It also lets the players know that the DM has commited to the DC, so there's no backing out of it. Everybody agrees to what the stakes are, so there shouldn't be any hard feelings if the roll fails.

When to hide information vs when to be transparent with information is an important balance to strike, both for the matter of informed choices from both character and player knowledge perspectives, as well as above table engagement.

The tension of knowing what you need to succeed is juicy

The dumbest purchase I’ve made that I absolutely do not regret is a copy of the box of doom

11:10 BONK! 😂 You guys are adorable

Honestly, my favorite idea from Brennan was when he did Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. He basically said that in that game, DCs are a gradient, which has basically been fully realized in Campaign 4 when he outright states multiple DCs and what you achieve from them for varying amounts of success. It's great.

Another box-of-doom style move Brennan uses in Critical Role is rolling potentially fateful NPC attacks or other dice checks in front of the players, usually with a pointed remark such as "to keep this all above board." I also appreciate how he really leans into natural 20s as a supreme critical, often having it affect the remainder of the narrative of the scene in a substantial way. Watching Brennan really is a master class in using the most common DnD procedures to create drama.

The artificer in my group tried to recreate a bottled fireball that I'd had a mad scientist npc invent. I told him the ingredients were cheap and easy to get and it wouldn't take to long to make, but it's a dc 30 and on a failure it blows up in your face. I knew the player had a +11 to the roll, and an easy +5 from flash of genius, the cleric would cast guidance, and if it did fail, he had fire resistance. So, not terrible odds. But this works perfectly, because giving a high dc tells your players that this is hard, these are the stakes, you need to lock in if you want to do it. He rolled a 34, everyone got excited, and it was a great moment. This absolutely works.

One time I was DMing for friends and one of them got royally screwed by something I don't even remember. Since he was new I wanted to give him at least a chance since we were in a temple so divine intervention was not unthinkable. I  rolled a D4 on the table, but with my hand covering it. I leaned in and said "name a number between one and four"  and by jove he guessed right. He came back to life with 5 levels of exhaustion and they weren't out of danger yet. It was very tense and I thought it pretty clever of myself.

(Ps. My cat also has rollover mechanics.)

6:00 Reminder to all fellow DMs that RAW you don't roll anything to jump a chasm. Jump distance is determined by your strength. However, the DM can still call for an athletics check if there are other mitigating factors, like low hanging ceilings.

How dare you reveal Brennan's secrets, sir!

I think you've said it before in another video but it's similar with regard to telling players how much HP a big enemy has left so they know what they need to defeat it. They're not waiting for a "how do you want to do it?" question, they roll the damage and celebrate, and then bask in the glory as you ask them to describe how they do it. Very fun very cool.

Even when I don't say the DC I also try to convey a ballpark just with how I call for the roll. "Ooof, ok, give me slight of hand!" Vs "oh yeah no problem, gimme a slight of hand."

I don’t have a Box of Doom exactly but I do something similar for death saves. I’ve got a special dice tray, that everyone refers to as The Mimic, that gets brought out only for death saves, the players choose a random d20 from my big dice bag, and we make a big production of the roll. It drives home this is something important that they need to be paying attention to

I started doing this from Murph and Brennan.

If they do something crazy I let them know the DC and What happens if they fail. That has replaced the vague "are you sure?" That starts so many D&D horror stories. If they know "unless you roll an 18 your character dies" they'll tell you themselves if its worth it to them

Superb video, thanks for this. I wish more people would call attention to how damaging the whole “mysterious DM guarding the secrets” thing really is. It seems to be the default for many people and I think it just makes it harder for players to engage. And you sort of point it out but it bears repeating that he’s not just telling them the DC but also the stakes. He tells them what will happen if they succeed or if they fail. When I started doing this it improved the game massively, because it adds tension but more importantly imo because it puts everyone on the same page, as you say.

This is controversial but I also have my own version of “grading on a curve”. I don’t do margins of success very often, but I will often take into account the character doing the action when determining the stakes, and will tell the players that. So a fighter examining arcane runes might get only patchy information on a success and nothing on a failure, while a wizard examining the same runes could get a full understanding on success and still an educated guess on a failure. This eliminates the common problem of character competence being overwhelmed by the randomness of the d20. I highly recommend it.

Share the target number! Roll in the open! Bring the energy of a hot-streak Craps table to your game! Where's my free drink?!

I don't know how this video slipped my notice 😭
Great points,I love doing this.
Also, building the tension on that one dice roll encourages the players more and more to figure out how to get any kind of edge. They check their gear, they make crazy plans, all because of that building dread of That One Die Roll. So much potential game that would be lost by just saying "okay roll"

This may be one of my favorite videos of yours so far! I love you how bring your directing experience into each of these!

My partner has a minor in film and loves stuff like this, so even tho they don’t dm, I’m gonna send them this video! I think they’ll love the filmmaking style of it, and learn some interesting things about storytelling outside of the D&D context!!

Well today I learned that people don't tell their players the DC for their rolls, that seems so bizarre to me. I've always told my players exactly what they need to roll because I felt doing otherwise removed too much information and made the skill modifiers seem meaningless because you couldn't gauge how difficult something is for players with different skill/stat values.