Secret Rolls

[Vorpal Glaive]

Do you use these as a ref or do you always allow players to roll Perception-related checks themselves?

I used to let players make their own but realized later that if I made the Perception/Insight/Investigation/Deception checks secretly, it can be really fun.

Give me your viewpoints as referees and players, please and thank you.

[Aotrs Commander]

Do you use these as a ref or do you always allow players to roll Perception-related checks themselves?

I used to let players make their own but realized later that if I made the Perception/Insight/Investigation/Deception checks secretly, it can be really fun.

Give me your viewpoints as referees and players, please and thank you.

Most of the time, I make them roll their own (but I have, like, 6-8 players normally).

But on occasion (like last week, where the rogue slipped ahead of the rest of the party and was the only one possibly able to spot the natural-20 rolling stealthed monster), I will make a roll for them if I don't want to give something away.

[Peelee]

My group is scattered across the state, so we play with Fantasy Grounds. Nearly all non-combat rolls are made in the dice tower, so we roll ourselves, but only the DM sees the results.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Roll everything in the open, including GM dice, always.

[Keltest]

If the players are actively looking for something, they can roll themselves, out in the open. If its a passive check where the act of rolling would reveal that something is there, I do it myself.

[Galithar]

Roll everything in the open, including GM dice, always.

This is not true of a lot of groups and systems. PF2 for example calls out in the rules a number of rolls that are to be made by the DM in secret to avoid letting players know something is up from a bad roll. It eliminates the need for 'random rolls' on things like perception. If you only call for it when there is something to find even if everyone rolls a 1, suddenly they're all on edge and investigating every Pebble until they find something.

[Sebastian]

When it is appropriate (when the PC don't know they should roll) roll secretly.

Occasionaly roll dice for no reason, (AKA paranoia dice) to keep them on their toes else they'll know that when you roll dice something is up.

[Khedrac]

Playing D&D 3.5:
I like to have the players roll 3 or 4 (or 6 - it depends on the adventure) D20 rolls in advance which I record. I also get them to give me their characters' relevant modifiers (spot, sense motive, listen etc.).

As play progresses I will mark off the dice rolls asking for more for a specific character when I run out. This way the players get to roll their checks, but they don't get to metagame from knwong when they make those checks...

It's also great fun when they are worried by a series of really low rolls made in advance - they usually end up not mattering, but the players don't know that!

[Earthwalker]

Sometimes I roll and sometimes the players roll.
It depends on the game, the system being used and the group.

So DMing a fate game I never roll checks for the players and all my rolls for the NPCs are in the open. It requires a different mind-set and set up to truly work.

If I am playing Pathfinder I may do secret rolls. Of course even this gets a bit odd if we have hero points in play. As it allows players to re-roll or alter the result. Which is hard to do if the players don’t know about the dice rolls.

[Glorthindel]

One solution to utilise secret rolls, whilst not taking away the players ability to make their own rolls (players like rolling dice) is to use a dice tower. Position it your side of your screen, with the top sticking over, so when you need a secret roll, the player can throw their own dice in, but only you will see the result.

You will find, in the case of most players who object to secret rolls, it isn't actually the fact the result is secret that they dislike, it is the fact that they aren't rolling their dice for their character. Its a viceral thing, and as soon as you take that problem away (by letting them roll the dice, even if they don't see the result), they don't have a problem with secret rolls.

[Themrys]

As a player, I don't care much one way or the other, but I do think it is better for immersion if rolls for "does the characters notice that something is amiss" are made in secret.

If everyone rolls perception but no one notices anything, you just know there is something - I dutifully pretend to not know somethig is amiss in-character, but it would probably be fun for it to be entirely surprising.

[Vorpal Glaive]

One solution to utilise secret rolls, whilst not taking away the players ability to make their own rolls (players like rolling dice) is to use a dice tower. Position it your side of your screen, with the top sticking over, so when you need a secret roll, the player can throw their own dice in, but only you will see the result.

You will find, in the case of most players who object to secret rolls, it isn't actually the fact the result is secret that they dislike, it is the fact that they aren't rolling their dice for their character. Its a viceral thing, and as soon as you take that problem away (by letting them roll the dice, even if they don't see the result), they don't have a problem with secret rolls.

But can there be situations at the table where the GM rolling for a player is "good for the group"?

What if secret rolls (1) create suspense for the group, and (2), help a player better separate THEIR knowledge from their CHARACTER'S knowledge?

