Fudging for fun and profit.

[Ariosto]

First of all, it is not breaking the rules of the game, if the rules of the game says it's okay for a DM to do just that. Why do you insist on pressing this point?

Because it is the critical point. It simply does work for you or me to insist that doing this or not doing that is binding on everyone else.

What works is for people to agree upon the rules of whatever game they wish to play.

I happen to find that it works a lot better for me and my friends to keep it above board.

"What's the difference" tends to be a rhetorical question, and the character of the follow-up rhetoric can be telling. I treated it as a genuine question, and gave my answer. It is not an answer for you to try to "prove wrong", but hypocrisy rushes in where common sense dare not tread.

Conversely, why does it seem that you are so intent on proving that fudging is wrong?

Because that is how you choose to see it.

And see, this is why your position is coming across as The One True Way...calling others approaches to this (fudging) as being misleading, dishonest

Did you even bother to read that? "Other" than what? That is the method that I employ. It is also, as a plain matter of fact "misleading" and "dishonest". Not surprisingly, I consider it not wrong.

So, Umbran tries an Appeal to Authority ... then you take my rejection of that OTW gambit as indicating some need for you to "lecture" me with my own point ... and you wonder at what you hear in your echo chamber?

You can stop telling me that I believe this or that and instead ask me and listen to what I say.

I am saying now what I have said repeatedly: Your methods suit the game you want to play. My methods suit the game I want to play. The means are different because the ends are different.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Janx]

umbran pretty much hit all the points.

1) the rules in editions 1-4 say i can cheat/fudge
2) most DMs who do fudge do so rarely
3) there are multiple ways to manipulate game results and outcomes, besides lying about what the die roll was behind a screen
4) encounter design is itself a manipulation of the outcome


Personally, I rarely fudge a die roll. I never do it in the bad guys favor. I only fudge the bad guys hit or damage to miss or be less when it would result in a PC death that seems unduly unlucky.

To take it easy on a PC, I am more likely to change tactics or have an event occur that is to the PCs advantage, but doesn't seem like deus ex machina.

Generally, I expect my players to be successful in every encounter. I may not know how they will win, but I figure that they must win, otherwise they wouldn't get to the next one, and there'd be no point in writing more encounters in advance.

Since it is possible for me to make an unwinnable encounter AND not provide information to that fact, or a means to avoid it, means I inherently have the power over ALL outcomes in the game. For good fun results, I must avoid that situation.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

umbran pretty much hit all the points.

1) the rules in editions 1-4 say i can cheat/fudge
2) most DMs who do fudge do so rarely

The thing I find most interesting about this discussion is this: "Given (1) above, then why (2)?" Not only "why" in the game, but why do folks bother to say, "Fudging is perfectly okay ... but I only do it rarely"?

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?

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

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. If I'm doing my job well and I'm still getting poor results from the action resolution system of the game, I maybe need to change games.

Now sometimes I don't do my job well. Sometimes I make mistakes as a GM. And in those cases, the rules are very right to tell me that I'm not cheating when I take steps, during resolution, to correct for that. 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.

 

[Ariosto]

On those occasions when I do fudge a roll, I don't generally have an outcome in mind before I roll the dice. I roll the dice, see the result, and go, "Hm, that's probably not something we want to have happen just now." I then fudge to get something near to the result the dice gave me, but not as bad.

I prefer to deal with such questions at the design level. If a result is really not to be permitted, then I will not include it in the spread. A result may be undesirable from a player's strategic perspective, but then that is what makes strategy a going concern. It is no different for me as a player in D&D than in other games.

Yes, that may be different from what you -- or you -- or you happen to prefer!

That's fine - but don't try to use your local rules to define what I do or do not know.

Umbran, I am not about to get into arguing interpretation of those snippets in the wider context with you. Use your interpretation to inform your local rules, but don't try to foist on me that yours is somehow Official. That is "What Gary Said", too!

[edit] As to "trying to define what you do or do not know", all I can figure (without knowing whence you got that) is that I made an error in grammar or punctuation somewhere. For what must seem not only absurd but inconsiderate, I am sorry.

Why should I find such quotes?

Because the point you apparently were arguing was in fact that letting the players "fudge" would be "not D&D". I have never suggested that you need permission from Gygax to do whatever you will! (He gave it at the end of the original D&D set, FWIW. I thought that was also addressed to me, though.)

What matters, as a practical matter so far as I can see, is whatever "the rules" are in your relationships with the people with whom you play.

 

[Nagol]

I prefer to deal with such questions at the design level. If a result is really not to be permitted, then I will not include it in the spread. A result may be undesirable from a player's strategic perspective, but then that is what makes strategy a going concern. It is no different for me as a player in D&D than in other games.

I certainly learned that lesson the hard way.

It's really a variation of Murphy's Law. If you allow for a probability of an event no matter how slim, you wil see the event occur over the lifetime of gaming.

If you aren't willing to allow the event, don't allow for a probability of the outcome.

 

[Umbran]

Because it is the critical point. It simply does work for you or me to insist that doing this or not doing that is binding on everyone else.

Yeah, well check this out - the critical thing is that nobody has said any of this is binding on you. Not a single person. Go back and check, if you don't believe me.

I was here saying that it is okay to use if you want to. See that if? It's a conditional. It gives you choice. Just like the rules I quote, also conditional on your own decision as a GM. Like I said in my very first post in this thread - sometimes I want to use it, sometimes I don't.

So, you know what? You're struggling really hard, and getting a bit rude in the process, trying to avoid being tied down when nobody's ever tried to confine you.

Given that, you might want to reconsider how you're approaching this discussion.

 

[Ariosto]

<tweet>

>: I'm a canary-bot.
( | Danger, Jeff Wilder!
^ Dang ...

 

[Ariosto]

Attack someone for something he did not write ... because of agreement with what he in fact did write ... while accusing him of having done just what one is at that very moment doing ... That's some kind of brilliant.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

<tweet>

>: I'm a canary-bot.
( | Danger, Jeff Wilder!
^ Dang ...

I'm sorry ... I don't get this.