It occurs to me that open rolls are mostly a thing because it’s fun to roll dice, and character sheets are a thing because players like to optimise. It’s be fun to have a system where the rolls and player stats are hidden information and the players only have perception of how good their character is at stuff from the outcomes of their choices - like you can have a full-on Dunning Kruger wizard in your party, or be totally unaware that your barbarian has an innate skill for music.
I mostly remember the events from the 1s I have rolled. 20s fade into insignificance
So it’s nice when die rolls are open, do everyone can share in the expectation
Not going to lie, this sounds like a fun game.
Do that many of you really play in these antagonistic as fuck groups? I see so many memes that imply a very a hostile dynamic between DM and players. I think you might need to find a better group if that’s the general atmosphere.
D&D is like sex, in the sense that “no D&D is better than bad D&D”
I find that the people who play in groups like this are people who haven’t been able to find a better group, but haven’t realised how antagonistic groups kill the joy of the game
Not really, at least, not anymore.
There are some people that come to RPGs to escape reality and man, do they need it. D&D holds out a promise of agency, power, and control, in a fantasy setting free from real consequences. Provided a player lacks these things in real life, they can cling to it like a life-preserver. Then, take any of that away - as a DM must do - and things can get ugly.
I really want to say that there’s a known and practiced way to get people like this some real help, like a free hotline or website. After all, if it’s going to come up, this is the place it’s going to happen. Sadly, I know of no such resource.
A fuckton of people these days play D&D as a pick-up game with randos off Discord or Roll20 and not actually in person with people they know.
I have a feeling that people who spend their time posting memes about shitty relations between players and DMs probably aren’t actually playing that much.
Also, like, every social media platform seems to thrive on conflict, so there’s probably a relationship between spending loads of time engaging with those platforms and having a shitty attitude in general.
So many people hate secret rolls. So many people feel like they remove agency from them.
But that’s what the dice do. They’re agency-revoking machines.
One reason people may dislike secret rolls is you can’t be sure the GM isn’t just lying to you. Though if that’s the case, you should probably find a GM you trust.
On the other hand, I prefer systems where dice aren’t the sole arbiter. I want to be able to spend a fate point or inspiration, or succeed at a cost.
Question. I’ve never DM’d obviously, but outside of combat I assumed the success threshold was something the DM made up on the spot based on how hard the task/situation should be and does not explicitly communicate that to the players. Is that what happens?
I would rather know my roll so I can imagine for myself how much of my character’s capability went into the attempt. Failing a check after rolling a 2 vs rolling a 19 affects how I play from then on, similar to how I think it would affect my character psychologically. If you try to climb a wall and fail without knowing the roll, would you try again? I hope that made sense.
It depends on the system and GM style.
I usually would tell players the target number. Their character would typically have a sense of how hard something is, more so than a desk job nerd sitting comfortably at home trying to imagine climbing a brick wall. If I say climbing the wall is difficult enough they have slim odds, they can then make an informed choice.
DND is also largely missing meta game currency, degree of success, and succeed at a cost. All of those change how the game works, and make hidden rolls less appealing.
For stuff like “there’s a hidden trap” or “they’re lying to you”, you don’t want players to enter into meta game “I know there’s something here so I’m going to be extra cautious” mode. I often find a hazard they can see and need to deal with is better than a hidden surprise. Like, all those black tiles shoot negative energy out when stepped on. And also a lot of Zombies just woke up and are shambling towards the tiles floor. Enjoy!
Personally I like how games like Fate you can mechanically reward players for going along with it. DND almost has that with Inspiration, but it’s very under baked.
DND is also especially loosey-goosey about target numbers aside from physical combat defenses and damage.
Another system might have a more explicit “To bully your way past someone, roll your provoke vs their will” combined with “the bouncer’s will score is 2”. DND has vague rules no one uses for “asking a favor”.
Sorry for a long unfocused answer. Happy to talk about whatever if you have questions
That’s part of the job as a DM. I would often have new enemies show up to the fight if it was going too well, or secretly nerf the enemies stats if it was going too poorly.
That’s one way to play. Personally, if I knew the GM was secretly adjusting the game much I’d feel dissatisfied. Why not just give me a sticker that says “You win!” if I’m always going to win anyway?
