Are you a fudging fudger?

[Barastrondo]

I've done it before, might do it again. Usually it's a matter of "corrective fudging", wherein I realize that I or someone involved with the rules has made something of an oversight: a monster's a little too weak or too strong, for instance, and I didn't catch it the first time around. (Oh, for the days of college when I had all that extra spare time to plan game sessions.) I don't generally trust all of the planning and mechanics to be perfectly thought-out ahead of time, so I leave a little wiggle room to fix things in play. Mostly that applies to statistics, but I can't say "I would never" to dice, particularly if it's a system where there is no curve to the dice (a d20 rather than 3d6, for instance). I like and respect my fellow game designers, past and present, but sometimes they make mistakes (just like I do), or simply miss my group's play dynamic by a few percentile points.

 

[pawsplay]

I've done it before, might do it again. Usually it's a matter of "corrective fudging", wherein I realize that I or someone involved with the rules has made something of an oversight: a monster's a little too weak or too strong, for instance, and I didn't catch it the first time around. (Oh, for the days of college when I had all that extra spare time to plan game sessions.) I don't generally trust all of the planning and mechanics to be perfectly thought-out ahead of time, so I leave a little wiggle room to fix things in play. Mostly that applies to statistics, but I can't say "I would never" to dice, particularly if it's a system where there is no curve to the dice (a d20 rather than 3d6, for instance). I like and respect my fellow game designers, past and present, but sometimes they make mistakes (just like I do), or simply miss my group's play dynamic by a few percentile points.

The way you describe makes an encounter sound like a sort of exercise, with expected results. I like my games to have a little deadly risk of deadly danger of death, even if small and somewhat manageable.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[pawsplay]

Double jeopardy!

 

[Barastrondo]

The way you describe makes an encounter sound like a sort of exercise, with expected results. I like my games to have a little deadly risk of deadly danger of death, even if small and somewhat manageable.

But do you want a lot when you're expecting a little? You know, if the GM tells you "they're pretty rough and it could be a tough fight," if it turns out "the odds are decidedly stacked against you" and you die, is that cool? Even if there was no real way for you to determine the latter because the GM believed at the time that it was a fairer fight than it turned out to be?

Bad planning, or bogus challenge ratings, or whatever might lead a GM to believe that an encounter is less dangerous than it actually is, is kind of a trap. It basically prevents the players from making informed decisions, because as the GM doesn't know the actual extent of the danger, he can't inform them even if they do their best to discover it. I prefer to make sure my players' decisions are as informed as they can be; if I've screwed up, or the monkey in charge of challenge ratings has screwed up and I didn't catch it, I don't think it's fair to make the players eat the punishment and say "oh well."

Of course, some people might not want that level of fair, which is all well and good. It's just not our thing.

 

[Ariosto]

Of course, some people might not want that level of fair, which is all well and good. It's just not our thing.

Some people might not want that level of interference with the game.

Some people don't want 2-2-4s suddenly turning into 5-4-4s because our soak-off gave us 5-1. That's not what we call fair, and neither is the opposite.

Your specter of GM incompetence does not encourage me to see more of it as a "solution"! Why make it too hard for players to assess situations, much less too hard for the GM? Why is it the GM making the decision as to whether "a monster's a little too weak or too strong"? On what basis is the GM suddenly less out to lunch than before?

Some players like to play the game for themselves -- and some GMs like to find out how the players surprise them!

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

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edit: The comment this was responding to was edited out during the response! Catastrophe averted!
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[Ariosto]

Is it safe to assume that you didn't intend to suggest here that GMs who fudge are incompetent?

Yes.

Heaven forbid you needed a Botox injection to ask that question with a straight face.

Why don't you ask Barastrondo just how much fairness we don't like? Are we also against "a certain level" of motherhood and apple pie?

It's safe to assume that I mean to suggest just what I wrote: that if I were worried about the possibility that "the monkey has screwed up" (which I am not), then that would not make me any more eager to have him trying to fix his "bad planning" by suddenly screwing with dice rolls. Just the opposite, really.

Fortunately, as with most "specters", Barastrondo's is as vaporous now as when people were holding up the legendary incompetent GM as the reason it was necessary to forge such a heavy chain of comprehensive rules that there would be no room for the dreaded DM Fiat.

Ain't it funny how the way things go?

 

[Hussar]

One thing I noticed that when I rolled in the open, the lethality of my 3e campaigns went WAY up.

 

[Victim]

Depends on the system. Generally, I play DnD, and I'm not a huge fan of fudging things there.

OTOH, I also run Mutants and Masterminds, and that system essentially runs on GM Fiat. Everything inflicts saves, and a badly blown save can be devastating. I can alter die rolls or handwave certain results, but every time I do, I have to give the players resources that they can use to change die rolls. However, how I use that power makes a big difference. Brute forcing too many things, or have an NPC essentially hand out Hero Points faster than players can spend them is unsatisfying. However, the system can have a brutal death spiral and 1 hit take down potential - using too little GM Fiat and NPCs can be very brittle. And so can the players, since they'll have an extremely limited supply of their own.