Do you "save" the PCs?

[pawsplay]

I'd like to return to a prior note about how these arguments go for a moment. Some folks may view this as well-thought-out or well stated. To me, this stands as one of those statements that could well make one wonder if you really respect the other side.

You see, it is based upon the idea that the fudging GM has a weakness - either the creations are not to be trusted (is a weak craftsman), or the GM lacks confidence (has a flaw of character). When the answer to your wonderment has been given several times over the course of this and previous threads, and you don't seem to have gotten it.

I think I have gotten it, or at least gotten something. It has been a very interesting discussion. I am not persuaded, however. I can only be honest in saying that if a GM asked me if Iw as okay with fudging as a player, I would say no. If someone asked me if a game would be better with fudging or without, I would say, generally, without. I wouldn't tell a person, categorically, "You, stop fudging, you will ruin your game," because, as has been described above, without the right kind of game design, you might ruin the game anyway, and I would not want to claim the ability to save or ruin your game based on that one piece of advice.

I think it's perfectly fine to speculate whether I respect the other side. All I can say is that I am intending only to be direct and nonjudgmental.

If someone said, "Pawsplay, by saying to trust the dice, you are telling the GM not to trust their own psychology," I would agree. Saying a GM doesn't trust the design is simply what I hope is an accurate description of not feeling a game will structurally function without active intervention by the GM in its outcomes. Since a game design doesn't itself have feelings, I would not imagine that saying a GM doesn't trust describes a character failing on the part of the GM.

In fact, I did not say not trusting the design is bad, or a personal failing. I was pointing out a relationship to the creation that, according to my goals as a game master, I would avoid. "I don't trust the design and I love my campaign anyway," is a valid response and I would not take issue with that. However, I would disagree with someone saying they trusted the design, if they manipulated the output according to predetermined goals. I would say they are being inaccurate, or that we are not udnerstanding the words each other are using.

Taking P-cat's earlier statement as an example - he noted that he sits down with some bare notes. His in-play modifications (fudging) aren't because he "doesn't trust" his creation. They are because his act of creation isn't complete before runtime.

His process (and view of the act of GMing) does not hinge on the idea that his "creation" is done and ready to bear weight before play begins. His model is one with the GM as an active participant in a process that goes on throughout play. The tools he may choose to use to finish assembling "his creation" in situ may be fundamentally different than yours.

At some point, he picks up the dice and holds them in his hand. As he decides to roll them, his creation is in solid, fixed form up to that moment in time. I am also an active parcticipant in the processes of my game. However, I roll my dice in the open and consider the uncertainty that exists the primary reason to roll the dice in the first place.

If I merely pretend to roll the dice, there is no real uncertainty for me as a GM unless I try to hide my own intentions from myself. And I really feel, as others have stated, that knowing fudging may occur means the players know uncertainty is not ultimate, that ultimately events will transpire as the GM wishes them to.

 

[Ariosto]

I rather doubt anyone would start a game of Axis and Allies and expect it to last for several years.

I have no doubt at all that nobody with a lick of sense would have taken a character in the pioneering D&D, T&T, EPT, etc., campaigns and expected the character to last for several years. That was very clearly something to be known only after the fact -- a fact that would be the exception among characters!

The game, though? Yes, indeed! Without some particular reason, why would one not think so, when it had already lasted half a decade or more, eh?

On both counts, it is of course possible to have different expectations of a game. "Fudging" does not follow from that, at all.

 

[Umbran]

I would be cautious indeed about assuming that a perception that "X is a weakness" or "X is used to compensate for a weakness" somehow implies disrespect of the other side.

When applied to a class of people?

After 30 pages of discussion on the topic?

When "they" are still (metaphorically) standing there to talk to?

It is possible that no disrespect was intended, but the context is such that I don't think it unreasonable to read it there. Folks have frequently asked why things go awry. I'm pointing some things out. You can argue with me about how I'm wrong, or you can accept that this is an example.

 

[Fifth Element]

Talk about misrepresentation. Raven Crowking didn't posit fudging to "prevent any and all PC death." He presented specific circumstance: a critical hit that would kill a PC.

Any death in combat, then. RC characterized the players as not worrying about the character dying because the DM will fudge to save him.

 

[Fifth Element]

I suspect that there are rules governing a given GM's "fudging", but that they are too complex for codification.

I'd say this is a fair comment. There are times I will and won't fudge, but if I were asked to sit down and write them out how I make such a determination, I would be unable to.

It should, I think, be informative that the technique is so much associated with reference to "the story". I am pretty sure that the ethos involved has to do with some perception of the process as indeed a form of fiction, and the GM in some sense as author and/or director of a drama.

I've been associating it with "the fun", rather than "the story."

 

[Fifth Element]

But I am trying to understand what you are advocating.

It's not difficult. I'll say it again.

If fudging is good for your game, do it. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.

 

[Doug McCrae]

WEG Star Wars explains the dramatism/fudging style very well, covering a lot of issues raised in this thread. I believe it was the first rpg to present this play style in depth. These quotes are from the first edition (1987), pgs 90-92.

Script Immunity

Heroes don't die until the final reel – and usually not then. And heroes don't fail – at least, not badly, and not permanently. If they did, they wouldn't be heroes. They have script immunity; dramatic necessity makes them immune from failure at dramatic moments.

The purpose of any roleplaying game is to tell a story. The purpose of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game is to tell stories like those of the movies. The rules are a structure that help you tell stories by giving you impartial ways to decide whether actions succeed or fail. But sometimes, the rules get in the way.

When the most important moment of the adventure comes around, for dramatic reasons, a character must succeed, or must fail – or the story is not satisfying.