Though this does tie into a separate bugbear of mine: D&D makes it hard to reason about encounters because the stats are unbound and all over the place. You see four bandits rummaging through the wagon they stole. Do each of them have 8 hp, 16 hp, 32 hp, 64 hp? Who knows! Do they attack once or twice? Could go either way! That is not an innate property of RPGs, but it’s very common in D&D, and I think leads to a lot of “oh this is going badly - let me fudge the stats”. Both because the GM got the math wrong, and because the players assumed these were 8 HP bandits and they’re actually “well you’re 5th level the bandits should be tougher” level scaling bandits.
For the bandit thing, a good DM would say that they look strong or that their equipment looks expensive, or something like that. A decent one would at least answer the player’s question on if they look tough. I agree though that D&D 5E, in particular, has a lot of issues though. It isn’t a great system. It’s just popular.
Personally, if I knew the GM was secretly adjusting the game much I’d feel dissatisfied
the point is to make your death a fun and meaningful one, or at least a good punchline to a run. it’s not ‘to let you win’ - I’ve had characters of my own survive encounters but regret the outcome - I think you’re reducing the dm/gm role to a combat calculator, and there’s so much more going on with a talented one. storytelling is my favorite part of DM’ing and I’ll be fucked if I let a kobold derail the overall plan… but there’s a lot of room for kobold fuckery within that envelope.
I don’t think the GM’s job is merely damage calculator. But this:
I’ll be fucked if I let a kobold derail the overall plan
I rather disagree with. If there’s a plan then why are we rolling dice? I don’t want to play to fulfill whatever the GM’s plan is. They should just write a book. I’ve had many great, memorable, scenes that came about because the players had a challenge and they overcame it. Sometimes after running away and trying again. If I just decided “oh I guess the dragon’s breath rolled really low” then, again, we should just write a story together. Or play a game that doesn’t have such a big random factor.
Like, I also don’t really enjoy a nameless kobold killing Finnigan the Fighter with a fluke natural 20 in what wasn’t supposed to be high stakes. But the solution for me isn’t to fudge rolls, but play a different game. I don’t really like stupid deaths like that, so I don’t play games that facilitate it. I know that’s kind of “baby with the bathwater” for some people, but I really do think some people are fighting against what D&D trends towards, when there are better tools. It’s a hammer. Sometimes you want a screwdriver or a pen.
Every TTRPG are just mechanics to tell a story.
D&D’ rules may be 80% about combat, but they are all still there to facilitate the story. You aren’t wargaming.
You roll dice to see how the story enfolds. Having it cut off abruptly because of a mistake calculation on the DM’s part while prepping the session goes against the story.
Also, having a player sit around twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the session because their character died is not fun and goes against the reason why we play games in the first place.
Fuck realism, it is a fantasy game we play to have fun. So getting rid of unfun aspects isn’t just recommended, it is a necessity.
I feel like your post and my post are tangential to each other.
Having it cut off abruptly because of a mistake calculation on the DM’s part while prepping the session goes against the story.
As I said, if you don’t want situations where a character meets an abrupt end anticlimactically, don’t play games that do that. That’s a pretty big property of DND and close relatives, but that’s not how ttrpgs have to be. Or, if you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, have some sort of table rule to handle it. I guess “hey GM can you fudge it if we’re going to die stupidly?” would be a rule you could adopt, even. Informed consent is important.
I think it’s because DND is so old. It’s like a black and white tv, and people have all these tips and solutions to solve problems like “I can’t tell if that’s red or purple”, and ignoring people saying “if that’s important to you, get a color tv”. Black and white is definitely a valid choice for media, but it probably shouldn’t be the default.
Also, having a player sit around twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the session because their character died is not fun and goes against the reason why we play games in the first place.
This is also kind of a dnd-ism that can be solved in various ways. Fate’s consequence system, for one example.
Fuck realism, it is a fantasy game we play to have fun. So getting rid of unfun aspects isn’t just recommended, it is a necessity.
I mean, I don’t particularly disagree with this but my point wasn’t really about “realism”. It’s about the social contract. I don’t want a game where the GM is telling a fixed story, and will move the pieces around to keep it on track.
Like, in one game the party was trying to deal with a wyvern that was making trouble in the region. The players had several misfortunes that I could have fudged, but it wouldn’t have been better
They wanted to use some spell or other to keep it from flying away. I rolled the save in the open. It saved, and flew away. Yeah, I could’ve just lied and said it failed, but why even have a saving throw system if you want that? Other games have meta game currency to force issues one way or another. Play that. Or port that into DND.
