Alright, let's solve this: should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not? Should you always roll in the open or is it okay to roll behind the screen? How does it change the flow of the game? Be civil.
Alright, let's solve this: should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not?
rolling dice is obsolete and the only reason people still do it is because its romanticized as the mark of a true role player
Are diceless/without rng systems good?
They can be but are VERY reliant on you having good players.
its fun to physically interact with something, and the suspense of a roll heightens the drama
... and whatever question OP was asking, is instantly derailed in the first post
>DC
Have you tried not playing D&D?
>Should you always state out loud the difficulty of a roll?
No, you should in fact never outright state the numerical value difficulty of a roll unless absolutely necessary.
>Should you always roll in the open?
No, you should in fact avoid rolling in the open, as to obfuscate the numerical metagaming. You should ideally only roll in the open when it helps facilitate the flow of the game, such as in immediate combat scenarios when the players need to tell you if they were hit or not.
>How does it change the flow of the game?
It makes it flow and not get caught up, and allows the GM to quickly eyeball results and events to make calls, without beancounting or lengthy exchanges back and forth.
>Be civil.
No. Frick you, D&Drone.
moron bait.
>Fudging is a useful tool.
No. It's not.
You should never ever fudge.
Fudging will destroy the trust at the table, kill all the interesting situations that might've otherwise developed, remove gracitas from the game world, and make you a liar to your friends.
If you fudge, you're not playing a game.
>avoid showing
>but never fudge
based and correct
>Always state the DC out loud, but only once a player has committed to an action. The PC may be able to gauge the DC beforehand depending on circumstance and experience. This allows players to actually take measured choices, reduce the information gap between DM and player whenever possible.
>Always roll in the open because in my experience it’s more fun. Having tense moments where a single roll can change the flow of battle is much more likely to occur when the DM does so. Only roll behind a screen for elements the PCs aren’t aware of such as opposing a check to deceive or the stealth of a as-of-yet-to-be-revealed hidden party.
>Do NOT fudge
If you don't roll in the open and state DCs in the open, you might as well not be rolling.
Fudging is a useful tool. However, just like real fudge will make you sick if you eat too much of it, fudging too often will make your game sick.
Use it sparingly, and ideally find alternatives that don't involve lying to your players about dice rolls. But keep the option on the table in case you need it.
Yeah you might need it if you’re a shit DM
>Fudging is a useful tool if you are a huge homosexual who ignores the consequences of their players actions.
FTFY
It's a narrative format. While dice are necessary in order for it to be a game, fudging dice by the GM is no different than any other GM fiat. Allowing the dice alone to dictate the story means you aren't a good storyteller.
Fudging dice isn't just to save players, that's just your headcanon.
Nta, but if you're in a situation where the dice roll needs to be fudged, just don't roll the dice. It happens way too fricking often were gms call for a roll, and then scramble when it's too good/too bad.
Sometimes the players do stuff that use dice that could make for an unsatisfactory narrative outcome for them. That doesn't necessarily mean keeping them alive, since their death could be compelling or necessary for the health of the table.
If you read the post you'd find the answer.
It is foolish to blanket stick to dice and also foolish to completely ignore them or not use them.
TTRPG are about balancing the storytelling and the game and if being a slave to one in a context significantly harms the other then it is the job of the GM to find that golden ratio regardless of the "rules".
>Sometimes the players do stuff that use dice that could make for an unsatisfactory narrative outcome for them.
The gm calls for rolls. The players do not call for rolls. You as the GM can say to a player "alright, that actions fails/succeeds, here is why."
I'm not even talking about auto failures, I'm talking about shit like making players roll perception or investigation or like skills to get clues. Just give them the fricking clues. If they set up a perfect ambush and it makes sense for it to go off, it just goes off, they get the surprise round. If it makes zero sense for the pcs to sense an ambush, same deal. YOU DO NOT NEED TO ALWAYS ROLL THE DICE, and if you are going to fudge the fricking results anyway, rolling the dice is just fricking theater.
The whole game is theatre
They are. If they weren't people would just play a videogame.
RPGs aren't stories, moron.
Some are.
Nope.
Yes, they have Narrators instead of DMs, WoD for example.
Not stories.
Is called The Storyteller System
Not stories.
Did the AI broke? Is doing that thing were it repeat stuff.
>It's a narrative format.
