I was all for hidden rolls up until after a few sessions of GMing, it really does give everyone the best room for narrative.

Side note here. So if you are not doing open rolling and the GM rolls the baddies skill to sneak up on a PC, the baddie fails and generates threat/advantage, this cannot really be resolved.

if I am doing open rolling and have the PC make a skill check with the difficulty being the sneaking NPC baddie, I can explain the situation in the terms of the success/fail and advantage/threat.

So if the PC does not notice this dude sneaking up on him, but he has some advantage, I may use that to allow the character to get that creeping feeling, like he is being watched. I may allow him to pull his weapon, but usually in this case I would provide him a boost to either his "initiative" check, or boost to his next action "for being a little on EDGE"

If I hide my rolls, I can't really resolve the threat/advantage thing, and that is really a huge part of this game.

it still really boils down to what works best with you and your group. For my Group, open rolling is doing great.

It doesn't warrant an answer. That would be a waste of my time and yours.

Since I started GMing AoR, I've only done one half of a roll in secret. Why only one half? It was specifically in one of the situations that has been mentioned above - I felt it was a situation where a failed roll would have given too much away. I'll spoiler the situation here for anyone who hasn't played through Takeover at Whisper Base / Operation Shadowpoint:

I had the player in question roll the positive dice (including a few boost die for having done some good research homework before trying the action) while I rolled the negative die behind the screen. The players could see that they had rolled fairly well (multiple successes and advantages), but not how they would be cancelled out by what I rolled.

In case you're interested, they succeeded in the roll, but they didn't know it until later as the story then progressed. Personally, I felt bad about doing it this way and resolved to only do it again in a dire situation - all other rolls would be in the open.

As an off-topic aside, did anyone else look at R2Builder's posted image and spend more time jealously looking around the rest of the Star Wars merchandise before noting the GM screen? :-)

Oh, I just clicked through to Photobucket and looked a few others... now I really am jealous... :-)

Thanks. Yeah, I am a collector of sorts...

Kind of the all around geek. I am still trying to get my new room set up, but I have been uber-lazy lately.

You can take a look at some of my other albums of geekdom if you want to. All items in the photos are from my collection. I need to finish up my room and get some better pics.

http://s1307.photobucket.com/user/Rtwo_Builder/library/?sort=9&page=1

I roll in secret. However that is when I roll at all. Most of the time I have my players roll for whatever checks need to be made, but if I need to make a check on behalf of an NPC I do so in secret. I assemble my pool, show it to my players and give them an opportunity to alter it with Destiny. I then roll and do as the dice say. I prefer to roll in secret incase I have to fudge a roll, like the time an NPC did 19 hits of damage to a PC and my thinking was "Things are hard enough for them as it is...let's dial that down a little bit." The only fudging I do is debuffing my own rolls, never have I simply said someone passes when the dice said otherwise.

Does this create a feeling of the players VS. the GM? I've not seen it, and it is something I regularly stress to the players. I am not there to kill them, I am there to tell an interesting story. So far the only player to die has been the wookiee who had to pull out of the game and so we decided to give the wookiee a heroic sendoff.

I may be 'doing it wrong' as others say...but it is what I am most comfortable with personally as a GM with only 7 months experience.

Coincidentally, the Fear The Boot podcast have just done an episode (353) covering this very topic. They have a few interesting ideas for alternative options. The episode is about 36 minutes long and can be found here (along with index times for discussion of four possible approaches):

http://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/4114

So if a baddie is sneaking up on a PC, I would have the PC roll his perception or vigilance with the difficulty being the baddies skill in sneak. SO I am not rolling the dice very much, and I am ok with that.

Just to add an extra voice to this point, if the players roll the dice they get invested in the narrative. I made this mistake in one of my first games and when reviewing the session realiased that I did it wrong and took an important part of the game away from a friend.

I think as a GM you have to realise that the players, your friends, are working with you to create and exciting story and they are the central protaganists. Everything you can do to put a spotlight on them, is a great boon, and it is even better if they can draw the light onto themselves and tell their own story as to how awesome they are.

Side note here. So if you are not doing open rolling and the GM rolls the baddies skill to sneak up on a PC, the baddie fails and generates threat/advantage, this cannot really be resolved.

if I am doing open rolling and have the PC make a skill check with the difficulty being the sneaking NPC baddie, I can explain the situation in the terms of the success/fail and advantage/threat.

So if the PC does not notice this dude sneaking up on him, but he has some advantage, I may use that to allow the character to get that creeping feeling, like he is being watched. I may allow him to pull his weapon, but usually in this case I would provide him a boost to either his "initiative" check, or boost to his next action "for being a little on EDGE"

If I hide my rolls, I can't really resolve the threat/advantage thing, and that is really a huge part of this game.

it still really boils down to what works best with you and your group. For my Group, open rolling is doing great.

I'm not sure why you're claiming that rolling secretly creates an issue here. If you secretly roll advantage/threat/triumph/despair then you resolve the advantage/threat/triumph/despair just as you normally would. The only difference is that you only describe what the effects were if the PCs would be aware of it. Otherwise, it happens in the background.

For example if, as you said, in the case above the PC fails to notice the person shadowing him but generates some advantage in the attempt (or the NPC successfully conceals himself but generates some threat, whichever), then you might tell the player that his character gets "the feeling you are being watched". Whether you rolled openly or secretly made no difference. Indeed your specific example works much better if the roll was secret since the player now knows that he "feels like he is being watched" without knowing whether this is even true - just like his character. If you rolled openly then he also knows that he is , in fact, being tailed by someone who beat his Perception check (which, ideally, he shouldn't know).

The only issue, admittedly, that secret rolling has with advantage/threat/triumph/despair is that you can't ask the players' input on how they should be resolved. But in most cases that's part of the point - if you're rolling secretly in the first place then presumably you don't want the players to be aware of the results.

