Pre-rolling: what do you think?

[Isamu Dyson]

Has anyone here ever tried the pre-rolling method for combat and/or a non-violent dramatic scene? How did it go?

[Rhynn]

Can you elaborate on what that would entail? The question is a little vague.

[Isamu Dyson]

Can you elaborate on what that would entail? The question is a little vague.

Making various common/agreed upon-type rolls ahead of time to avoid having to break up a scene's immersion with said rolls.

A frequently stated criticism of certain systems is that the (large amount of) rolls required often takes one out of a confrontation. I thought that there must be at least one group out there that has experimented with my proposed method in order to expedite the crunchier bits of gameplay.

[Rhynn]

The problem would be knowing what rolls to make... although if you simply mean eliminating die rolls, that's easy enough: at least one game I know of (Cyberpunk 2020) suggests making a pre-roll list and crossing results off it as you use it (in CP2020, this is specifically for Awareness and Initiative rolls). It seems to me like the lookup wouldn't be that much faster than a die roll, though.

[Scow2]

The problem would be knowing what rolls to make... although if you simply mean eliminating die rolls, that's easy enough: at least one game I know of (Cyberpunk 2020) suggests making a pre-roll list and crossing results off it as you use it (in CP2020, this is specifically for Awareness and Initiative rolls). It seems to me like the lookup wouldn't be that much faster than a die roll, though.

It sounds like it would also ruin the suspense, and possibly result in metagaming if players have access to the list as people try to align rolls with their checks.

As for "Roll for your turn if you know what to do", the biggest problem would be honest verification.

[Rhynn]

It sounds like it would also ruin the suspense, and possibly result in metagaming if players have access to the list as people try to align rolls with their checks.

That depends on who does the pre-rolling and how it's implemented, I guess. In CP2020, the idea is that the GM pre-rolls a list of results, and whenever anyone (PC or NPC, but PCs especially) needs an Awareness roll, the GM takes the next one off the list. Really, I think the main point there is that your players don't know you've made an Awareness test for them and don't start acting squirrely. CP2020 is a game where making an Awareness test and not succeeding is usually followed by being shot or blown up...

That's about the only type of pre-rolling I can see as being useful, though. You could certainly use the same principle for all tests, but you're still looking up skills, modifiers, etc. - IMO the die rolls are usually a fairly small part of the whole thing. And I find players get weirdly squirmy and unhappy when you don't let them make their own rolls... it's an (illusory) absence of agency, but that makes a difference in player comfort.

[Isamu Dyson]

The roll spread is also something to factor in: sure, you have that magic 3 or 20 up your sleeve, but do you necessarily best know when to "spend" it?

[Rhynn]

The roll spread is also something to factor in: sure, you have that magic 3 or 20 up your sleeve, but do you necessarily best know when to "spend" it?

That would be a whole different system, and possibly an interesting one: a list of rolls that you choose from. It would add a whole other dimension of resource management.

It does have potential problems, though: if the list of results is not long enough, you'll run out; possibly towards the end of the session. If you roll a new series of results towards the end of the session, you'll probably end up with more than you need, and can only use the good ones.

Using short series (what's short depends on the system) of results might work better, with less chance of unbalancing the tail end of the session.

I could see all sorts of annoyance among players, though: there's no real difference between rolling five poor results separately one after the other, but rolling five poor results all at once and being "stuck" with them would probably be perceived as worse or more unlucky or unfair.

[Red Fel]

I see two ways you could do that. You could either have each player actually pre-roll their dice, which keeps the element of chance, and record those rolls such that they can spend them later; or give each player a daily pool of rolls based upon their character - for example, the Wizard might get nine Spell rolls of varying values, plus a few Skill rolls, and a few weak Melee rolls; the Fighter could have an abundance of Melee rolls, and so on.

The mechanical problem with either is the roll-pool - how do you know they have enough rolls to cover them through the day? How do they replenish them? Is it in-between combats? Is it "draw five from the deck at random?"

