Who rolls?

So, on televised depictions of RPG (i.e., D&D), and here I am thinking principally of Big Bang Theory and Community, the procedure used is the GM rolling a d20 to determine outcomes of player choices. (I think Spencer Crittenden did this on Harmontown, which may account for the Community depiction.)

I've never played that way. At our tables the players each roll most skill attempts, and always all personal combat rolls. Do others do this most, or is the GM rolling method (depicted) most common?

Did I miss a clear suggestion in the PH or DMG?

I've never heard of a real group where the GM rolls everything.

Depends on the system. And whether or not someone has crazy hands and always throws the dice under the table.

>televised depictions of RPG (i.e., D&D)

It's the writers being misconceived or deliberatly not caring, writing in something that would make for an easier joke.

Not for nothing, but Abed doing the heavy lifting so everyone could play makes sense, like how he made the character sheets.

The fact that Fat Neil went along with it was kind of odd, but he was cracking up.

I know that the 3.x D&D books suggest the DM roll spot, listen, and other checks like that so the player dosn't see that they rolled a two and then have their character act all suspicious when they hear "nope no traps here" or whatever.

I'm not sure off hand if I know of any other games have similar things actualy written in the GM advice sections or not.

They've never played D&D before and are just attempting to use the culture to shill out shit to line their pockets with more money and TV ratings.

Can I please shoot every single person in this thread?

Fuck you.

That's not a thing.
Numenera has the exact opposite though, GM never rolls a die.

>I've never heard of a real group where the GM rolls everything.
Me either.

>Abed doing the heavy lifting so everyone could play makes sense, like how he made the character sheets
This was my guess too. The other players were new as fuck, so he had to do basically everything for them.

>when you're underage but your parents aren't monitoring your phone

The DM on DnD is for Nerds does that, but that may to get the three players more immersed and acting in character. Also cuts down on looking for the right die.

Community is pretty well researched, so they probably know. I'd take any misconceptions as misconceptions made by the characters, as they're new to it as well.

Also, consider they were going for impartiality with Abed as DM, and because cheating on rolls might have been an easier plot device for Pierce.

Also . That sums it up pretty well.

I started DMing in the 4th grade with no prior RPG experience and I rolled all the dice for my group. Of course, I also found the rules too restraining and mostly just made shit up as I went along. But even after I started paying a bit more attention to the rules, I still rolled everything for years. At some point, I made a conscious decision to have people roll their own dice a significant amount of the time, like you're supposed to do. These days, my players almost always roll their own dice except when there's reason not to (it's a roll to detect something hidden and I don't want the roll to tip them off that something's up, for instance).

I think the GM rolling the dice on TV allows them to skip over the boring mechanics of the system and just cover the drama. IRL, it can be useful if your players don't know what they're doing though.

There is SOME truth to it, but it's founded on dated conceptions.

The old conceit of the DM being your "enemy" as much as the referee meant stuff like having them roll for you wasn't unheard of, since it kept you guessing. That sort of Killer DM cliche fallout sticks around in Writer Land.

In our group, the default is that player choices like attack/skill checks are handled personally, and if there's deliberate ambiguity (passive perception, stealth, infighting, disarming traps etc.) the DM handles it. Even then we play pretty fast and loose with roll responsibility.

All-DM rolling is doable, but feels detached and is less practical when you there's plenty of extra hands at the table.

Shows have one Dungeon Master roll all of the dice because to the uninitiated at home with low autism power levels it reinforces the idea that he is in charge of the game, reduces the amount of props and shot angles the photography staff and continuity team need to keep track of, and increases the audience response to the DM and the drama of the dice rolls.

It is a storytelling technique that works very well with television that is not directly and exclusively targeting Veeky Forums posters. Turbonerds with $4000 in Warhams can go watch a Dead Gentlemen movie and the players have their own dice, make their own characters, discuss the rules, and so on. You choose to watch a normie TV show with noted hottie Alison Brie instead and you get one DM rolling everything for the sake of concise storytelling cues for normies.

Bunch of bizarrely angry fa/tg/uys in this thread.

No you didn't.
The only reason I can see that happening is if you went back to the magical year of 1974 where you had only one set of dice among your group.
But even then, players would roll the dice, because that was their character.

>(I think Spencer Crittenden did this on Harmontown, which may account for the Community depiction.)

Community's Advanced Dungeons and Dragons episode aired in the second season and predates the Harmontown podcast, and Spencer Crittenden's introducution by about 15 months.

Spencer Crittenden's not a great DM, but you got to cut him some slack for some of his choices as forced by the situation he's working with.