>Allowing the dice alone to dictate the story means you aren't a good storyteller.
Why are you even using dice at all?
>storyteller
Wrong board m80
If there is no cosequence for rolling the don't even bother to roll the dice you dense homosexuals.
>Well no, I don't play games, how could you tell?
>PUNISHMENT TIME!
... so you are into spanking or something more complex, /d/rone?
Fudging is never an answer or tool, it's a bandaid solution to a problem thr GM caused or an attempt to force the game to go back to its rails.
Any dice fudge could've been prevented and showcase your poor preparation as a GM. Don't take the easy way out because that's all you'll be doing from now on.
>all these gays against fudging
Yes table trust is important, that's why anon said to be sparing with fudging. But the job of the GM is to make the game interesting and fun for everyone at the table.
Sometimes the die rolls achieve that, sometimes they swing too hard in a direction and don't create that.
How much you need to fudge depends on table. I fudged a roll yesterday because I crit a player to instant death at the start of a session and I didn't want him to be sitting around bored for a while till his party had him back up. Normally I wouldn't, except if he's lost a character to some hot rolls from me the past two sessions and it's tiresome for both of us.
When I set up a cool boss encounter it's frustrating, and I can say from experience not memorable for the players most of the time, if all they do is whiff their attacks. Sometimes if I know party resources are fine I'll give the big scary enemy a reroll if it's just missing over and over so the encounter can have some kind of tension.
I don't bubblewrap to avoid their deaths, I don't force every encounter to be life or death with monsters hitting constantly. I just adjust when I feel like the outcome of the dice is running extremely counter to the party having fun. If my player made a stupid decision, he'll eat the punishment, if he did nothing wrong but the dice want to punish him I'll probably leave it. But sometimes it's just not fun for either of us.
honestly dying to hot rolls being bad tends to be either a system problem - the game is promising to deliver heroic fantasy yet maybe there is a repeating 5% chance a player gets blasted - or a goals problem - the system is built to be gritty and lethal and the players don't really want to do that.
Don't care, homosexual.
Stop using dice if you can't accept a result or stfu.
>But the job of the GM is to make the game interesting and fun for everyone at the table.
No it is not, the job of the GM is to be an arbiter of the rules and make sure the game goes on, while also having a right to enjoy the game as a "player" from the GM side.
I hate rule 0 missinterpretation and the whole "the GM is an arbiter, storyteller, entertainer, judge" and whatever else, because way too many people assume these are all responsabilities that the GM has to stand up too and not simply consequences of his job.
GMs are storyteller and entertainers because someone has to do it, someone has to read the module and play the NPCs, someone has to act the world and they interactions with the party. It is not the GM's responsability that the players have fun, specially if that lack of fun is a direct consequence of player chocies.
The only good thing fudging has is that it exposes issues with the system or GM. Why are you playing a system that allows a player to be removed from the game like that? Sounds like some houserule or change should've made before the game.
A dice roll is asking a question, usually onee with a binary outcome, sometimes grades of success, but most of the time it can be reduced to "Does this happen? Yes / No".
Why would you ask me a question with 2 possible answers where you already decided you're not accepting one of them? Don't ask me to roll, ask me what happens or tell me it's not possible.
Also maybe it is because I'm a forever GM but the few times I've played with a GM that fudged I could see them comign from a mile away, because you have that slight moment of hesitation between rolling the dice and telling me the result where your face and behavior doesn't match the outcome.
>I fudged a roll yesterday because I crit a player to instant death at the start of a session and I didn't want him to be sitting around bored for a while till his party had him back up.
You robbed them of everything that could've come from that experience, from the anger expressed by other characters to the attempts to restore him to life, if even possible.
This makes you a homosexual, and perfectly encapsulates why fudging is for homosexuals.
No fudging involved, but at least twice (in different games with different GMs) I had a lvl 1 character dying to rng on the first session and everyone just ignore it because they didn't want to waste time introducing a new character. Depending the situation people don't want to spend time in pointless character generation.
>from the anger expressed by other characters to the attempts to restore him to life
You act like either of those is actually interesting and not just frustrating for the player who gets to sit on his thumbs for an hour. And that's if revival is easy. In games where it isn't, that player is probably out for the night and now gets to sit there while everyone else has fun playing their characters and rolling dice, and all because of one really unlucky roll at the start.