Avoiding Anticlimax

Here's an example. Following rumors and ancient legends, the player characters have travelled half-way across the galaxy in search of the Prana Lexander, an ancient scientific vessel which disappeared five hundred years ago. They believe that aboard this ship is, preserved in cryofreeze, an alien philosopher, who is respected as one of the great minds of history by his culture. If they can free the philosopher and persuade him that the Rebellion is necessary, the Alliance will gain powerful new friends.

The players have, after weeks of exploration, found the Prana Lexander, freed the philosopher, and persuaded him to help. They are now en route to the philosopher's home world. As they exit hyperspace, they are accosted by Imperial customs frigates, which demand to search their ship. They hide the philosopher, and prepare to be searched.

You roll for the Imperial officer's search skill and the players for their hide/sneak skills. The Imperial officer's roll is considerably higher.

Does this mean he finds the philosopher, imprisons all the characters, and the mission is a failure? What an anticlimax that would be! For dramatic reasons, you can't let it happen.


What To Do?

You have two alternatives.

First you can fudge things. If you made the Imperial's skill roll someplace where the players couldn't see the dice, you can always pretend the roll was lower. “Well, he doesn't spot the philosopher. All is well.”

Is this cheating? Certainly not! You are not fudging the rules to victimize your players, or to benefit one player at the expense of another. You're fudging them to make the game satisfying. That's a gamemaster's prerogative.

Second, you can use the failure to your dramatic advantage. For example, suppose the Imperial officer does find the philosopher. Does this necessarily mean arrest and mission failure?

[Scene in which Naval Officer NPC hints heavily that he wants a bribe, and receives one.]


Keeping the Players in the Dark

To make the game satisfying, you must maintain dramatic tension. That means the players must always think they can fail. You want them to rack their brains to figure out ways to succeed; to perch in anticipation on the edge of their seats.

If they realize they have script immunity – that they'll always bumble through, they'll waltz through the greatest dangers unscathed, you'll always let them succeed regardless – the adventure has lost its edge.

So apply script immunity sparingly; intervene only when you must. And never, ever let the players know what you're doing. They must always think failure is possible. If not, what is the point of playing?


When to Fudge

Also, it's only at key moments that script immunity comes into play. Along the way, botching one part of the adventure or missing a skill roll makes the players' job tougher – but it doesn't throw the whole plot into jeopardy.

You should be very careful about killing player characters. A character who is important to the plot can't be killed in the first reel , because then the plot can't go anywhere. Worse, character death is often anticlimactic: for a hero to die just because a stormtrooper gets off a lucky shot is not very dramatic. A hero's death should be a major event, befitting the hero's place in the story. A moment for a last few words, used to impart vital information or express love for friends or family – or to cast defiance in the teeth of the enemy – is a must.

Moreover, players become attached to their characters. A player invests a lot of time and affection developing a character; losing a character is traumatic. A player will accept the loss of his character better if he loses it in an appropriately heroic and dramatic way; he will feel cheated if he loses the character over trivia.

There's also a section headed "Penalties Short of Death", delineating all the other bad things a GM can have happen to the PCs, such as being captured, losing equipment, the bad guy escapes, and suchlike.

 

[Ariosto]

WEG Star Wars explains the dramatism/fudging style very well, covering a lot of issues raised in this thread.

That it does.

It really seems to me that the most fundamental issue is here:

The purpose of any roleplaying game is to tell a story.

Maybe that does not accurately represent what Fifth Element means by "fun", but I think it most sensibly reconciles there being clearly "undesirable" outcomes that yet are not so clear as to be avoided with explicit rules.

The element of illusion is important.

I personally am so far from suspending disbelief after reading one of those "never, ever let the players know what you're doing" lines, in the very book that I as a player am expected to read, that I am more likely to suspend the book itself in midair by giving it a good toss.

YMMV, though!

Moreover, when we explicitly make production of art "the purpose of" a process, it stands to reason (at least to me) that the artist's intuition and "feeling" is going to play a decisive role.

"Avoiding anticlimax", or any other "dramatic necessity" is a sensible concern for authoring a dramatic story. Ditto assumptions that these or those figures are "the heroes". Script immunity is premised upon there being after some fashion a "script" in the first place.

This just has no more to do with Dungeons & Dragons as I met it than with Squad Leader or Strat O Matic Baseball. There was no reference at all to "telling a story". The purpose of the game was for players to play it.

But then, along came those fellows who took upon themselves to decree what must be true of "any role-playing game". Either (A) they were wrong, or (B) D&D was not a role-playing game, or (C) a whole lot of people were playing D&D wrong.

 

[Fifth Element]

This just has no more to do with Dungeons & Dragons as I met it than with Squad Leader or Strat O Matic Baseball. There was no reference at all to "telling a story". The purpose of the game was for players to play it.

I agree here. I don't play D&D the way that passage describes the Star Wars RPG. I also dispute its description of the purpose of "any RPG."

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I agree here. I don't play D&D the way that passage describes the Star Wars RPG. I also dispute its description of the purpose of "any RPG."

I honestly think it's just a case of sloppy writing.

It's not an RPG's "purpose" to "tell a story," but it is an RPG's purpose to provide a framework in which a story -- a narrative, not necessarily a well-structured story -- will occur.

That's what I think is meant there.

BTW, I love the D6 system, and prefer WEG Star Wars to every other Star Wars RPG I've played (including our current SWSE game). When I was GMing it I not only never fudged a die roll, I never "needed" to (by any definition). In the situation as described, my players would have spent a Force point, doubling their dice, and done their own "fudging." And if unsuccessful, I would have gone the second route, i.e., the Imperial dickwad hinting for a bribe.