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Fudging for fun and profit.
- Thread starter Kzach
- Start date
On the rules thing - that the rules say the GM can fudge - I actually tend to think that that is a bit incoherent. As Nagol and others have said, the rules shouldn't permit unfun/undesirable outcomes.
The most common of those mentioned seems to be PC death/inadvertant TPK. As I said upthread, there are ways to handle this (canvassed in DMG2) that don't require fudging.
The most common of those mentioned seems to be PC death/inadvertant TPK. As I said upthread, there are ways to handle this (canvassed in DMG2) that don't require fudging.
Merlin the Tuna
First Post
Because fudging is something that really only works in moderation, just like it doesn't do much for a campaign to have nothing but cakewalks every encounter or to kill half the party every encounter.
Even if you design your adventure with all of the numbers pegged exactly right, there's still that 1/8000 chance that the main villain of the campaign will roll nat 1's on the first three attack rolls he makes, and the big climactic battle is a crock because Lady Luck is being a brazen strumpet. And then next week, she balances the karma out by being a saucy tart and showing us the other end of the spectrum -- that Level+4 solo crits on its first three attacks and smears the party all over the floor.
We play with the dice because they give us ups and downs. But that doesn't mean that we want to go all the way up into the stratosphere or down to the center of the earth at any given time. We're counting on that band in the middle 99.5% of the bell curve, and when we miss it, we make a save to disbelieve that we missed it.
I mean, yes, I guess I could codify a bunch of rules or use a different game for my fantasy RPG of choice to avoid ever having to fudge, but it's a lot easier to just say "That 8 is really a 4" and go on my merry way.
You know thta's actually why I won't run MERP/Rolemaster. I tried to start a small campaign many years ago and wiped the group three times in the first adventure because I kept rolling open ended criticals. I dropped the baseline effectiveness of the opposition each TPK so that the last wipe was a combat against normal humans with no armour and either daggers or short swords.
I find the excitement of a system with wide variance in result stops being excitement and turns into dread quite quickly when that variance is actually encountered during play. If the system in play offers that variance as a feature and I don't want to actually use that feature, I should find a system where it doesn't exist.
As for outlier sessions where the aggregate dice are off the curve, they end up being great stories. If the BBEG whiffs, the group feels relieved and seriously lucky because they know they dodged a bullet. If the BBEG continuously crits, the group feels triumphant with their victory after being put through such a wringer. If the group is forced to flee then it works to improve its odds for their next encounter with that which defeated them and usually smears the opposition on the second try.
And that's fine. For me, whether or not a result is permitted is highly conditional. If a result needs to be avoided, it is likely due to the details of the drama in the session and how play at the table has gone, and so cannot be strictly handled as part of the design.
Apology accepted.
Just for the record, I got it from here:
"Maybe that's because you know very well that the common word for it is not so sweet as "fudge"."
Okay, you keep bringing up Gygax. He in particular is not relevant to my points.
I listed quotes from several books. Gygax only wrote one of them, and I didn't call it out as being him specifically. The point was not to invoke the Ghost of Gygax, but to demonstrate that the technique has been included as part of the commonly available rules continuously since the 1970s, and therefore calling it "cheating" in general was not appropriate.
If I brought out the rulebooks to establish that d6s are and were the nominal damage die for fireballs, I would not expect you to claim I was resorting to Gygax's authority. This isn't any different, to my eye.
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The rules can only take a broad guess at what is unfun or undesirable. And even for a given group and campaign, what is normally fun and desirable may not be so in a specific incident. The rules have, to my thinking, never disguised this fact.
I totally agree that in any RPG the rules are just guidelines. Personally, I'd rather have it out and above board, but that's just my preference.
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.
People play RPGs a lot of different ways, and I think it's always important to make sure play styles match up and people have a common ground for play.
My own take on it is, when I'm GMing, I say flat out "Your character can only die with your consent." For some players, that'd suck the fun right out of the room, because there's a safety net. But the reason I do that is because, in our group, a character dying is by far not the worse thing that can happen to them, it just means they leave play. So we use stakes other than "You might die", unless the player's like, okay, this is important enough to my PC that death is on the line here. I don't assume that'd apply to every group, obviously.
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.
People play RPGs a lot of different ways, and I think it's always important to make sure play styles match up and people have a common ground for play.
My own take on it is, when I'm GMing, I say flat out "Your character can only die with your consent." For some players, that'd suck the fun right out of the room, because there's a safety net. But the reason I do that is because, in our group, a character dying is by far not the worse thing that can happen to them, it just means they leave play. So we use stakes other than "You might die", unless the player's like, okay, this is important enough to my PC that death is on the line here. I don't assume that'd apply to every group, obviously.
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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.
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.
