How to hide Dungeonmaster dice rolls?

When COVID hit, we moved our D&D 5e game to Roll20 and I ran a couple of adventures from Tales from the Yawning Portal, before I ran Dragon Heist. After finishing the latter, we have just started Curse of Strahd.

In the former two adventure, when I rolled monster attacks, damage, etc., as the DM, the players couldn't see the rolls.  They could see when I rolled an NPC's attacks and damage, which was fine.  I don't know how I set this up, if I did.  I don't remember doing so, it just seemed to be the default setting.

In Curse of Strahd, though, they can see all my rolls, and neither my players or I like it.

How do I change this setting, so that DM rolls are hidden by default?

I have searched for the answer, and seen different - and conflicting - advice, including suggestions to change a setting on literally every monster stat block.  Sorry, ain't gonna happen, I don't have that much free time!  Surely there must be a simple switch or setting for this, for all sorts of obvious reasons?

This browser hates me, I typed a huge screen shot version of instructions but the forum refuses to accept the images so..., the setting you want is in the options of the sheet.  if its an NPC sheet you get to that by clicking the gear that only shows up when you mouse over it in the top right slightly below the edit button assuming you are using the 5e OGL sheet in the session.  Once in there scroll down to Whisper settings.  You either want whisper toggle or never whisper.  Personally I prefer to always roll public and when I need to whisper a roll I either use that new blindcheck api script on myself OR I use the dice roller which is always setup to whisper to myself and manually add the modifier in my head.  The blindcheck api is way cooler though.  If you need to adjust a ton of sheets already created, you could go outside and set the sheet default, which is in the game settings outside the session where you can see the splash screen for your game.  Scroll down to the sheet options and you'll find the whisper drop down.  Once its set there, go into the session, into the settings tab there and scroll  waaaay down and apply session defaults.  This will adjust the players sheets too beware.  

Note that the whisper settings are attached to each individual sheet, there is no actual game setting. These instructions are for changing the defaults for all the character sheets in the game, then applying the settings to all existing sheets. Note that this will also change your PC sheets - you will have to manually change them to a different setting if one is preferred.

Here are the ways to toggle this behavior:

Always Whisper

1. Go to the Campaign Settings Page
2. Choose "Always Whisper Rolls" under "WHISPER ROLLS TO GM" in the Default Sheet Settings
3. Save
4. Load your game
5. Go to the settings tab on the right and scroll to the bottom where you will find a button that says Apply Default Settings. Press it.
6. Choose to update the Whisper settings. Wait a minute or two for it to resolve. There is a thin easy-to-miss progress bar.

Never Whisper

There's a bug in the game settings that doesn't recognize "Never Whisper Rolls", possibly because it is trying to write a blank value. The solution is to use Whisper Toggle. The default is public, so once this is set, all rolls should show.

1. Go to the Campaign Settings Page
2. Choose "Whisper Toggle" under "WHISPER ROLLS TO GM" in the Default Sheet Settings
3. Save
4. Load your game
5. Go to the settings tab on the right and scroll to the bottom where you will find a button that says Apply Default Settings. Press it.
6. Choose to update the Whisper settings. Wait a minute or two for it to resolve. There is a thin easy-to-miss progress bar.

Query Whisper

The default is public, so once this is set, all rolls should show by default unless you choose otherwise.

1. Go to the Campaign Settings Page
2. Choose "Query Whisper" under "WHISPER ROLLS TO GM" in the Default Sheet Settings
3. Save
4. Load your game
5. Go to the settings tab on the right and scroll to the bottom where you will find a button that says Apply Default Settings. Press it.
6. Choose to update the Whisper settings. Wait a minute or two for it to resolve. There is a thin easy-to-miss progress bar.

   7. Have fun!

I have that explanation on a hotkey, it comes up so often...

keithcurtis said:

I have that explanation on a hotkey, it comes up so often...

And I have the thing documented on the wiki:

• https://wiki.roll20.net/Game_Settings_Page#Character_Sheet_Default_Settings
• https://wiki.roll20.net/Community_FAQ#Change_All_Sheets_to_whisper
  
  

Now your comment is there as well. :D

"What a guy!"

So the answer is to change literally every monster stat block and character sheet in the game! (I'm assuming this applies to monster stat blocks as well as to 5e character sheets?)  At least it's a 'do once, never have to do it again' thing.

keithcurtis said:

I have that explanation on a hotkey, it comes up so often...

Yup, like I said, I googled this - and saw lots of conflicting advice in various places - here, reddit, blogs, etc.

Maybe that'd point to a UX design problem, or at least a requirement to have the show/hide dice-rolling options front and centre when someone creates a new game or campaign?

Thanks for your help, folks - I'll implement those changes before our next game and once again be able to fudge things for my players, so when their characters do eventually die, it will at least be somewhat meaningful :-) 

Anton S. said:

So the answer is to change literally every monster stat block and character sheet in the game! (I'm assuming this applies to monster stat blocks as well as to 5e character sheets?)  At least it's a 'do once, never have to do it again' thing.

Yes, but there is a built-on tool to do this automatically in a couple of minutes. I'm not sure how else you could do it and still keep flexibility. Some gms, players or games want or require some creatures to whisper and some not. A global switch would doubtless a poor choice for them.

In the case of modules, they are created as fully-functioning games with no settings unsresolved. I don't think you could have a choice like that be applied before first startup.