If you don't want your PCs to die from the occasional baller roll from the GM/shit roll from the player, give the players Fate Points or Karma Pool or some shit.
It accomplishes the same function as fudging, but without irreparably breaking the suspension of disbelief that is key to prevent the game from devolving into a lame novel.
State difficulty of the task in descriptive terms so the players have a good idea of the range it could be. Answer questions they have to try and gather more information.
Roll in the open.
Don't cheat.
The flow of the game is now good.
>but failing this roll means my game story is ruined
Run a better game.
Playoids are children who need to be lied to for their own good, the less they know the better.
>Should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not?
Why not? If isn't a passive roll there's no reason the player should have the DC obfuscated. The only other exception is if it's an open ended roll needed for evaluating the degree of success (so doesn't have an fixed dc to begin with).
>Should you always roll in the open or is it okay to roll behind the screen?
I just roll behind out of laziness but ideally the GM needs to roll behind for passive checks and for everything else not immediately evident for the players. Everything else should be rolled in the open.
>How does it change the flow of the game?
By nothing, it's the same.
>Be civil.
Frick off homosexual.
The actual correct take is only the DM should roll dice.
>should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not?
Not always, but it does help the player get into the mindset to respond. If they know the DC is within the range of possibility, they're waiting for the number they need to succeed and will react better when they get it, rather than falsely react when they get a good but not good-enough number before you announce their failure. Announcing it sets the bar for tension. In cases like AC and other things that will be frequently rolled, announcing the DC keeps it consistent. Once an enemy has been hit OR when they've barely missed, you can usually reveal their AC if they survive. If there's an environmental hazard affecting the fight each round the DC should be consistent: start your turn and make the save against the dust cloud.
>Should you always roll in the open or is it okay to roll behind the screen?
This is to taste and depends on what you consider important as well as the game's focus. Rolling in the open can prompt metagaming which isn't always bad, and behind the screen can tempt you to fudge if you're a bad DM. But if you need to roll in the open to keep yourself honest, you have other problems, and if you have a party that insists you roll open for fear of fudging, then that's a different problem entirely.
>How does it change the flow of the game?
Behind the screen PCs are just reacting to numbers without context. Depending on the system there can be SOME context but if you're.
In front of the screen players can be tempted to reverse engineer results.
>he rolled an 8 but processed it as an 11, this guy must have a +3 bonus to these rolls, we gotta blahblahblah
>he got a critical success with only a 4 on the die so his Fortitude bonus must be blahblah
Better to curb that, honestly.
Always state the DC of checks when you call for them.
Always tell PCs the DC of checks they can make, if they ask, e.g. "how hard is it to climb this cliff?"
Reserve the right to withhold information the PCs cannot know (invisible wall of force half way up cliff) but these cases should be rare.
Roll when it's dramatically important, not when it's done e.g. roll forgery when the document is checked, not when it is created.
>roll difficulty
maybe not explicitly all the time, since peeking too far into the matrix saps the game of its magic, but absolutely give them some idea (e.g. "the ledge is going to be an incredibly difficult climb unless you can pull some trick out of your sleeve", or "you'd have to absolutely fricking bungle your roll to not get this").
unless you're talking about common combat checks, in which case absolutely share the TNs and don't be that gay who loses his shit about "metagaming" because the players mathed out the boss monster's AC from paying the frick attention
>open rolls
it's not strictly necessary, but whether you open roll or not fudging the dice is a lot more work than it's worth since the only thing that saps the game of its magic more than peeking into the matrix for too long is seeing the man behind the curtain press his thumb on the scale.
>openly stating the DC
No, but it should be narrated or at least clearly communicated if something is exceptionally difficult, so when a player rolls high and still fails, they don't get as pissy and insist that you are being unfair. Assuming the GM isn't being a homosexual and setting things so high that the actual intent is "don't even try" instead of "it's a big challenge"
>rolling behind a screen
Fun for theatrics, but comes off as dishonest, especially when the GM somehow hasn't rolled below a 15 all night and the player characters have been run ragged trying to survive the most impossibly accurate and lucky monsters in existence.
I play a game where the rules for rolling at the following:
>The DC is always your character's skill + or - modifiers.
