Choosing when to have parity of information between PCs and their players is a difficult balancing act.
Let's look at the surprise roll. You, as DM, have to roll a d6, as do the players. Do you tell them that they are making a surprise check, or do you just tell them to roll a d6? Do you keep your result secret? Or do you openly roll a d6, telling the players exactly what you are rolling for? ("There is a group of goblins you're just about to encounter and I'm seeing if they are surprised.") Does it matter?
My own approach is usually to be as open as possible. I often, though not always, tell the players the reason I am rolling the dice. I don't care about information disparity between players and PCs in this respect. For one thing, I know that the social contract of gaming, and also just plain honesty and common sense, will ensure that the players do not make use of their information disparity to game the system or, more bluntly, to cheat. This, indeed, is probably one of the most important characteristics of a 'good' role player. This is somebody who you can tell, explicitly, "I am rolling the dice now to check if murderous elves who are setting up an ambush manage to stay silent," and who will not let it affect the decisions or actions of their PC.
And more importantly, there is a significant benefit that you get from telling players exactly why they, or you, are rolling the dice: it keeps everyone honest. Everybody knows there is no fudging. This is one of the absolute, most crucial elements for me in what makes a game 'good'. No fudging. That is the starting point from which all else follows.
But there is a limit to how much information disparity you should tolerate. Because information parity between player and PC can be both important and part of the enjoyment.
Let's use an extreme illustration: you don't want information disparity to extend so far that you give the players a copy of your dungeon map, keyed in full. Nobody, not even the best role player, can act as though they don't know the content of the map when making decisions on the part of their PC when it is right there in front of them. It will inevitably affect the decisions they make within the game - and even where it doesn't, the suspicion will remain. ("You're only turning left because you know there is a Sword +1 in that room down the corridor.")
Moreover, it is enjoyable, in its own right, to discover things. I don't think any player would like a complete map of a dungeon they are exploring, nor a complete hex map of the setting. Finding out what is out there, and being surprised by it, is half the fun.
These two competing needs - to have openness and transparency, set against the desire for surprised and mystery - pull in opposite directions. To a certain degree they are irreconcilable. One of the most interesting questions in RPGs for me would be: Which is more important - that the players know that the DM is rolling to see if the murderous elves manage to stay quiet (which preserves accountability) or that the players should be genuinely surprised when a gang of murderous elves ambush them (which is fun)?
One thing I've done is have print out a sheet with random numbers generated in Excel, so I can cross them off, row by row, whenever I want to make a "roll" without picking up dice. It preserves accountability as I can simply show players the sheet with crossed-off numbers, and fun, because it's indistinguishable from any other kind of note-taking.
ReplyDeleteI used to be really against this but you're not the first person to comment on the blog in favour of the notion. I can see its advantages. My main concern would be that you, as the DM, know what numbers are coming up next, which may either consciously or subconsciously affect your decisions.
DeleteIt isn't real unless you roll the dice at the actual decision point. It has to be physical dice with the intention of the roll committed to before they are dropped. It's oracular.
DeleteThat's why I was really against it. I wish I could find the entry I wrote about that, but I can't remember what it was called.
DeleteFound it (http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/irrational-dice-fetishes-and-punch-and.html):
Delete"I was thinking today about dice superstitions, and it occurred to me that the most fundamental dice superstition of all may be that dice must either be rolled in anger (i.e. when they are needed - in a game, or on a random generator table during prep) or entirely idly (for fun), but they should never be rolled in preparedness for a game to be substituted for actual dice rolls. To explain a little further, in case that makes no sense, let's try a thought experiment.
Imagine if, as a DM, you thought it might be useful to roll out loads of dice results in advance, or even generate a load of results entirely randomly without using dice at all (random.org would allow you to create literally millions of such results very quickly), and then simply refer to your list of results in-game rather than actually making dice rolls. You also thought of a way to do this entirely blind, so you had no way of knowing in advance what a given result would be - you eliminated all possibility of foresight. Wouldn't you nonetheless feel horrendous if you did this? Wouldn't it seem like the most heinous act that a DM could perform? Wouldn't it go against everything that is good and true in the universe?"
