Yo! to the DMs out there do you guys hide your rolls or make them public? do you ever flub your rolls if they are hidden? or is there another method you use? is it bad to flub your rolls as a dm?
In one of the two campaigns I'm running, I roll behind a screen to help maintain narrative focus, avoid disruption and to occasionally help out the party when things go sour and it's not a good time for it.
In the other, I roll openly. Unfortunately, a past player was cheating and I didn't realise. As a result, I upped the combats to keep them relevant and main melee guy paid the price, getting dropped a lot. After a while, he felt he was being picked on in the group, and while I rooted out the cheating and rebalanced the encounters, there's still a bit of bad feeling. Being the only melee and tank, he still gets the lion's share of attacks, so it's hard psychologically to shake the feeling of unfairness since he naturally gains most of the crits and so forth. I roll openly so that everyone can see that I'm not fudging my crits etc. This campaign is heading towards its crescendo now, and I'm hoping things will have normalised so I can roll hidden. Their near-TPKs have risen a lot since I've started rolling openly.
But if you ever notice why I've 180'd on cheating and become a lot more stricter, you now know why.
Do I ever flub my rolls when hidden? Rarely. Occasionally, the dice start showing very high results at a time when that would not improve the game experience. Other times, I've had them run low for too long, which can also be a bad experience. So maybe once every couple of sessions or so?
Having the dice tell the story can provide some really interesting results, so I wouldn't ever make a habit of it. But dice are random and storytelling isn't, so occasionally they'll make things worse rather than better. The occasional fudge can be good.
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I hide my rolls - GM's do, in our group (we're 4 GM's out of 5 people total). Fudging rolls is a good thing - at least when done properly. The aim of the game is to have fun, not to obey the dice. Of course if your fun happens to be obeying the dice, don't fudge.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I think it should be a mix. More general rolls should be open but some things are hidden to surprise the players, like random encounters, making decisions, etc. Like rolling a few dice to generate an NPC on the fly. Attempts by unseen agents. That sort of thing.
I hide my rolls but I'm 99% honest. I will perhaps flub a roll if something happens that I feel will break the immersion or the narrative. Most of the time though I don't even care if players see them.
I almost always hide my rolls, even though I rarely feel a need to adjust them. By making hidden rolls the standard, I'm able to adjust rolls if needed without awkwardly switching from open to hidden rolls.
As for the general ethics of roll-fudging: I think all DMs should fudge rolls from time to time. The dice might have a story to tell, but there's no guarantee that story will be any good. Keeping a light hand is the best and easiest way in my opinion, but sometimes your big bad just can't seem to roll above 5 (or below 20) and you need to normalize your rolls to keep the encounter in the goldilocks zone between boring and impossible.
As a player I freaked out my whole party by passing a note to the Dm. They all started checking their pockets and pouches thinking I want all pickpocket on them.
Really the note was blank and when the Dm rolled behind the screen I rolled my die and held up my fingers to sort of show my roll.
The Dm caught on quick and played it up a very little but pretty much just let me do my thing.
I never did anything to the party but boy did it raise the anxiety level up a few notches.
Hidden dies rolls by the DM raise the anxiety level. Which is something a good games needs.
Exactly. Some rolls like Stealth and Perception have to be behind a screen. Combat based rolls are in the open. If I kill a PC, I want the table to see why.
Per Chris Perkins, the new DMG is going to have more guidance on what a DM screen is and the sorts of rolls you might want to consider using it to hide.
As long as both you and your players are having fun there is no wrong answer here, but do keep in mind that some rolls are intended to be secret even if you prefer rolling in the open most of the time.
Don't have the most experience with it, only DMing in a limited capacity. But with the group I play with over Discord, I hide my rolls for two reasons.
1. Practicality. It's much easier not having to share screen and show.
2. I feel like the unknown makes monsters/worlds feel much more real. I remember years ago playing LMoP at a table group for a couple sessions. When we found the nothic it felt exremely dangerous. Like we were in the presence of something FAR FAR stronger than us. Whereas knowing it's a CR 2 monster and therefore could've been realistically fightable (same for a random owlbear we saw later when we were lv3) makes it feel less dangerous and exciting.
Also going with that Discord group, one of the guys was DMing and had a monster statblock he showed us. (Made sense since he wasn't as sure on various rules and me taking a look at it helped with letting him know how Legendary actions worked.) Went from "This is a terrifying eldritch god" to "Oh, this is still terrifying since it just one-shotted the warlock and left my ranger alone to fight a CR ~3 monster, but there's hope."
