GM rolls behind screen

originally the dm screen was a whole wizard of oz pay no attention to the man behind the curtain deal. in some cases with a literal curtain. Now we've moved away from that, but there are still vestiges left, and i do think it makes things fun.

> When I'm the DM who says that all the time.
> My players nervously sweat as they do another action.
> Turns out the new action is even worse.
> Smile Widens.
Every time.

I ask this often, even when I know the marching order. Just because I like to keep everyone on edge, more than anything.

Exactly why I just make most of my shit up anyway. No one would know the difference.

>>GM rolls behind screen
>>chuckles softly and writes something down
>>nothing happens
I do this all the time.
My greatest flaw as a GM is that I have exactly no poker face.
Fortunately, my facial shenanigans are difficult to read because I flash the same maniacal grin if the PCs are about to fall into the BBEG's trap or if they just shoved my campaign plan up its own ass.

...

As I typed "campaign plan" I thought of this phrase and I'm typing it now before I forget it.

Campaign plans are like flight plans.
You always plot a vector towards a destination, but you only really can see as far as the horizon.
As you encounter changes, you make course corrections to modify the plan or even the destination.
I only plan details for a session at a time and each session is really the beginning of a whole new journey.

Thank God for PMs on roll20
It makes for awesome manipulations of folks.

>what's your AC again?
>rolls and winces

I do this constantly.

>Wait, hold up, which hand are you using right now?

...

I've done that before as a GM.
it was in a game over IRC not in person. But doing rolls in the OOC channel without explanation while the PCs and their squad were crawling across no-man's land on a night time trench raid.

>Fortunately, my facial shenanigans are difficult to read because I flash the same maniacal grin if the PCs are about to fall into the BBEG's trap or if they just shoved my campaign plan up its own ass.
You have to make the most of your lack of poker face. A big, doofy smile works wonders in driving paranoid players bonkers when it's accompanied by:
>It's probably nothing, I wouldn't worry about it.

I do this all the time, stresses people out like crazy. Especially when they're just about to take a short rest or something in the dungeon.

Also love to ask players's to roll percentile dice for me, then don't tell them the result.
Players fear nothing more than percentile dice.

>''Roll me a wisdom save''
>''Ehm.. 3.''
>GM writes something down
>''Alright''

>GM rolls behind screen
>Curses quitely and seems to be disappointed with the roll
>"ah...mmm...it's a crit"

...

>our boat sinks because kraken
>we manage to swim to a beach
>me "Ok, I think we should border the coast till we find a river, then walk up that river because settlements are near watercourses"
>GM laughs
>Me "What?"
>GM "Nothing"
>Roll survival: 17+7 = 24
>Spend several days and we find nothing
>GM laughs harder and says "that logic is fucking stupid, see Las Vegas, retard"
And like that 1001 more situations in where logic didn't apply to his setting, like for example hot air going up or if there's thriving fauna on a place there's also flora and water

And by his "setting" I mean him, he actually believed everything that he said.

>go into a room
>GM suddenly wordlessly rolls for no apparent reason
>"You enter the hall. There is a treasure chest in the middle. From what you can see, there seems to be no danger anywhere in the room."

Did you explain that an example to the contrary doesn't discredit a general assertion?

What an odd choice of reaction image.

>To the best of your knowledge, he doesn't know you're here.
>To the best of your knowledge, this water is safe to drink.
>To the best of your knowledge...

How's this one?

>"What's your passive perception already?"
>"13"
>"Ok"
>Writes something down and nothing happens.

>Which one of you is holding [ random relic picked up long ago ] already?

>whats the point of even rolling behind the screen when he can just make shit up anyway?

Making shit up is called "GMing".

Seriously, a good GM screen has all of those useful charts and rules summaries. It can speed up the game.

And the only time I shade a die-roll is to save a player's ass.

>GMing Savage Rifts
>Player rolls his dice and looks at you expectantly.
>"Are you happy with that die roll?" I ask him.
>Player winces and tosses in a Bennie for a re-roll.

To hear the dice roll. It sounds nice.

> playing games with bennies
> players use all their bennies in the first battle and turtle the rest of the session

Without cheating, this often happens. Nothing can shred a narrative like an unexpected crit from either side of the screen.

Because the dm wants to have fun too. And not knowing yourself what is gonna happen is part of the fun.

This is why oldschool games had all thise random tables.

Sadly the majority have forgotten that rpgs are games too and think theyre just vehicles to make others follow their railro- i mean "plot".

>"Finally finished that fucking sudoku, rolling a dice for what number to put there nailed it, how lucky"

I'm at a loss.

>yet

>Las Vegas
but vegas exists because of the colorado river and the hoover dam...?

>GM passes me a note about how I'm now up in shitcreek
>Have to keep a poker face

As perma GM, i've taken to asking for a perception test from everyone once or twice per session, if any of them roll particularly high, I might just throw in some extra fluff about how they see an npc they've met in a previous session or something.

Helps to avoid the "oh, the GM asked for a perception test, we're being snuck up on" metagaming

>So do you take the long way... or the short way?
>The short way
>GM's face when

>tfw do this to my players
>I was rolling to see if the island's cannibal had come across them yet
>player to my right watching the roll and freaking out

Las Vegas wasn't very close to the Colorado river until sprawl happened. It was originally near a set of natural artesian springs that fed a stream that flowed to the river, because before Hoover Dam, the Colorado was a creek at the bottom of a gorge that periodically flooded like a motherfucker.

Which made it pretty inconvenient to build a town around.

The springs have dried up because the wells that also water the town (they don't just draw from the reservoir) have lowered the water table enough to stop the flow, but those springs are the whole reason for the town. Las Vegas literally means "the springs".

