For conflicts that occur offscreen, but whose outcomes can impact PCs, how do you determine results? Do you tell the story you want to tell, only rolling for outcomes the PCs are directly participating in? Roll for all combat outcomes, including scenes the PCs are not acting in? Some combination of both, depending on circumstances?

Completely depends on the circumstances, and how much I'm feeling indecisive about the outcome I want.

E.g. 1: 2 captives of the slavers have been made to fight each other to see who joins the crew. I'd decided which one, so no rolls needed.

E.g. 2: Astrogation check for how long it takes the villains to reach their destination, I'm not bothered and happy to leave it to fate, so I made the roll.

For me, I pretty much only roll if the PCs are onscreen. If they are in the middle of a firefight that includes multiple participants, I will generally roll in some manner, even if it is a pseudo-mass combat check, but I try to avoid having a bunch of NPCs rolling as it slows the game down unnecessarily if they aren't targeting the players or important NPCs.

If you were to have a gunfight between two important NPCs off-screen, I'd probably roll for it and let the dice decide the outcome (or even just flip a coin), but most of the time I'd just tell the story I want to tell, as you put it. The thing about rolling for stuff that happens off-screen is that it becomes a question of when do you stop. Do you roll for everything that tangentially connects to the PCs?

You build the world around the story. Do you think GM Filoni bothered to roll to see if Admiral Constantine would follow Thrawn's orders and stay in position? He might've and had Thrawn roll a ton of blanks and then had Commander Sato roll a check to strategize, and then have the crew roll Piloting (Space) to properly collide with the interdictor, etc. etc. etc. but really he would have just said "Okay, Commander Sato will sacrifice himself to let Bridger escape by ramming his ship into the interdictor, thus making a hole."

Now, in the case of, say, for example, a rival bounty hunter chasing the same quarry, I might have him roll Astrogation or Survival etc. to decide timing in relation to the PCs, but again, that is something that fairly directly affects the PCs similar to a chase check.

It really, really, depends on the situation. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer here.

Most concise thing I've heard on this topic is "do you want to leave it up to fate?"

Sometimes you don't want to risk it. Here's a couple examples ...

• You could loose a favorite NPC of yours
• Results could mess over the players
• Players have a vested interest in an NPC
• It could ruin your own short term plans

The same thing applies to excessive "roll to check." For example, a lot of times it can be better to flat out tell the player "yeah, you know about it" rather than making a knowledge check.

It also depends on how far off screen it is. The further off screen, the less necessary rolls are. = If it's off screen in the next building over, the players will want you to roll. If it happened at some point between 3 sessions ago and now? Don't roll.

In my opinion, if a PC isn't directly involved, don't worry about rolling. Otherwise, you are just playing a bunch of GMPC's. Now, if a PC can give advice via comms, or is otherwise involved, let a roll help determine what's going on.

Sometimes, it can be a bit of both.

Example: In the campaign I run, a PC who was trying to score a long lost treasure found a centuries-old droid that was said to have information leading her to her goal. The droid was in desperate need of significant repair to do so. One of the other PCs, a droid tech, was going to perform the repairs. I knew I was going to play out the treasure hunt, but at the same time, wanted the droid tech to have something to do (as he's said he sometimes feels left out). So, there were going to be checks - tough ones - to repair the droid, but if he failed to repair the droid, the entire treasure hunt would then be aborted. So, he was always going to repair the droid...the rolls were really to see how well he did so, with the results determining how clear the information retrieved would be. Meanwhile, though, in describing the difficulty of the repairs, I played up the possibility of "failure" accidentally destroying the droid's memory core or some such.

I roll a Force dice. White = it goes in the PCs favour, black = it doesn't.

1 hour ago, Talkie Toaster said:

I roll a Force dice. White = it goes in the PCs favour, black = it doesn't.

Nice and simple, might try that one some time. It even still comes with degrees of success/failure still, with the number of pips.

3 hours ago, Talkie Toaster said:

I roll a Force dice. White = it goes in the PCs favour, black = it doesn't.

I’ve done this for some situations from time to time, too.

Only roll for stuff the PCs are actively taking part in, though Toaster's option for when a "coin flip" is required is good too.

But yes, if the players aren't involved, it just happens.

There’s also a matter of (as suggested in my earlier post), if the players failing a roll will grind the adventure to an irrecoverable halt, it shouldn’t be a rook (or the roll should signify something other than pass/fail at a task).