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.
That’s part of the job as a DM. I would often have new enemies show up to the fight if it was going too well, or secretly nerf the enemies stats if it was going too poorly.
That’s one way to play. Personally, if I knew the GM was secretly adjusting the game much I’d feel dissatisfied. Why not just give me a sticker that says “You win!” if I’m always going to win anyway?
Though this does tie into a separate bugbear of mine: D&D makes it hard to reason about encounters because the stats are unbound and all over the place. You see four bandits rummaging through the wagon they stole. Do each of them have 8 hp, 16 hp, 32 hp, 64 hp? Who knows! Do they attack once or twice? Could go either way! That is not an innate property of RPGs, but it’s very common in D&D, and I think leads to a lot of “oh this is going badly - let me fudge the stats”. Both because the GM got the math wrong, and because the players assumed these were 8 HP bandits and they’re actually “well you’re 5th level the bandits should be tougher” level scaling bandits.
For the bandit thing, a good DM would say that they look strong or that their equipment looks expensive, or something like that. A decent one would at least answer the player’s question on if they look tough. I agree though that D&D 5E, in particular, has a lot of issues though. It isn’t a great system. It’s just popular.
Personally, if I knew the GM was secretly adjusting the game much I’d feel dissatisfied
the point is to make your death a fun and meaningful one, or at least a good punchline to a run. it’s not ‘to let you win’ - I’ve had characters of my own survive encounters but regret the outcome - I think you’re reducing the dm/gm role to a combat calculator, and there’s so much more going on with a talented one. storytelling is my favorite part of DM’ing and I’ll be fucked if I let a kobold derail the overall plan… but there’s a lot of room for kobold fuckery within that envelope.
I don’t think the GM’s job is merely damage calculator. But this:
I’ll be fucked if I let a kobold derail the overall plan
I rather disagree with. If there’s a plan then why are we rolling dice? I don’t want to play to fulfill whatever the GM’s plan is. They should just write a book. I’ve had many great, memorable, scenes that came about because the players had a challenge and they overcame it. Sometimes after running away and trying again. If I just decided “oh I guess the dragon’s breath rolled really low” then, again, we should just write a story together. Or play a game that doesn’t have such a big random factor.
Like, I also don’t really enjoy a nameless kobold killing Finnigan the Fighter with a fluke natural 20 in what wasn’t supposed to be high stakes. But the solution for me isn’t to fudge rolls, but play a different game. I don’t really like stupid deaths like that, so I don’t play games that facilitate it. I know that’s kind of “baby with the bathwater” for some people, but I really do think some people are fighting against what D&D trends towards, when there are better tools. It’s a hammer. Sometimes you want a screwdriver or a pen.
D&D’ rules may be 80% about combat, but they are all still there to facilitate the story. You aren’t wargaming.
You roll dice to see how the story enfolds. Having it cut off abruptly because of a mistake calculation on the DM’s part while prepping the session goes against the story.
Also, having a player sit around twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the session because their character died is not fun and goes against the reason why we play games in the first place.
Fuck realism, it is a fantasy game we play to have fun. So getting rid of unfun aspects isn’t just recommended, it is a necessity.
I feel like your post and my post are tangential to each other.
Having it cut off abruptly because of a mistake calculation on the DM’s part while prepping the session goes against the story.
As I said, if you don’t want situations where a character meets an abrupt end anticlimactically, don’t play games that do that. That’s a pretty big property of DND and close relatives, but that’s not how ttrpgs have to be. Or, if you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, have some sort of table rule to handle it. I guess “hey GM can you fudge it if we’re going to die stupidly?” would be a rule you could adopt, even. Informed consent is important.
I think it’s because DND is so old. It’s like a black and white tv, and people have all these tips and solutions to solve problems like “I can’t tell if that’s red or purple”, and ignoring people saying “if that’s important to you, get a color tv”. Black and white is definitely a valid choice for media, but it probably shouldn’t be the default.
Also, having a player sit around twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the session because their character died is not fun and goes against the reason why we play games in the first place.
This is also kind of a dnd-ism that can be solved in various ways. Fate’s consequence system, for one example.
Fuck realism, it is a fantasy game we play to have fun. So getting rid of unfun aspects isn’t just recommended, it is a necessity.
