D&D General Dice Fudging and Twist Endings

[EzekielRaiden]

Or... if what is actually the case... is a wonderful and large middle ground and nuance between the two extremes. If you and @EzekielRaiden would care to head towards the middle and admit that ignoring one die roll out of thousands does not turn a D&D campaign into a novel, then I'm more than happy to meet you there with a more measured take on the sanctity of game mechanics.

But it's not  one die roll, is it? It's every die roll you dislike enough.

And it's secret. Never ever to be known by players, no matter how much effort they might put in to finding out. Indeed, ensuring that they cannot even in principle find out that this occurred is absolutely critical. If it weren't, it wouldn't be fudging. It would just be...telling the players what you're doing. "Y'know what, no, you just succeed, ignore that die roll" is not fudging. "I shouldn't have rolled for that; we're just going to go with X instead" is not fudging. "You land what you KNOW to be a lethal blow...but the goblin lord rises back up, his eyes wild and glowing, his wound dancing with purple fire, and he attacks again!" is not fudging. In every case, the players know something is happening. They may not know what. They may try to find out and fail. They may make progress and then draw false conclusions from the evidence. But they had the chance to learn. They weren't prevented by an almighty figure from ever even having the potential to access that information.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It's a scene from Labyrinth, where the protagonist is confronted with two talking doors in the classic "one always lies, one always tells the truth" scenario.

Then I don't really know if I understand what you were meaning by it. Characters can lie in stories. That doesn't make all storytelling lies.

 

[DEFCON 1]

But they had the chance to learn.

Learn what? What exactly are they learning?

You had mentioned this before in an earlier post that one needs to run the game in a certain way so that the players can learn from what happened. Learn from their successes and their mistakes I guess? I never got a chance to respond then, but because it's now come up again I'll ask it now instead... what are the player learning that it's so important that they do? I honestly do not know what you are referring to. What are they supposed to be learning, what does it matter if they are or aren't, and ultimately what is the purpose to "learning" something about the game other than just playing it?

I'm actually curious what it is that you think is important for players to learn that all dice rolls have to be on the "up and up"? Because the things I can think of end up falling into a couple different categories-- none of which have anything to do with dice fudging or are for a part of the game that I do not find to be important enough that "learning" it is worthwhile. So for instance:

- Do players need to learn how to play the game?

Yes. Sure. I can buy that statement. Why? Because I presume by learning the game rules all the players can "play faster", which speeds up the number of encounters and events the group can do, and that presumably is more fun for all players at the table. And maximizing people's fun is a good thing. I would 100% agree with that take. The only problem being that I do not believe a DM fudging a roll has anything to do with how fast a player can learn the rules of the game, so I don't think that is what you are talking about.

- Do players need to learn to trust their DM?

At some point, sure. I'll give you that. I'm sure that's a big thing for a lot of tables... especially for all those players who don't have set groups and are constantly joining or running pick-up games. Learning how the DM will run the game gives a person a better chance of knowing they will probably enjoy their time playing with them. And as people's time is precious, I do not discount wanting to learn that info and that they can trust that unknown DM as quickly as possible. But... for all the tables that are already established and for which there is already a built-in trust... those DMs that know their players and know what those players are okay with, and the players know the DM and what the DM's ultimate focus is on that they are agree to and believe in... those DM can do whatever they want if they stay within those parameters. Which means a universal "all fudging is bad" quite possibly does not apply to those tables. Which means we now move to a middle ground in the discussion and not remain out on the extreme all-or-nothing opinion of the matter. Some tables can be fine with fudging, even if a lot of tables aren't.

- Do players need to learn "tactics" on how best to defeat the monsters and encounters in the game?

