(Can I just chime in here and say how refreshing it is to have civility on an online forum? Bravo to the both of you!)

I only bother with secret rolls on things where they may not know if they passed, such as a guile test or a when they are trying to pass off a disguise. There are many times when the outcome may not be immediately known to the characters. Here's how I do it:

I let my players roll their pool, including any boost or setback dice. That way, they know how the various environmental or situational factors affect them and have a general idea of their success chances.

I roll the challenge (purple) dice behind the screen. I have the players respond to me with a net result from their pool and modify it with my pool. I signal this sort of roll to my players with "I've got your purple". When they hear this, they know I'm rolling the difficulty dice.

This method has worked very well throughout our years long Warhammer campaigns and seems to be working very well with the new Star Wars campaign.

NezziR said:

That's how I'd imagined doing it, but I'm interested in testing out the fully open narrative method others are advocating. It will probably take a few sessions, and if I find the players can't adapt and act on character knowledge, not player knowledge, then this would be the alternative.

I tend to agree with Nezzir. I've been keeping more information out in the open lately, and EotE helps with that mentality. Does it really matter if the player knows the target number to hit orcs # 1-12? I think the character would figure that out pretty quick, and it saves bookkeeping. It's the same with lockpicking or a lot of social rolls. The character may not know his exact difficulty going in, but he's gonna figure it out pretty quick. Just give them the difficulty. You throw out about five seconds of realism and save yourself an extra thing to keep track of.

The trouble really comes in with "notice" checks, whether against stealth or some sort of deceit. I don't even really like the players to know such a check has been made. As a player, I don't like knowing much more than my character. "You're walking into a trap, but pretend you don't know that," is not a fun roleplaying challenge (though really, when are PCs not walking into a trap?).

I haven't found an ideal solution. It probably involves something other than dice. Secret thunder behing a gm screen is kind of a dead giveaway when everything else is out in the open.

NezziR said:

Thanks much, I will add this to my notes!

Question - The RAW typically have the referee interpreting disadvantages/despair and the player interpreting advantages/triumphs. Since part of the results are secret, how are you dealing with this? The players will not know the net amount of disadvantages/advantages, so you as referee are interpreting advantages secretly for the players? The players WILL see a triumph roll. Is there a problem of the players interpreting the triumph without knowing whether the action was a success or failure?

The Grand Falloon said:

Years ago using d20 I sometimes would roll several d20's before a session and have their results in order on a scrap piece of paper. If I needed a secret roll, I picked the top of the list then scratched it off, so the players would not hear/see me making a die roll. You could do the same with EotE by having a table of pre-generated die results (for all dice) to choose from, starting at the top.

Or, have a smartphone or Ipad behind your screen with the dice roller app and volume turned off?

Sturn said:

Not a bad idea. Gonna have to roll a heck of a lot of dice though.

Or, have a smartphone or Ipad behind your screen with the dice roller app and volume turned off?

No way, that's where I have the entire game soundtrack running from!

Aside: So, I'm new here, and this is my first time using quotes and smileys and such. Is it just me or does this forum have some weird issues goin' on? And the smiley names are in… is that Spanish?

TGF:

the problem with quotes and this BBS is that it hides that it's actually a richtext environment… none of your additions show up outside the top level quote. The board here does NOT use BBScript

The way I may my multiple-chunk quotes here is to copy the whole quote, paste it several times, and trim chunks out until each chunk is just what I'm responding to..

Nezzir:

in combat, not knowing success result when you roll a triumph absolutely a MAJOR issue - because a Triumph with no successes remaining is a miss, and thus can't crit, but a triumph with at least its own success intact allows (and usually is best as) a critical hit.

aramis said:

I can't imagine ever using a secret referee roll for a player shooting at someone*. Secret rolls would be used only when the player/character shouldn't know anything is going on or wouldn't know success/failure. The most common use could be Stealth vs. an unknown NPC's Perception. Or perhaps Perception vs. a mechanical trap.

*I guess I could imagine a PC choosing to fire a blaster into a very dark hole hoping to kill whatever is hiding down there, but not being able to see his results.

I suppose you need to divide the secret rolls into two types:

1. PC is knowingly attempting something, but won't know the results. PC rolls the good dice, Referee rolls the bad dice behind a screen. The PC can guess at how well he did by looking at his own results. The Referee secretly interprets ALL negative or positive results.

2. PC has no idea that anything is going on. Referee rolls the action without the player knowing (using an app or pre-rolled table) and again interprets all of the results, negative or positive.

The only time I have ever made hidden rolls is when i've actually been sitting behind a screen. Which isn't often because I either don't have one for a certain game or I am not sitting. I tend to walk around when Gming and do all my rolling along with all the players out in the open. I don't worry about giving players info because it is a game. Much like in "scary" movies we know or can anticipate when things will happen, I am all right with the players being aware of what is going on. It is easy enough to put in modifiers to rolls to show characters caught off guard or whatever. Its just a style of play so do whatever works best for you.

And I have to chuckle at the cheating remarks. Had a guy like that in my group, changing or lying about die results. Basically we just let him do it. For some it is a style of play. We saw no point in confronting him about it and calling him out because beyond that idiosyncracy he was a great guy and got along great with everyone.

