I'm not sure that a die-rolling thread is strictly necessary. I mean, given that we seem to have already adopted an official "out-of-character" signifier, I don't see a real problem with the following:
Professor Blenckson sniffs deeply, catching the fresh scent of students hanging in the air.
[I'm going to make a Survival check to track down the students. With a roll of 11, I get a 20.]
Grinning to himself, the professor follows the smell of fear and misapplied philosophy to an empty classroom. Inside, he finds Grahm and the others, who look up from their youthful entertainments with a sudden fear.
"Ah, class," Blenckson purrs. "It seems you forgot to inform me that we were changing classrooms for today. What a delightfully enlightening experience this has been. I'd love to hear how the experience has affected you. In seven to ten pages, single-spaced."
We can always switch from brackets to something else, but--if you're trusting people to roll their own--I really think that another thread is unnecessary.
Second Thought: Of course, for the purpose of making saving throws and such, you could have us "bank" rolls ahead of time. Basically, we'd have a "floating" roll that would be used the next time everyone needed to make a roll against a number known only by the DM, which you could reference without taking up time. I'll explain it more clearly tomorrow.
Third Thought: Since you're a moderator on this board, are you capable of editing people's posts? If so, this solves the "only the DM knows DCs and monster stats" problem, as you could theoretically edit players' posts to let them know if they succeeded or failed. Hell, we could even do something like the following:
Professor Blenckson sniffs deeply, catching the fresh scent of students hanging in the air.
[I'm going to make a Survival check to track down the students. With a roll of 11, I get a 20.]
On a success: Grinning to himself, the professor follows the smell of fear and misapplied philosophy to an empty classroom. Inside, he finds Grahm and the others, who look up from their youthful entertainments with a sudden fear.
"Ah, class," Blenckson purrs. "It seems you forgot to inform me that we were changing classrooms for today. What a delightfully enlightening experience this has been. I'd love to hear how the experience has affected you. In seven to ten pages, single-spaced."
On a failure: Though he is able to follow the students' scent to the dining area, Blenckson loses the trail among the various smells--both savory and pungent--surrounding that dubious institution. Cursing to himself, he stomps back to his office, where he continues plotting the eventual downfall of fun and entertainment.
As the DM, you know that a 20 on my Survival check is sufficient to track three or more Medium creatures across hard ground. Therefore, you'd edit my post by removing the "
On a success:" tag and deleting the entire "
On a failure:" section, causing the post to look like my first example. Neat, huh?
Granted, I'm not actually sure if you can do that. Also, it might be too complicated.
(And, yes, this theoretical version of Alexander Blenckson took the Track feat for the exclusive purpose of finding students that attempted to ditch class.)
