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)

[Blacky]

Agreed. Saying VTT is replicating real tabletop gaming isn't good enough. Mostly because unless good 50 inches UHD TV are 50 or $100 apiece, computer can use several of them without being connected by a geek, everyone has fiber internet and good HD webcam, well it can't. It physically can't reproduce 100% of the experience (especially for gamer, where computer would need smells synthesis technology to fully replicate the experience :rolleyes: )

But, it can offer new things. Sometime even better things. Things like no more commute, no more fight between smoking and non smoking players and other benefits of that type of course. But more important it can offer things that are really hard to do on a real table: like secretly speaking to the GM, like digital maps and miniatures, like automatic computations, like charsheet and notes tracking and versionning, and so on.

Yes, for some (a lot of?) GM having true secret dice rolls is a plus. And as said, it's not like it's a big feature, it's probably more along the line of a new option and another if() in the code around the dice animation.

[greyhoundgames]

(especially for gamer, where computer would need smells synthesis technology to fully replicate the experience :rolleyes: )


where are the cheetos???

[Nylanfs]

Right next to the Mountain Dew, in the darkness.

[Andraax]

As a counter-counter-point, horses take in fuel and release pollution.

And so do automobiles. Just a different type.

:-)

[Griogre]

It maybe spitting hairs, but some VTTs *simulate* face to face gaming. That's one of FGs strong points. The point of a simulation is not usually to faithfully replicate everything, but to get only the most important parts. The creators of FG thought physical dice, character sheets, and a wet-erase battlemap with a few letter tokens where the most important things to simulate. There is a cost of adding endless options in that these core simulations become lost in the clutter, and the simulation gets more complex without any benefit to the core simulation.

Like Blacky, this is not an important option to me and I know I wouldn't use it since I roll dice all the time as a GM, out of sheer habit. That doesn't mean it isn't important to others though, which why having people vote is a good idea.

To the original poster, one of the best ideas to come out of D&D 4E was diceless or passive rolls, IMO. One work around right now is just look at the parties skill on the party sheet and add 10 for a d20 based system. Then make a single roll on the desktop of the opposing skill by the opponent and see how many PCs match or exceed the roll and determine the results.

[greyhoundgames]

My party actually moved to doing that. But in the end it feels like a bad solution because of a few points
1) Lots of things are impossible when using take 10. Example knowledge. Lots of knowledge checks are dc 20,25. If you run the math, a couple of people rolling is better odds then taking 10
2) It removes the benefit of combined skill training. Example Multiple people putting points in perception but only the highest matters
3) It makes some things trivial like stealth. Its very very hard to stealth when people with good perception are around. An entire group can be foiled by just a single good spotter instead of say spotting 3 of 4 etc

At this time I just have a ton of pre-rolled d20s and I do the math by hand.

[Mirloc]

For the GM only rolls, I actually physically roll dice myself.

I've used FG for face-to-face as well as for purely online gaming, it works in both places really well.