SECRET ROLLS (Remastered) - In Case Your Not Good at Lying to Your Players…

Today on the RPGBOT.Podcast, we're talking about secret rolls, the wonderful tabletop RPG mechanic where the GM rolls your dice for you and then refuses to tell you what happened. Pathfinder 2e actually built rules for this. Dungeons & Dragons 5e mostly hands the problem to the DM and quietly backs out of the room.So grab your dice, hand them to the GM, and try not to look nervous. Apparently, not knowing whether you succeeded is a feature.

Show Notes

Sometimes knowing what you rolled is almost as dangerous as failing the roll. In this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we dig into secret rolls in tabletop RPGs and why hiding the result of a check can completely change the way players experience a game. Pathfinder 2e secret checks provide a formal system for keeping certain results hidden, while D&D 5e leaves Dungeon Masters with considerably more improvising to do.

The problem starts with metagaming. A player rolls a 3 on an Insight check, gets told that an NPC seems trustworthy, and suddenly everyone at the table knows exactly how trustworthy that NPC probably isn't. Even when players try to separate player knowledge from character knowledge, ignoring a terrible die roll sitting in front of you is easier said than done. Secret dice rolls remove that information entirely.

We look at how secret rolls work particularly well for knowledge checks, Perception, Insight, Deception, hiding, sneaking, and social encounters. If the player doesn't know whether they succeeded, failed, or critically failed, information from the GM becomes part of the world instead of an obvious reflection of the number on the die.

Pathfinder 2e takes this idea especially seriously. The GM can make a secret check using the character's modifier, determine the degree of success, and describe only what the character knows. A successful Recall Knowledge check might reveal something useful. A critical failure might produce convincing misinformation. Either way, the player has to decide what to do without first checking the d20 for permission to believe the GM.

We also talk about one of the simplest tools available to a D&D 5e DM when secret checks aren't being used: sometimes a failed Insight check doesn't need to produce false information. The NPC can simply be hard to read. That keeps a bad roll from becoming a giant flashing METAGAME HERE sign over the conversation.

Secret rolls can also make exploration more interesting. Searching for traps, sneaking past enemies, or trying to determ