I mean, I don’t particularly disagree with this but my point wasn’t really about “realism”. It’s about the social contract. I don’t want a game where the GM is telling a fixed story, and will move the pieces around to keep it on track.
Like, in one game the party was trying to deal with a wyvern that was making trouble in the region. The players had several misfortunes that I could have fudged, but it wouldn’t have been better
They wanted to use some spell or other to keep it from flying away. I rolled the save in the open. It saved, and flew away. Yeah, I could’ve just lied and said it failed, but why even have a saving throw system if you want that? Other games have meta game currency to force issues one way or another. Play that. Or port that into DND.
They tried to poison the wyvern. Rolled in the open to see if the wyvern ate the bait, or spotted the players hiding nearby. It rolled well, and took off before eating a full dose. Could’ve just fudged it, but they knew the odds.
So they followed it to its lair, dealt with the kobold cult (they made friends because this group was great), and had a climactic fight with the wyvern on top of the plateau, by the lake. Including a dramatic “wait if I dive into the water I take less fire damage, raw? I’m a warlock of the deep I’m diving in!” moment.
Or the time they challenged an NPC group to a battle of the bands to see who would claim ownership of the macguffin. The players lost. The NPCs took the macguffin back to the university. But they negotiated a compromise to borrow a similar, weaker, tool, and went on with that. The story was different, but it wasn’t worse. Fudging the rolls to be like “oh wow guys they really borked it up” would’ve felt cheesy as hell.
So yeah, I could’ve fudged it, but I didn’t have to. I’m not writing a book with a fixed plot.
TTRPGs are games where you create stories, and sometimes those stories are “we did something we shouldn’ta, and someone got ganked”. What you’re describing is someone reading you a story book.
The confusion here is there are a few different ways of playing D&D and many different types of DMs out there. The number one rule that matters, imo, is that everyone is having fun and enjoying the game at your table.
Some players don’t want their characters to die, at least non-meaningfully, in a campaign that’s meant to be long-running. D&D is as much about the story as it is about having fun and setting expectations with your players.
If you market the campaign as mostly storytelling and light combat, but then the party rolls up geared for the former but not the later - then people will likely leave feeling frustrated instead of feeling like they had fun when they die to a random encounter. If you don’t set expectations well or prepare people well, then some people will quit playing right there instead of creating a new character.
If I want a high-stakes, combat-geared campaign where people will be expected to create new characters at some point then I feel it’s important to lay that out from session zero.
If I want some middle of road campaign geared towards storytelling and medium combat, even then I’d be letting players know from the start that their characters can die from any encounter if they push their luck too much.
The confusion here is there are a few different ways of playing D&D and many different types of DMs out there.
This is an important point. There’s not really a “right” way to play so much as a “right way for your group”.
I don’t think D&D specifically does a good job of guiding groups into finding what they’ll enjoy. It comes loaded with a lot of assumptions, and then different players can sit down at a table without realizing how different their axioms are.
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
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.
I would say you as a player experience the game best when you are not privy to 90% of what happens behind the DM screen. The more mystery there is, the better. Half the point of the screen is for the DM to be able to weigh if certain things trigger and if they do not, imo. I agree that D&D is at its best when a DM loosely has what an idea for the campaign but leave it up to the players to write the story.
I personally had the most fun as a player when the DM was constantly rolling hidden checks, since out of character you feel that danger is lurking. I agree that you wouldn’t want predictable outcomes for whatever happens next, since the fun is in the mystery.
I would say that the DM has a lot of agency to pick and choose what moments you succeed versus fail. The DM may throw a check at you that requires a 30+ to succeed, but you don’t know that in the moment. Likewise, if you’re in a close fight and one of the players scores a natural 20 and a big hit, then I feel it’s a better moment for the story if that enemy drops from that. Rather than having the foe still stand with a couple hp, it dodges the next two rounds of hits, and wipes the party.
I agree totally, but the rolls that aren’t supposed to be behind the screen shouldn’t be. It removes agency from the players when the DM is deciding what they can and can’t do. Like you said, there are plenty of things they do control. There’s no reason to control other things. There should be hidden checks for things like spotting traps/enemies they aren’t aware of, and things like that. Their actions shouldn’t be hidden though.
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.
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.
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.
For example, if I’m casting a spell on a victim in 5e, I know what the DC is.
