Invisible GM dice rolls

[greyhoundgames]

I made this feature request a long time ago and it has a piddily amount of votes.
https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=84459

Does nobody else want this? As a GM there are TONS of times when I need to roll something without giving away that I am rolling something. Rolling randomly all the time just to counter this is pretty annoying. It should be super easy to implement just not doing something you already are doing. If anyone else shares my dismay at this feature not being available please vote

Shameless bump for another request that would save a lot of time, polygonal fog of war clearing instead of just boxes and freehand
https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=58034

[Andraax]

You can always roll to the desktop, and there is no indication to the players that it's happening. I think I suggested this last time you brought it up.

Personally, I like to keep my players guessing by making rolls in the chat window even when I don't need them. I do the same in face-to-face games, rolling dice behind the screen at random times... Look at them and give a devious smile, or maybe a "tsk-tsk" under my breath...

[greyhoundgames]

By roll to desktop do you mean /random 6? That would remove the ability to use all the functionality the tool gives for example if want to do a party perception check, or any of the other mass or individual rolls on the party skills sheet. How would i do this?
I can understand wanting to do the rolls a lot. For me though its just one more thing to do and I often fall behind on that and then when it comes up for real its obvious.

[Andraax]

By roll to desktop do you mean /random 6? That would remove the ability to use all the functionality the tool gives for example if want to do a party perception check, or any of the other mass or individual rolls on the party skills sheet. How would i do this?
I can understand wanting to do the rolls a lot. For me though its just one more thing to do and I often fall behind on that and then when it comes up for real its obvious.

No, if you want to do the rolls from the party sheet, then you can't do those to the desktop. However, you can mask it by putting a die roll on a hot key, and every once in a while just hit the hot key. The players will see a roll that means nothing to you, but they don't know that. Misdirection - it's part of the magic. Also, I'll ask players to make rolls into the dice tower once in a while, even though I don't really need the roll. The other thing you can do is to make the rolls off the party sheet "ahead of time" - do the rolls, then hang onto the results and use them later in the game.

[Nickademus]

The other thing you can do is to make the rolls off the party sheet "ahead of time" - do the rolls, then hang onto the results and use them later in the game.

This is what I do. I find that asking for or making rolls can be a speed bump in atmospheric descriptions and PC-NPC interaction. I'm running Ravenloft which is a bit more into the atmosphere than most campaigns, but still, it's nice to not have to stop in the middle of a bone-chilling description to roll shadow dice.

[greyhoundgames]

Agreed. This seems like a easy and good bang-for-effort feature to add.

[Blacky]

I made this feature request a long time ago and it has a piddily amount of votes.
https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=84459

May of this year isn't "a long time ago" Feature requests made almost 3 years ago are still in the pipe, or waiting

However, myself I didn't see this. It's one of the caveat of this informer thing, unless checked by hand on a regular basis we don't see new ideas posted there.

Does nobody else want this? As a GM there are TONS of times when I need to roll something without giving away that I am rolling something. Rolling randomly all the time just to counter this is pretty annoying.

Personally I would, but pretty low in the pipe. Yes it would be useful, but very much less useful than a ton of other things. One can always roll by hand, or keep the real life habit of rolling more dices than needed or rolling for nothing. So yes at 4 votes I will add mine, at ~100 votes I wouldn't do it to keep other more interesting requests (in my opinion) near the top.

Note that of late JPG didn't implement a lot (if any?) of non-ruleset specific improvement. There was no announcement, but my guess is he's spending a lot of time inside the Unity engine for the FGNext rewrite. So new feature wise things might get a little slow for a few months, but imo it's for the greater good.

[greyhoundgames]

As a Unity dev myself, I look forward to seeing the new unity version of FG
I was hoping this change was worth doing in that it feels like it would take like 2 minutes but there could be more going on then appears.

Also if they are new to Unity and have any questions I can happily provide helpful answers. Least I can do for all the fun they have provided me via fantasy grounds.

[Andraax]

I still don't see the need. After all, this software is replicating face to face gaming over the internet - and I can't see how you would roll dice in face to face gaming without the players knowing you are doing so. I handle it in FG using the same techniques I use in face to face gaming.

[greyhoundgames]

Here is a counter point. This game is not replicating face to face gaming. Its providing a new improved version of it.
This would be akin to having cars dump manure on the road because, well horses did that and cars replaced horses.

Playing the face to face game required lots of tedious book keeping, yet we let fantasy grounds automate a lot of that. Fantasy grounds removes a lot of the bad about face to face gaming.
(Note my counter example is meant to be funny and not an attack or being hostile, hopefully you take it as such)