So by hiding the rolls you can leave players wondering just what the to-hit and other bonuses a monster has are and increase tension.
I used to hide my rolls as a DM and fudge if needed. But then I got to be a Player, and I hated it when the DM rolled in secret. I now roll in the open as a DM. I really want my players to know that I'm not there to save them from their decisions. For the most part, the players don't care.
I roll publically and privately, digitally and physically. Sometimes I roll just to roll too, so players can see me do it, but it does not affect the game. If it is a real emergency, I hide and fudge my rolls to avoid a TPK, and I only fudge in favor of the party. Rolling digitally helps with fudging a lot, since it is quick and quiet.
I roll publically and privately, digitally and physically. Sometimes I roll just to roll too, so players can see me do it, but it does not affect the game. If it is a real emergency, I hide and fudge my rolls to avoid a TPK, and I only fudge in favor of the party. Rolling digitally helps with fudging a lot, since it is quick and quiet.
That's going to be pretty obvious. There are plenty of ways to fudge encounters (or to design encounters so defeat != campaign ends) that don't involve fudging die rolls.
I usually hide my rolls. It keeps the players from knowing the modifiers of the NPCs so they can't instantly tell the level. I have great respect for the absolute authority that is random number generation or randomly rolled pieces of shaped plastic.
The only time I've ever fudged my rolls was when I caught a player fudging his spell slots and hit points. It got to the point where everyone started being suspicious of him always burning through spell slots and the next session, when we got to the boss, he still had plenty of spell slots left. So I started paying more attention to his character. He was at four hit points, he took four points of damage, then said "I'm still alive! I've got one hit point left." After that every attack hit him.
I roll publically and privately, digitally and physically. Sometimes I roll just to roll too, so players can see me do it, but it does not affect the game. If it is a real emergency, I hide and fudge my rolls to avoid a TPK, and I only fudge in favor of the party. Rolling digitally helps with fudging a lot, since it is quick and quiet.
That's going to be pretty obvious. There are plenty of ways to fudge encounters (or to design encounters so defeat != campaign ends) that don't involve fudging die rolls.
It is easy to intervene naturally without fudging in a TPK in progress near settlements and groups of NPCs. If the party is just traveling alone out in the wilderness or dungeon though, it feels a bit more forced to have a knight in shining armor swoop in to save the party in distress. I do not mind using it once, maybe twice at most, but I prefer to keep that card up my sleeve without using it. Fudging a miss or damage roll before it downs too many players is more believable than deus ex machina in my opinion.
That being said, I try not to get to the point of a TPK in progress by encouraging my party to do things a bit more stealthily and cautiously, so I have an excuse to trickle in reinforcements so I do not accidentally overwhelm them with too much monsters at once.
It is easy to intervene naturally without fudging in a TPK in progress near settlements and groups of NPCs.
I didn't say without fudging. I said without fudging die rolls. The most common ways of doing this are bad tactics (sure, the monster could womp on the cleric to prevent healing, but maybe it's more annoyed with someone else?), optional monsters (maybe this gets added to the fight on round 2... maybe it doesn't), fudging hit points (it's not like the players know exactly how many hit points the monster has), and 'forgetting' about monster abilities or scenario features (what's that hidden icon? Oh, it was a trap that was supposed to spring? Whoops, my bad). There is also the option of giving the villains objectives other than murdering the PCs, so the PCs losing doesn't mean TPK, it means captured, or allowed to flee/surrender, or left to bleed out (with the chance to stabilize), or paralyzed by spider venom and stored in a cocoon as later food, or some such.
Overuse of any of form of fudging will get noticed by the players, but it's still useful to understand your toolbox.
It is easy to intervene naturally without fudging in a TPK in progress near settlements and groups of NPCs.
I didn't say without fudging. I said without fudging die rolls. The most common ways of doing this are bad tactics (sure, the monster could womp on the cleric to prevent healing, but maybe it's more annoyed with someone else?), optional monsters (maybe this gets added to the fight on round 2... maybe it doesn't), fudging hit points (it's not like the players know exactly how many hit points the monster has), and 'forgetting' about monster abilities or scenario features (what's that hidden icon? Oh, it was a trap that was supposed to spring? Whoops, my bad). There is also the option of giving the villains objectives other than murdering the PCs, so the PCs losing doesn't mean TPK, it means captured, or allowed to flee/surrender, or left to bleed out (with the chance to stabilize), or paralyzed by spider venom and stored in a cocoon as later food, or some such.
