Everybody Cheats?

Maxperson said:

Incorrect! We don't call it cheating or fudging. We call them rules. In the beginning Gygax had a game without rules, and everything was cheating. Then he said, let there be 20 sided dice, 12 sided dice, 10 sided dice, 8 sided dice, 6 sided dice and 4 sided dice, and it was good, and they were used for the game, and it was no longer cheating to do so. When you make something a rule, it ceases to be cheating or even fudging. Fudging is only fudging, because that's the name that was stuck on the rule many years ago. It really has no place. If I alter a die roll or tweak hit points on a monster mid fight, I'm simply engaging a rule. I'm not fudging or cheating.

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And, if you or I were sitting at that table back in the 70's, you'd have a point. Unfortunately, I doubt that either of us were there. So, what's your point? We're now going to include game development into the conversation? Gimme a break.

In the absence of any rule, there can be no cheating, since there is nothing to cheat. That's what Rule 0 was meant for. The rules cannot cover everything, so, the DM needs to step in and make a ruling to keep the game moving. No problems.

However, that's not what's being discussed. What actually is the issue is when there is a perfectly clear rule that everyone at the table agrees to abide by, and the DM decides to abandon that rule, for only this specific situation, because the DM thinks it will make the game "better". IOW, the DM fudge or, by any other name, cheats.

Maxperson said:

This can only be true if you completely re-define cheating. Of course, then every rule ever made for every game is also cheating, since at some point those rules didn't exist and were only created to make the players feel better.

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Yeah, stop the merry go round, I'm getting off. This is ludicrous. The goalposts aren't even in the same zip code anymore.

Look, you can call it whatever you like. Obviously. That's precisely WHY we call it "fudging", so that DM's can feel all warm and fuzzy. Me, I'll call it what it is - cheating.

You are over ruling a rule for entirely personal reasons. You're doing it because YOU think that it will give a "better" result. That's pretty much the textbook definition of cheating. The fact that you keep it a secret from the players because the players would hate it if they knew what you were doing tells me very clearly that this isn't a good thing.

Don't like the negative connotations? Too bad. Don't do it. If you do do it, own it. Embrace it. But, don't pretend that it's something that it's not.

Hussar said:

And, if you or I were sitting at that table back in the 70's, you'd have a point. Unfortunately, I doubt that either of us were there. So, what's your point? We're now going to include game development into the conversation? Gimme a break.

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You made the claim that making rules is cheating. Not me. If making rules is not cheating, then a rule to alter die rolls is not cheating. There is literally no difference between making a rule about critical hits and making a rule about altering die rolls. Both are now fair and game legal rules that make whatever they allow into acceptable game behavior.

Ilbranteloth said:

Every adventure they published had some background and story to it, however thin.

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Your "however thin" is my point. These weren't stories. The Talisman boardgame has backstory too, but it's not a story. The Warlock of Firetop Mountain has backstory, but it's not a story - it's an exploration-oriented single player wargame.

Ilbranteloth said:

If you want to choose to believe that there was no story (which we know is not the case for all people playing D&D at the time because prior to AD&D Ed Greenwood was already playing D&D where the fiction was more important), the purpose was exploration, which serves the same purpose that story serves now.

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I don't know why you're attributing obviousluy stupid beliefs to me. I'm not, and have never asserted, that all AD&D play followed Gygax's precepts.

I'm saying that Gygax's books, which do advocate those precepts, do not advocate a "rule zero" of the type that many in this thread have done.

And saying that "exploration serves the same purpose that story serves now", is like saying that cooking (on Master Chef) serves the same purpose as explosions (on Mission Impossible). I mean, I guess so, insofar as people watch Master Chef for cooking and Mission Impossible for explosions, but that doesn't mean we can learn about cooking by reflecting on explosions, nor vice versa.

Homogenising all ways of RPGing into some single thing is the antithesis of both serious analysis, and serious understanding of the range of play that is going on in the world.

Ilbranteloth said:

But my point was that his example specifically references ignoring or adjusting the die roll for the purpose of more exploration that “would be particularly exciting.”

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Yes. I quoted that passage upthread well before yuou did. I'm familiar with it. Likewise, in the same passage where he says that allowing victory over wandering monsters by fudging woudl be contrary to the major precepts of the game, he says that a GM can ignore wandering monster rolls in circumstances where players are playing with skill and another encounter with wanderers would be frustrating.

Which is my point. Gygax encourages the GM to judiciously modulate content introduction, overriding randmo content generation, in the interests of increasing excitement and reducing frustration (provided said frustration is not the result of bad play, which players are expected to suck up). But he describes fudging a combat outcome, by allowing the PCs an easy victory or unnatural escape, as contrary to the major precepts of the game.

Ilbranteloth said:

To answer the question about the precepts of the game, it’s all about exploration and the activities they happen within the game. It’s not about following the rules without intelligent input.

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To reiterate: no one in this thread, least of all me, is talking about "following the rules without intelligent input". I'm talking about changing outcomes which otherwise would follow from the rules that have been applied.