[Tinkerer]

One solution to utilise secret rolls, whilst not taking away the players ability to make their own rolls (players like rolling dice) is to use a dice tower. Position it your side of your screen, with the top sticking over, so when you need a secret roll, the player can throw their own dice in, but only you will see the result.

You will find, in the case of most players who object to secret rolls, it isn't actually the fact the result is secret that they dislike, it is the fact that they aren't rolling their dice for their character. Its a viceral thing, and as soon as you take that problem away (by letting them roll the dice, even if they don't see the result), they don't have a problem with secret rolls.

That reminds me of one method that I used back in the day. I would have all of the players roll me about 6-10 or so checks at the start of the adventure, then I would randomize the order of their results and use those for the secret checks.

I know what you're thinking. "Wow that's a lot of effort for an effectively useless outcome." And you would be right, hence why I stopped doing it (particularly when I lowered my session time to 3 hours). But I noticed that it went over pretty well with the players who normally really disliked secret rolls.

Now I normally just use the characters passive perception for 95% of situations.

[Aotrs Commander]

One solution to utilise secret rolls, whilst not taking away the players ability to make their own rolls (players like rolling dice) is to use a dice tower. Position it your side of your screen, with the top sticking over, so when you need a secret roll, the player can throw their own dice in, but only you will see the result.

You will find, in the case of most players who object to secret rolls, it isn't actually the fact the result is secret that they dislike, it is the fact that they aren't rolling their dice for their character. Its a viceral thing, and as soon as you take that problem away (by letting them roll the dice, even if they don't see the result), they don't have a problem with secret rolls.

I'm sure those players would loath my current weekly campaigns, one fears, since all the iniatives are generated on a spread sheet months in advance...

(Because doing it otherwise simply wastes a lot of time on my end organising 7-8 PCs plus umpteen monsters in order when we only have just over two hours to play in. Now, we just have a little line of cards that get put onto of the DM's screen (DM's right to left in descending initative order), which tells the player what sequence the iniative is in and thus when they can whip to the bar between turns and that's all you need. You don't even need to know the actual numbers, really. And, since it's on a spreadsheet and sorted, I adjust the numbers up or down (based on Dex or whatever) when I do it, so there's a discrete sequence, as it's not even as if if I amde you roll with actual dice fifty or so iniatives beforehand they'd actually be the same numbers by the end of it.

Players are advised if they're going to pick something that changes initaive modifiers, to do it at first level of at the end of a stretch I've already written, since I'm not going to go through every combat and do it all again for the sake of changing the order of the first round of combat which is the only point it matters...!)



For the record, ALL my dice rolls are behind my screen - I don't need to see your dice if you're my DM, you don't need to see my dice if I'm yours - especially if I need to fudge it (a typically remote possibility), it's most likely going to in your favour¹. (For that matters, I (and my group) consider the DM is quite within their rights to go hold their dice up in their hand and say "rattle rattle rattle, it's a twenty" if they think that makes for a better game (though doing it more than once in a blue moon's blue moon starts to raise questions about what you're doing wrong as a DM to have need to do that). It's a random number generation system there to facillitate the game, it isn't THE game. 99.99% of the time, the system does the job it is supposed to and can be left alone, but that's not 100% of the time.



¹Sorry, metaphorically annoyed player, but I don't generally feel like spending another three-four hours writing your new character into the campaign (and re-doing all those initatives) because RNG said so. RNG is not the DM, nor a good story-teller, despite what all the computer games that rely on procedural generation claim. If you want a game where the dice more inviolable and where succeeding is not something I'm explictly working to essentially let you do (gratuitous stupidity aside), you're welcome to play a wargame with me instead - but be aware that since the sort of wargames I play can be more likened to the sort of "max difficulty iron-man" that a lot of folk prefer to play the computer games at, the dice are not going to help you if you're a bad general...

[LordCdrMilitant]

I generally roll dice in the open. I like it, and my players like it. I also feel like "what's the point?", if I roll behind the screen and fudge numbers; I might as well not roll. Sometimes, there are rolls that the result of needs to remain hidden, but that's the exception.

In D&D, there's a passive perception score, I'd reference my creature's take-ten stealth against their passive scores, so I don't have to roll and give anything away.

In Dark Heresy, it's based off of degrees of success, and I usually just assign an appropriate difficulty rating for detecting the stealthy target, and drop hints that they should test Awareness.

[Vorpal Glaive]

Well just because a GM rolls behind a screen does not mean they are fudging. I make secret rolls using a site that records them, along with notes.

I've always felt fudging dice is silly: if your "story" can be killed by a bad roll, why are you even using dice?