The way I'd circumvent that argument is by stating that, if restricted in this manner to stealth rolls or information checks, the "roll" is not being made in anger. I wouldn't use this for common mechanics like wandering monster checks, but for the specific scenario you discuss in the main post - discovering the results of things that players aren't necessarily aware of. Obviously, the players will be aware of someone firing arrows at them, for example.
DeleteAs far as foreknowledge goes, if the paper method is not used for -every- roll, I may know the numbers but not the tasks that will call for them, the metric of success, or anything else. A bonus deterrent is that I imagine it would be incredibly tedious to try and manipulate gameplay around my awareness of the dice rolls. "Hmm, so I just need to make sure that the 7th, 10th, and 29th rolls I make are Charisma checks..."
I should also mention that my answer to all of the questions in the Dice Fetishes post is "No, not even in the slightest." Nevertheless, I do actually use physical dice, 19 times out of 20!
I think there's a hard line you can draw:
ReplyDeleteIf the nature of the conflict is that by the next round it's going to be revealed no matter what the players do, then I go ahead and tell them since I'm essentially just moving the "Reveal" forward in time a bit.
If it is is more distant than that I tryta keep it secret.
Makes sense. That's the case with the surprise roll, definitely.
DeleteGenuine surprise.
ReplyDeleteI tend to keep it secret - I only explain why if why is obvious. It's not a question of player honesty - I trust my players. It's that if they know they failed a roll, they'll bend over backward to make it clear they aren't using meta-knowledge. If they don't know if they succeeded or failed, or even if the roll mattered, they can freely use whatever information they do have.
ReplyDeleteI've had people make some remarkable leaps of logic about what could happen with no knowledge of what's ahead, and had people do deliberately dumb things to avoid looking like they're cheating. So I do all I can to allow for the former - and that means not telling anyone things their characters wouldn't know, if it's possible to do so.
Interesting point.
DeleteWhen the dice are being rolled, I want the players to know why. That's why I try to push the die rolling forward as much as possible, so that it happens near the action. Players (at least mine) are great at rolling with it, and there are enough surprises in a dungeon crawl that you don't need the "screw you" moments.
ReplyDeleteGenerally my policy too.
Delete"I am rolling the dice now to check if murderous elves who are setting up an ambush manage to stay silent."
ReplyDeleteI try to be open, but then, in situations like that the players have little or no opportunity to put the information disparity to use. In the dungeon map example, the players have near endless opportunities to exploit the disparity.
I generally tell my players when they're making a surprise roll to build suspense. It's only after the results are done that I reveal what actually "surprised" them. A horde of skeletons! A child running through the streets! A bunny! A corpse in a bed! It's an old trick that was suggested in Ravenloft and with my group it really keeps the tension up. Even when DMing Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, I still do tricks like rolling dice, referencing monster manuals, and writing down the results... just to keep them on their toes.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to "pre-rolling" ..when I ran WGM1 with my group I did figured out a lot of the "random" encounters and put them on a my DM log (including weather) before play. Because of the amount of time spent traveling from settlement to settlement in the mod it made sense to do it. Each session ran smoothly because I knew exactly when an encounter was going to occur.
Yes, it's interesting how well that can work. Just the act of the DM rolling a d6.
DeleteI almost always ask for a specific roll without specifically saying why. I find that this has much the same effect as a dramatic musical cue in a movie. The audience are tipped off that something's about to happen, but they don't know what exactly yet.
ReplyDeletePlus, there's nothing quite like asking for Spot Hidden rolls and having everyone fail--the players understand that they just missed a clue, but they can't have their characters act on this knowledge, and the tension is ratcheted up.
I do that quite a bit too. I think some of the time I ask for a roll without saying why, and sometimes I do ask why. I think probably I do this totally intuitively.
DeleteI tend to use the same tension builder. The only PC complaint is a demand that I tell them whether they want a high or low die number, and an occasional argument over whether someone's favorite die tendency to roll high is luck or proof of deliberate malfeasance.
ReplyDeleteThe psychology of dice rolling is really interesting to me. I understand completely the urge to know whether the number required is low or high. But it literally doesn't matter.
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