Non-RNG, GM-controlled "rolls"

I'd like to suggest a feature. In most RPGs, the GM can decide how the dice come up when necessary. This is an advantage of a shield - or a source of endless humor in Paranoia. If the players aren't having fun because the dice gods have anticlimactically killed two party members, the GM in many games will intervene not by heavy-handed miracle, but by letting the bad guys have a few doses of "bad luck" themselves. Now, I'm not wading into the argument about what you should or should not do in your games. What I am saying is that it seems like an insanely useful and simple tool. The GM can specify that the dice on a roll comes up a certain number - either "Player X's next roll" or the GM's roll. The players only see the "roll" and not the manipulation. This allows the GM to subtly adjust encounters on the fly if the RNG has come up with some wonky results. For example, if the low-level encounter against some flunky orcs has had the orcs roll 3 crits, you might be grateful for the option to have the orcs "publicly" roll a few bad rolls rather than derailing your entire campaign thanks to some bad luck. Or maybe you'd rather let the dice fall where they may. I'm just saying it would be a nice option. Maybe you want to be sure the players do notice that musty old book at the back of the library at Miskatonic U - especially since they critically botched their questioning of the police chief. Etc, we could come up with examples all day where GM control of the random element would be helpful. Thoughts?

Well, I was going to suggest faking it with the chat, but you can't write chat that looks like a dice roll. It would probably only be doable with a typed roll, though - in another discussion the devs point out that it's actually harder to fake a graphical dice roll to look right than it is to just actually roll virtual dice and let the programmed physics take their course. So I suspect the "fudgeable" roll, if implemented, will only be possible with a chat command like /roll 1d20+9 and would not show the virtual dice. On the broader topic, I have no problem with it as a thing. I rarely fudge dice but mostly because I just don't care how things turn out; I know however that my characters' bacon has occasionally been saved by a sudden "lucky streak" given by a benevolent GM, and I don't think there's a problem with that! :D

GMs have plenty of power to control the flow of the game, we do not need to undermine the trustworthyness of the system that designed to provide an unbiased selection among options. If you really don't want the game to end, you have plenty of options: - They are left for dead when the orcs rush off to something else nasty elsewhere - They are enslaved and have to work from inside the orcish camp - The PCs die and now play the noble orcs defending their land - Some PCs die and are replaced by other wandering heroes destiny arranged If you are the kind of DM that likes fudging rolls, make yourself a macro that says "I'm totally rolling dice behind the screen, and maybe nudging them a bit" and use /gr rolls as a "suggestion" for the outcome.

The biggest problem with this is that it is impractical to develop with this kind of abstraction layer between players; I'm not sure it's wrong to consider it. It was a fairly common request in other VTTs I've seen. In fact, IIRC, some other systems have an "Approve This Roll" dialog presented to the GM when players execute rolls; there's your fudge-point. Edit: I was too hasty - if you (Shawn) were referring to whether players can then trust Roll20 , I see your point - if the GM can create any roll, without being known to be doing so, it's problematic. I assumed you were talking about the trustworthiness of "gaming" in general, but in retrospect my comment about being judgmental was probably off the mark. I've removed it. In such a situation, you're correct - best to just have a macro that says "The GM Rolls dice behind the screen" and then declare whatever you want.

Exactly, it's the GMs job to provide an interesting game. The players could well EXPECT the GM to save them from angry dice gods (or spice things up), but this is the sort of thing that should be between the players and the GM, and Roll20 should remain trustworthy.

If I need an attack to miss my players or dmg to not kill them, I just add mystery modifiers after I roll the dice.

