GM Screen

[Grimace]

I always roll behind the screen.

Right now I'm playing in a game where the GM rolls in the open. I just roll my eyes when he makes a roll and either calculates the total wrong (or maybe on purpose) or rolls the incorrect number of dice. Each GM has a different style, so who am I to say it's wrong.

[Yak Face]

I always roll in the open, unless it's for something where I have to conceal NPC stats or the method of randomly determining an event. I have a very strong free-will approach, where I do as little as possible to artificially direct the story where I want it to go.
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. -Sir Winston Churchill

[enderandrew]

Very rarely do I hide a roll. If I'm shooting at a player, I'm not going to fudge the roll either way. Either the NPC hits fairly or doesn't. In not hiding rolls, I think the players trust me more.

However, in my next campaign I am planning on developing Force adepts. They won't start with lightsabers. When they eventually get to a point where they acquire crystals to make one, I will give them die rolls to try and ascertain which crystals to use. If they appraise an item, I will hide a roll like that. They shouldn't know if they are successful or not. They should only know what I tell them about their appraisal.
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Nihilism makes me smile.

[garhkal]

[Delkarnu]

One reason to hide rolls is some increased tension.

Is he really that good or did he burn some cp to survive that?

If you roll in the open, the players may see that they aren't normal Stormies rolling 4D blaster, they're Imperial guard on rotation rolling much higher.

Of cource, I've been with the same group for years and player and gm, so trust isn't an issue. Then again, I think my NPCs have rolled more complications than the players.

[mastereji]

I pretty much make all my rolls behind a screen unless, as many have stated before, it isa critical situation. On some occasions though if it something that will directly affect the PC ill let them roll their own fate. For example, I had a player whose PC was a herglic that stupidly tried to run a fairly powerful jedi over with a repulsor truck which in the end did not work out well for the herglic -- he ended up crashing after rolling multiple 1s on the wild die for his repulsor ops skill check (and with a little aid from the jedis telekinesis skill). Basically, i ruled that the truck flipped over and landed on top of him. He then rolled poorly on his STR check and was critically wounded. Since his Perception was really poor (due to his high STR) he failed to notice the crime syndicate thugs that were tracking him (and the rest of the group down for prior transgressions) and came up to him while he was helpless and put a thermal detonator in his hand and then left (they really really didnt want any evidence left of the corpse). Well since he was helpless i ruled that there was nothing left to stop him getting incinerated so i pulled out my dice in front of the group and rolled the damage and believe it or not i rolled several 1s on the wild die and made a ruling that the FORCE (or luck) was with him because the detonator was faulty and failed to trigger the explosion. So he lived, but ironically, the next session he had his head cut off by a scritok warrior (no chance of that not blowing up). For the above thermal detonator roll though, after i rolled two 1s on the wild die i gave him the chance that if he rolled the next roll and it came up a 1 that it would be a "dud". I rarely do that, but it really made for lots of laughs and excitement by the other players (who were relying on him for their mission and he notoriously does things like that). Anyways, i pretty do what everyone else does.
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"Remember the PCs are just putty in your hands"