No. I don't think they do. Because learning how to "best defeat monsters" means that the purpose of fighting those monsters is to "win". The fastest way to do it. The way that results in the least amount of damage taken. Figuring out the "rules" of a monster or encounter and then blazing through it with the most effective strategy that causes the least amount of issue. But all of that brings us back to the whole thing about treating D&D as nothing but a board game-- where learning how to "win" each fight ids the reason for doing it and trumps the narrative and story of the fight itself... the reason for the fight, the actions of the fight, and what happens to the characters after the fight. Players don't need to "learn how best to defeat" monsters... because winning or losing against them shouldn't matter to the players. What matters is the story the characters go through due to the fight, and how they are changed by the fight after it. Characters can learn as much from a loss as they can a win. So as long as A result occurs after a fight (whatever that result is and however the DM and players got there)... the players can roleplay their characters after the fact and the story of their character will progress. Players can just blindly stumble through a fight or series of encounters with no thought or learning whatsoever and come out the other side having their characters having been successful... and there's nothing wrong with that one bit.

Is there something else that you think players are meant to "learn" that can ONLY happen if the DM is completely up front about the results of every die roll? I'm sure it's possible I might be missing something else, so please feel free to pass on what you think those are if you believe it's important and you wish to continue the discussion. You don't have to, obviously... because I don't think either of us are going to change our minds so this is all just talking about D&D stuff because like talking about D&D stuff. But that's never stopped me from doing it here on EN World all the time, so I'm more than happy to read your further comments on this if you wish to discuss them.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Then I don't really know if I understand what you were meaning by it. Characters can lie in stories. That doesn't make all storytelling lies.

I thought it was just a flip comment I was making.

But to examine it further, Labyrinth is a story where pretty much all the characters lie, where deception plays a very strong, perhaps even central role. Hoggle and Jareth lie to Sarah on multiple occasions, Sarah lies to herself, Ludo's fearsome appearance belies a loyal and friendly nature. And arguably, what defeats the Goblin King is the assertion of truth of "You have no power over me."

 

[Umbran]

Then I don't really know if I understand what you were meaning by it. Characters can lie in stories. That doesn't make all storytelling lies.

I've seen "all storytelling is lies" as a sort of reductive argument. The logic is that if you say, "Sam walked into a bar," and this person named Sam didn't literally do so (because, for example, Sam and the bar are both fictitious, and so do not exist to walk into each other), then you are willfully relating an untrue statement - in other words, lying.

It is a pretty bogus argument, IMHO, that shifts the burden/issue of lies away from trust.

Like, two old guys sitting on a dock fishing, telling "exaggerated" tales of prior fishing exploits - technically lying about the size of the one that got away, but there no violation of trust, so they are both fine with it. But when one of them gets home late, and his wife asks where he's been, and he says he was working late instead of skiving off fishing, she cares a lot, because he's broken trust.

Which dovetails nicely with this discussion. Whether fudging is bad is highly contingent on what violates trust at the table.

 

[Zaukrie]

“Always roll your dice in public. “Let the dice fall where they may,” as the saying goes. The players will learn fear, as they trust in the objectivity of your combat encounters.”

“Let the characters die if the dice so dictate it. Nothing is as precious as a PC's life when it can be taken away— and nothing is so unchallenging as a game where the players know the judge will not kill their characters. The DCC RPG is designed for high character death rates—let this be true in your game as well. Achieving 5th level in the DCC RPG is a true accomplishment.”

—Dungeon Crawl Classics​

The referee is not a storyteller. They setup the baddies and react to the players’ decisions and what the dice dictate. The referee does not fudge rolls and push for certain, pre-determined outcomes.

And if you set it up wrong? I couldn't disagree more. The DM is there to make sure people have fun, not a referee.

 

[iserith]

Fudging is, to me, not so much about trust (though there's some of that, depending) but just that it's a tool that serves no purpose. I don't rely on the dice to make decisions for me that could go in a direction that is not fun for everyone, given that particular group's preferences. If we've taken death off the table, for example, I don't roll the dice to determine life or death because the answer is always "life." No need to roll there and thus no need to fudge.

 

[overgeeked]

And if you set it up wrong?

Not really a thing. The referee sets up the monsters based on the situation in the fiction. It's on the players to engage with that or run away. If they insist on fighting things above their pay grade, that's 100% on them. That's what Session 0s are for. "There is no balance in this game. Not all monsters or encounters are designed to be fights. Not all fights can be won. Adjust your expectations accordingly. If that doesn't sound fun to you, there's the door."

