In the days of the d20, where there were some checks that the player wouldn't know if he succeeded or not, the GM would roll the check for the character. Whether it was sneaking, or spotting, or whatever, it eliminated a lot of "using player knowledge for a character".

For example, in a game of D&D, the rogue would be searching a room for a lever to open a door. If he rolled the die himself, and rolled super-low, he knows that chances are there could be something there that he missed, so he could encourage his fellow players to try, or try again himself. So, in most similar instances, the GM would secretly roll and let the rogue know if he saw anything or not.

This has come up in our EotE games, as a player was trying to coerce an NPC, to get some info and help from him, failed overall, and rolled a despair on his check. But, the NPC acted totally scared and said he would help us, just wait right there and he'll be back. But, since we knew we failed miserable, the PC went ahead and started shooting things. Sometimes it's hard to not use info if it's right in front of your face, but everyone seems to say let the players roll most of the checks. Should there be times like this, when the GM should secretly roll for a player? Or instead of the PC rolling to spot the sneaking assassin, would it make more sense to have the assassin roll his stealth opposed by the group's perception? Or in the above example, the NPC could have rolled a Discipline check with the inverse of the PC's Coerce as difficulty?

Wasn't there a section on this in the Alternative Rules appendix of the book? I forget (and don't have it to hand).

I would still try to encourage open rolling as much as possible. Try to mix up the effects of threat and despair and make the results more immediate so that players only have a split second at most to react.

For example, I don't let my players roll perception unless they are actively looking for something. The success/failure axis determines whether or not they find the specific thing they are looking for. The advantage/threat axis determines the accuracy of the information, but in a way that only I know. I'll throw them both true and false facts on success/threat situations, which forces them to sort through the accuracy of their results on their own. On failure/threat situations, I'll normally avoid false facts, since they already know they failed. Alternatively, I'll drop setback dice or strain damage as a result of their focused search, such as dust in their eyes on Tatooine or being so distracted by what they saw/didn't see that they cannot focus on other tasks at hand.

For the assassin example, I would usually choose vigilance versus stealth unless the PCs are actively searching for him. I would not ask for a check until the assassin tries to perform a task that would have a direct and immediate effect on the PC. I would then either allow an opportunity to preemptively react depending on the success of the vigilance check. This "instant results" strategy can work for other situations too.

In your coerce situation, I would have avoided the false fear outcome. That outcome would be saved for a successful result with threat, and I would then provide real facts mixed in with false support. If I do this often enough, the players don't know which parts of my information to trust, but they will have to trust some of it. For your failure/despair result, the victim would probably outright defy the PC in question, maybe even having the guts to attempt to call in support through yelling/hidden comlink or offing themselves with cyanide pill or hidden grenade or such.

The way this system works really encourages everything being above board. The player should be involved with spending the results and adding to the narrative.

That said, the few occasions I want to hold back on the outcome of a roll, I roll the bad dice (and keep them to myself) and the player rolls the positive dice. I think that's a nice compromise.

Wasn't there a section on this in the Alternative Rules appendix of the book? I forget (and don't have it to hand).

As far as the GM rolling for the players, I'm not seeing anything, unless you're thinking of passive checks, which aren't quite what would work here, given that they're handled in the open (and can be re-rolled if the passive check isn't satisfactory), so they're prone to metagaming.

Ah, fair does. As mentioned, I don't have the book to hand presently, and couldn't remember the content of that section.

On a related note, I do think that open rolls are a great way to utilize the full benefits and unique aspects of the system. Granted, there will always be boons to a GM rolling secretly, but EotE can work just as well without such rolls being made.

I worried about the OP's question in the beginning, but I have yet to feel the need. With the whole game geared towards narrative play, it makes it a lot easier for the players to act on character knowledge rather than player knowledge.

The only rolls I make secretly are those I use as "idea generators", very useful when I'm winging it. For example, if the players want to go to a shop, a couple rolls for myself might determine how good the shop is, and the attitude of the NPC that owns it. Successes, Advantages, and Triumphs all work favourably for the characters...etc. I only do it secretly because it needs to be quick, and the players don't necessarily need to know what's going on in my thought processes, or which particular "couple of attributes out of potentially thousands" I'm thinking about.

I'd be wary of the PC doing something because they "failed". Its the whole player knowledge vs character knowledge. Unless they are performing an action that has an obvious success/failure the character can know then the character doesn't know he failed.

In the case the OP mentioned about coercing the guy, the characters didn't know they failed. They used knowledge that the character shouldn't know to make a decision.

Open dice rolls always, you explain the situation and have a risk that presents itself to the player. You explain and narrate the risk and dangers, you then suggest that a dice roll is in order:

If you pick up the dice and roll them you will lack the player buy in, the player will just have to accept the results and deal with whatever comes of it. There is a danger here that should something go wrong the player will resent you for it. You may be telling a great story but the players are not participating.