They tried to poison the wyvern. Rolled in the open to see if the wyvern ate the bait, or spotted the players hiding nearby. It rolled well, and took off before eating a full dose. Could’ve just fudged it, but they knew the odds.
So they followed it to its lair, dealt with the kobold cult (they made friends because this group was great), and had a climactic fight with the wyvern on top of the plateau, by the lake. Including a dramatic “wait if I dive into the water I take less fire damage, raw? I’m a warlock of the deep I’m diving in!” moment.
Or the time they challenged an NPC group to a battle of the bands to see who would claim ownership of the macguffin. The players lost. The NPCs took the macguffin back to the university. But they negotiated a compromise to borrow a similar, weaker, tool, and went on with that. The story was different, but it wasn’t worse. Fudging the rolls to be like “oh wow guys they really borked it up” would’ve felt cheesy as hell.
So yeah, I could’ve fudged it, but I didn’t have to. I’m not writing a book with a fixed plot.
TTRPGs are games where you create stories, and sometimes those stories are “we did something we shouldn’ta, and someone got ganked”. What you’re describing is someone reading you a story book.
If your group has the trust, there is something to be said for making all rolls GM rolls. The GM is going to tell you how it turns out anyway so why not just make them roll? Let them handle the mechanical elements of the game so the players can focus on the role play.
I used to play when the basic D&D was out, we rolled. Later in highschool we had this amazing story telling dramatic DM, he did all the dicerolls. At first it felt odd, but since he kept the story moving it let you focus on group communication and your own role play.
For me as a GM this is a nightmare scenario. You want me to not only manage story, NPCs, physics, metaphysics, narrative cohesion, pacing, world building, encounter design and scheduling, I now have to make your rolls too? Miss me with that shit.
I would turn this around: If there is trust [to not meta game] there is no need for the GM to make any rolls or have hidden stat blocks for any NPCs. This way the GM can focus more on roleplay.
There is approximately zero weight to being the roller. If the added task of rolling a die you would normally ask them to roll is going to be the straw to break your back, you’re probably dealing with something else.
Well but it’s not just the rolling is it? And it’s not just “a die”. Its ALL the dice. And not just the ones I would ask them to roll, but the ones they’d normally roll unquestioned. And all their class feats and modifiers and Free Rerolls and on and on and on. Either the GM has all that data (and must therefore manage it) when making a roll or he has to request the mechanical data from the players, which is just as immersion breaking and way more time consuming.
What are they rolling unquestioned? Genuine question. I’ve had players roll unasked because they wanted to see if their character would do X or Y but that’s not mechanical. That’s them letting dice handle something they can’t puzzle through in real time.
As for feats, rerolls, and their analogs in other systems, those are things for the character to decide to use. Most of those rolls, in most systems, are ‘may’ actions, which means the decision lies with the character. You wouldn’t decide things for them, even if it seems obviously ‘better’ in your head for them to do it. You just let them avoid thinking about the numbers. You can even use software so you don’t have to do the math. The point is just to move away from the distraction of the numbers.
If your group has the trust
This is the heart of tons of table drama. The DM wants to tell a story and the players want to be heroic. The dice add randomness that can add drama, but they also cause chaos by introduction outcomes people don’t want.
If you’re just trusting the DM, why have rolls at all? Just tell GM what you’re doing and GM tells you what happens. But then players feel like they’ve got less heroic agency. They’re not pulling together a brunch of cool traits to do something risky and daring. They’re saying “I leap over the battlement and drive my spear into the champion’s throat” and the DM either says “Yeah” or “Nah”. You need phenomenal trust in your GM for that to work. A bunch of 12 year olds at a table aren’t going to have that.
Let them handle the mechanical elements of the game so the players can focus on the role play.
The mechanics are, ostensibly, there to facilitate the roleplay. The paladin’s smite isn’t just a set of numbers, it’s an expression of their role as holy warrior and divine judge.
That’s why you would keep the randomness of the dice, but isolate it. It’s easy to trust a DM to be reasonable when it comes to some things, but the randomness is useful in making the play more interesting, and people aren’t great at creating statistically distributed randomness. And if your DM is just looking at the die and saying, ‘yah’ or ‘nah,’ they shouldn’t be your DM. If your players can’t handle being told their characters’ attack didn’t land, they aren’t ready to play the game. It isn’t possible to win or lose DnD, but it’s absolutely possible to succeed or fail to play.
