Your d20...an inny or outy?

[EmbraCraig]

When I DM, I roll almost exclusively in the open, keeping very few rolls secret (usually my rolls for "does something happen", when the players don't know exactly what I'm rolling for anyway). Let the dice fall as they do, sometimes I've hit a player with 2 or 3 crits in an encounter, one time a group of archers rolled 1s for about 80% of their shots during a fight... these things happen.

As a player, some of the GMs use a screen, some don't... I don't have a problem with either, as I've generally trusted my GMs. The only time it's bothered me either way is with a GM who rolled behind a screen, but was really bad at letting the dice decide things - he sometimes made it very obvious that he was re-rolling the result because he didn't like it (and sometimes did it 2-3-4 times on the same roll...). Not that he was biased for or against the players, just he wanted to make sure a certain thing happened - I never got why he rolled the dice in the first place in those circumstances.

 

[Wik]

I am usually the GM - I roll the d20 in the open, but I don't announce the result most of the time. Nearby players can easily see the result, though. In the case of a disable device or a perception check, I might roll the d20 in response, but it's 50/50 whether I do. Occasionally, I'll hide the roll if absolutely necessary, but this is rare.

As a player, I always roll out in the open. I don't really like it when players roll in secret. Seems shady.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I'm only a player (except on those Leap Days when I get roped into running) and I'm happy with the GM doing whichever they prefer. I support rolling behind a screen so the GM has the freedom to fudge things to make the game more fun, if they want to.

 

[Zhaleskra]

And, honestly, seeing the rolls only helps you know the GM is not cheating when you know the full stats of the monster or what have you. If you don't know the stats (or even the mechanic) used by the challenge, seeing the roll is meaningless.

It's been my experience that players will figure out what the creature needs to hit them. "It hit AC 16 on a 6!" And, I see that influence their choices.

These comments combined help describe why I have a slight preference for games that don't use "static defense"/"Taking 10 in Combat". It adds a few more dice rolls, but you're less likely to end up with "it needs an x to hit me" when the attacker is rolling dice+modifier and the defender is rolling dice+modifier. You may learn what its bonus is, but in a game that uses this system, that's not that important.

When I did roll behind a screen, sometimes it was to keep the dice on the table. I have a dice tray for that now.

 

[Water Bob]

These comments combined help describe why I have a slight preference for games that don't use "static defense"/"Taking 10 in Combat". It adds a few more dice rolls, but you're less likely to end up with "it needs an x to hit me" when the attacker is rolling dice+modifier and the defender is rolling dice+modifier.

The entire first part of the campaign, I used active defence. While it was fun and different at first, it seems to lose joy in my group. It became a chore, and it sucked some of the excitement and flow from the game.

Thus, I went back to using straight ACs, and the full excitement of combat came back.

I would think the opposite, but that's how it happened in my game.

 

[Zhaleskra]

[MENTION=92305]Water Bob[/MENTION]: I don't want to sidetrack this topic too much, but given a sample size of two convention games, nobody said a word about it. When I ran HARP at a convention, one player actually expected to need to roll for defense. Maybe people at conventions are more willing to take things as presented?

I'm working on characters for a Forbidden Kingdoms game, and those that are done have high Defense scores, so I'm weighing if I want to use defense rolls. At the same time, they also have fairly high attack modifiers.

 

[Water Bob]

Maybe people at conventions are more willing to take things as presented?

My players accepted rolling for defence just fine. No complaints. It was me, as GM, that noticed that the combat were not as exciting as when the player rolled an attack then hung onto every word of my description of what had just happened in the combat.

I was excited about Active Defence when I first started using it, but since I've gone back to using the plain old static AC, combats are not only more exciting, but combat runs a lot smoother, too.

So, I tried it. It didn't work for us. And, I'm back to the basics.

We played several combats with the Active Defense throws, and my players like the static defense ACs better, too.

 

[Water Bob]

We played a 12 hour game yesterday, climax to our first story arc. That took us about a year, real time. We played about 12 sessions. The PCs aged from age 11 to between 14 and 15.

It was a damn good game--proably the best we've had so far. I may write about it in another thread.

One of the reasons I started this thread was that I was contemplating going from throwing out in the open, as I've done this entire campaign, to how I used to do it--throwing behind the screen.

Whelp, I made the change last night...and I really think my game was better for it.

Too many times, games are focused on dice throws, not the action at hand. I think this is a real problem with 3.x games because there are dice throws for all sorts of things right there in B&W in the rules.

A couple of game sessions before, I had stopped using Active Defense, where the players roll their defense instead of using a static AC target number. That not only helped speed up combat, but it also encouraged a better flow, more visual style to combat. Instead of the players automatically knowing if they were hit or not because they've seen the dice they rolled for defense, they got that information in a more visual way as I described what happened.

Rolling behind the screen only enhanced this. I've removed from their sight as many dice throws as possible, re-focussing the game on my narration of what their characters are seeing and feeling.

It was a definite good move for us. It even livened up simple encounters.

Amazing what a little mystery can do for a game.