Fudging for fun and profit.

[Barastrondo]

I generally let the dice fall, but I might fudge some stats, if the players aren't having much fun (like if the combat gets grindy, I'll drop some HP).

My strongest temptation comes from what I call "corrective fudging" — when I feel that I've made an error in the actual planning part of the session, by creating an antagonist that's entirely too strong, for instance, but giving the players reason to believe beforehand that he was more manageable. (After all, I thought he was that manageable myself.) Since confronting an overpowered opponent wasn't an actual decision they made, not having the right information, it could potentially get to a point where the players are getting punished for my mistake.

Of course, that kind of reflects how I feel as a player about GM fudging; it all depends on how I trust the GM's judgment. If I trust them to be fair in giving me the information I need to make decisions or in statting out things for the group to face, then I'm cool with them letting the dice fall where they may. I'm also fine with some fudging if I trust the GM to be fair about it (if you nudge one fight easier, nudge another harder later on), or I think their in-play judgment is at least the equal of their planning judgment.

 

[darjr]

I don't use a screen. I roll out in the open.

I have been accused of being a 'whiffle' once cause I let a healer come to the 'minor' rescue as a reward for some really great play. I really try and go for the story reasons why a party would catch a break.

I really like, in the first PVP podcast, after the tpk, the characters woke up, tied up, ready to be sacrificed, but had one last chance. To me that is the way to fudge.

Though I can't say I've never fudged the result on the dice.

 

[aboyd]

Of course, that kind of reflects how I feel as a player about GM fudging; it all depends on how I trust the GM's judgment.

Same. I've had DMs that feel very cheaty -- a player takes a trip build and suddenly every enemy has 4 legs, or a player creates a pyromaniac and suddenly every enemy has fire resistance, etc. Back in my Seattle days, I had a DM that would throw down 20 enemies onto the battle mat and then just pull a bunch right off the mat mid-battle if it was too much for the PCs.

No matter what we did -- smart or stupid, planning or spontaneous -- every fight would be very hard but not hard enough to kill us. At a certain point you realize that it doesn't matter what you do; these fights are destined for a specific outcome. So, no need to invest time or energy into a plan that might make things go better. In fact, after a while you start to realize that you might even be *protected* from death, so you act stupid just to crash up against the railroad and see how forced it will be.

I myself have never done that as a DM. I run a sandbox and let the dice fall where they may, almost always. In fact, my players would suggest that I am probably too impartial, as I've allowed them to be TPK'd repeatedly. However, they would be TPK'd probably a little more if it wasn't for the little fudging I have done.

I had to create a golem to guard a treasure. I couldn't predict if the players were going to storm the ruined keep or if they would send the rogue in to scout -- so I needed a creature that would be a match for all of them, but not so tough that it would insta-kill the rogue if he encountered it solo. I also needed the golem to have the see-invisibility property, which a lot of the weaker ones don't have, and a lot of the tougher ones were too tough. I finally found one that was almost perfect, in the Tome of Horrors. However, I calculated that if the golem were to hit for max-damage, it would put the rogue at -1, at which point the rogue would be beaten to death. Anything other than max damage was fine. So I resolved right then & there that since the golem was otherwise perfect for my game, if I managed to roll max damage, I was re-rolling. Any outcome was fine except one -- I did not feel that certain death with not even a chance to react was "fun" for the players. If the golem hit hard and the rogue lived but was dumb enough to try to solo it anyway, then by all means let's kill the rogue. But killing him out of the blue simply because the monster wasn't a perfect match for all the constraints I had? Nah.

Of course, just as fate would have it, the rogue scouted ahead invisibly, the golem saw him, and walloped him for max damage -- 4 or 5 d6s, with a 6 rolled for every one. Damn it. So I secretly re-rolled and the game went on.

I could have picked a different gaming system that wouldn't have required a re-roll, if I were willing to spend weeks or months investigating such a solution. I could have made a custom monster if I were willing to invest time in that, too. I could have simply said beforehand that the monster would do a set 10 points of damage because that's what I wanted to dictate and then proceeded to railroad the hell out of the game because I'd become some power-tripping evil DM. However, the solution I used took 5 seconds and still left my game with a huge realm of possible outcomes. I was happy, and to this day the players still talk about that insane golem fight, so it appears I provided a good time to them, too.

That is the "mental place" that I hope the DMs I play with can find. I want a DM that leaves things alone, and lets the outcome be the outcome... with rare exceptions for miserably lame crap. Tinker too much and I can see it, which sucks. Tinker not at all and the statistics (at least for D&D) will eventually dictate that something ridiculous, stupid, and annoying happens. In such (hopefully extremely infrequent) cases, I'd rather a secret change than simply discarding or overhauling the entire system.