Overuse of any of form of fudging will get noticed by the players, but it's still useful to understand your toolbox.
I get what you mean. 99% of the time I do not fudge dice rolls. I still roll just to roll anyways, so the players cannot tell what I am rolling for, or if I am fudging. Plus, if I rolled a real life 20 a few seconds ago, I want to use that 20 for something! It could be a trap! Or treasure! Or something hilarious! Nothing wrong with fishing for rolls, and backing up a spontaneus event with a 20 (or 1).
Yo! to the DMs out there do you guys hide your rolls or make them public? do you ever flub your rolls if they are hidden? or is there another method you use? is it bad to flub your rolls as a dm?
In one of the two campaigns I'm running, I roll behind a screen to help maintain narrative focus, avoid disruption and to occasionally help out the party when things go sour and it's not a good time for it.
In the other, I roll openly. Unfortunately, a past player was cheating and I didn't realise. As a result, I upped the combats to keep them relevant and main melee guy paid the price, getting dropped a lot. After a while, he felt he was being picked on in the group, and while I rooted out the cheating and rebalanced the encounters, there's still a bit of bad feeling. Being the only melee and tank, he still gets the lion's share of attacks, so it's hard psychologically to shake the feeling of unfairness since he naturally gains most of the crits and so forth. I roll openly so that everyone can see that I'm not fudging my crits etc. This campaign is heading towards its crescendo now, and I'm hoping things will have normalised so I can roll hidden. Their near-TPKs have risen a lot since I've started rolling openly.
But if you ever notice why I've 180'd on cheating and become a lot more stricter, you now know why.
Do I ever flub my rolls when hidden? Rarely. Occasionally, the dice start showing very high results at a time when that would not improve the game experience. Other times, I've had them run low for too long, which can also be a bad experience. So maybe once every couple of sessions or so?
Having the dice tell the story can provide some really interesting results, so I wouldn't ever make a habit of it. But dice are random and storytelling isn't, so occasionally they'll make things worse rather than better. The occasional fudge can be good.
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I hide my rolls - GM's do, in our group (we're 4 GM's out of 5 people total). Fudging rolls is a good thing - at least when done properly. The aim of the game is to have fun, not to obey the dice. Of course if your fun happens to be obeying the dice, don't fudge.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I think it should be a mix. More general rolls should be open but some things are hidden to surprise the players, like random encounters, making decisions, etc. Like rolling a few dice to generate an NPC on the fly. Attempts by unseen agents. That sort of thing.
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I hide my rolls but I'm 99% honest. I will perhaps flub a roll if something happens that I feel will break the immersion or the narrative. Most of the time though I don't even care if players see them.
The only time I hide a roll is if the result isn't immediately apparent to the character but the success or failure has consequences.
Other than that, it's all in public. I set up a dice tower that I can reach and the nearest player tells me what the roll is.
I almost always hide my rolls, even though I rarely feel a need to adjust them. By making hidden rolls the standard, I'm able to adjust rolls if needed without awkwardly switching from open to hidden rolls.
As for the general ethics of roll-fudging: I think all DMs should fudge rolls from time to time. The dice might have a story to tell, but there's no guarantee that story will be any good. Keeping a light hand is the best and easiest way in my opinion, but sometimes your big bad just can't seem to roll above 5 (or below 20) and you need to normalize your rolls to keep the encounter in the goldilocks zone between boring and impossible.
I hide rolls when it's something where the fact or results of the roll would give the players information they shouldn't have.
As a player I freaked out my whole party by passing a note to the Dm. They all started checking their pockets and pouches thinking I want all pickpocket on them.
Really the note was blank and when the Dm rolled behind the screen I rolled my die and held up my fingers to sort of show my roll.
The Dm caught on quick and played it up a very little but pretty much just let me do my thing.
I never did anything to the party but boy did it raise the anxiety level up a few notches.
Hidden dies rolls by the DM raise the anxiety level. Which is something a good games needs.
Exactly. Some rolls like Stealth and Perception have to be behind a screen. Combat based rolls are in the open. If I kill a PC, I want the table to see why.
Per Chris Perkins, the new DMG is going to have more guidance on what a DM screen is and the sorts of rolls you might want to consider using it to hide.