Harmon was a high school player (D&D and Shadowrun from what I can gather), and he's one of the members (along with Schrab) of the Dead Ale Wives who wrote/performed the "I Attack the Darkness/Mountain Dew/D&D sketch" so his comedy gamer cred goes back a bit further than community.

Well, it doesn't really matter who rolls the dice. Does''t chance the game at all. I would imagine it's done to simplify.

>Bunch of bizarrely angry fa/tg/uys in this thread.
No one's really that angry, an to the extent that they are, it's not really bizarre. I imagine any sports fan would feel the same if there was an episode where everyone plays that sport and they get the rules wrong. I mean, it's not really anything worth getting genuinely upset about, but it's also not at all strange to be annoyed by it. It happens to pretty much anyone who has a niche interest or is an expert in something that most people aren't. Telly gets that stuff wrong all the time. It's not really worth bothering to get it right, because it only bothers the minority who know better, to everyone else it's not noticeable at all. Doctors will notice how inaccurate a medical drama is but no one else will. You can't really blame the doctors for finding it annoying even if it doesn't bother anyone else.

I suppose that's a fair point.

but this isn'teven a getting the rules wrong thing.
DM rolling the dice for a noob dominated group is pretty normal. I used to do it a lot and I know it was how I learnt the game.

We did it briefly in a game group I was in when I first started, but we were all newbies and kind of just learned the rules by trial and error, so I like to think we're allowed to make a few stupid mistakes (because boy we made so many stupid mistakes).

>Did I miss a clear suggestion in the PH or DMG?
No. However, you can do well with the Players rolling all the dice.

d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm

My DM rolls some checks and the players roll others. Mainly in cases where he doesn't want players to know if they passed or failed.

Pic related explicitly says that the DM rolls all the dice for everything. (The '81 basic set is the only place I've ever heard such a thing mentioned, though.)

Incidentally, the few times I've tried it out? They've generally been good games with a better-than-average level of player engagement and immersion. So maybe there's something there worth looking at…

BBT was just making shit up. Ignore it.

It's doable with earlier editions of D&D, but atypical. It's from the era where the DM was the game's god-king before 3e made him or her subject to just as many rules as the players. But still the players are usually the ones making the rolls, since otherwise it puts all the pressure on the DM to know every single rule for every single thing instead of the players knowing the rules for their own abilities. And remember this was before everything was d20+mod vs. DC so that could be a lot of stuff.

The milk crate of sourcebooks Pierce takes from Garrett is actually Dan Harmon's personal milk crate of sourcebooks,

>Pic related explicitly says that the DM rolls all the dice for everything.
No, it doesn't. You must be thinking about something else.

>It's from the era where the DM was the game's god-king before 3e made him or her subject to just as many rules as the players.
Once a god-king, always a god-king.

You must be on the young side, kiddo.

Read page B24.

As far as I can see, it just tells the DM to roll damage in the sequence of action outline. (Note that it does not say that the DM should roll player to hits.) And B/X is kind of all over the place with who should roll what.

For instance, it has the GM rolling surprise for both the players and monsters, but has the players roll their own initiative.

Bottom of B23:
>INITIATIVE: To determine initiative, each side rolls Id6 (the DM rolls for the monsters).

Example of play on B28:
>The DM rolls a 2 for the hobgoblins' initiative; Silverleaf rolls a 4 for the party, so the party has the initiative.

Also on B28:
>Morgan rolls a 12 and Fredrik rolls a 16 — both hit! The DM rolls 1d6 for arrow damage and 1d6 for axe damage.

Notice how it has players rolling to hit and the DM rolling damage. But later on the same page, it seems to contradict this, though it's hard to tell because they reference the character names for both player and character actions:

>Rebecca and Silverleaf both miss, but Morgan hits (with her sword). She rolls a 4 for damage.

The example of play on B59 has the DM making most of the rolls, but the players rolling initiative and the saving throw vs. poison that kills Black Dougal.

B60:
>The DM answers: "Looking down into the chasm, your character can estimate that he has a 98% chance of dying, no saving throw, if he jumps. If you decide your character jumps, roll percentage dice. A result of 99 or 00 will mean that your character lives, but any other result will mean that he will die in the attempt."

B60:
>To perform a difficult task (such as climbing up a rope or thinking of a forgotten clue), the player should roll the ability score or less on 1d20.

B9:
>If the player rolls the given number (or greater) on 2d6, then some of the undead monsters are Turned.
>If a cleric is successful at Turning some undead monsters, the player must roll 2d6 to find how many hit dice of undead monsters are Turned.

>Harmon was [...]of the members [...] of the Dead Ale Wives

Wait. Seriously? I had no idea!