 

[aboyd]

I think that the possibility of harming the social contract -- whether it's explicit or not -- is the primary reason that GMs that alter die rolls do so secretly.

For what it's worth, while I do not think I've specifically told my players, "I WILL ALTER DIE ROLLS BEHIND THIS SCREEN," the players know that the screen is there precisely so that I can do secret stuff. There may be a fudged die roll, an alteration to an NPC's sequence of attacks (I write them all out beforehand), or who knows what else. My players read this forum and have kindly posted in defense of my game a few times, and so I know they will read the story I just posted of the golem with the re-roll for max damage. This is a known part of my game. I ain't ashamed of it. This is fun, this is what I'm paid to do as a DM.

EDIT: I do know a DM that acted as if the social contract was intact, and then proceeded to undermine it. However, most DMs I know would never even suggest that such a social contract (no altered die rolls) was in operation in the first place. YMMV.

 

[The Shaman]

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.

Okay, I don't get this at all.

How on earth is that a "stupid" ending to the encounter?

If a player is most intrigued by the mechanical and tactical challenge of defeating a tough enemy, they might well feel cheated by the fudging. Not cheated as in "You're a dirty cheater", cheated in that if they wanted to win or lose a fight on their own merit, but didn't get to do so, so they're disappointed.

*raises hand*

Yeah, over here. That would be me.

 

[Ariosto]

I had to create a golem to guard a treasure. [... specific requirements ...] I finally found one that was almost perfect, in the Tome of Horrors. ... Anything other than max damage was fine. So I resolved right then & there that since the golem was otherwise perfect for my game, if I managed to roll max damage, I was re-rolling. ... Of course, just as fate would have it, the rogue scouted ahead invisibly, the golem saw him, and walloped him for max damage -- 4 or 5 d6s, with a 6 rolled for every one. Damn it. So I secretly re-rolled and the game went on.

So, apparently it was part of your rule that you had to "find" something in a certain set of books -- or else use some system ("I could have made a custom monster if I were willing to invest time in that, too.") -- instead of just making it so. However, you were allowed to change that one factor. Nonetheless, it was -- and is -- significant to you that you secretly re-rolled.

Am I right in taking that as an example of what 'fudging' means to you? As far as I can tell, that was simply the damage spread on which you had previously determined. In such a case, the mere fact of taking two rolls to get the result would have been of no special significance to me; it's just one of many ways to use dice. I would see no reason to roll it any more 'secretly' than other normal damage roll (which in my case means out in the open).

I would not be likely to find myself (except for a one-shot scenario) designing an encounter on such terms, but that's just a whole different "campaign" context.

This is what I'm paid to do as a DM.

Then of course you had better do it, or else the players might demand a refund.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Am I right in taking that as an example of what 'fudging' means to you? As far as I can tell, that was simply the damage spread on which you had previously determined. In such a case, the mere fact of taking two rolls to get the result would have been of no special significance to me; it's just one of many ways to use dice. I would see no reason to roll it any more 'secretly' than other normal damage roll (which in my case means out in the open).

Yeah, those're pretty much exactly my thoughts.

There's a difference between thinking, "If I roll a crit here, I'm going to reroll" and thinking, "Oh, crap, I rolled a crit. I need to reroll." In both cases, if rolling a crit is bad, you should probably not be rolling, IMO, but if you must, the former is better than the latter.

In the "max damage" case presented, I simply would have rolled (or maybe just set to a number) the damage ahead of time and noted it in my encounter notes. But I don't consider it fudging to determine ahead of time that you'll reroll a result if it's in a certain range. As Ariosto said, that's effectively just changing the way you're setting possible outcomes with the dice. It's no much fudging than it is cheating when a player has an ability that allows a rereoll-take-highest.

 

[aboyd]

Am I right in taking that as an example of what 'fudging' means to you?

Yes. For fun & profit, as the thread topic says.

 

[Victim]

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.

My opinion is that not fudging is part of what produced a vivid memory like that. Everyone in our group remembers the time when a major villain was exposed for just a moment, but was hit and crit by our Paladin on a longshot attack. And then failed the massive death save, dying outright before his plan could get off the ground. Or when the dragon rolled a one saving against a low DC death attack from an item our cohort had.

The die producing an unexpected result is part of what makes the situation noteworthy. If things went according to plan, the encounters would be more ordinary.

 

[The Shaman]

My opinion is that not fudging is part of what produced a vivid memory like that. . . . The die producing an unexpected result is part of what makes the situation noteworthy. If things went according to plan, the encounters would be more ordinary.

Exactly.

I have to wonder how the referee handled the attacks in Merlin the Fish's example. I pictured the knight slashing with his dagger, narrowly missing, then stomping on the dodging dragon with his warhorse's hooves. I can't understand how that wouldn't be a satisfying end to the encounter.