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.
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 a valid mode of play, but I feel like if we’re going to have agreed upon rules we should follow them, and not unilaterally change them. If the rules say “you spot the trap on a roll of 10 or above”, the GM deciding you just don’t spot it because they say so can feel wrong. It can feel like cheating. We had an agreement, and they just broke it.
On the other hand, if in your session 0 you all agree that the GM may fudge things for more drama, then have at it.
On the third hand, I’ve done things like “the rules say X but I think that’s going to stink here. Anyone object to changing it?”.
The important thing is everyone gives informed consent.
Generally speaking, it’s almost always a bad idea to fudge things to make it worse, but acceptable to fudge things to make it better.
If your players are rolling well, good for them! Sometimes players want to feel really lucky and like their investments paid off. If that makes your campaign too easy there are lots of ways to address it, and an easy fight will rarely if ever cause a campaign to crumble
But a series of bad rolls? That can absolutely melt a campaign. It can suck the soul out of a party and make things feel unfair or too difficult even when it’s just a string of bad luck. Preventing a TPK or allowing a PC to narrowly escape certain doom can be the difference between a player losing interest and them learning how to mitigate risk.
GMs should all spend some time reading up on the psychology of games and player behavior. Stress and frustration exist in the strangest, most illogical places because our brains are strange and illogical.
One of the things I like from Fate is the concept of Conceding. It gives players the option to give up.
So when you have bad rolls or the situation is going real bad, you can concede. You all decide what that looks like. You don’t get whatever you wanted in the conflict, but you decide if that means you’re just left for dead, or you fall into the river and are swept away, or what. You get one or more fate points, too. Because this is written into the rules, it doesn’t feel as cheaty as it would in DND for a player to say “I don’t think we can win this. Can we say we escape somehow?”
You can always choose to fight to the bitter end, but then you don’t really have anyone to blame but yourself.
DND is an old game and it’s just missing whole concepts like this that I think would make a better experience.
I don’t think D&D will ever really change much. There are people that really like its quirks, and there’d be a backlash from people if they made large changes. People still repeat largely nonsense complaints about 4e, sometimes while trying to patch 5e with ideas that 4e did.
Unfortunately, some people like it without ever trying anything else. D&D is a mega behemoth. I personally think it’s more popular than it should be, given how many people I’ve talked to that play it only with a generous heaping of house rules and practices that transform it into something else.
Sure, sometimes. It should be used incredibly rarely. However, not in this way. The GM has plenty of levers to pull without messing with the one thing you have players for. If the GM is just going to tell a story then they should write a book. If they want to do cooperative storytelling then they need to cooperate.
If the rolls don’t matter then the story gets incredibly boring, as it just goes whatever direction the GM wants. Without failure, success is boring. Without success, failure sucks. When they’re perfectly balanced by the GM, it’s predictable and not surprising or fun.
Shouldn’t play a game with random rolls if one doesn’t like random rolls. Secret rolls don’t add anything except suspicion.
As a DM if I decide something is going to happen then I don’t bother rolling. Like if a character who is competent wants to do something and they have plenty of time they just succeed. If a monster is sneaking I might just compare their stealth to character perception if being stealthy doesn’t have more of an impact that the characters finding out they were being followed. If it has a game play impact then I roll openly but don’t say what it is for. That way there is no suspicion that I rolled low and decided that it should just pass instead when the reason for the roll is eventually revealed.
For all its other faults, I love the Edge system of shadowrun. In brief, Edge is an attribute like strength or charisma but also a resource pool. You can spend a point for a greater chance of success, or you can permanently burn an edge point for a +4 success (degree of success is calculated into damage).
You can, it just seemed like a lot of info to dump in my first post. Shadowrun is a classless, level less system. Your xp is called Karma, and you can spend Karma to increase your skills and attributes.
There are probably ways to ensure that the DM isn’t lying to you, like the DM could take pictures of the dice rolls and reveal the pictures later. But trust is better like you said.
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
I don’t see the issue with the GM lying to players if the lie makes the game more fun and less frustrating.