@ Shawn: Apparently you missed where I said I wasn't going into wading into whether you should run your games a certain way, but whether it'd be nice to have the option to. While your advice is certainly fine, I've been running games long enough to not need a bit of basic advice. Yes, that's one way to address it, and I've been around enough to see it, but I've also been around enough to know there's a great deal to be said for controlling some events you want the players to -think- are random. "Roll20 should remain trustworthy." So the GM has to basically announce "I'm rolling dice and not letting you see them," causing the players to doubt the GM, to preserve the "integrity" of a program? Why the heck would you want to make the GM look duplicitous to protect a machine? Every player knows most GM's fudge results where appropriate, but so long as it is not announced, they pretend not to notice, akin to ignoring stage hands in a theater. That fudging is invisible until you have to call attention to it. Nor is merely sparing PCs from bad luck the only goal. Faking randomness is an incredibly handy tool. To use a non-dice example, one of the best shocks I've ever dealt my players was to have an NPC deal them a very ominous tarot reading in OWoD. The players assumed I'd stacked the deck. I had. Then I let them shuffle the deck and dealt the -same- tarot reading by cold-decking in an identical deck. They were shocked. It was memorable and effective. The principle was the same; I took control and made an apparently random element serve my game and my story to make it more fun for the players. @ Charles: At that point, you might as well announce, "I'm railroading," and you diminish the player's sense of accomplishment, rather than allowing the players to feel the game world interacts with them. Furthermore, there are a lot more things than simple attacks that may require a fudge, as the Call of Cthulhu (make sure they find the book) example might show. Sticking with D&Dish examples, you might want to intentionally fudge a wild magic roll while making it look random, send a grenade-like weapon in the right direction for an amusing result, or keep the Critical Damage table from tearing a PC's weapon arm clean off, rendering them useless.

I'm new to roll20.net, but sometimes when I run a game (used to run DnD 3.5, but now it's Pathfinder) I have been known to fudge rolls if I want/need a specific outcome (I try to do this only when necessary). I think it's a good idea!

Exactly, it's the GMs job to provide an interesting game. The players could well EXPECT the GM to save them from angry dice gods (or spice things up), but this is the sort of thing that should be between the players and the GM, and Roll20 should remain trustworthy. It is the GM's job to act as the rest of the world they are exploring. The players could well EXPECT the GM to be completely impartial in his role as blind luck. So if the players want to be pampered, they should ask the GM to do it. And in this case, there is no need for a dice feature, the GM can just announce what suits him and his players. If you want to cheat, you don't need to hide it. So, I agree that Roll20 should remain trustworthy. I wouldn't play in casino that announces that the rolls can be fixed, even if it is in my favor. YMMV.

I think what Carlos is getting at is that in many games (mine included) the dice take a back seat to the enjoyment of everyone and the story. When I play at a real table all of my dice rolls are behind a screen. I am not sure it is really an issue of trust in the GM. If you don't trust your GM, you won't have a good time no matter what happens. I think that everyone could be satisfied if there was a way that the GM could configure his account to not show the result of dice rolls in the chat. Just that some dice (maybe even how many and what type) were rolled. The result would have to show in the GM's chat of course.

If I need an attack to miss my players or dmg to not kill them, I just add mystery modifiers after I roll the dice. unfortunately that only really works with new player that dont know a creatures stats. what i normal do is GM rolls for most of my dice rolls that way i can just say hit or miss and i can say when i need to that the guards heard you breaking into a house or things like that. the other thing i do is if i know a player gonna die cos i roll a natural 20 i just say it a miss cos they cant see what i rolled. the only problem with GM rolls is the players have to trust you and you have to make it look real not just say it misses every time cos they might die but they don't need to know what you have rolled is my main point here. but i always roll dmg in game

With all my respect for the OP, I disagree with the suggestion. My reasons: The capability for the GM of making a die roll to show the number that he wants, is really weird to me. It's a way of deceiving players, because they are objectively seeing the (randomly?) generated result. One thing is the GM rolling dice behind his GM's screen and then announcing the result (which is a subjective report, and here the players occasionally can guess for themselves, and at their own risk, if the GM fudged or not), and a very different thing is that the dice "magically" show a manipulated result . I'd refuse to play in such a game, and I would prefer to see this out of the Roll20 app. Even with this being optional, players could never be sure of the objectivity of the results displayed by dice. What I think that would be useful in the sense of the suggestion of the OP is to optionally enable a sort of notification for the players when the GM is using the gmroll command, rolling dice for his eyes only. That would be similar to the players knowing that the GM is rolling dice in secret behind his GM's screen. The VTT Fantasy Grounds does this by letting players to see the shadow of the dice that the GM is rolling, but not any of the results. Reporting the results of GM's secret rolls is always up to the GM. That would be enough good to me and it wouldn't be beyond what a GM can do in a face to face game. In some senses, GMs are magicians, yes. But real magic is done without cheating.