The other problem I see with either system is two-fold. Problem the first - hoarding. Once players get a knack for the system, it will turn into a rather perverse bidding war - who can use the lowest rolls, while still high enough to take out an enemy or overcome a challenge. To put it in Bob Barker terms, who can go lowest without going under. Problem the second, in reaction to that hoarding, the DM has to be sure to have planned every encounter out in advance. Few things will frustrate the players more if, on their way to the BBEG, they painstakingly saved every high roll they could, only to have their penultimate fight be a kobold. They have to waste their 20s on the kobold before they can face the boss. That's likely to cause some frustration.

[DigoDragon]

I had one player who brought a few opaque cups to the game. During combat he'll roll a d20 in each cup, but he won't lift the cups to show the result yet. Whenever his turn comes around, he declares his action and then lifts one cup to show what the result is.

It's sort of like prerolling, but maintains honesty in the roll since even he does not know the result until the reveal. The downside is he needs room for the cups, so we set aside a standing tv dinner tray for him.

[Friv]

I had one player who brought a few opaque cups to the game. During combat he'll roll a d20 in each cup, but he won't lift the cups to show the result yet. Whenever his turn comes around, he declares his action and then lifts one cup to show what the result is.

It's sort of like prerolling, but maintains honesty in the roll since even he does not know the result until the reveal. The downside is he needs room for the cups, so we set aside a standing tv dinner tray for him.

That's a neat idea!

Most of the games that I play involve die pools rather than modifiers, so pre-rolling isn't really an option, and honestly now that computers are a thing I find that, as a GM, it takes less time to click the "roll" button than to pre-roll.

What I have pre-rolled are any large-scale battles that the players take part in. I divide battles into sections, roll out how each section goes without PC involvement, and then when the PCs move from section to section I can just describe what's going on and have notes about what every NPCs status is from the moment the PCs interfere.

[Airk]

I think the only pre-rolling we've ever done is for stuff like initiative in D&D - you KNOW there's going to be a fight at some point, and there aren't really any situational modifiers (even if you're surprised, you still roll initiative eventually). In fact, we've even gone ahead and recorded the results for the PCs on the intiative board and just added the badguys when the fun started.

As a time saver though, it's not really very effective, it's more a 'time reorganization' because there's a lot of stuff that happens at the start of a battle, so moving initiative earlier gets it out of the way.

[BWR]

That depends on who does the pre-rolling and how it's implemented, I guess. In CP2020, the idea is that the GM pre-rolls a list of results, and whenever anyone (PC or NPC, but PCs especially) needs an Awareness roll, the GM takes the next one off the list. Really, I think the main point there is that your players don't know you've made an Awareness test for them and don't start acting squirrely.

This is how I do it for my games. I keep a list of all important abilities, Spot/Listen, Will STs, Sense Motive (or equivalent skills in other systems) etc to keep things hidden from them. If something is scripted, I roll the relevant rolls during prep, like prerolling init for monsters in planned encounters just because it saves time. For any non-scripted event I just have a page of prerolled results.
IME, players like to roll pro-active things themselves, things like Diplomacy, attack rolls, most saving throws (WIll is an exception because it might impact the scene in some way, like being charmed or dominated, not just dead), so I let them do that. And let's be fair, too much of roleplaying is deciding what to do and what sort of approach to take, be it combat, social or domain management, and having the DM do all that for you is the worst sort of railroading.

One of my friends keeps a similar list but rolls them then and there, which is kind of a give away sometimes, and setting up a battlemap is always a bit of a giveaway. He also keeps certain rolls like stabilization rolls a secret, which does add a little tension to combat.

[Amphetryon]

I've seen DMs who roll a pile of d20 results before the session, then just check their way down the list of results as such rolls become needed on their side of the DM screen. Provided there's no cherry-picking, it shouldn't be an issue, but I'd think you'd have to be dealing with fairly large numbers of NPCs to make this a particularly time-saving option.

[Trebloc]

To some extent, when we play higher level games, melee PCs will sometimes preroll their hit and damage rolls to help speed things up. This doesn't always work 100% of the time because situations can change. Same thing for casters and rolling damage on spells.

