I trust the GM unless they give me reason to think otherwise.
Fudging is not your friend
I trust the GM unless they give me reason to think otherwise.
I confess to being a fudger, more often with hitpoint totals or the like than with die rolls. I try to avoid doing it too much for the reason cited above, but often find myself short on time to have the fully detailed encounters written out and work from "sketch of encounter" instead (especially in more wide-open games). It's hard for me to give that hitpoint number I just pulled out of the air at the start of combat the same weight as something I fully planned in advance. Reading this has me thinking about trying harder to avoid it just to see how it goes.
For the non-dice fudgers here: Do you alter what the encounters will be on the fly before the party gets to them? (e.g. If the dungeon was well balanced for a party of five and one just died... wouldn't the smart party always just leave to try and find someone with the PC aura at the appropriate level to join them to finish? What if the party missed all the places where there were vital clues about the upcoming big encounter because they did something you weren't expecting... do you give them some other way to find the clues you weren't planning on?) If yes, would you argue against my thinking that's still fudging, just at a different stage of the process?
By and large, I attempt to separate the "designer" from the "adjudicator" roles when I DM. When I adjudicate, I make as few changes to the environment as possible. When I design, I try to design situations to adjudicate.
If the party decides to press on when down resources... that's their call. If all the clues were missed (or more typically: summarily discounted) then the big encounter may get really nasty.
In one case, the party cast Divination on an upcoming plan to attack a temple. The result came back an unambiguous "Don't". when the attack went ahead, the party had its figurative head handed to them.
Good questions!
1) I tend to run more or less level appropriate but sandboxy, so chances are the PCs are in a dungeon more or less appropriate for their level, but that's within a power factor of 2 or 3, and I don't scale encounters to party size. A larger group will have an easier time and/or can take on tougher challenges, but fights take longer and they get less XP.
If a PC has died that usually means a player has no PC (unless I'm running Old School with henchmen accompanying the party) so for that reason alone the PCs should retreat and get a new member, the new player's new PC. If they don't, not only will the party likely be too weak to survive - they are delving deeper in a dungeon that already killed one of them, while weaker than before - but also that player will be left out. So bad gaming and bad metagaming, too.
2) If the party misses all the clues or otherwise misteps and that leads to failure/TPK, I have no problem with that. I was just thinking this evening about a 20 session campaign that ended in victory for the antagonists and TPK of the PCs & allies present at the final doomed battle. From what I can tell, it all went wrong for them when they decided to detour from a scouting mission to launch a home invasion of the BBEG's estate, killing his wife and sister then firing the place, alerting his army camped to the north, while also destroying their moral standing with the BBEG's wavering allies. Basically a disastrous decision tactically and morally - but it made for a great story that resembled a classical tragedy. Fudging to ensure a different outcome would have made a far less interesting game.
Conversely, in my current campaign, the PCs' defeat by a dragon means they have lost the chance to discover a prophecy on the copper writing-plates it had stolen. They may still get the prophecy some other way, it's not a big deal, just some interesting foreshadowing of future campaign events. If it turns out they don't get it, or indeed those events never happen, then fine.
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I often roll or assign average hp at the start of combat, in my old-school games. I definitely don't change those tallies once generated, though.
Note how nobody seems to be saying that they *always* fudge to make things come out exactly as they want them?
I asked my players about this before I began my Deadlands game - they have no problem if I fudge on occasion. Strangely, there have been *many* unexpected outcomes in my game. Pretty much every session, something turns out differently than I thought it would. So, clearly, having the tool at hand (and used on rare occasion) does not somehow eliminate all unexpected fun results.
And, despite some of the gloom and doom in this thread, my game has completely failed to collapse in a pile of player discontent and disenfranchisement.
It isn't a "one-method-fits-all" kind of thing. For some groups it is a good tool, for others it is a lousy one. Know your players, and you can figure out if it is right for your table.
JRRNeiklot
First Post
Fail analogy.
If the dm doesn't want a crit to kill a character, he shouldn't use crits. If he doesn't want rot grub to be a possible reincarnation result, he shouldn't put it on the table.
If we're simply talking about a high damage roll, well, thems the breaks.
Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
Average DMs fudge die rolls; great DMs fudge tactics. You can roll in the open and let the chips fall where they may, and the players will never notice when the evil ogre fails to take the finishing swing on the wounded wizard in favor of the "more dangerous" fighter.
JRRNeiklot
First Post
1. No. The party generally chooses where they go and when, unless it's a save the princess before the dragon eats her scenario. If someone dies. He either plays a henchman, or rolls up another pc. I work him in when it's appropriate.
2. If they miss clues, they miss clues. They'll find another way to deal with the encounter. Or they won't. Either way is fine.
Thanks for all the answers. Always interesting to see whats going on outside of my own little gaming bubble.
For the non-encounter-fudgers, what do you do if a party member (or two) can't attend a game session? (e.g. have the characters NPC'd, have someone else run them, robot them in the background unless there's and emergency, or come up with an excuse for them to wander off and adjust things down? -- needing everyone isn't an option for us unless we want to give up all hope of a regularly scheduled game).
So the argument here is that the greatness comes from the greater illusion of not fudging? (Which floating hitpoints would also do, and should be even harder to notice than missed tactics?)
Tangentially, shouldn't the really old evil thing with the high int and wis, who has led lots of other past do-gooders to their deaths and seen how they've fared against his minions, have figured out that they should train their less intelligent minions to always stab the unconcious invader one more time?
For the non-encounter-fudgers, what do you do if a party member (or two) can't attend a game session? (e.g. have the characters NPC'd, have someone else run them, robot them in the background unless there's and emergency, or come up with an excuse for them to wander off and adjust things down? -- needing everyone isn't an option for us unless we want to give up all hope of a regularly scheduled game).
So the argument here is that the greatness comes from the greater illusion of not fudging? (Which floating hitpoints would also do, and should be even harder to notice than missed tactics?)
Tangentially, shouldn't the really old evil thing with the high int and wis, who has led lots of other past do-gooders to their deaths and seen how they've fared against his minions, have figured out that they should train their less intelligent minions to always stab the unconcious invader one more time?
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