Carlos - "@ Shawn: Apparently you missed where I said I wasn't going into wading into whether you should run your games a certain way, but whether it'd be nice to have the option to." Opening that option for games affects me, unless there is a visible trustworthy flag on my game that says: "This game will never fake rolls at the GMs request." Subverting the players expectations is sometimes beneficial, but besides the battle map, one of the major purposes of this system is to provide trustworthy shared dice rolls. To make a roll in secret is one thing, and common for events the PCs do not know and you want to foster realistic uncertainty. To purposefully lie to your players is another, and one that I would appreciate the ability to declare I can NOT do. A feature I currently have and do not want to lose. @Keith - Your proposed system is already in place. /gr 1d20+2 shows up only for the GM, and you can make yourself a macro that says "GM rolls dice behind screen" to let the players know randomness is being determined without their knowledge.

@Keith - Your proposed system is already in place. /gr 1d20+2 shows up only for the GM, and you can make yourself a macro that says "GM rolls dice behind screen" to let the players know randomness is being determined without their knowledge. I didn't know that this is possible to do. Could you show me the syntax for this macro, please? I'm trying to set up a macro for the GM rolling 3d6 "behind the screen", letting the players know that I'm making a secret roll, but for some reason I'm unable to get it working.

Here you go: /me rolls behind the screen /gr 1d20

@Keith - Your proposed system is already in place. /gr 1d20+2 shows up only for the GM, and you can make yourself a macro that says "GM rolls dice behind screen" to let the players know randomness is being determined without their knowledge. I didn't know that this is possible to do. Could you show me the syntax for this macro, please? I'm trying to set up a macro for the GM rolling 3d6 "behind the screen", letting the players know that I'm making a secret roll, but for some reason I'm unable to get it working. When you create your macro, just add a second line underneath the /gr with something like this:

Eric D., Kristin C., Ken Bauer: I just tested this way of announcing my rolls "behind the screen" to the players and it works pretty well. Thank you all.

Subverting the players expectations is sometimes beneficial, but besides the battle map, one of the major purposes of this system is to provide trustworthy shared dice rolls. I don't see why deceiving the players should be more acceptable on a battle map is more acceptable than besides it.

@ Eric D, Ken Bauer: That was very far removed from the idea. To overextend my use of a comparison to magic tricks, that would be like the magician simply looked at the card and announced, "Oh, yeah, it's your card," without revealing it to the audience. What I want would be analogous to the ability to force a card, allowing an audience member to believe he has chosen (rolled) freely when he has actually taken exactly the card the magician (GM) wants him to. ...incidentally, it'd be cool if we could stack decks we make, too. Isn't that playing a trick on the players? Define trick. The GM is an entertainer first. He should only use such a thing to improve the experience of his players. Anyone who'd use it to make his players have less fun shouldn't be GMing anyway. The GM can already override the dice if he wants. (Paranoia, hilariously, tells the GM to reach across the table and set it on the number he wants if he feels like it. It's that kind of game.) Why not let him sleight them as he chooses? To continue the analogy; the magician isn't forcing a card to be a jerk; he's entertaining the audience and the performance he has in mind requires he have the ability to make the audience believe they have a free choice. If a particular magician doesn't want to use card forces...he doesn't have to. I just don't think the GM should run his games that way. Don't in your games. Allow others a tool to use to run theirs. You'd be surprised how often the ability to sneak in a false random result can be used for a lot of techniques to drive a story. Heck, make it an option in the settings and announce to the players that your game never allows the GM to mod rolls if you wish. At a real table top, the players know whether the GM has the capacity to lie to them just based on whether he rolls behind the shield or not. It's a technique. It's a very widely used technique. Like all techniques, it has a place. The odd thing is it seems those strongly objecting are arguing, "Well, it's not -my- technique, so you shouldn't have the option to do so." Curiously, it's saying that the game should not have a tool because they don't plan to use it. The argument seems to be gamist vs narrativist , except the gamist side is basically saying, "You shouldn't be able to do something in your games because I don't like it in mine."

Saying that the GM shouldn't be allwoed to fudge things is a very narrow-minded point of view. In the right place it can be very effective. The entire point of the GM is to make a game that is enjoyable for everyone. If the GM is painted into a corner where a bad roll will upset everything, then they have probably made some big mistakes along the way, but sometimes (such as the Call of Cthulhu example above) it can be good to make players think that they were lucky in what is actually a scripted event. The GM has many many options to fudge or change all other aspects of the game, he can change stats or hitpoints of enemies on the fly, he can even change the environment without the players knowing - the path would have taken them to A, but the GM suddenly decides that B is a better location. Friends and foes can appear as needed, and disappear equally easily, the GM can manipulate all things. So why should anyone have a problem that when (the GM feels it's) necessary a dice roll can be "nudged" to a more favourable (or unfavourable!) outcome? The dice are just a mechanic to help the GM tell the story with the players, they provide some element of unknown risk and reward, but they shouldn't be able to derail the campaign entirely...they're simply a device to enhance the fun. Sure, if you game is specifically player versus player, and the integrity of the dice is paramount then there should be a tabletop flag to set this, but it should not limit others who play their game a different way. -- Pete.