>It's a D100 roll under system
>Modifiers go from -30 to +30 in increments of 10 for difficulty, told to the player as they roll
>In addition there is a hidden modifier for opposed depending on the opponent's level of skill (for every point above 30 in the opponent's opposing skill they impose a -1 penalty)
This whole thing of 'Tell the DC' never really enters the running because the system isn't designed to hide DCs. It does hide opponent skill levels because players shouldn't really know exactly how good opponents are at all times.
Depends on the purpose of the roll.
Players checking for secret Doors? Hide the roll, players cant know It they failed or if there truly is no secret.
Attribute check? Open roll and the player does It.
I've played percentile systems where the DCs are *always* open, as the alternative is thinking you got a success and having the GM go.
>"Erm actually it was at a -30%"
As for how it may have changed the flow of the game, it just meant people actually played to their strengths and remained conscious of whether or not something was feasible for them. Some would try to call this metagaming, but IMO it's just an abstraction.
Your character isn't deciding against a course of action because he has a 2% chance of succeeding, he's deciding against it because he can physically tell its beyond him.
I never tell my players the DC of something, as is my divine right as GM.
In turn I roll my big metal dice in the open so they can all see it. Some of you players reading might be uncomfortable with not knowing the DC but if I fudge a roll it can go in your favour or not. I have learned that its best to have some room to manoeuvre and make results the most interesting or entertaining. I only serve what gives the table the most smiles granted my style requires a GM that is impartial and not hostile to the players having a laugh. I dont care if you kill my monsters or npc's, if I was keeping score the players have killed far more of my guys if I were to see it like that but I dont.
it comes down to having a GM who isn't a moron socially, admittedly hard to find in this hobby.
Write down the target number and reveal it after the result.
If you think im doing that you can frick off, do you know how many times I ask the players to roll in your average session? you can trust my judgement or get to frick, Im not going to give written evidence to people who put in less effort than me just by default, like players.
try answering again after your medication
Do you even have a game? do you know how impractical that would be to write down numbers for say 4 people, its stupid. You would end up with pages full of numbers and annoying your players at the same time. Like in combat do you have any idea how many results that would be in a typical round?
Excuse me, half the posters in these threads are like 14 and dont even play an actual game. Im likely a better GM than you will ever be, I've run successful in person games for years. People don't come back weekly for years if your bad trust me. Players with absolute freedom sandbox end up just wanting me to tell them simple objectives in the end like go in the cave to kill the monster.
you just need to think about it. Most combat rolls will be up against target numbers that don't change and sit in nice easy to reference stat blocks. Normally, you don't need to write any of these down and if you did, it would be once for each significant number. For things that don't come up again, you can reveal the number straight away. Usually, I'll use a die face to mark the difficulty and then reveal, but a wordpad on a laptop would also suffice, which is to say nothing of the fact that a piece of paper or two of numbers is a no brainer if it facilitates fun at the table.
I've had one-shot casual players who I have no doubt would appreciate playing fast and loose with things in the name of dramatic moments and wacky stories, but my regular players across at least four different campaigns and systems want nothing less than to be able to approach things from the perspective of a character who cannot see behind the curtain whilst also knowing the gears under the hood are objectively there
I also prefer, if a player doesn't like the outcome of a roll, to deal with it openly as a table rather than trying to stage magic it in front of four canny players
I mean fair enough if thats how you like to do it. My players are also my friends so it helps that they already trust what Im doing. I say this isn't even an issue since I've never had a player demand to see what I rolled because I think there is an unstated etiquette that the GM has final say even if you dont like it in order to prevent the games pace being dragged down with committee meetings. I do think it should be run like a dictatorship but Im always willing for someone to have their say in court, but it must be arrived at swiftly. If a player demanded to know the result of roll I have nothing to hide but if they ask about the DC I know how people think, they start to get meta. Even during a typical combat they love trying to figure out a monster AC by deduction of dice rolls, a bit of mystery helps protect them from themselves it brings them out of the video game mindset.
That DM spotted. Get fricked, you railroading, fudging shitter.
Stating DCs is moronic and leads to metagaming but I do say if a task is feasible on an easy to impossible scale. Rolling in the open also leads to more metagaming as you can use basic math to figure out statblocks
How?
Either the DC is known by the GM and him telling it to us os more a way to gauge how difficult this will be, or the system gets DCs through some rules so the reveal isn't even necessary.
Always in the open. Frick the DM and his railroading "no you lost 3 times in a row so you just get kidnapped by the goblins and railroaded through my OC donut steel story".