Being about exploration isn't a precept. The precept, clearly, is that skilled play should be rewarded and unskilled player should suffer for it (within the context of the game). Hence Gygax's repeated suggestion (pp 9, 110) that:


There is nothing magical about that precept. My own RPGing doesn't really adhere to it. But all that means is that I can't find advocacy, of my own approach to RPGing, in Gygax's DMG. Nor can those who adhere to the expansive reading of "rule zero".

Ilbranteloth said:

there are players that don't want the GM to have the power to make any such judgements. The rules state when a modifier is applied or not, and if those conditions aren't met, then the roll is not modified.

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If the game is a RPG and not a wargame or boardgame, then those conditions will include references to circumstances within the fiction. And then someone will have to make a judgement about the fiction, and the fictional positioining of the PCs. In most traditional RPGing, that person is the GM.

This has nothing to do with "rule zero" or fudging.

Ilbranteloth said:

In story now games, the GM can absolutely still impose their will. It has to be done in a different way, and it might be more difficult, but the underlying problem can still exist.

<snip>

Many of these games seem to be designed to reduce the influence of the GM, as if it's a bad thing. They have rules, such as the ability to reject a DM "intrusion" to further reduce their power or influence on the game.

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I haven't played enough of those games, nor often enough, to claim any sort of mastery. All I can say is that they aren't the kind of game I enjoy.

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I think that your unfamiliarity with these games is showing in your description of them.

There are (at least) two ways of thinking about RPG mechanics. One is that they are a device that the GM might pay regard to in deciding what story to tell the players. Another is that they are devices for allocating (in various more-or-less complex ways) authority over the content and development of the shared fiction. This is not reducing the influence of the GM unless we take the view that the default, for an RPG, is that the GM tells the players whatever story s/he wants. But that has never been the default except perhaps for a period in the late 80s through 90s.

Preferring the second approach to mechanics over the first, GM story-telling, approach doesn't mean that one thinks the first is bad. It's not a moral judgement. It's an aesthetic preference - for my part, if I want to be told a story I'll sign on for that, and if I want to play a RPG then I want to have robust mechanics that mean that the game is not one of storytelling.

Ilbranteloth said:

The Gygaxian AD&D model is the best fit I've found, and more importantly, it's the model that seems to work best for the players in my campaigns.

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If I signed on for a game of "Gygaxian AD&D", and then found the GM was fudging or doing other stuff contrary to the major precepts of the game, I'd be a bit irritated, for much the same sorts of reasons as if I learned that someone was playing with loaded dice.

pemerton said:

If a party deserves to have these beasties inflicted upon them, that is another matter, but in the example above it is assumed that they are doing everything possible to travel quickly and quietly to their planned destination. . . . When they have done something stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they may!​

There is nothing magical about that precept. My own RPGing doesn't really adhere to it. But all that means is that I can't find advocacy, of my own approach to RPGing, in Gygax's DMG. Nor can those who adhere to the expansive reading of "rule zero".

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Not only is there nothing magical about that "precept," but it's not even a precept. That's an example of Gygax giving his advice/opinion on what the DM should do. It's nowhere close to being a precept/rule.

Tony Vargas said:

EGG contradicted himself all the time.

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Sure, but there is no significant contradiction in the AD&D DMG and PHB concerning how the game is expected to be played. The closing words of the PHB (before the Appendices) state that if one finds AD&D worth playing, one will find it doubly so if played well. And the preceding 2+ pages give advice on what "playing well" means - and nowhere is metagaming condemned (in fact it is advocated!, in relation to party composition, equipment and spell load outs). What is advocated is skilled dungeoneering - comprehenisve equipment lists, well coordinated spell load outs, a good plan, good mapping, trying to avoid wandering monsters, etc. In other words, it's much the same as the stuff that appears in the DMG paragraphs about adjusting die rolls that I quoted not far upthread!

As I said, I don't think everyone played like Gygax did. Nor did Gygax, obviously, or he wouldn't have needed to advocate it so strongly! My point is textual - the AD&D texts don't propound or advocate for a "rule zero" of the sort that is clearly found in the 2nd ed books, in 3E, and in Essentials. (But not in 4e itself - I regard the change of text in the later Essentials books as a significant retrograde step, given that the whole schtick of 4e is that it runs smoothly without need to fudge outcomes.)

Aldarc said:

That strikes me as a false dichotomy, though it may be of benefit to you and your players, so I am glad that you find value in this approach. But I myself can't see much of a causal connection between "I want my players immersed in their characters" with "therefore, I prefer near absolute control as a GM and a separation of powers." While these issues may be casually connected via other related issues, GM Autocracy and Player Character Immersion do not seem causally connected.

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I certainly do not find AD&D a particularly immersive game. My PC is rather poorly defined, and the world is very hard to grasp with the concreteness that I grasp the real world as I move through it.

Of "classic" RPGs, BRP type games GMed in a certain style are highly immersive. Of "contemporary" games, my favourites are 4e and Burning Wheel, though I suspect I could also get pretty into Dungeon World, and find that pretty immersive.