I keep hidden rolls to the minimum, but I use them. I try to limit them only when the PC is the pasive participant of the action, like a perception roll to notice if you are being followed. There are situations where I just don't want to bother the players with metagaming head haches. I don't think it is a matter of trusting the players (which I do fully), but I think it is a bit naive thinking that the player character actions won't be affect by the metagaime information (or lack of it).

For example, If out of the bluff I ask for a perception roll, the players will know there is something going on, a trap, someone sneaking on them, a hidden clue…"something", and this something is different from "nothing", which will for sure affect the players reaction.

Regarding the comparison between the FATE system and the custom dice from EotE (or WFRP 3 for that matter), I think they are two worlds apart. The FATE system is by far much more narrative and cooperative than EotE. The mechanics of games like The Dresden Files are totally built arround the concept of GM and Players working cooperatively to build up not only the story, but the setting as well!

While one may say that the dice pool concept in EotE encourages players to contribute to the narration of the history, actually, it is not that different as to asking a player to narrate the dice outcome of any other rpg. The only difference is that in EotE the dice outcome is just richer (and therefore probably more fun) than in other rpgs where typically you only have degrees of succees and degrees of failures.

My two cents,

Yepes

Yepesnopes said:

Not sure I agree with this. I don't think Fate (it stopped being FATE several years ago) is world's away from Edge or WFRP. GMs and players can use the same mentality and skills in Fate as they can in Edge. In a lot of ways, granting other players boost die is similar to creating advantages in Fate. There are many other parallels as well. Obviously, the systems are not the same, but I think they have a lot of similarities.

cparadis said:

Probably we can discuss on this and we won't agree, as it happens with many discussions made through the forums.

For sure we can find some similarities between The Dresden Files and EotE (or WFRP 3), but my point is that regarding cooperation and narrative approach, there is nothing in EotE or WRFP 3 that was not already there before, all I can grant you is that EotE and WFRP 3 put it there in words with a fixed mechanic and add a bit more flavour with the different dice outcomes (which is by the way a very nice inovation).

I have been playing rpgs for many years (as most of us) and I have been using things like the "assist manoeuvre" since the begining, in games lile Rune Quest or Role Master. There difference was that we had to invent the bonus or the effect of the "assist" on the fly as a function of the player narration instead of the fixed boost die mechanic found in EotE (or WFRP 3). Similarly, granting boost dice due to enviromental or situational effects is no different as to granting bonus /malus in a traditional rpg, appart of course from the fact that the boost /set back die have a richer outcome as compared to just a bonus /malus in a roll.

Other similarities are for example the one present in wfrp 3 with the fortune points, where you can spend one to, for example, all of a sudden make appear an item you needed, or find a door open while fleeing from an enemy etc. But again this is not new! it dates back to Warhammer 1, where you had fortune points and something call a "luck roll" which was not linked to any skill but rather to something call "luck".

I won't enter into detail because it would need to describe the mechanics, but in the Dresden Files the narrative impact a player has on the history goes much much further than in EotE or WFRP 3.

Said that, don't take me wrong, the engine of EotE is great, but I think that some concepts aren't that new, just writen down in the book. Which of course is good for old and new players a like, specially for those too used to d20 games ;p

Cheers,

Yepes

cparadis said:

In practice, FATE as a game is all about the Fate Point economy. Including Dresden Files. Mainly because you have to use them to invoke or compel.

Edge is far less driven by metagame constructs - the Destiny Point is only slightly less metagamy, but has far less impact overall, and is less useful. And not anywhere near as essential.

The highly pervasive metagame currency aspects of the FATE engine make it very different in play, despite some shared conceptual underpinnings.

@aramis: Thanks for giving the short explanation, I was not able to synthesize this point

Although I am not sure I will use the term metagame since in those games the narration of the history is shared between players and GMs. On the other hand, it can be that I am not grasping 100% what you mean by metagme…

I'm not sure having the GM roll only the difficulty dice in secret works. For spending DP the player is at a disadvantage of not knowing the full pool while the GM does. Or is the DP decision made before the pool is created?

Anyway it sounds like a lot of fun to fail my disguise roll and my character not know it even if I as the player do. I have to RP around that type of thing all the time. I know what a thermal detonator can do but does my Ewok character?

I can know that as a player I failed but still play my character accordingly. I think that's the whole point of this style of game. Maybe I failed the disguise but rolled a triumph or a bunch of advantage. The enemy knows I'm in a bad disguise but maybe they think I'm someone else in disguise and not the character in disguise and something interesting happens. Either way I can play my charcter as if I think I succeeded.

I like how much this game asks of all the players.

I agree that there are subtleties to the dice pool rolling, DP protocol, and who interprets the results that are very unclear from the rules.

@Yepesnopes two points. First, I'm not sure what "not being new" has to do with whether Edge is "worlds apart" from Fate. A lot of things in Fate are not new. Second, don't forget about obligation which is a very effective way players shape the history and environment of the game. You're probably right that we won't agree on how similar the games are, especially given it is an inherently subjective evaluation of a relative judgment. I only wanted to post a reply so that other Fate fans like me would not be put off by hearing that the two games are "worlds apart." I think fans of Fate will really like Edge and will not see it as limiting their narrative or cooperative gameplay.

cparadis said:

We agree on something

Yepesnopes said:

The metagame is things outside the story driving elements of the story and/or player decisions about how to have the character act.