[valadil]

If the players could see the list I wouldn't trust it. They'd game it to get the good rolls to line up with the important actions. At that point I'd rather just give everybody a list of numbers and tell them to choose one for each roll. Of course then they'd come up with trivial crap to do between combats just to use up the low numbers. Or they'd make sure their high bab attacks hit and the low ones don't.

The other implementation I've heard of is that the GM has the list and reads then strikes a number as rolls are needed. I'm not convinced this is any faster than just rolling the die.

I am in favor of prerolling initiative. My life is so much easier if my 5 monsters who only ever need to roll init once already have it precalculated and are sorted accordingly.

[TuggyNE]

I've seen DMs who roll a pile of d20 results before the session, then just check their way down the list of results as such rolls become needed on their side of the DM screen. Provided there's no cherry-picking, it shouldn't be an issue, but I'd think you'd have to be dealing with fairly large numbers of NPCs to make this a particularly time-saving option.

If you print out results from a computerized roller it should be a little faster, I'd expect. (Also somewhat higher quality randomization, in practice.)

[TheEmerged]

We 've tried it a few times, in 3D&D, 4D&D, and HERO. Specifically, I as GM\DM prerolled the dice. We found the results as follows.

1> Overall it didn't save nearly as much time as we expected.
2> Players found they missed rolling the dice.
3> We did find that *certain kinds* of pre-rolls sped things up.

#2 may sound weird and subjunctive but was almost unanimous. Players felt that they weren't "playing" the game.

#1 was a bigger issue in 3D&D and 4D&D than HERO, probably because of the more unified dice types in HERO. I was mostly able to kick out a long list of 3d6 results and then whatever xd6 results I knew the damage results would be and we were good. I would have thought being able to already have the stun\body totals for the HERO dice would have saved a lot more time than it did. That isn't to say we *didn't* save time, but the savings weren't enough to override #2.

Spoiler: HERO Dice Explanation

Show

You roll only d6, but tend to roll a lot of them. Skill rolls are 3d6 added together which must be below some target number.

For most damage rolls you're rolling Xd6, and X will usually be around 6-12 but can hit 15 depend on the campaign. In addition to adding the results on the dice (the "stun" total) you also count a "body" total. For every "1" you add zero, for every "6" you add two, and every other result adds one. In theory, this is where pre-rolling saves time. In practice, you get so used to counting this it doesn't really help - and on average, it's going to be X anyway.

#3 was most noticeable with initiative in 3D&D and 4D&D - I prerolled initiative for pretty much the entire time I ran 4D&D. This allowed me to have my combat sheets \ spreadsheets ready to go before the fights even started.

If you print out results from a computerized roller it should be a little faster, I'd expect. (Also somewhat higher quality randomization, in practice.)

Excel is your friend, especially that randbetween(x,y) function they added in more recent versions.

RE: "Saving" results. Having played a couple of systems where the results are determined by cards held & played in a player's hand, this can lead to some interesting metagaming. Try it with Sorry\Trouble\Aggrevation some time if you want to see it in action first.

[Amphetryon]

If you print out results from a computerized roller it should be a little faster, I'd expect. (Also somewhat higher quality randomization, in practice.)

I'm confused as to how this would speed up gameplay, relative to a pregenerated list of rolls from a different source (Also why it would be "higher quality randomization" than rolling with a pile o' d20s).

[TheEmerged]

I took it to mean it would allow you to generate the list quicker than rolling them by hand myself.

[Amphetryon]

I took it to mean it would allow you to generate the list quicker than rolling them by hand myself.

But in regards to the original comment of a time-saving option, I made no mention of time out-of-game, so I'm still confused.

[TuggyNE]

(Also why it would be "higher quality randomization" than rolling with a pile o' d20s).

Physical dice are a pretty low-quality source of randomness, as these things go; small flaws enough to bias one number by a fraction of a percent are almost ubiquitous, and most people roll rather poorly too, introducing more biases of one sort or another. To get really good results you need to use a mechanical roller of some sort along with fresh high-precision dice, and switch them every thousand rolls or so.