However the DM appears to be ignorant of the fact that there are towns at the mouth of the Colorado river, less than an hour's hike from the Gulf of California.

Whether someone succeeds or fails a wisdom check, I always use 'To the best of your knowledge' even if it's 100% true

For narrative-oriented players, it helps maintain the mystery of any plotlines, and hiding the clockwork parts maintains the illusion of reality. It's like if you're playing a sandbox vidya with the debug display up: seeing all the scripts triggering and all the variables updating breaks the illusion.

For mechanically-oriented players, not being able to see the results of the DM's rolls cuts out a lot of metagaming possibility. Most players actually do prefer not to metagame.

More like
>do you want to take the right or left
>both paths send them to the detour initially

>GM pulls out the Monster Manual
>Starts rubbing his chin as he reads an entry
>"Hey, which of you guys has the lowest Dex?"

>"You THINK they're dead..."

>'Roll for perception'
>5
>'Yeah, you're fine.'

I make my players set up their actual marching order with models on a square grid, always. Helps a lot.

This.

>I hate a good story a bloo bloo muh game mechanics ree

Railroad DM detected.

Alternatively

Bait harder, faggot

>Whats your hp at?
>'Less than half'
>... Oh dear

>Bait harder
>Cant tell if it's bait or bad DM
That means it's good bait then, right?

>Do you still have that ruby?
>Where were you keeping it again?

I'm sorry you're such a shitty GM that you can't weave an interesting campaign for your players like I can.

You keep doing your roll-playing.

...

>Well, you've seen Pulp Fiction, right?

...

...

>get note from GM
>asks for a few rolls
>get another note
>"you've been replaced with a doppelganger/possessed by a spirit/infected with The Virus"
>"act natural"

> ____ already?
Is your DM an old Brooklyn Jew or just really impatient?

My last game
>Players go on boat on the river cause it'll be quicker
>Even though a guy warned them about nasty eels in the water
>Eels attack, boat overturned, two PCs eaten, rest make it to shore
>"Well guess we should have gone on land"
>They start walking
>Run into the witch I had prepared for the land route

Campaign plans are always fluid, unlike flight plans which must be filed with the agency.

youtu.be/oHC1230OpOg

>Party wizard encounters BBEG
>Wizard is defeated and is knocked out
>Wakes up and nothing is different

I do this all the time. Whether it ends up panning out or not, it's always worth it to make my players become a little more on edge.

Pffft. I wouldn't tell them what it is. I may not even tell them to act natural. The less they know, the better their acting is (because they don't have to act).

l li
ll l_

I always say "Oh you know/figured out" when I do that stuff. If you fail by a small enough margin you basically "know enough to know you don't know". Fail largely enough and "You totally got this."

Okay, that one was always bullshit. And kind of damn stupid too.

...

Had this happen to me, and I almost wiped the party because they thought I was being more helpful for good reasons. Took DM an ass pull to fix it

>Int
>not Wis
failure

only a select few systems have a separate stat for wisdom to intelligence.

>not having separate stats for wisdom, intelligence and wits
will I ever find a perfect system?

never. but keep living the dream

Wetherby an idea is good or not depends on the amount or lack of information for possible outcome so intelligence is suitable for the roll.

>"I smash the [Demon relic that the players found]"
>"... Alright then"
>DM flips several pages in his book, reads for a bit. Rolls a die, turns even more pages.
>"You smash into pieces and nothing of note happens."
>DMs face when
>Mfw I'm the DM
>Mfw the players have no idea how badly they just fucked up.

I did this too, but it was because they went mad from several failed mental saves and became paranoid they weren't themselves. Played right into my hands.

dear fucking lord I hate baneposting

When I started dm'ing I would ask this on the first few doors my party opened in a dungeon. The hope was that they would get used to the idea of thinking carefully about things they take for granted, and that they would stop trying to take-back an action

It didn't work. I had a guy who would immediately cut me off every time I described the routine turning of a door-knob because he "thought he saw me smirking"

is it

the bane of your existence

>Guess it, same way we have to guess which opponent has the lowest Wis

Expanding on this;
>Goes left, gets mauled by a super hard encounter, barely survives. Goes back to the crossroad, rests up, then takes the other road, because the first road was clearly dangerous
Every single time. I love my dumbshit players.

I always do this with Undeads.
>"I check if they are dead!"
>"Oh they are dead alright"

That ruins it.

I always do this even when I am 100% sure of the order. 9 out of 10, they'll rearrange.

>who was in the back again?
>Uhh... give us a second, we can't quite remember. Must have been the toughest guy, right?

Someone get this hot-head out of here

>"The monster is weak to loud noises"
>It is angered by distant noises and rushes to those causing a clamor
>When stuck amidst many sources of noise, it flees
>They keep sending it back and forth and never surprise it with a noise
>They never make noises directly next to it, which would stun it for long enough to meaningfully hurt it
>"It's close to me now, so...I guess I'll attack it, after all since our attacks aren't at full strength against this thing it needs all the DPS it can get!"
>"I need to drop my sword or the pan I brought for noise-making to pick up the lantern...better leave the pan."
>Hint numerous times that they've yet to make noises when directly adjacent to the thing
>One guy finally takes the obvious hint and uses his turn to cast an illusion spell and just cause a thunderous noise next to its ear
>It's stunned for a moment and they attack it at full power; it begins to limp away (it was an ambush predator that had performed several hit-and-runs already)
>Instead of making more noise, they all just attack and then chase the monster which runs faster than they can, it escapes to the forest
I have no mouth and I must scream

t. user who secretly loves baneposting and is looking for (you)'s

t. faggot who thinks crossposting is anything but cancer

>nothing happens
>yet...