>should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not?
No, why would you?
>Should you always roll in the open or is it okay to roll behind the screen?
Roll out in the open unless it's something like a sense motive check where it can be hard not to metagame if you know you've rolled poorly.
My GM goes even further and has us all roll a bunch of checks at the start of every session so he can record the results in order and tick them off over the course of the game if he needs a certain check but doesn't want to alert us, like, sometimes just being asked to make a listen roll can change behaviour.
Play games and you will see for yourself, instead of asking about stuff that requires to be a never-game to make
I just don't roll unless I want the results to be up to chance.
Similarly, I won't ask the players to roll unless I think there's a worthwhile chance of failure.
My table tends to appreciate the more powerful/capable feeling this fosters, so I haven't changed this approach.
I can imagine each extreme. The complete declaration of all DC's players and dungeon masters, everybody show their rolls for everybody to confirm. Seems autistic to me, like is that really necessary? so little trust.
On the other end most rolls are hidden, nobody knows the DC the dungeon master says if you succeed or not. This can be bad or good depending on the DM.
I think its safer to have a bit of fudging, it allows the DM to have an input otherwise they might as well be a laptop sitting at the table that the players punch the numbers into. That element of spice and chaos is required to prevent the autism of ruels lawyers.
Pathfinder 2e has certain rolls required to be made in secret and with good reason. Recall Knowledge checks give you false information on a critical fail. A crit success will give you more information than a standard success. The dubious knowledge feat triggers on a failure which would usually give you no information. You instead recall one piece of wrong and one piece of correct information. If the roll is made in secret, this feels like a crit to the player. The demerits to failing critically or failing normally with the feat disappear the moment you announce dcs or roll in public.
On such a successful roll, telling your player about the enemy's lowest saving throw or a weakness or resistance or maybe even a particular combat ability that it can use is what is expected. You can now clumsily tell them
>Yeah it's lowest saving throw is fortitude at a +8
or you could be a little more creative, take for example a lecherous, slightly dumb character
>From your timespent in the pleasure districts watching exotic dancers, you learned a lot about strong legs and the legs of this creature would probably crumble under its weight if it had to dance. In fact its whole body looks like it could be pushed fairly easily. You are not sure if you could exploit this vulnerability yourself, since admittedly you aren't the very picture of phyysical health, but you might have other ways that don't involve a physical altercation, with which to target this fatal flaw
essentially telling them, yeah you didn't spec into athletics, dont even try to grapple or shove the thing, but maybe you have a spell that targets their fortitude save.
This approach requires a lot more investment as a gm into the kayfabe, but also requires the players to make characters with actual backstories to explain where one might've gotten the experience to recall certain things and make it flavorful.
>Should you always state out loud the DC of a roll or not?
I describe the difficulty of the task ahead of time so the player can guess at the possible DC, then reveal the real number in the result. Thereafter whenever the player rolls for the same sort of action, we both know the approximate DC.
Also, I just let PCs auto-succeed at some tasks if they heavily invested in the relevant skill. Lets me play up the strengths and weaknesses of each party member while avoiding freak critfails over minor stuff.
>Should you always roll in the open or is it okay to roll behind the screen?
I always roll in the open, but since I homebrew a lot of effects and use degrees of success, players don't know how bad failure could be ahead of time.
>How does it change the flow of the game?
I'm still a fairly fresh GM, but the party seems to enjoy this approach so far.
Never state the DC. Never roll in the open. Roll all ability checks for the players behind the screen. And don't roll at all when there is no chance or consequence of failure.
There's rolls players shouldn't see to avoid having information they shouldn't have, like when an npc actually notice they're lying, but doesn't want to act on it immediately.
What's with this concept of an adversarial DM you need to constantly keep tabs on you guys have now?
I used to fudge enough that players caught on and it definitely caused them to feel as if the game was DM vs Players, which made me realize that doing honest rolls out in the open would definitely be the best way to go. Now my players play the game more collaboratively and less like I'm constantly about to have them killed with no way for them to have done anything about it.
I don't need to state anything; as soon as I roll, the players will know the rank of the attack or effect by how many dice I roll. However, with power like Weakness Detection or an appropriate application of a talent, I allow players to learn information like this before having seen an effect take place. Obviously, since I roll in the open, there's no need to fudge, and I've never had any issues.
>always
no, moron