Brian Stanfield

Forget it kid, you'll shoot your eye out.

Something like that. Players like to roll dice because it makes them feel like they have control over their own fate. But sometimes you don’t want them to know the result. My guess was to use a box and let them shake it or something like that. Behind a screen works too. Mostly I was just curious if anyone has ever used a particular approach to doing this. For some reason this thread turned into some sort of “trust issues” rant.

@Steve Long Maybe you should consider setting up a Patreon campaign or something like that. There are enough people here who I’d imagine would throw in a little cash on a regular basis to help support the Q&A forum.

The opposite, actually: allowing players to make the rolls themselves, but keeping the results hidden (like in a covered box or a shaker or something). The idea is that if they roll a 9 on their Stealth Skill, they have a pretty good expectation of it having worked. If they roll a 16, they'll know it probably didn't. But if they roll a ?, it opens up for a lot of role playing possibilities. Did they hear me sneak into the room behind them? Do I keep hiding for a moment to be sure? Do I go ahead assume surprise and line up an attack? Can I take extra time to take aim without them noticing? That sort of thing. It was just an idea I'd been playing with in my head, and wondered if anyone had any experience with this sort of thing.

Aaaannnnnnnd just like that, I came home from chemotherapy on Thursday and found myself eating crackers in bed . . . .

Thanks everyone. I didn't mean to ghost my own topic. I had to start chemotherapy again with very short notice and my time and energy has been taken up with that. I always forget about the list of pre-rolled results made by the players themselves. That seems like an obvious solution to the mechanical problems I was having a hard time with. Lots of good input on when to do it as well. Thanks for the suggestions!

Tell me about how you conduct the rolls . . .

It's been a while since I've posted, but I miss those long gameplay discussions with lots of great bits of advice. So here goes: I've been fiddling with the idea for a while to use hidden or secret die rolls for certain types of situations. I've never really liked having the GM do all the rolls behind a screen because it takes away, at least on the surface, from player agency (some of us remember the bad old days of D&D using this tactic). But sometimes you don't want your players to know if they've succeeded, or by how much. Some examples could be: a stealth roll while trying to hide from a pursuer. Did he see you hide around the corner? Are you sure? you set an explosive to go off at a certain time after you leave. Will it succeed? you want that guy at the bar to give up some information. You try to use a Persuasion roll, but did it work? you're absolutely positive that you take a right at the fork in the road to get back to the rendezvous point. You roll an Intelligence check, but did you succeed, or was it a critical failure? You get the idea. I want to avoid meta-gaming the rolls and to leave some doubt in the players' minds. There is a lot of potential value in these sorts of results remaining secret from the players. But how to conduct the rolls without leaving them feeling scammed? My thought was to use a box, throw in the proper dice, and let the players shake it without seeing the results. They get to make their own rolls, so they don't feel cheated, but they also don't actually know the result. Has anyone done this before? Am I missing some obvious drawbacks to this approach? Are there better ways of doing it? I'd like to pull from the collective experience of everyone here. Let me know what you've tried, what's worked, and also what hasn't.

Got it. If you ever see fit to trust my conscientious use of font you can send me a private message! 😉

That's a dirty trick! Out of curiosity, does changing the font create a problem for you as an administrator? Or is is a potential uniformity issue?

We used to be able to use different fonts in our posts. I used to start every post with [font=times] in order to get a serif font, because as my editor friend once said, "Sans Serif fonts are an abomination!" I like to use the Times font mostly because it makes italics much easier to see in a post, and I do like to use my italics. That trick doesn't work anymore. Has it simply been weeded out with the latest update of the HERO site? Just curious . . . .

I would totally agree here, except that I once saw Ernie solve the problem of "not eating crackers in your bed" by eating crackers in Bert's bed instead. Some crackers (albeit very few) really do matter to some beds. But in the spirit of your overall message, we do in fact tend to take ourselves waaaaay to seriously in these discussions, and probably do deserve to sleep in the beds we make for ourselves, crackers or no.

Yosemite Sam? I mean, c'mon, he's the rootin'est, tootin'est, gosh-darn shootin'est . . . .

It may not be what you're looking for, but I think it is: go to your "Profile," then click on "See my activity," and then scroll down on the left to "Posts," and it should get you want you want.