For something like “finding the trap”, in D&D that’s pretty open to the GM. I usually tell players the target number before they roll, so they can better decide if they want to use more resources or rethink.
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.
That’s part of the job as a DM. I would often have new enemies show up to the fight if it was going too well, or secretly nerf the enemies stats if it was going too poorly.
That’s one way to play. Personally, if I knew the GM was secretly adjusting the game much I’d feel dissatisfied. Why not just give me a sticker that says “You win!” if I’m always going to win anyway?
Though this does tie into a separate bugbear of mine: D&D makes it hard to reason about encounters because the stats are unbound and all over the place. You see four bandits rummaging through the wagon they stole. Do each of them have 8 hp, 16 hp, 32 hp, 64 hp? Who knows! Do they attack once or twice? Could go either way! That is not an innate property of RPGs, but it’s very common in D&D, and I think leads to a lot of “oh this is going badly - let me fudge the stats”. Both because the GM got the math wrong, and because the players assumed these were 8 HP bandits and they’re actually “well you’re 5th level the bandits should be tougher” level scaling bandits.
For the bandit thing, a good DM would say that they look strong or that their equipment looks expensive, or something like that. A decent one would at least answer the player’s question on if they look tough. I agree though that D&D 5E, in particular, has a lot of issues though. It isn’t a great system. It’s just popular.
the point is to make your death a fun and meaningful one, or at least a good punchline to a run. it’s not ‘to let you win’ - I’ve had characters of my own survive encounters but regret the outcome - I think you’re reducing the dm/gm role to a combat calculator, and there’s so much more going on with a talented one. storytelling is my favorite part of DM’ing and I’ll be fucked if I let a kobold derail the overall plan… but there’s a lot of room for kobold fuckery within that envelope.
I don’t think the GM’s job is merely damage calculator. But this:
I rather disagree with. If there’s a plan then why are we rolling dice? I don’t want to play to fulfill whatever the GM’s plan is. They should just write a book. I’ve had many great, memorable, scenes that came about because the players had a challenge and they overcame it. Sometimes after running away and trying again. If I just decided “oh I guess the dragon’s breath rolled really low” then, again, we should just write a story together. Or play a game that doesn’t have such a big random factor.
Like, I also don’t really enjoy a nameless kobold killing Finnigan the Fighter with a fluke natural 20 in what wasn’t supposed to be high stakes. But the solution for me isn’t to fudge rolls, but play a different game. I don’t really like stupid deaths like that, so I don’t play games that facilitate it. I know that’s kind of “baby with the bathwater” for some people, but I really do think some people are fighting against what D&D trends towards, when there are better tools. It’s a hammer. Sometimes you want a screwdriver or a pen.
Every TTRPG are just mechanics to tell a story.
D&D’ rules may be 80% about combat, but they are all still there to facilitate the story. You aren’t wargaming.
You roll dice to see how the story enfolds. Having it cut off abruptly because of a mistake calculation on the DM’s part while prepping the session goes against the story.
Also, having a player sit around twiddling their thumbs for the rest of the session because their character died is not fun and goes against the reason why we play games in the first place.
Fuck realism, it is a fantasy game we play to have fun. So getting rid of unfun aspects isn’t just recommended, it is a necessity.
I feel like your post and my post are tangential to each other.
As I said, if you don’t want situations where a character meets an abrupt end anticlimactically, don’t play games that do that. That’s a pretty big property of DND and close relatives, but that’s not how ttrpgs have to be. Or, if you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, have some sort of table rule to handle it. I guess “hey GM can you fudge it if we’re going to die stupidly?” would be a rule you could adopt, even. Informed consent is important.
I think it’s because DND is so old. It’s like a black and white tv, and people have all these tips and solutions to solve problems like “I can’t tell if that’s red or purple”, and ignoring people saying “if that’s important to you, get a color tv”. Black and white is definitely a valid choice for media, but it probably shouldn’t be the default.
This is also kind of a dnd-ism that can be solved in various ways. Fate’s consequence system, for one example.
I mean, I don’t particularly disagree with this but my point wasn’t really about “realism”. It’s about the social contract. I don’t want a game where the GM is telling a fixed story, and will move the pieces around to keep it on track.
