In the immortal words of The Bard… “To roll or not to roll, that is the question…” Rolling dice is the cornerstone of TTRPGs, because without them, as DM Chris says, we’re just telling a story as we play with our GI Joe’s in the backyard. So, when you’re running a session, when do you decide to have the players, and yourself, pick up the dice?
In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave springboard off a listener question that deals with trying to speed the game up in a homebrewed superhero campaign. From here, the 3 Wise DMs delve deeper into the big question of when to roll and when not to roll.
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2:45 Static Damage: The difference between players and DMs.
9:30 The “DM Decision Helper”: Using dice to decide who’s attacking who.
13:00 Using dice to bring characters back into the action.
15:00 When too much rolling can lead to inevitable failure.
17:20 Using dice to avoid “Roleplay Slog.”
18:30 “Dungeon Crawl Lubricant”: Easing decisions in a dungeon crawl to move the session forward.
19:40 The Return of Castle Greyhawk!
23:30 Our tangent into the issues with Hexcrawls within 5e.
25:40 Rolling dice to affect the Slog Trinity: Combat, Roleplay, or Exploration.
32:50 Rolling dice to avoid the DM soliloquy: An example from our Dragonlance campaign.
36:30 The time not to roll: Random Treasure.
37:40 Final Thoughts – Capes and Crooks from Crit Academy.