The DM is there to make sure people have fun, not a referee.

To quote you...

I couldn't disagree more.

It's on each person to make sure they are entertained. If it's anyone else's responsibility (it isn't), then it's everyone's responsibility. It's certainly not one person's responsibility to ensure the whole table is entertained. Do players really sit down and expect that DM to entertain them? How exhausting. Maybe that's why there's a DM shortage and there are paid DMs now.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Learn what? What exactly are they learning?

The state of play. To make (reasonably) well-informed decisions, you must have a chance to learn the state of play. Call it "the fiction" or "the pieces on the board" etc.; all call out what's going on, people, things, and acts. Some stuff remains hidden for diegetic reasons: as said, characters lie often for their own reasons. That's just people.

You had mentioned this before in an earlier post that one needs to run the game in a certain way so that the players can learn from what happened. Learn from their successes and their mistakes I guess?

Yes. What is wise, or unwise? What is useful, or trouble? How much work to make ready is right, vs. wasteful or lacking? Etc. Learning how to play the game, not the spreadsheets (that's just math), not the DM, but the rich space between the two.

- Do players need to learn how to play the game?

Yes. Sure. I can buy that statement. Why? Because I presume by learning the game rules all the players can "play faster", which speeds up the number of encounters and events the group can do, and that presumably is more fun for all players at the table. And maximizing people's fun is a good thing. I would 100% agree with that take. The only problem being that I do not believe a DM fudging a roll has anything to do with how fast a player can learn the rules of the game, so I don't think that is what you are talking about.

There is (much, much) more to "learn[ing] how to play the game" than just learning the math--for exactly the same reason that it is demeaning to call a TTRPG a boardgame. You're right, speed, efficiency, etc., these are useful as tools. It is not the tools that matter. It is learning to make wiser choices that matters--and learning when the wise choice and the right choice should differ.

- Do players need to learn to trust their DM?

Not relevant here. I don't mean to be dismissive, just...that's outside the point I'm making.

- Do players need to learn "tactics" on how best to defeat the monsters and encounters in the game?

The question is too small. You have only considered one, narrow, limited branch of wise decision-making. How should we spend resources? How should we spend time? What places are worth going to, when we don't have all the info to make a perfect choice, nor enough time to go everywhere? Which people are worthy of trust vs suspicion? What goods are worth buying, and why? When should we sell what we do not use? Etc., etc., etc. All of these things are part of learning to make wiser decisions--to play the game better, not just the math, nor just the DM.

Interceding between the players and the consequences of their choices breaks that link. Even doing so for the best, most principled reasons still means that every single bad result has the massive asterisk: "Unless the DM decided that the actual results weren't right." That asterisk means, ultimately, you are always playing the DM, not the game. You are learning how to shape the DM's response, not learning the connections between your actions and the consequences, because when that intervention is a perfect secret, the player cannot know the difference.

Is there something else that you think players are meant to "learn" that can ONLY happen if the DM is completely up front about the results of every die roll? I'm sure it's possible I might be missing something else, so please feel free to pass on what you think those are if you believe it's important and you wish to continue the discussion. You don't have to, obviously... because I don't think either of us are going to change our minds so this is all just talking about D&D stuff because like talking about D&D stuff. But that's never stopped me from doing it here on EN World all the time, so I'm more than happy to read your further comments on this if you wish to discuss them.

Think of it like this:

The player sets up tracks, which feed into a very wide tunnel they cannot look inside. Colored trains go on those tracks. When trains of the right color reach the stations on the far side of the tunnel, the player succeeds. When they do not, the player fails. Clearly, the player wants to place tracks in such a way that they have the best chance of getting the trains to the right stations. They cannot know all information, because the tracks inside the tunnels change randomly, but they can try to account for that randomness as part of their choices. As the player learns both the fixed and random parts of the overall system, they will get better at getting trains to the end. They may not ever get 100% success, but they'll accomplish their goals better than they did before. Providing new setups, with more complicated tracks and more difficult unknowns to puzzle through, is part of what makes this "train-game" a fun challenge, and not just a gambling game or weird semi-random puzzle. These new setups are provided by the Trainyard Master, TM.

