PF2e. #recommend

I have to roll in the open, otherwise I’m tempted to lie about the rolls to benefit the players. I don’t want to, it just happens.

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.

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.

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

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.

Do that many of you really play in these antagonistic as fuck groups? I see so many memes that imply a very a hostile dynamic between DM and players. I think you might need to find a better group if that’s the general atmosphere.

Unless you have something specific, and you should let your DM know ahead of time, for wisdom rolls specifically blind rolls can be pretty fun.

That said, if you roll a nat1 and you DM says someone is trustworthy then that also doesn’t mean they’re lying, so it’s not a huge deal.

I have a feeling that people who spend their time posting memes about shitty relations between players and DMs probably aren’t actually playing that much.

Also, like, every social media platform seems to thrive on conflict, so there’s probably a relationship between spending loads of time engaging with those platforms and having a shitty attitude in general.

A fuckton of people these days play D&D as a pick-up game with randos off Discord or Roll20 and not actually in person with people they know.

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).

with both triggers explicitly on a failed roll and refunds if the extra dice if it doesnt make it succeed so you cant even include mystery if the reroll made it a success.

It works fine as long as they don’t try to use the extra die until after the actual result is clear. So it’s fine if they’re trying to reroll checking for traps, but not if they’re trying to reroll whether or not some creature successfully laid eggs inside them.

You’d generally want blind rolls whenever a player is trying to find something out, like check for traps or see if someone’s lying.

I guess that makes sense. To be honest for me it’s such a social experience who I’m playing with is the biggest thing I care about.

I feel like I would never burn edge, but hold onto it like Elixirs in final fantasy. (Unless you can restore it somehow)

ok so for anyone wandering, most rolls in pf2e are required to be open, except for actions with the secret trait, which the gm rolls in secret. there are very fw of those, and they are only ever used for when a player/pc shouldn’t know how well they went. some examples are: peception checks, stealth, recall knowledge, deception, and some other similar checks that, in real life, you couldn’t really know how well you did

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.

Not really, at least, not anymore.

There are some people that come to RPGs to escape reality and man, do they need it. D&D holds out a promise of agency, power, and control, in a fantasy setting free from real consequences. Provided a player lacks these things in real life, they can cling to it like a life-preserver. Then, take any of that away - as a DM must do - and things can get ugly.

I really want to say that there’s a known and practiced way to get people like this some real help, like a free hotline or website. After all, if it’s going to come up, this is the place it’s going to happen. Sadly, I know of no such resource.