I want to run a playtest of DitV soon, but something occured to me just now that might make things problematic.

My group plays scattered around our living room, with each person rolling their dice in a little dice tray, not gathered around a table. So it would often be impossible (with this setup) for anyone else to see what other people have rolled... folks are sitting too far apart and the angles would often be bad.

Would that make a serious difference to the resolution system? Do most folks play in such a way that everyone can always see & count what the others have rolled?

Personally, I'm not sure it'll make a huge difference... it might even be an improvement for our group, since I have at least one player who would probably spend more time figuring out the most advantageous dice to raise ("Aha... if I raise a total of 7, he'll have to spend 8 points to block it, because he can't actually form a total of 7 with his current rolls! I'll be a point ahead!") than he would describing his character's actions.

As long as everybody's communicating about their dice, I'm sure you'll be fine. When we play we always do talk like "you remember that I have this 9 here and I'm'a just reverse that, right?" and "hoo, look at all these 1s and 2s! I'm screwed!" The farther apart you're sitting, the more you should chatter about what you've rolled. No biggie.

(And believe it or not, the kind of strategizing you're talking about actually contributes to the game. Don't go out of your way to stifle it.)

-Vincent