And you wouldn’t be removing the mechanical elements, such as the smite, just putting player focus on the diegetic space. They can still smite, but with their attention spent on thinking about the righteous smash of their weapon against the enemy’s armour and less on going ‘okay, then we carry the one, and…’
And if your DM is just looking at the die and saying, ‘yah’ or ‘nah,’ they shouldn’t be your DM
Where do you think DMs come from?
Same place as everyone else. They’re just a peculiar bunch of people who get more enjoyment out of supporting the players than being the heroes of the story. Not having one of those people means you are not equipped to play the game, just as much as if you didn’t have dice. You can try to put someone else in that slot, in the same way you can try to play Eberron as a setting using Werewolf: The Apocalypse rules, but your expectations will need to be low.
This sounds like a “GM is the entertainer” thing to me.
Either you think doing rolls is a mechanical burden that strips away immersion and reduces fun. In this case making the GM do all the rolls does the same to them and why would that be ok?
Or you don’t think rolling all the dice is a burden for the GM. Well then it wouldn’t be a burden for the players to do it either.
There are systems that are all player facing (players make all the rolls), but I’ve never heard of the system that expects the GM to make all the rolls.
Immediate flaw there; there is no immersion for the DM. You aren’t breaking their immersion because it can’t exist.
You could argue for breaking their flow, but that’s only an issue where they aren’t used to it. Once everyone is used to the flow of things, you shorten the workflow from ‘player:intent>player:declaration>DM:mechanical interpretation> DM:request>player:roll>player:report>DM:mechanical interpretation>DM:report>repeat’ to ‘player:intent>player:declaration>DM:mechanical interpretation>DM:report>repeat’
One of the problems that people have understanding RPG dynamics is the GM/DM is not playing the same game as everyone else. They aren’t an entertainer, like a Martin Clunes, they are an entertainer like a Martin Scorsese, or like a one-person, brain-powered Superblue. Their real role is in ‘making the magic happen.’ The players are ‘playing DnD’ or ‘playing Changeling’ or whatever. The GM, in any GM focused system, is playing The GM’s Game. It’s the same game, no matter which of the GM focused systems they are using to play The GM’s Game. Sometimes, the group of players is of a certain type, and the numbers don’t distract them. Such a group doesn’t need the GM to handle the numbers, but many players do find them distracting, and if the GM can handle it, it can make the game better, which means the GM is winning their game.
Several things:
First: Of course there is GM immersion. The GM has to be able to “see” the world in his mind so he can describe it adequately to the players. Immersion is more than just “feeling like you’re there”. Nobody at the table thinks they are an actual high wizard or barbarian or sth. You can tell by how they are saying “I swing my axe” instead of actually swinging an axe. Immersion just means how coherent and complete their mental picture of the world and their characters place in it is (which comes with an empathetic connection with the character). The GM is doing the same thing to a lesser degree for many characters (all NPCs at the least, but also the PCs).
Second: Your workflow diagram is only describing the simplest case of “Straight roll with predefined modifiers” and omits the kind of important part of actually rolling the dice and doing math with them.
Third: You entirely neglect the fact rolling a die is often actually fun. Blowing on it. Pleading with the dice gods to give you a good result. Yelling “NAT 20!” or whispering “NAT 1” in dismay (or whatever your systems equivalent is). Putting a badly performing die in prison. Borrowing the lucky die from another player and negotiating lending fees. Rolling 15d6 to see how much damage your nuclear leveled fire ball actually does.
Ultimately, you should play how you and your table enjoy it. I wouldn’t want to play at a table where some players (the GM is a player too) don’t get to make any rolls or have to make all the rolls. You do you, but to me that sounds like a terrible time.
PS: During the pandemic my table switched to a VTT and I enabled automatic saving throws. I had to disable that feature because my players HATED “the computer” rolling for them. They insisted that they must be the ones to click on the “roll saving throw” button. If I tried to take their rolling during live gaming I would loose the table.
I have to roll in the open, otherwise I’m tempted to lie about the rolls to benefit the players. I don’t want to, it just happens.