Aldarc said:

DMs can and are replaceable, and they have been in a number of games that I have played. We have deposed and replaced DMs. DMs have left, and a new DM rose to take their place. I have done this on occassion as well. And some games ended not because of the DM stops play but because particular players left or all of them left the DM.

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Absolutely. I've been part of uprisings against bad GMing, and have withdrawn from games that started to suck due to poor GMing and seen those games end as others withdraw too.

From the social point of view, the GM is one player among the rest.

Maxperson said:

Not only is there nothing magical about that "precept," but it's not even a precept. That's an example of Gygax giving his advice/opinion on what the DM should do. It's nowhere close to being a precept/rule.

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So you think that when Gygax refers to fudging combat dice being contrary to the major precepts of the game, he's wrong? About his own game?

Hussar said:

In the absence of any rule, there can be no cheating, since there is nothing to cheat. That's what Rule 0 was meant for. The rules cannot cover everything, so, the DM needs to step in and make a ruling to keep the game moving. No problems.

However, that's not what's being discussed. What actually is the issue is when there is a perfectly clear rule that everyone at the table agrees to abide by, and the DM decides to abandon that rule, for only this specific situation, because the DM thinks it will make the game "better".

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Well, this is one of those points where the disinclination of some posters to actually analyse anything, or even to acknowledge that there can be different sorts of game rules serving different sorts of purposes, makes it very hard to talk coherently about various roles the GM might have.

In this thread, the following things have all been lumped togther as "rule zero" - and probably others as well:


The first sort of thing is found in most "traditional" RPGs - the GM has to adjudicate the fiction. It is also found to a significant degree in a game like Burning Wheel. In some "modern" systems, though, the determination of the ability of the PC to lift the boulder might be rolled into the resolution of a declared attempt to lift or throw it - eg if such a check fails, one possible narration might be that the boulder is so big even the strong PC can't lift it!

The second sort of thing is common in classic D&D, because it has few generic resolution processes, and rather has a whole lot of situation-particular mechanics (most of which involve searching for, listening at, or forcing open doors - which tells us something about what those early games were mostly focused on!).

The third is expressly advocated in AD&D (see eg the discussion of the adjuciation of saving throws in Gygax's DMG), although in my own experience it's rare for an AD&D GM to apply modifiers that aren't being read from a chart (so attack modifiers are common, because there are lists of those, but saving throw modifiers are rare, because these are stated as general principles rather than a detailed list). Most RPGs that I'm familiar with are pretty similar to AD&D in this respect, although not all: Cortex+ Heroic doesn't directly allow the fiction to modify resolution (it's mediated via Scene Descriptors), and in Dungeon World the fiction is expressed primarily by way of GM moves.

The fourth is not advocated expressly in many systems I'm familiar with, and nor is the fifth. The fourth, to me, smacks of arbitrariness if done unilaterally (why is the GM not going the first or third way?), though if the purpose of the variant is eg to save time at the table, and the player is on board, then that is a different matter. Many contemporary RPGs address this possibility expressly by having both "simple" and "complex/extended" resolution options.

The fifth - outright fudging - is to me a sign of limitations in the system. A well-designed system won't deliver results that need to be overridden. Look at the two examples Gygax gives: his need to fudge the roll for the secret door discovery to get to the "exciting" layer of the dungeon becomes unnecessary in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" approach to resolution (and I have used this in Classic Traveller on occasion to mitigate some of the issues inherent in that system); his need to fudge wandering monster rolls could be mitigated by having a rule for triggering monster rolls that factors in considerations other than time in the dungeon (eg a cap on the number or HD or whatever of wanderers while on the way to an objective, with that cap growing by X every time the party does a stupid/careless thing that makes them deserve all the wanderers they get - mechanics like the Cortex+ Heroic Doom Pool show how this can be done).

pemerton said:

So you think that when Gygax refers to fudging combat dice being contrary to the major precepts of the game, he's wrong? About his own game?

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I think it's irrelevant to the power that he gives the DM. He's right that it's contrary to the major precepts, but as he also acknowledges that the game belongs to the DM and the DM has the Gygax given ability to change every last precept as the DM sees fit, that he is right just doesn't matter.

Hussar said:

Therein lies the disagreement. Simply writing it into the rules that you can cheat doesn't suddenly make it not cheating. It's that you've changed the rules to make yourself feel better because, while everyone knows that you are cheating, you don't have to call it that. That's the whole point of the original article. We added these allowances to allow the DM to "fudge" the rules so we didn't have to call it cheating.

But, like [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] says, let's call a spade a pointy digging implement. It's cheating in everything but name.

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OK, so what are you defining as cheating? Because to me, following the rules by definition cannot be cheating.

I disagree with the assertion that we "added these allowances to allow the DM to "fudge" the rules so we didn't have to call it cheating." We have no idea why they more explicitly stated something in the rules. Regardless, it really doesn't matter why something was added to the rules. In American football it used to be against the rules to throw a forward pass. By your logic, every time a QB throws a forward pass it's cheating.

So again, what is your definition of cheating?