There is a difference between making a hidden roll with players knowing that the GM can fudge them and presenting a decision of the GM as a real dice roll made by an impartial digital device. That's deception, not fudging or nudging. If you can decide the results of any rolls, why roll at all? If there is a possibility for the GM to display any results he wants, there should be a warning somewhere saying "on this table the GM can change any dice result to display what he wants".

If not seeing dice rolls makes the pcs not trust a gm, there's a bigger issue here. I play in 2 campaigns right now where the gm shows every roll and the other he doesn't show any rolls. I don't not trust either. I actually prefer not seeing his rolls, leaves everything more mysterious and fun. "Not oh shit this guy has. +12 to attack while everyone else has +5 kill him!"

That's not what I am speaking about. It is not a problem of trust or gaming style. You can fudge or change anything you want if your players agree to this kind of things, that's not a problem. What I find dishonest is passing a loaded result for a fair unaltered one. Because it comes from the system, your players are going to trust the dice to be fair. I think that if the system is skewed, the GM should be upfront with it with a warning. The players deserve to know if the dice show dices result or GM choices. It just needs a warning. And I play fairly with my players and expect them to act accordingly. I would trust them rolling dices without seeing the result myself.

If such a feature was introduced one could easily make it apparent to the players when they log on. For example, a message like this "In this game the DM is god. Advanced controls, such a Roll Mastering, has been enabled." Could appear. Personally I don't mind since ALL my rolls are 'behind the screen', always, but it does sound like a feature that might be good to have for certain kinds of games.

Roll Mastering is one of the most imaginative euphemism I have seen. Maybe something a little more explicit should be used...

Oh sorry patrick I was responding to carlos' second post

"Controlled Dice" might be a bit more explicit, but doesn't sound as cool ;)

So if this were an actual IRL game, this feature would be akin to using loaded dice?

If you're a GM rolling behind a screen wouldn't you make all your rolls behind the screen? Just make all of your rolls as /gm rolls and you can fudge which ones you want. Unless you are rolling behind the screen, then changing how the die landed, and then showing that roll to the players, I don't see what you are missing from the /gm rolls.

So if this were an actual IRL game, this feature would be akin to using loaded dice? That's what I've been struggling with. I can't come up with a good physical tabletop analogy. It'd be like reaching out mid-roll, grabbing the d20 and plopping it down on a 10 (or whatever) without your player noticing.

Q: If a 400 lb gorilla rolls a d20, what is the result? A: Whatever the hell he says it is. Also: <a href="http://xkcd.com/221/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/221/</a>

That's what I've been struggling with. I can't come up with a good physical tabletop analogy. It'd be like reaching out mid-roll, grabbing the d20 and plopping it down on a 10 (or whatever) without your player noticing. I'm pretty sure that's part of the ninja final exam.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have no desire to keep this option from anyone, as long as I retain the option to have the system display obviously and provably that I CANNOT modify the dice displayed in my games.

As I mentioned in my last post, I have no desire to keep this option from anyone, as long as I retain the option to have the system display obviously and provably that I CANNOT modify the dice displayed in my games. Same thing here, except that I think that fair dicing should be the default and loaded dices the option that should be announced on the game page. Because expecting the dice to fall true is the default expectation of most peoples.

"In this game the GM rules all but chance. The Dice can not be controlled." "In this game the GM rules all, even chance. The Dice can be controlled." Etc etc. As for a good tabletop analogy, it's when I used a die-cup many years ago, and modified rolls using sleight of hand. (my most oft used trick was to tilt the cup to see the result, if it was undesirable I used the cup, when removing it so the others could see, to "nudge" the die) These days I just go with "In this game I am God. If I say you die the roll doesn't matter, if I say you don't the roll doesn't matter, if you give me a big enough bribe the roll doesn't matter. Everyone clear on this?"