[Keltest]

Well just because a GM rolls behind a screen does not mean they are fudging. I make secret rolls using a site that records them, along with notes.

I've always felt fudging dice is silly: if your "story" can be killed by a bad roll, why are you even using dice?

At my table at least, the goal is to maximize fun. Sometimes that means eliminating stupid, random statistically unlikely events like three consecutive crits on the same character who would otherwise be fine in combat. An honest loss in a fight is one thing, but a character suddenly facing and inexplicably god like orc for a couple rounds that they had no reason to expect or prepare for just isn't something anybody particularly cares to see.

[Aotrs Commander]

At my table at least, the goal is to maximize fun. Sometimes that means eliminating stupid, random statistically unlikely events like three consecutive crits on the same character who would otherwise be fine in combat. An honest loss in a fight is one thing, but a character suddenly facing and inexplicably god like orc for a couple rounds that they had no reason to expect or prepare for just isn't something anybody particularly cares to see.

Agreed.

That last time I did it was because the AP (1-20 level) I was running thought it was a good idea to have a high-crit, high damage Large creature (something wielding a falchion) as an early enounter for level 2-3 PCs. (Not even a boss fight.) The inevitable happened, and killing the player's character he'd spent ages making up a lyrical backstory for (bard) and I'd spent quite some time writing additional background for - like all the PCs - to slot them into the world (and thus not do "you meet in a tavern) wasn't going to be fun for him or for me (or anyone else at the table); not for the empty "because dice say so."

So as we realised he'd be obliterated on hit point damage (because like an idiot, I'd annouced the crit before I realise what it meant), I "remembered" at the last second the monster the monster ws power attacking (it might even have been true, I forget whether or not I genuinely forgotten to include PA in the equation) and that meant the monster missed the confirmation roll. (I have no idea or whether this was true.) As a result, said character still went down like a sack of potatoes (so dramatic tension still achieved and the other PCs had to frantically to resuce him), but, with the addition of power attack damage but sans double damage, he was still on living negatives.

(Once they get to level 9, so long as it's not the cleric, this never needs to be a concern, of course.)

[MoiMagnus]

Do you use these as a ref or do you always allow players to roll Perception-related checks themselves?

I used to let players make their own but realized later that if I made the Perception/Insight/Investigation/Deception checks secretly, it can be really fun.

Give me your viewpoints as referees and players, please and thank you.

It depends.

For D&D, we usually play with "all player rolls are public, and DM rolls are semi-public (not hidden, but you're not supposed to look at them specifically, as you might deduce from them information you're not supposed to have)".

In fact, in most games, we don't use hidden rolls, unless when the Players are not supposed to know that a roll happened at all.

For more "DM-controled" games (like Paranoia), hidden rolls are frequent, and it is assumed a hidden roll is a roll the DM actually chose the result of, but might take in account the suggestion given by the dice if he does not have a clear mind on how the action should resolve.

[Ashtagon]

If the players are actively looking for something, they can roll themselves, out in the open. If its a passive check where the act of rolling would reveal that something is there, I do it myself.

I search the room.

Okay. Roll a Search check.

I rolled a 1.

You find nothing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's something out there.

Sometimes, knowing what you rolled will give useful information about whether the information the GM provides is accurate.

[LordEntrails]

face to face, the players roll in the open. Online (using Fantasy Grounds) we use the dice tower and the rols are hidden.

I prefer hidden and so do my players online, but face to face, I somehow find it emotionally ... unstaisfying to have the DM roll. But, online I don't.

[Keltest]

I search the room.

Okay. Roll a Search check.

I rolled a 1.

You find nothing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's something out there.

Sometimes, knowing what you rolled will give useful information about whether the information the GM provides is accurate.

That would be actively searching something, and therefore A: I would have the player roll and B: their conclusion is faulty, because it was an active search. If there was nothing there to find, it wouldn't matter what they rolled, nothing magically appears on a poor search roll instigated by the player.

[Galithar]

That would be actively searching something, and therefore A: I would have the player roll and B: their conclusion is faulty, because it was an active search. If there was nothing there to find, it wouldn't matter what they rolled, nothing magically appears on a poor search roll instigated by the player.

Did I miss something? Who said there was nothing there to find?

[Thinker]

I search the room.

Okay. Roll a Search check.

I rolled a 1.

You find nothing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's something out there.

Sometimes, knowing what you rolled will give useful information about whether the information the GM provides is accurate.