As long as both you and your players are having fun there is no wrong answer here, but do keep in mind that some rolls are intended to be secret even if you prefer rolling in the open most of the time.
Don't have the most experience with it, only DMing in a limited capacity. But with the group I play with over Discord, I hide my rolls for two reasons.
1. Practicality. It's much easier not having to share screen and show.
2. I feel like the unknown makes monsters/worlds feel much more real. I remember years ago playing LMoP at a table group for a couple sessions. When we found the nothic it felt exremely dangerous. Like we were in the presence of something FAR FAR stronger than us. Whereas knowing it's a CR 2 monster and therefore could've been realistically fightable (same for a random owlbear we saw later when we were lv3) makes it feel less dangerous and exciting.
Also going with that Discord group, one of the guys was DMing and had a monster statblock he showed us. (Made sense since he wasn't as sure on various rules and me taking a look at it helped with letting him know how Legendary actions worked.) Went from "This is a terrifying eldritch god" to "Oh, this is still terrifying since it just one-shotted the warlock and left my ranger alone to fight a CR ~3 monster, but there's hope."
So by hiding the rolls you can leave players wondering just what the to-hit and other bonuses a monster has are and increase tension.
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It depend of how i play.
In person i tend to walk a lot when DMing so depending where i stand, i may roll at player table or DM table (behind DM screen).
Online all my rolls are public.
I used to hide my rolls as a DM and fudge if needed. But then I got to be a Player, and I hated it when the DM rolled in secret. I now roll in the open as a DM. I really want my players to know that I'm not there to save them from their decisions. For the most part, the players don't care.
I roll publically and privately, digitally and physically. Sometimes I roll just to roll too, so players can see me do it, but it does not affect the game. If it is a real emergency, I hide and fudge my rolls to avoid a TPK, and I only fudge in favor of the party. Rolling digitally helps with fudging a lot, since it is quick and quiet.
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That's going to be pretty obvious. There are plenty of ways to fudge encounters (or to design encounters so defeat != campaign ends) that don't involve fudging die rolls.
I usually hide my rolls. It keeps the players from knowing the modifiers of the NPCs so they can't instantly tell the level. I have great respect for the absolute authority that is random number generation or randomly rolled pieces of shaped plastic.
The only time I've ever fudged my rolls was when I caught a player fudging his spell slots and hit points. It got to the point where everyone started being suspicious of him always burning through spell slots and the next session, when we got to the boss, he still had plenty of spell slots left. So I started paying more attention to his character. He was at four hit points, he took four points of damage, then said "I'm still alive! I've got one hit point left." After that every attack hit him.
It is easy to intervene naturally without fudging in a TPK in progress near settlements and groups of NPCs. If the party is just traveling alone out in the wilderness or dungeon though, it feels a bit more forced to have a knight in shining armor swoop in to save the party in distress. I do not mind using it once, maybe twice at most, but I prefer to keep that card up my sleeve without using it. Fudging a miss or damage roll before it downs too many players is more believable than deus ex machina in my opinion.
That being said, I try not to get to the point of a TPK in progress by encouraging my party to do things a bit more stealthily and cautiously, so I have an excuse to trickle in reinforcements so I do not accidentally overwhelm them with too much monsters at once.
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I didn't say without fudging. I said without fudging die rolls. The most common ways of doing this are bad tactics (sure, the monster could womp on the cleric to prevent healing, but maybe it's more annoyed with someone else?), optional monsters (maybe this gets added to the fight on round 2... maybe it doesn't), fudging hit points (it's not like the players know exactly how many hit points the monster has), and 'forgetting' about monster abilities or scenario features (what's that hidden icon? Oh, it was a trap that was supposed to spring? Whoops, my bad). There is also the option of giving the villains objectives other than murdering the PCs, so the PCs losing doesn't mean TPK, it means captured, or allowed to flee/surrender, or left to bleed out (with the chance to stabilize), or paralyzed by spider venom and stored in a cocoon as later food, or some such.
Overuse of any of form of fudging will get noticed by the players, but it's still useful to understand your toolbox.
I get what you mean. 99% of the time I do not fudge dice rolls. I still roll just to roll anyways, so the players cannot tell what I am rolling for, or if I am fudging. Plus, if I rolled a real life 20 a few seconds ago, I want to use that 20 for something! It could be a trap! Or treasure! Or something hilarious! Nothing wrong with fishing for rolls, and backing up a spontaneus event with a 20 (or 1).
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