Fudging for fun and profit.

[Umbran]

Since it's perfectly okay, why only do it rarely? Since it's perfectly okay, why do folks need to be so clear that they only do it rarely?

Because, as Merlin noted, it is a tool that works best when used only rarely.

Also, because there seems to be a big bugaboo out there of GMs who as general policy drive the game to highly specific predetermined results. It then seems prudent to point out that the tool is not being used for that end, but instead to make only occasional edits for specific instances.

And another one: Since it's perfectly okay, and right there in the rules, why keep it secret from the players?

I'll repeat - for the same reasons that I keep the stat blocks, maps, and room descriptions from my players, and why I avoid extended rules-debates in the middle of play. The players don't get to know what's happening behind the curtain during play, and the game needs to progress smoothly.

My viewpoint is sorta this: If I'm doing my job well as a GM before the dice are rolled, I should never need nor want to fudge.

Mostly true. I think there are occasions where things go wrong that aren't clearly connected to the GM's ability. Those occasions are not particularly frequent, but they do happen, and they will happen in any game that includes random elements.

And sometimes is seems to me that players are themselves a random element

But when I have to do that, I take it as an indication that either I didn't do my job well before picking up the dice ... or I should be resolving things differently, whether without the dice or with a different system.

I'd not call it an "indication". More like evidence. When evidence stacks up, one should look at it and see if it indicates a pattern. If there is a pattern, one might want to look at changing things to eliminate that pattern going forward.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Heh...there's a similar thread over in the GitP forums.
Sometimes I fudge, sometimes I don't.

If the end result would be anti-climatic and sucktastic, like a rat gnawing on a paralyzed PC, I generally try to fudge in the PC's favor, especially if its a situation that would wreck my campaign due to pure, bad luck.

If the PC does something stupid, like an arcane caster entering melee combat with a magic warhammer-wielding dwarven vampire, I let the dice fall where they may (full attack + crit = Gallagher show with the Artificer's head in the place of a melon).

If it's the Final, Climatic battle of the campaign, I have the monsters/NPCs fight no-holds-barred: if PCs die, they die. If they live, they can revel in their triumph!

Exactly this.

But the wizard as the last one standing, no spell left and the only choice is take your staff and crit the evil vampire into oblivion...

But in the end, themost satisfying fights are those which puts the party close to defeat... luck and bad luck included... and hopefully good tactics.

 

[Faraer]

It's interesting that Forge thinking and 3E thinking concur on this point that rulesets should deliver good outcomes with their unchanged die rolls, and designs that need/acknowledge/work better with fudging are incoherent. I think it can be perfectly coherent to use dice as a resolution resource at the DM's discretion and service rather than a game-defining oracular authority -- of course with pros and cons many of which have been mentioned on this thread.

I wonder how many of the absolute-dice-obeying GMs also feel obliged to stick to predefined monster stats (and numbers), rather than sometimes making them up or altering them during play.

 

[Dandu]

Exactly this.

But the wizard as the last one standing, no spell left and the only choice is take your staff and crit the evil vampire into oblivion...

Undead are immune to crits.

 

[Nagol]

It's interesting that Forge thinking and 3E thinking concur on this point that rulesets should deliver good outcomes with their unchanged die rolls, and designs that need/acknowledge/work better with fudging are incoherent. I think it can be perfectly coherent to use dice as a resolution resource at the DM's discretion and service rather than a game-defining oracular authority -- of course with pros and cons many of which have been mentioned on this thread.

I wonder how many of the absolute-dice-obeying GMs also feel obliged to stick to predefined monster stats (and numbers), rather than sometimes making them up or altering them during play.

I create/alter creatures during design, but once I'm at the table as a DM I use what I have in front of me straight.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

A counter question for those that use the dramatic fudge: what makes you feel that your decsion to change the narrative direction provides a better game experience?

Looking back at my gaming table history and thinking about those tales that get mentioned by my current and previous groups, I don't think I could match the experience of the emergent narrative with my sense of drama or my feeling for group dynamics.

A very simple example is a session I ran for some friends a couple weeks ago. I was guest DMing a short side-trek in an ongoing Keep on the Shadowfell game and, thanks largely to some positively ridiculous resource hoarding on the PC's part, 3 of the 5 party members were down with the battle only about half way through. A couple of fudges -- one miss from the monsters, and one artillery monster going down like the paper mache that he really was not, and the group pulls it out. But even with the monsters dead, they have to stay in initiative to see if they can stabilize the other party members before they bleed out for good. They (barely) succeed, and it's a nice memory for them of their group scraping by on the skin of their teeth. Without the fudges, they would have lost easily, and that becomes a memory of the time that I visited from out of state and killed their characters like a total jerk.

For a little background on my overall situation, I started playing D&D in college, about 4 years ago. When I eventually started DMing, I decided that I wouldn't be like those big old jerkface grognards that hide behind their screens. I'd be fair, and roll everything out in the open and never adjust die rolls. And then I discovered that the dice are stupid. Villains got derailed by a string of worthless rolls, turning what was going to be a triumphant victory into what is basically a joke and probably a waste of an hour of time spent running a combat. On the flip side, dramatic moments for the PCs fell apart because the numbers just weren't there.

The most vivid memory I have of the latter was from a 3.5E battle with a young-ish dragon and his hobgoblin allies for control of a bridge. Most of the hobgoblins are down, the dragon is at about 2 hitpoints, but the party is stretched just as thin -- we're at the point where a stiff breeze will knock over most of the combatants. The Knight PC, on his horse, has been disarmed somehow but, in order to keep the dragon from taking to wing in order to get away or make one last strafing run, bites his lip, draws his dagger, and charges. He rolls the dice, and it shows something like a 13, totaling something like a 23 to hit -- one lower than the dragon's AC. "Sorry, " I say, playing it by the books, "you're one short of hitting." Visible disappointment all around the table. The player follows my halfheartedly noting that his horse gets an attack too, and, stupidly enough, it connects for the kill. We collectively shake our heads and wrap things up in the next round.