I'd ask why you're bothering to roll for the search if there's no pressure for them to search quickly or if nothing interesting might happen. That's a waste of time. Any action where there's no interesting outcome, no pressure to succeed should simply happen, and it makes logical sense for it to happen in the context of the game.

[Keltest]

Did I miss something? Who said there was nothing there to find?

Nobody. Hence the use of "if".

[Galithar]

Nobody. Hence the use of "if".

That does nothing to change the fact that they THINK there is something and have reason to believe they missed it. The if doesn't change the problem, though it changes my response slightly that you are hanging on the if.

The point of the secret roll is to not give them the chance to make that assumption. If there's nothing there the result could be they continue to search thinking 'I just missed it from a bad roll'. Now you can tell them 'no move on you only get one check' but that's kinda taking agency away from them. Now this interacts with some systems 'don't roll if there's nothing interesting to come of it' but I'm keeping this system agnostic as much as possible and not all systems say that.

It matters less when there really isn't anything there, but it matters greatly when there is something. They rolled a 1 and then decide 'I'm going to take 45 minutes to fully investigate every inch of this room'

[Keltest]

That does nothing to change the fact that they THINK there is something and have reason to believe they missed it. The if doesn't change the problem, though it changes my response slightly that you are hanging on the if.

The point of the secret roll is to not give them the chance to make that assumption. If there's nothing there the result could be they continue to search thinking 'I just missed it from a bad roll'. Now you can tell them 'no move on you only get one check' but that's kinda taking agency away from them. Now this interacts with some systems 'don't roll if there's nothing interesting to come of it' but I'm keeping this system agnostic as much as possible and not all systems say that.

It matters less when there really isn't anything there, but it matters greatly when there is something. They rolled a 1 and then decide 'I'm going to take 45 minutes to fully investigate every inch of this room'

Why is that a problem? This isn't a passive spot check, they actively decided to initiate the search to begin with, and not just with the subsequent roll, but the initial roll. Its not metagaming, they just legitimately think theres something there and are determined to find it.

Sometimes the players will be wrong about something. Let them be wrong. Theres no harm unless they start spending an hour of real time trying to find the hidden door that isn't there, at which point the DM's job is to throw the book at them after about the 3rd search that comes up empty.

[RedMage125]

Sometimes, knowing what you rolled will give useful information about whether the information the GM provides is accurate.

And sometimes, this is exactly why the DM makes the roll for them.

I roll for my players when they search for traps, specifically. Especially when it's the trap searching specialist who looks.

Because these 2 things happen:

Player rolls a 4 on the die.
DM: you find no traps.
Player: ok, this thing is probably trapped, but I didnt find it, let's be extra careful.

Or

Player rolls a 19 on the die.
DM: you find no traps.
Player: totally not trapped. I open the door/chest/whatever.

When I roll for them, this does not happen. The Player then has their character behave as if he rolled well and found no traps, because he was confident that his search was thorough.

That's the only roll I make FOR them. However, when they ask to make Perception/Spot checks, I will roll a die behind the screen as if making a Stealth check, no matter what. Same goes for Insight/Sense Motive checks. I will roll Bluff for said NPC no matter what. I do tell my players, in advance, that any NPC who believes he is telling the truth gets a +30 circumstance bonus to Bluff checks, however. So when I tell my players "he is telling the truth", they usually believe him, because they are willing to immerse themselves enough to go along with the story. It actually has happened, in Age Of Worms, that my players attempted to Sense Motive on a seemingly helpful NPC who was actually a vampiric silver dragon working for the enemy. Her Bluff check was SUPER high, and they missed the opposed check by only 2 or 3 points, but they continued to believe she was just being truthful.

[Jay R]

Any general rule has holes in it. Have a general rule, with a perfect willingness to make an exception at any time.

My general rule is that players make rolls if they know the rolls are happening, and if their characters would know the results immediately. But I make rolls privately if the fact of the roll gives them information, thereby robbing them of the possibility of learning it in play.

For example, the party walks into a cavern. I quietly make DC 20 perception rolls. They all fail. One player says, "Pollyanna looks up at the ceiling." I say, make a perception roll. If she succeeds against a DC 10, she sees the dire bats perching in the darkness.

But (like so much in RPGs), this requires the two basic rules for a comfortable game:

A. Be trustworthy, and only play with players who will trust you.

B. Only play with players you can trust, and trust them.

[Psikerlord]

My strong preference is to roll as much as possible in the open. At the start of an adventure I get everyone to make 10 x d20 rolls that I keep as a list. If I need a secret roll (very rare), I use the PC's list.