RPGMemes

I occasionally roll dice as theatre myself. In my last session, I had a troupe of traveling performers that I rolled for on each act to see if they did well or not, with each roll hidden from the players, and I would then describe the outcome to them. Most of the rolls were real, but some performers I had already decided would fail from the beginning, because they were plants for the enemy faction and had a plan going on in the background that depended on their failure at the act. But of course I still had to roll to not set off any alarms. Going to be fun when my players later piece together "oh, that hypnotist didn't actually fail, they just used mass suggestion to make everybody believe they did so they don't come under scrutiny." If a player catches on - one actually did pretty quick - then great, let them have the victory, but in general it's one of the ways I like to create expectations so I can subvert them or use them to sneak things by. The enemy faction is very guerilla-oriented, so it fits their MO pretty well.

On a more general scale, when it comes to hidden rolls, if I really need something to succeed, I'll make the roll not a matter of whether they succeed, but who succeeds. Keeps the story moving if I realize too late that that roll shouldn't have happened because a failure brings the game to a halt.