That’s a valid mode of play, but I feel like if we’re going to have agreed upon rules we should follow them, and not unilaterally change them. If the rules say “you spot the trap on a roll of 10 or above”, the GM deciding you just don’t spot it because they say so can feel wrong. It can feel like cheating. We had an agreement, and they just broke it.
On the other hand, if in your session 0 you all agree that the GM may fudge things for more drama, then have at it.
On the third hand, I’ve done things like “the rules say X but I think that’s going to stink here. Anyone object to changing it?”.
The important thing is everyone gives informed consent.
Generally speaking, it’s almost always a bad idea to fudge things to make it worse, but acceptable to fudge things to make it better.
If your players are rolling well, good for them! Sometimes players want to feel really lucky and like their investments paid off. If that makes your campaign too easy there are lots of ways to address it, and an easy fight will rarely if ever cause a campaign to crumble
But a series of bad rolls? That can absolutely melt a campaign. It can suck the soul out of a party and make things feel unfair or too difficult even when it’s just a string of bad luck. Preventing a TPK or allowing a PC to narrowly escape certain doom can be the difference between a player losing interest and them learning how to mitigate risk.
GMs should all spend some time reading up on the psychology of games and player behavior. Stress and frustration exist in the strangest, most illogical places because our brains are strange and illogical.
One of the things I like from Fate is the concept of Conceding. It gives players the option to give up.
So when you have bad rolls or the situation is going real bad, you can concede. You all decide what that looks like. You don’t get whatever you wanted in the conflict, but you decide if that means you’re just left for dead, or you fall into the river and are swept away, or what. You get one or more fate points, too. Because this is written into the rules, it doesn’t feel as cheaty as it would in DND for a player to say “I don’t think we can win this. Can we say we escape somehow?”
You can always choose to fight to the bitter end, but then you don’t really have anyone to blame but yourself.
DND is an old game and it’s just missing whole concepts like this that I think would make a better experience.
6e when?
I don’t think D&D will ever really change much. There are people that really like its quirks, and there’d be a backlash from people if they made large changes. People still repeat largely nonsense complaints about 4e, sometimes while trying to patch 5e with ideas that 4e did.
Unfortunately, some people like it without ever trying anything else. D&D is a mega behemoth. I personally think it’s more popular than it should be, given how many people I’ve talked to that play it only with a generous heaping of house rules and practices that transform it into something else.
Sure, sometimes. It should be used incredibly rarely. However, not in this way. The GM has plenty of levers to pull without messing with the one thing you have players for. If the GM is just going to tell a story then they should write a book. If they want to do cooperative storytelling then they need to cooperate.
If the rolls don’t matter then the story gets incredibly boring, as it just goes whatever direction the GM wants. Without failure, success is boring. Without success, failure sucks. When they’re perfectly balanced by the GM, it’s predictable and not surprising or fun.
Shouldn’t play a game with random rolls if one doesn’t like random rolls. Secret rolls don’t add anything except suspicion.
As a DM if I decide something is going to happen then I don’t bother rolling. Like if a character who is competent wants to do something and they have plenty of time they just succeed. If a monster is sneaking I might just compare their stealth to character perception if being stealthy doesn’t have more of an impact that the characters finding out they were being followed. If it has a game play impact then I roll openly but don’t say what it is for. That way there is no suspicion that I rolled low and decided that it should just pass instead when the reason for the roll is eventually revealed.
For all its other faults, I love the Edge system of shadowrun. In brief, Edge is an attribute like strength or charisma but also a resource pool. You can spend a point for a greater chance of success, or you can permanently burn an edge point for a +4 success (degree of success is calculated into damage).
I feel like I would never burn edge, but hold onto it like Elixirs in final fantasy. (Unless you can restore it somehow)
You can, it just seemed like a lot of info to dump in my first post. Shadowrun is a classless, level less system. Your xp is called Karma, and you can spend Karma to increase your skills and attributes.
There are probably ways to ensure that the DM isn’t lying to you, like the DM could take pictures of the dice rolls and reveal the pictures later. But trust is better like you said.