I roll in secret. However that is when I roll at all. Most of the time I have my players roll for whatever checks need to be made, but if I need to make a check on behalf of an NPC I do so in secret. I assemble my pool, show it to my players and give them an opportunity to alter it with Destiny. I then roll and do as the dice say. I prefer to roll in secret incase I have to fudge a roll,

I must admit this sounds like an odd way of doing things. If you fully reveal the dice pool before rolling it secretly, then, as you said, the only purpose of doing it secretly is to keep the ability to fudge results.

While it would obviously vary person to person (and perhaps all of your players are cool with it), I expect a lot of players would become very suspicious of this.

i'm not saying there is a right or wrong way. each table belongs to those seated at it.

but this illustrates why i roll in the open.

one of the most exciting moments during our campaign was when a character, separated from the group, was being stalked by a cybernetically enhanced nexu through the ruins of a wrecked starship.

every PLAYER at the table knew the character was being stalked but none of the CHARACTERS did.

the tension was palpable. if that had been a secret roll there would have been zero interaction or fun gained by anyone, myself the GM included.

furthermore, when the beast finally attacked i had the player roll the attack dice of the nexu so they were in 'control' of their destiny.

All rolls are out in the open at my table, I occasionally grab a few dice and do a shielded roll but that is only used at heighten tension moments to make the players paranoid, which is easy and fun for me as my table is mainly from the 1 ^st and 2 ^nd D&D eras of play, and have no impact on the game.

I'm (currently) strictly a player and I don't mind if the rolls are hidden. I don't have much choice, really, but it doesn't matter. I prefer the mystery. It isn't a matter of players being unable to separate IC and OOC knowledge. It's just more fun discovering things instead of being told. I can pretend I don't know what's happening in a movie I've seen but it was always better the first time.

Oh... And there's no right or better way. YMMV. Make it a group decision.

As a DM I've always hidden my rolls, until EoTE.

I liked the idea of everything being out in the open, since the game is about narrative storytelling I wanted the players to have a chance to tell parts of the story too. 99% of my rolls are in the open.

It definitely shows the players that I'm not fudging things, (well, with the rolls at least... wound thresholds on tough baddies is another story). But that is both good and bad for them. Good that they know that I didn't have a bad guy hit them when the reality is that they missed. Bad for them when the bad guy gets a super nasty crit on them and they get no hidden-roll pity from me.

It's a rather freeing experience and I think my players enjoy it.

I used to open roll everything, until I played a game where the GM kept some secrets. This gave us an edge of suspense.

So what I like doing now (in purely situational moments) is have my players roll the positive dice and tell me any subtractions to negative dice, then I roll the negative dice behind the screen to determine the outcome. I only use this for a situation where it would add to the suspense for the player. Yes, a lot of people here are arguing the players should be able to keep IC and OOC info separate... but we're also playing a game and there is plenty fun to be had in not knowing something.

Two instances I use this are trap-setting and sneaking. You set a Trap. Congratulations, it didn't blow up in your face, so you succeeded (as they think they did) until it doesn't blow up at all and now the player is caught off guard too - it can be just as fun as knowing the result before hand. Another is stealth. You're sneaky-sneaky... too bad a despair came up and you tripped the silent alarm (so you don't know it until your character does) - it adds tension. It also works both ways. So you're setting a trap as a distraction because it's for a guy you think is too powerful for you to stop with just a simple trap... except there weren't any failures that came up so when it goes off, you deal more damage than you expected and also have some advantage you can now use - AWESOME.

Now, I don't use this all the time (as I mentioned above), but my players said it really adds to the gaming experience to be left in the dark about some things. The whole theory about not hiding anything because if you are, you don't need to roll at all anyway is also faulted because as I mentioned, there are times when it's fun to not know what's happening. That's why the GM doesn't tell you the whole outline of the campaign before playing - you're in it to figure it out and play along; knowing the route that's going to be taken can get stale.

Anyway, all that to say "if it adds to the gaming experience, then go with it. If it's hurting the game, stop."

Obviously, I'm not the one this question was addressed to, but if evileeyore will forgive me, I'd like to offer up some answers anyway.

1. The stakes are higher for my players.

As GM (I keep wanting to say ST), I'm an advocate for my players and for the story, not for any one PC or NPC. I'm not (or shouldn't be) heavily invested in a particular character's mindset or success. But my players are each heavily invested (especially considering how long my campaigns last) in their character, and in that character surviving and thriving. If a player-character is about to ambush my favorite NPC (or deceive, expose, etc.) "Bravo!" I say. If the opposite is true, then my player is likely to get desperate.

Corollary: Players should also be advocates for the story, and mine are, but Star Wars is a new beast for them, and they are still learning just how much contribution they are allowed, and how to balance their own ideas for the story with those of other players.

2. I've seen their struggles.

I know which of my players (who come from my group of friends) are the strongest roleplayers, and who are not. One of the most experienced players I have tends to overcompensate in the face of secret knowledge, and once nearly got the whole group killed when his character ignored increasingly blatant warning signs. The next most experienced has had so many bad experiences with other GMs that almost any danger to her character makes her nervous. And my newest inductee had to be taken aside and gently corrected when his character started driving hard towards another PC's backstory secret, listed on the character sheet but utterly hidden in-game.

Corollary: This isn't to say that the players will never improve; I'm sure they will. But in some cases, improvement has been slow, and I do bring in new players from time to time, so the issue is not likely to ever go away completely.

Now, all that said, I do intend to do more rolling in the open as I continue my Star Wars campaigns. Most of my previous games have been set in a world of dark secrets and ancient conspiracies, so keeping secrets from the players was a necessity. Star Wars, thankfully, is a nice change of pace.