You ask the player for the dice roll. You negotiate with the player the skill to be used, you allocate the blue and black dice and most importantly the player gets a chance to spend destiny points. There is a danger here that a player metagames, but that will diminish over time as the players grow to trust you in your effort to tell a great storey and involve them in it.

I made this mistake in a chase between my players and some Tie Fighters, I should have just had the player make his piloting roll and had the Tie Fighters oppose this roll, that way the Player had his skill in the spotlight at all times and he had his moment to “shine” because of my error I diminished that somewhat.

Consider this example: You are on a Star Destroyer, you have retrieved the invasion plans and are making your escape as an explosion racks the ship. Alarms go off and an evacuation is called for. Lights start going off and back on, secondary explosions can be heard from time to time. The ship will take about 2-3 minutes to explode and there is a chance that a secondary explosion will cause a hull breach.

I would consider this to be bad: GM rolls dice and says “you are all ejected into space and die!!

I would consider this much better: GM: OK I think now we have an idea as to what is going on we should roll and see what comes of it. Would this be a knowledge test of some sort? Player: How about survival? GM: Sure who will make the roll? Player: I have 2 green and a yellow dice. GM: This could be pretty bad, so even though it is an average difficulty I’ll make one dice red to represent how bad it could be if things go wrong. Another Player: Perhaps if I make a Knowledge roll I could help trace the shortest path to the escape pods? (This ends up adding a boost dice.) Player rolls and gets 3 successes and a despair. GM: You hear a loud bang behind you and feel the rush of air going past you, it will sweep you off your feet in an instant.

GM: Now there is a blast door between you and the large hole to space, if one of you could make a hard athletics test you could perhaps get to it and shut to blast door or you could all make average athletic tests to move to the escape pod and avoid further trouble….

If you allow the players to control the dice rolling they take on the problem and start seeking solutions. I think the other thing I have done is to show that even a bad dice roll isn’t and should be the end of things, you take your players out of the frying pan and put them into the fire and yes there is always a bigger fire.

Now, the droid player realising he will survive lunges for the door controls….

I would still try to encourage open rolling as much as possible. Try to mix up the effects of threat and despair and make the results more immediate so that players only have a split second at most to react.

For example, I don't let my players roll perception unless they are actively looking for something. The success/failure axis determines whether or not they find the specific thing they are looking for. The advantage/threat axis determines the accuracy of the information, but in a way that only I know. I'll throw them both true and false facts on success/threat situations, which forces them to sort through the accuracy of their results on their own. On failure/threat situations, I'll normally avoid false facts, since they already know they failed. Alternatively, I'll drop setback dice or strain damage as a result of their focused search, such as dust in their eyes on Tatooine or being so distracted by what they saw/didn't see that they cannot focus on other tasks at hand.

For the assassin example, I would usually choose vigilance versus stealth unless the PCs are actively searching for him. I would not ask for a check until the assassin tries to perform a task that would have a direct and immediate effect on the PC. I would then either allow an opportunity to preemptively react depending on the success of the vigilance check. This "instant results" strategy can work for other situations too.

In your coerce situation, I would have avoided the false fear outcome. That outcome would be saved for a successful result with threat, and I would then provide real facts mixed in with false support. If I do this often enough, the players don't know which parts of my information to trust, but they will have to trust some of it. For your failure/despair result, the victim would probably outright defy the PC in question, maybe even having the guts to attempt to call in support through yelling/hidden comlink or offing themselves with cyanide pill or hidden grenade or such.

To the OP: I have rolled the negative dice behind screen and had players roll their positive dice for the corresponding skill. For example a Vigilance check vs. Stealth for two reasons. 1) sometimes I don't want them to know if they fail and 2) I can compared 1 NPC roll vs. all their rolls.

It has help speed up checks if the entire group is rolling vs. something. For me it also makes sense, if the NPC is stealthing why would he stealth better or worse against different players. His portion of the check, stealth, would be constant wether they see him or not is based off of their portion of the check. That's why I do one opposed roll vs. all of them and compare them.

However, this is rare as others have stated you don't want things to go against the players and they think you are fudging rolls behind a screen to get them.

I sometimes roll the 'bad' dice, so the player doesn't know the opposition's skill. I then say how many fails/threats/despair came up.

The hard and fast rule is.... It depends on your players.

If you have players that you can trust not to metagame, then by all means, I advocate the rolling in the open system.

However.

If I have players I cannot, then I'll roll dice behind the screen for certain things. Like Perception to see if they notice something. I'll never roll anything related to combat behind the screen, unless its another perception like check, but even then I'll probably have the players roll that one.

I would consider this to be bad: GM rolls dice and says “you are all ejected into space and die!!

Basically, if you ever get into this situation you fail as a GM. You should never roll for player death like that behind the screen. I don't even know what skill he'd be using in that example. At any rate, its a bad example.

