk verses reward.

Edit: here, this sums it up quite nicely:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...raps/7540-Check-for-Traps-It-s-Not-Your-Story
 
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I generally like to assign dice to particular characters or roles (I have 'DM dice'), and the dice are always kept fairly segregated, either in dice bags or in their plastic boxes. Some of my older sets from my 2e-era gaming are co-mixed, but all the characters they were used for were in the same setting and played around the same time.

Other than that... nothing in particular.

A friend of mine, with terrible dice-luck, just got a new set, and he's keeping them separate from all his old dice to see if they'll keep their mojo longer.

Another one of our gaming group treats all his dice like crap, but has this one set of translucent light purple dice which he has dubbed, "the Lavender Dice of Love," making mocking reference to my DM dice, which I'd dubbed the "Black Dice of Doom." Unlike my BDoD, which roll horribly, these Lavender dice are murderously high-rollers, especially the d20. He once rolled four critical hits in a row, several of which were natural 20s.

I called him on it, and he says that there is no real mojo to it, and that it only seems that way because he calls attention to all his high rolls and glosses over the bad ones. He likes to make good-natured fun of the rest of us and our silly dice superstitions, rolling conventions, and other idiosyncrasies.
 



Whenever I buy new dice, I immediately swallow them. Once they have completed their arduous journey and emerged from the other end a day or so later, they are totally in synch with my needs, and respond appropriately with the desired numbers when rolled.

(I would suggest not starting with Game Science dice, though.)
 

Nice gentle bath in sea-salt then air dried, followed by a mild coat of oil, then place them into a leather pouch.

Not sure what it does for the dice, but the pouch is great afterwards.
 

A guy in my group was so upset by one of his d20's, that in the middle of a game he threw open the woodstove and tossed the die in there. Then he took his other dice over and "showed" them the stove.

When we fished the die out of the stove later, one side had burned down --so it is now a 21-sided die.
 


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