Any decent PRNG will have vastly superior entropy characteristics, especially if you go the extra mile and use one that's designed for crypto (though there's really no need for that). Truly terrible PRNGs might have worse entropy, but might not.

But in regards to the original comment of a time-saving option, I made no mention of time out-of-game, so I'm still confused.

You didn't? That's what I assumed you meant (i.e., that the time savings in game are not enough to justify the extra time spent out of game). Sorry.

[huttj509]

It depends on the system.

I play Legend of the 5 Rings as an archer. That means, in combat, i'm really not making many choices that affect my die pools (I can't full attack to gain 2 rolled and 1 kept die, for example).

Since my attack roll involves 10d10, keeping and adding up the top 7-8 of them, and my damage is 8 rolled, keep the top 2-3, I've found it saves a LOT of time for me to roll during other people's turns, make notes on attack and damage, and just list off the result when it gets to me.

I keep myself honest. If the situation changes and I do something different? I cross off the pre-rolled and roll anew. I don't get to say "oh, that was a good roll, I should raise for damage (-5 to roll result for 1 more rolled die on damage)." I decide all that beforehand, and stick to it. It's simply to save time in rolling a fistfull of dice, rerolling tens, adding them up, and applying modifiers.

[Segev]

I have never used it, but I have considered it for one specific purpose: when it would be necessary to ask the PCs for a roll but I don't want to tip off the players that "something is up."

Typically, I do this by randomly rolling dice for no reason at odd times, so when I roll them for reason the players don't notice it as "unusual." However, I've often thought of maintaining a list of pre-rolled results so that I could just check them silently when checking my notes, and add in the PCs' relevant stats (e.g. perception bonuses) without actually rattling dice. If they succeed, I tell them what they notice. If they don't, I haven't tipped them off that there was something to find.

Like I said, I've never actually tried it. But it is something to which I've given a modicum of thought.

[Jay R]

I have a couple of players who pre-roll their turn, watching each other's rolls. When their initiative comes around, they say, "I missed," or "I hit for 14 points of damage."

When I helped run the AD&D tournament for Nancon 88-3, in 1979, each encounter had pre-rolled attack and damage rolls for the NPCs. It didn't really save much time, but it guaranteed the same result for all tables.

[SiuiS]

I have rerolled combats between NPCs and allowed the players to witness an epic conflict, with the ability to step in if they so choose. At that point I am 50/50 on making the original combatants start tossing dice or just use their existing numbers (raw numbers, so if they would hit with that 3, but fail a save, they would fail the save).

I have considered making a list of sequential d20 rolls, maybe a hundred to a set, and crossing them off as I go through them. But then there is the subtle risk of choosing actions based on what roll comes next, and while a perfectly objective DM would be able to handle this, I find the idea unsatisfactory.

Mostly however, you need player trust. They have to know you aren't cheating. That's hard, and gets harder when there is no discernable way to tell you aren't cheating. Pre rolling erodes player trust, often.

[Icewraith]

For epic 3.5 games my players roll their dice ahead of their turn. Everyone rolls in the open and we have other players confirm natural 20s. It sucks when their intended action gets derailed, though.

At some point for large quantities of damage dice we started using average damage and only rolling to-hit. Sped things way up.

[nedz]

Whilst I occasionally use it for NPC hide rolls and the like I link rolling the dice to performing the action and so pre-rolling wouldn't work.

[Zrak]

I typically "preroll" for secrecy, rather than to save time. Someone already mentioned things like awareness/spot/perception/&c., but it's also useful for social encounters in which lying is involved. I don't really care about the party metagaming, but I do care about ruining surprises for them.

[Jay R]

In the long run, consulting the list takes almost as much time as rolling a die, is less fun, and you need to remember to cross the result off the list every time.

Almost no benefit; some clear drawbacks. Roll the dice.

The only time I saw it have a significant value was in a tournament, in which it guaranteed that the encounters had the same rolls against every party.