I think rolling behind the screen is perfectly acceptable, as long as it is handled well. If I miss anything from 4th ed, it was the passive perception. That made my life easy as a GM. If they are actively looking, I let them roll. If not, and something was sneaking up, I used their passive perception. It was easy. This system doesn't have the equivalent of Passive Perception, so decisions have to be made.

With my regular players, who mostly I trust not to use player knowledge as character knowledge (or suspicions, in this case), I'll let them roll the dice for perception when they aren't actively looking. If I'm at a Con, GMing a bunch of players I don't know, you bet your ass I'm rolling behind a screen. I don't know them from Sam, and instead of ruining my game experience and the others at the table, I'd rather just make the quick roll and be done with it.

You know who your players are. If you have one that would metagame, you should roll behind the screen for everyone. For me, it is an all or nothing kind of thing. Either you trust your players enough not to metagame to roll for themselves, or you roll behind the screen.

Honestly, if your players think you are "out to get them" they need help anyway. Maybe if you are a GM with a reputation of one TPK after the other, but I find most people aren't. When I play, if the GM rolls stuff behind the screen, I don't automatically assume he's "out to get me". I just curse his luck, and move on. Its a game. Have fun.

I largely agree with Amanal; open rolling is preferable, especially when it gets the players involved in the story and the encounter more. However, there are occasions when rolling dice in secret creates excitement and tension - though this only really works for tabletop, and as I'm pretty much isolated to the PbP medium of gaming, it's a moot point.

And one other point is the GM fiat: if you're performing a roll that might cause considerable harm to the PC if it fails, you can't help them out a little if the roll is kept in the open (and comes up with a lot of negative symbols); having the dice roll in secret means that you can give them a break in those sessions when the dice just don't want to play nice.

And one other point is the GM fiat: if you're performing a roll that might cause considerable harm to the PC if it fails, you can't help them out a little if the roll is kept in the open (and comes up with a lot of negative symbols); having the dice roll in secret means that you can give them a break in those sessions when the dice just don't want to play nice.

I am going to respond to Shadai by talking to this.

The dice are always playing nice. Those negative symbols are not bad things, they are anti-climaxes that build the overall excitement of an adventure. Think Indian Jones for instance, it just keeps getting worse for him. Just how many despair come up for that guy, and this is probably in the first 5 minutes of the first movie.

Heck I recon if you are doing it right the players will be hoping for some bad rolls, Once you get to that point the players will become far more involved in helping make the story, which means that you can do twice as much with half the effort. You won't just be making awesome your players will too.

Teach a player that metagames that he is just spoiling his fun, and he'll slowly adapt and change.

So you need a perception test and you roll in secret, what does a failure, 3 advantage and a despair work out? Did the players have the chance to spend a point of destiny? Odds are the GM will just treat the failures and ignore the other dice, the players merely fail to spot the door.

Get the players involved, please make a perception test, the players don't have to know what this test is for. It could be to open the door or see that there is a datapad on the desk labeled "Death Star Exhaust Port Plans". Now, the players could spend some destiny or you could and the pool is made.

Same result as before. OK you fail to notice anything, but 3 advantage how would you like to spend that? The players then spend a bit of time and come up with a suggestion. During that time a good idea forms in the GM mind and he allows the players to hear voices or footsteps from behind a wall. At this point I would ask your players what are they going to do? If you have a metagamer odds are he will head on over and investigate further, other players may dive for cover or draw weapons. Now, spend your despair. The secret door opens and 4 stormtroopers walk into the room.

Players who do the right thing may gain some cover or boost to their next roll as indicated by the advantage dice. The player who went to investigate further is in the open, and most likely the initial focus of the stomtroopers.

Perhaps you could just have them find the door using the advantage but they fail to find the IR light beam that sets of the alarm when they pass by and sets of an alarm (maybe silent) due to despair.

I meant bad rolls that might result in a more definitive end - like an extremely lucky roll from a minion on a PC, a roll that should, but all rights, mean that the character dies. I agree that all rolls add to the story, and that even bad rolls can heighten excitement and tell a nifty tale, but sometimes...

The only roll that will kill a character is rolled with a d100 and requires the player be carrying a few critical hits already.

Anything else can be overcome, even Luke survives falling down through cloud city. The trick is coming up with a story that achieves that. You fall 50m off a cliff and hit the ground really hard, you die. But wait, you wake up and the pain is receding, a grey haired old man sits next to you, "I can feel the force inside you young one.".... Sometimes a player can end up mostly dead...

Now for being mostly dead the player may gain an obligation - say an oath to the old man - to learn how to use the force. You know that lots of XP will end up being sunk into that obligation. The player will take his character on an interesting and perhaps unexpected path. So the save isn't exactly without penalty but it offers something far more interesting than death.