I’ll be going to my first dnd session next weekend. Can someone explain why metagaming bob doesn’t like this regulation?
Edit: Thank you everyone! Great explainations.
Bob: “Do I see anything?”
[Rolls a 1]
DM: “You see nothing”
Bob: “Well, DM probably only said that because of my shit roll, I bet there’s something here”
Bob presumably has been using player knowledge to inform character decisions in a way the group doesn’t like.
For example, illusions may require a wisdom check to realize they’re not real. When Bob rolls openly on the table and gets a 1, he decides as a player that his character is going to treat the lava monsters as illusions. If he instead had to roll in the opaque jar, he as a player would be less certain about if they’re illusions or real.
Metagaming is broken into two halves. There’s the acceptable “suspend your disbelief” type of metagaming, where the entire table just sort of agrees that certain things (like a character being able to hike miles at a time while carrying 300 pounds of gear, just because they have a good Strength stat) is a perfectly normal thing. When people discuss metagaming, that’s usually not what they’re referring to.
When people discuss metagaming, they’re usually referring to when the player acts on knowledge that their character doesn’t have. For instance, maybe the player has already read/played the module before, so they know where all of the traps in a dungeon are. And maybe they take a route through the dungeon that conveniently avoids or bypasses every single trap. It’s one of those things that’s difficult for the DM to police, because delineating the difference between “the player got lucky/had a suspicion because of something I said when describing the room” vs “the player already knows what is going to happen” would require mind-reading. And notably, the only person who enjoys this type of metagaming is the metagamer. If the DM and the metagamer are the only ones who know the module, the metagamer is ruining a lot of the suspense and potential dramatic twists for the rest of the players at the table.
Wisdom governs a lot of “I want to find out something about the environment/this NPC” skills. Perception, Insight, Animal Handling, and Survival can all be used to notice things in different scenarios, (notice a trap, catch a lie, intuit an animal’s intentions, follow a trail in the wilderness, etc,) and all of them are governed by Wisdom. The only real exception is Investigation, which is governed by Intelligence. But Intelligence is mostly focused on “you remember this thing” skill checks, rather than “you notice this thing” skill checks.
As a result, Wisdom checks are often targets for metagaming. For instance, Perception allows you to detect things like traps or environmental details that would otherwise go unnoticed. Maybe a treasure chest has a false bottom, with extra loot hidden below it. The metagamer has already read the module and knows about the false bottom. And the metagamer will usually try to find ways to “force” certain results that they want, or will blatantly act on knowledge that their character wouldn’t have.
In the above “treasure chest with a secret compartment” example, maybe the metagamer (knowing there is loot under a false bottom) says they want to thoroughly search the chest. The DM calls for a Perception check as they rifle through the contents. The metagamer rolls, and the entire table can see that it is low. The metagamer knows they failed the Perception check. But they still want the loot at the bottom of the chest. So they say something like “when I don’t find anything worthwhile, I smash the chest in frustration.”
Now the DM is in a tricky spot. Do they reward the player and reveal that by smashing the chest, the player finds extra loot hidden in a secret compartment? Or do they try to punish the metagaming by saying that they find a bunch of smashed (now worthless) loot in what used to be a secret compartment? It’s a judgement call on the DM’s part, because the DM can’t read the player’s mind to know if they were trying to metagame.
For another example, maybe an NPC tells a lie. The metagamer asks if the NPC is lying. The DM calls for an Insight check. The metagamer sees the low roll, and the DM says the NPC seems to be telling the truth. Now the metagamer is in a spot where they (as the player) don’t believe the DM. But the metagamer’s character believes the lie, because they failed the Insight check. Now the metagamer may try to find ways to circumvent that failed Insight roll, by finding other ways to catch the NPC in a lie. Maybe they try to poke holes in the NPC’s story using History, Religion, Arcana, Nature, and/or Investigation (all governed by Intelligence) checks instead. Or maybe they go out of their way to find evidence that would disprove the lie. Even though their character would have no reason to do so, because their character believes the lie.
By hiding Wisdom checks from the players, it helps eliminate a lot of metagaming. Especially in the last example. If the Insight check was hidden from the player, the player wouldn’t know if they failed the check. So they just have to take the DMs word when they say the NPC seems to be telling the truth. It eliminates the entire “player saw the low roll and doesn’t believe the DM” part of things.