But, now, imagine that the Trainyard Master can insert or modify tracks wherever she likes, during the course of play. She can choose to modify tracks in three places...mostly because those are the only places that exist within the game space: openly, in the parts before the tunnel, secretly in the parts inside the tunnel, or openly, in the parts after the tunnel but before the stations (or, I guess, the stations themselves.) If she changes the parts outside the tunnels, the players can see how those changes affect the trains; the results are still mediated by the TM's choices, but the players can account for that, or at least try to. (I don't expect perfect play from anyone.) Some of the changes may be "as a trainyard master," played through as a person actually altering the tracks, while others may be external to the game, just declaring that the tracks are different now.

But if she modifies the tracks inside the tunnel...what can the players do about that? They can't. They literally are not able to see the difference between "this choice is because the TM made it so" and "this choice is because I made it so." It doesn't matter whether the TM only does so under the most dire circumstances, when someone's choices (whether her own or the players') would lead to a derailment or collapse of the rail network or whatever else. The filter is always there. Just because it doesn't change things doesn't mean it's not present in the system, yet the whole point of changing things inside the tunnels (rather than in either open space) is to ensure that the players don't know that the change occurred--to make them think the consequence is the result, solely, of their own choices.

Hence, the players cannot actually learn how to make wise choices. They can't even really learn how to make choices the TM likes, because any choices the TM doesn't like (beyond whatever threshold of dislike the TM has chosen) simply aren't allowed to have the consequences they should have had. This cuts both ways: secretly lengthening the life of a boss by nerfing someone's damage or raising the boss's HP (the two are precisely equivalent) means punishing good choices even if those good choices were heavily affected by luck; secretly saving a PC from death, whether by giving them extra HP or nerfing the attacker's damage (again, precisely equivalent) means rewarding poor choices even if those poor choices were heavily affected by luck.

The example I like to give for this, which doesn't actually involve fudging any dice but which I consider to be exactly as problematic, is a murder mystery. For whatever reason, the party is investigating a murder. They attended the masquerade ball, and the Prince was killed by someone there. You know, and have put clues out to the effect that, the Countess is the actual murderer. The players have found evidence to this effect, and have started to put together their theory. However, one player is gravely concerned, as he has found some of the false evidence planted by the Countess, which implicates the Baron, whom the PC has been courting. Thinking this theory so much more juicy than the one you originally went with, you now decide that all of the evidence they had been relying on--which they had understood to be true--has actually been false clues the whole time, planted by the Baron to make the Countess appear guilty.

There is no difference between this and the fudged roll. Both are taking the actual state of affairs and discarding it for the DM's preference instead. It does not matter that the DM is only doing it for the best of reasons, or for the worst of reasons, or for any reason or no reason at all. All that matters is that the players have understood something to be true, have reasoned based on that thing being true because it actually was, and then the DM secretly (in such a way so as to prevent the players from ever discovering it) made that something untrue and thus the reasoning based upon it faulty with no fault on the players' part. Caprice only intensifies the problem; it does not cause the problem.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Fudging is, to me, not so much about trust (though there's some of that, depending) but just that it's a tool that serves no purpose. I don't rely on the dice to make decisions for me that could go in a direction that is not fun for everyone, given that particular group's preferences. If we've taken death off the table, for example, I don't roll the dice to determine life or death because the answer is always "life." No need to roll there and thus no need to fudge.

Precisely. It is a risky, dangerous tool to resolve a problem that can already be resolved by perfectly safe, effective tools that actually have at least the potential to produce better results.

Why use a risky, dangerous tool that produces only (at best) baseline results, when you could use other tools that are safe, effective, and potentially able to do even better?

Practical concerns do not require fudging: there are better tools for exactly the same jobs. Ethical concerns point against fudging: it is deceptive, as the OP explicitly recognized. Ludonarrative concerns point against fudging: both the story and the gameplay are at least no worse when fudging is not used, so long as one either (a) sets the terms correctly in advance, or (b) prepares diegetic solutions for possible issues in advance, or (c) remains open to improvising solutions diegetically.