Playing digitally online can devolve into a strange experience.

Character sheets (especially for modern dnd editions) start to look like consoles of buttons. Whenever you want to do something, just hit the right button and see if it works.

The choices lay in which button you want to push.

As I’ve had folks start two different 5e campaigns with me recently, I find myself more and more telling them not to roll dice.

What I’m saying isn’t anything new, but it’s something I’ve been personally made to consider a lot recently. Don’t roll dice if the possibility of failure isn’t interesting.

For instance: last night, the PCs had captured a drake. It was a pretty dangerous enemy for their level, but their tactics (and their dice rolls) worked well.

When deciding how to transport it back to the city, one of the players wanted to lash some poles together to make an improvised stretcher like contraption. They asked me what they should roll.

My answer? Nothing. It just happens.

This was for two reason:

• First, I can assume their character is relatively competent and can do simple things related to adventuring. ‘

• Perhaps more importantly, what would a failure on that roll mean?

I could have worked hard at it to make that roll meaningful. Maybe I’d make it in secret, and if it was bad, the stretcher would break at a pivotal moment.

Or maybe I could have made failure mean it took more time and roll another random encounter.

They had just done really well on capturing it and I wasn’t interested in nickeling and diming them on a roll that was much more interesting just being handwaved. Besides, they still had a dungeon full of Kobolds they just realized were there.

The point here is, if the roll isn’t going to result in interesting consequences, just skip it.

• If it’s an easy thing to do and the failure won’t result in any interesting decision making, they do it.

• If it’s an impossible thing, they don’t.

It can just be simple as that.