Like, in one game the party was trying to deal with a wyvern that was making trouble in the region. The players had several misfortunes that I could have fudged, but it wouldn’t have been better
They wanted to use some spell or other to keep it from flying away. I rolled the save in the open. It saved, and flew away. Yeah, I could’ve just lied and said it failed, but why even have a saving throw system if you want that? Other games have meta game currency to force issues one way or another. Play that. Or port that into DND.
They tried to poison the wyvern. Rolled in the open to see if the wyvern ate the bait, or spotted the players hiding nearby. It rolled well, and took off before eating a full dose. Could’ve just fudged it, but they knew the odds.
So they followed it to its lair, dealt with the kobold cult (they made friends because this group was great), and had a climactic fight with the wyvern on top of the plateau, by the lake. Including a dramatic “wait if I dive into the water I take less fire damage, raw? I’m a warlock of the deep I’m diving in!” moment.
Or the time they challenged an NPC group to a battle of the bands to see who would claim ownership of the macguffin. The players lost. The NPCs took the macguffin back to the university. But they negotiated a compromise to borrow a similar, weaker, tool, and went on with that. The story was different, but it wasn’t worse. Fudging the rolls to be like “oh wow guys they really borked it up” would’ve felt cheesy as hell.
So yeah, I could’ve fudged it, but I didn’t have to. I’m not writing a book with a fixed plot.
TTRPGs are games where you create stories, and sometimes those stories are “we did something we shouldn’ta, and someone got ganked”. What you’re describing is someone reading you a story book.
The confusion here is there are a few different ways of playing D&D and many different types of DMs out there. The number one rule that matters, imo, is that everyone is having fun and enjoying the game at your table.
Some players don’t want their characters to die, at least non-meaningfully, in a campaign that’s meant to be long-running. D&D is as much about the story as it is about having fun and setting expectations with your players.
If you market the campaign as mostly storytelling and light combat, but then the party rolls up geared for the former but not the later - then people will likely leave feeling frustrated instead of feeling like they had fun when they die to a random encounter. If you don’t set expectations well or prepare people well, then some people will quit playing right there instead of creating a new character.
If I want a high-stakes, combat-geared campaign where people will be expected to create new characters at some point then I feel it’s important to lay that out from session zero.
If I want some middle of road campaign geared towards storytelling and medium combat, even then I’d be letting players know from the start that their characters can die from any encounter if they push their luck too much.
This is an important point. There’s not really a “right” way to play so much as a “right way for your group”.
I don’t think D&D specifically does a good job of guiding groups into finding what they’ll enjoy. It comes loaded with a lot of assumptions, and then different players can sit down at a table without realizing how different their axioms are.
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.
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.
I would say you as a player experience the game best when you are not privy to 90% of what happens behind the DM screen. The more mystery there is, the better. Half the point of the screen is for the DM to be able to weigh if certain things trigger and if they do not, imo. I agree that D&D is at its best when a DM loosely has what an idea for the campaign but leave it up to the players to write the story.
I personally had the most fun as a player when the DM was constantly rolling hidden checks, since out of character you feel that danger is lurking. I agree that you wouldn’t want predictable outcomes for whatever happens next, since the fun is in the mystery.
I would say that the DM has a lot of agency to pick and choose what moments you succeed versus fail. The DM may throw a check at you that requires a 30+ to succeed, but you don’t know that in the moment. Likewise, if you’re in a close fight and one of the players scores a natural 20 and a big hit, then I feel it’s a better moment for the story if that enemy drops from that. Rather than having the foe still stand with a couple hp, it dodges the next two rounds of hits, and wipes the party.
I agree totally, but the rolls that aren’t supposed to be behind the screen shouldn’t be. It removes agency from the players when the DM is deciding what they can and can’t do. Like you said, there are plenty of things they do control. There’s no reason to control other things. There should be hidden checks for things like spotting traps/enemies they aren’t aware of, and things like that. Their actions shouldn’t be hidden though.
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.
Some events in my campaign are doomed to happen no matter what, but I don’t always want the players to know it.
For example if they try a Survival check to track someone who was never even there, I might make a secret Stealth roll plus a million bazillion.
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.
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.
But how do they know what the DC is?
Depends on the system, style, and context.
For example, if I’m casting a spell on a victim in 5e, I know what the DC is.
For something like “finding the trap”, in D&D that’s pretty open to the GM. I usually tell players the target number before they roll, so they can better decide if they want to use more resources or rethink.
Other systems might have more specific rules.