Well, it looks like they may just fiddle with their dice. I personally hope they are going to make it optional.
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Because the audience is so much bigger and they're coming from such different games, their expectations for how narrative is handled is very different. So for a D&D player who is completely cool with getting three ones on the D20 in a row, they go like "yeah, this happened yesterday to me, this is completely normal." And then there are people who are coming from titles like XCOM or something more strategic where they would expect some dampers or stabilization on RNG so that you never see a really bad streak or something like that. So we're now discussing how we're going to tackle that.
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From our own experience at the tabletop, we know that even though dice are supposed to be pure randomness and very honest, the DM has has the screen for a reason where they're rolling their dice in secret. That is already in D&D this built-in mechanism for stabilizing randomness and an understanding that creating a compelling narrative takes a bit more than just completely [rolling] in a random motion.[
It has to be handled very carefully, because players are very good at spotting the game putting its thumb on the scale and the cheating the randomness. So right now we're discussing where exactly we're gonna start stabilizing RNG, most likely in combat scenarios. This is something that people have very specific set of expectations for. It's where they want a lot of control, have a lot of plans, and come up with very interesting tactics and strategies. If you have too much RNG it just messes it up. It devolves tactics to something less interesting.
Strick adhereance to dice rolls was never the purpose of their inclusion. They were designed to inject "dramatic" randomness into the game, not to become a noose around the players necks. Dice rolls can and *should* be fudged when doing so results in a better experence for the players. Pure randomness doens't care about player experience. DM's (and game designers) do.
This game has to appeal to more than just the hardcore tabletop crowd. Their biggest mistake however is *admitting* they're doing it at all. That's going to cost them. It immediately pisses off the purests, while making the regular players feel cheated when things come together for them.
