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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Michael Silverbane" data-source="post: 6231497" data-attributes="member: 38016">I have run and played in games that have used a variety of dice rolling protocols.Players tend to feel as though they have less control when someone else is doing all of the dice rolling. If you want to run a game that causes the players to feel quite a bit of stress and that things are out of their control, roll all of the dice for them (also, keep track of their hit point totals and only describe the wounds they've received). This works great for stuff like survival horror or malicious environment games. This requires a lot more work from the referee of the game, as they have to do all of the accounting work, as well as take great care that they are describing what goes on and the results of the character actions enough to get good player engagement. In general, I would not recommend running a game like this for an extended period (I played in a game run like this for about two years, but was only able to run such a game for about a dozen weekly sessions before I decided that the work was too much for the results)Conversely, if you allow the players to roll all of the dice, and also to know what sort of target numbers they are after, players typically feel like they have even more agency and control than they may actually have. This works great for encouraging an exceptional level of derring-do and for stuff like cinematic fantasy and four color supers. This can lead to discussing things more in terms of the numbers than immersing into the shared reality of the game world. Extra effort needs to be taken to make sure to engage the players in the world, rather than in just the events. I ran a pretty gonzo Spelljammer game for about eight years using this method, and have played in several such games of varying lengths.Mostly, you'll see an approach somewhat in between these two extremes. Mostly what I do is as you describe. Players make rolls where their characters are acting and the results will be immediately known, the DM makes secret rolls for passive stuff or for stuff where the results may not be immediately obvious. Another way to allow the players to feel as though their 'luck' is coming into play is to have them make a number of rolls at the beginning of the session, and then to apply those results to the later, passive stuff.</blockquote>

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