Isn't there a basic literary concept that as long as you keep the character alive he ain't dead, and as long as he ain't dead there is hope?

There is an equivalent to a passive roll in the game, an opposed check. In the case of the assassin, the GM should be rolling an opposed skill check for the assassin stealth vs perception (most likely the highest perception in group, possibly with added setback die due to assistance, because there is more than one player). Since this roll is made by the assassin NPC, it is rolled by the GM without the need to tell the players.

The only roll that will kill a character is rolled with a d100 and requires the player be carrying a few critical hits already.

Anything else can be overcome, even Luke survives falling down through cloud city. The trick is coming up with a story that achieves that. You fall 50m off a cliff and hit the ground really hard, you die. But wait, you wake up and the pain is receding, a grey haired old man sits next to you, "I can feel the force inside you young one.".... Sometimes a player can end up mostly dead...

Now for being mostly dead the player may gain an obligation - say an oath to the old man - to learn how to use the force. You know that lots of XP will end up being sunk into that obligation. The player will take his character on an interesting and perhaps unexpected path. So the save isn't exactly without penalty but it offers something far more interesting than death.

Isn't there a basic literary concept that as long as you keep the character alive he ain't dead, and as long as he ain't dead there is hope?

A very good series of points! I retract my initial assertion that passive checks might be required.

This game is designed to be a "co-operative narrative", therefore i let the players roll for EVERYTHiNG. All the dice rolls are out in the open so they can determine how to spend their advantages, and the enemies disadvantages. I really dont roll for one single thing, this also helps keep the players involved at all times and allows me to focus on the primary story (paperwork).

I was thinking about this earlier today in the vein of a horror campaign. Specifically, if you want the players to feel like their minds are playing tricks on them, and that they might be seeing things. Just simply narrating, "You feel on edge. You can't shake the feeling of movement in the corners of your vision." seems like it may have less player payoff than asking them to roll a perception check, versus a hidden roll and then being cagey about the results of the roll. Granted, this is achieving a certain amount of fear through metagaming, as you might be asking for a roll when there is really nothing there, making the actual player worried that there might be.

But I'm completely fresh to horror campaigns, so I don't really know the best way to go about that kind of stuff.

There have been several comments about why GMs should hide some rolls. In the past I'd have agreed with them. The binary nature of previous games (especially D20-based) plus a mechanic that starts a death countdown after HP has been exceeded meant that if you wanted to ensure player survival while still giving them a run for the money, you almost *had* to hide rolls. And sometimes you'd have a string of bad luck yourself, that conquering the red dragon becomes a cakewalk, and that just won't do...

So I feel I have to reiterate: I have not felt the need *at all* to hide any rolls with this game. I've faced all the examples given. I've let the players know the skill of the person they're socially or physically conflicting with. This knowledge hasn't been abused or reduced the tension in any way. I'd say on the whole, the tension has increased, but in a good way. And I've noticed that the presence of a single red die is enough to make them nervous. If an opponent has any skill ranks on an opposed roll, there is the potential for Despair, and if that's not enough, you can always flip a DP.

One benefit is the players don't have to engage in a kind of religious double-think to assume your dice rolls are honest, even though you're hiding them. I mean, if you are honest, why are you hiding them? And if you're not, why is anyone rolling any dice at all? I've noticed that making everything above board makes them feel more in control, like the results they get are more real.

Besides, if you're worried about your players meta-gaming on player knowledge you can try a couple things:

First, you don't have to be honest about the opposing dice pool, so long as you can work it into the story. Give those minions a leader with appropriate skill ranks on the fly.

Second, you can make the players roll for no reason at all, with whatever dice pool you want. If they succeed, say on a perception vs stealth check: "Okay, the coast is clear, there's nothing there." If they fail, you've just made them nervous, which is really one of the perks of RPGing for both GMs and players

I don't suggest using either option very often, only for dramatic effect and maybe to wean meta-gaming players from making assumptions. I haven't had to do either in a while, so maybe that says something.

I also considered changing the timing of the rolls. Most people would call for a perception test as you enter the room with the secret door or concealed object. You could make the dice roll in the room just before, as the players start the session or even after the players leave the room in question. Who hasn't walked out of the house and noticed something they had to go back and check or get?

Always open rolls IMO.

I am a bit unsure sometimes. I notice players acting different after they see the dice being rolled. When I roll the dice open, I do notice some players trying to meta-game it, not openly but sneaky.

Perception checks are the worsed offender there, so I do make perception checks behind the screen.

For combat I find the GM screen to get in the way of rolling my dice open, so i've been rolling it behind the screen. I don't want the players to roll NPC combat, but physical space is limited for me to roll combat dice open without having to crawl over the ground to pick up dice every now and then... Quite the dilemma. My group doesn't complain about it though, they are used to D&D 2nd edition...