I've just had too many sessions like that -- frequently with players afterwards saying things like "That's why you need to roll behind a screen" -- to put my faith in dice at those defining moments.

 

[Wormwood]

I wonder how many of the absolute-dice-obeying GMs also feel obliged to stick to predefined monster stats (and numbers), rather than sometimes making them up or altering them during play.

As I said earlier, I give myself some leeway with monster hitpoints. If the party is down to at-wills and I make my detect boredom check, then the monster is going to lose some HPs.

But defenses, powers and attacks? Play 'em like written (which is easy, since I calibrate all of those values before each game)

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Because, as Merlin noted, it is a tool that works best when used only rarely.

Yes, but why?

Also, because there seems to be a big bugaboo out there of GMs who as general policy drive the game to highly specific predetermined results. It then seems prudent to point out that the tool is not being used for that end, but instead to make only occasional edits for specific instances.

Okay, that makes sense, but in that case I'd suggest that instead of saying things like, "I almost never do this," say, "I don't do this to push things toward a larger outcome I've predetermined." (I almost left the "larger" out of that sentence, but that wouldn't work. Because folks do fudge to push things toward an outcome, right? Even if that outcome is, for example, a fight that doesn't end prematurely due to luck that's built into the system we play.)

I'll repeat - for the same reasons that I keep the stat blocks, maps, and room descriptions from my players, and why I avoid extended rules-debates in the middle of play. The players don't get to know what's happening behind the curtain during play, and the game needs to progress smoothly.

That's kind of a non-answer, isn't it? Why don't you want the players to know what's happening behind the curtain? Would it make the game less fun for them?

Mostly true. I think there are occasions where things go wrong that aren't clearly connected to the GM's ability. Those occasions are not particularly frequent, but they do happen, and they will happen in any game that includes random elements.

It's too strong for me to say that I disagree, but ... I'm inclined to disagree.

Someone upthread used the example of the BBEG rolling either three naturals 1 or three crits to open a combat.

It's extremely important to understand that not only is this built into a system with a random mechanic, it's not even particularly rare in a system in which that mechanic is linear. And not only is it built in, and not only is it fairly common, but any DM with experience knows all this.

So, basically, a DM is choosing to design things such that it's possible for this event to occur, and such that when the event does occur, the DM will feel obligated to change the rules of the action-resolution he's chosen to use (in both system and encounter design).

That doesn't seem odd?

And sometimes is seems to me that players are themselves a random element

True dat. I've tried to fudge one of my players into going on an extended beer run. Didn't work.

I'd not call it an "indication". More like evidence. When evidence stacks up, one should look at it and see if it indicates a pattern. If there is a pattern, one might want to look at changing things to eliminate that pattern going forward.

Cool, let's end on a point of perfect agreement.

The game I currently GM, BTW, is Mutants & Masterminds. M&M has a system of codified and encouraged fudging. It's actually in the rules. (One subsection of the rules is literally "GM Fiat.") It's worth pointing out that I love M&M ... and that M&M rules on fudging are completely transparent to the players. Meaning that when I call on something like GM Fiat, the players know it, and are even compensated for it in the Hero Point economy.

I encourage folks who are "casual fudgers" (now why does that sound dirty?) to examine, again and more closely, the reason that they think -- if they do -- that fudging should be kept secret from players.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I wonder how many of the absolute-dice-obeying GMs also feel obliged to stick to predefined monster stats (and numbers), rather than sometimes making them up or altering them during play.

To be clear, I don't think I feel "obliged" to do anything in this vein. I find "not fudging" to be more enjoyable for me, and I believe (partly because they've told me) that it's more enjoyable for my players.

I will make up opponents on the fly if needed, and then I'll try to stick with what I've created. I'm fairly likely to change things in play when this happens, also, because I'm much more likely to make mistakes when I'm flying by the seat of my pants.

I don't alter pre-created opponent stats during play (again, unless there's an actual mistake involved; typo in the stat-block, something like that).

 

[Cadfan]

A counter question for those that use the dramatic fudge: what makes you feel that your decsion to change the narrative direction provides a better game experience?

Looking back at my gaming table history and thinking about those tales that get mentioned by my current and previous groups, I don't think I could match the experience of the emergent narrative with my sense of drama or my feeling for group dynamics.

Well, I notice the game starting to suck, look around for a way to stop the suck without fudging, and if the game continues to suck and I can't find a way to make it stop, I fudge.

That handles... 90% of the cases where I fudge? And I don't even fudge that often, so exceptions to this are quite rare.

I'm more likely to ad lib a monster power or ability than fudge if I need a fight to be more exciting. For instance, I recently ran a fight where one of the enemies could transport a player to a pocket dimension for a short period of time, removing him from the fight. The fight was starting to get dull, and the monster was going to die, so I figured I'd end on a high note. I had the monster use its pocket dimension attack again on the weakest party member, then instead of making a second attack, he transported himself to the pocket dimension to fight his victim mana a mano.

This wasn't officially part of the monster's powers, but it was awesome. It not only made the party genuinely worried they'd lose a character, but another character with a lot of teleportation powers wanted to use his arcane skills to travel after the two disappeared combatants. I let him roll arcana, had him take nominal damage from dimensional tearing during an impromptu teleport, and threw him into the pocket dimension as well. It was actually really great.

I guess... I'm just highly skeptical of the idea that this is rocket science in some way, and I'm really, really skeptical of the idea that there's some innate feature of reality that makes randomized results better than my own judgment in all possible cases.