Do you "save" the PCs?

[Ariosto]

My argument is solely that fudging is not inherently wrong.

Then you are making absolutely no sense. It doesn't help that you throw around jargon like "slippery slope fallacy" where it does not apply -- and right after making a "slippery slope" argument!

Come on. I wasn't pulling your leg when I said it's really quite simple. It is. You are arguing against yourself, here.

You've been warned about rudeness here http://www.enworld.org/forum/5158481-post198.html and by PM. That's enough

 

[pemerton]

If the ultimate outcome is known then the journey to that outcome can only get so exciting.

Whether or not this is true depends on the degree of generality of the description.

Suppose that the ultimate outcomes is known to all participants to be "an exciting fantasy adventure in which the PCs bring about some changes to the gameworld that have both ingame significance and metagame thematic consequence." Knowing this need not spoil the fun and excitement of play. The fun and excitement of play consists in finding out exactly what the ingame change, and the metagame theme, are.

(Btw, this is not just a hypothetical example. Games like HeroQuest, The Dying Earth, and (I would argue) D&D 4e are all designed to ensure that this ultimate outcome is the result of play.)

The adventure cannot be "cratered" if that adventure is an account of how the PC's face challenges and handle themselves. Put another way, an adventure that never goes on the rails can never fly off them either. Setting up an expected ending in the first place makes the adventure vulnerable to cratering.

If the expected outcome is as described above, then the game can be cratered if the mechanics of the game don't ensure that such an outcome results.

I tend to agree with Ariosto and Jeff Wilder that the solution for players who want to guarantee such an outcome is to play a game with better mechancs. But the supply of games, players who will play the, the time to learn them, etc is limited, so sometimes we make do with second-best. And once we're making do with second best, sometimes the mechanics will deliver an outcome at odds with the desired one, of a game delivering both ingame and metagame significant results. It can make sense to fudge at such points (or to revise the encounter, or change the regeneration rate of the skeletons, or ...).

The possibility of character death is very important to player choice.

I just can't agree that this is true for all RPGs, or even all D&D games. It might be true for your game. Mallus and Hussar have already explained, in this very thread, why it is not true for (at least some of) their games.

To reiterate what I and others responded to a similar comment upthread: if the aim of the game is something other than "stay alive", then taking (at least some) PC death of the table has no impact on the meaningfulness of player choices in relation to the aim of the game.

If I know that my character is gonna come through the caverns of unescapable death somehow then any decision I make in that place is kind of pointless. Fight, negotiate, or run? It doesn't matter cause everythings going to be OK.

You're assuming, right here, that the purpose of playing a game where my PC goes through the caverns of unescapable death is to find out whether or not my PC lives or dies in the attempt. But what if that's not the case? What if the point is to find out (for example) how low my character will go in order to make it through (will I cannibilise the torch-bearers, for example, when the rations run low?)? Or what if the point is to find out whether or not, in the course of going through the caverns, I contract the lycanthrope's curse? I can think up any number of scenarios in which a fudge on the first fight in the caverns, in response to the dice producing wildly unlikely results, would have no impact on the meanignfulness of that session's play from either the players' or the GM's point of view.

Of course, D&D may not always be the best system for playing these sorts of games (though it has several features that support them) - but see my remarks about second-best RPGing above.

 

[Reynard]

Indeed. Say you fudge one out of every 100 rolls, just for argument's sake. Does this tiny change have any real effect on how the players control their actions, or indeed play the game? You can "let the players play the game" and still fudge because you only fudge things they don't have any control over anyway.

DM fiat or random die roll, it's the same thing to the people on the other side of the screen.

I think it comes down to the relationship between choice and consequence, and the perception thereof (primarily by the players). Choices can only be meaningful if they have consequences -- whether which door to go through or whether to initiate combat with the villain -- and fudging circumvents the "natural" consequences of player choices. Even if the players have "no control" over the outcome because the die roll is random, the fact of a random die roll with a set of known or likely probabilities informs player choice. Fudging, evn 1 in 100 times, corrupts that, having an impact on player choice and therefore free will. Even "good fudging" does this; the idea that the DM is going to "save" us from our own choices makes us play differently.

To use an example different from the usual "crit to whiff" fudging. Imagine a party is exploring the dungeon and they've had a few bad encounters. They are injured, low on resources and otherwise worse for wear. It's a half hour before session ending time and the players decide they want to push through one more room before calling it a night, without resting in game. Assume they have a reasonable chance of suspecting that any given room they might explore will result in an encounter like they have been having, but also that there's tougher and weaker encounters throughout (not to mention traps, tricks and unguarded treasure). The door the party chooses to break down happens to access the most dangerous fight on the level, a tough go even at full rest.

Do you alter the difficulty of the encounter to accommodate the party's current state, or do you let it play out as designed? Important note: this might be a "tough" encounter (CR-wise or whatever) but assume it is otherwise balanced and fair.

 

[Hussar]

Me? I'd probably play it as written. Given that scenario - yeah I probably wouldn't change the encounter. It's a fair encounter.

My question would be, why reasons would there be to change this encounter? How does it help the game? If the encounter is a very strong one that the party cannot run away from (a problem in some editions) and will wipe out the party, I might be tempted to weaken it, but, ultimately, probably not.

Player choices do have consequences. I generally will only fudge when the player's choices are not being invalidated.

Let me turn it around.

It's the beginning of the night, the players meet a regular encounter, nothing special. The baddie walks up to the PC, hits three times, twice with crits and takes the PC from full to dead in the first round. The player did nothing wrong. No mistakes were made. Just the dice gods deciding the player is dead.

Do you whack the PC and force him to sit and observe for the next four hours because there's no reasonable way to have a new PC parachute in right now? Or do you break suspension of disbelief and parachute a new NPC in anyway? Or do you knock the damage down so that the PC is very wounded (negative hp) and let him live?

Which would be best for the game?

((Btw, 5th E, I usually just announce, "The baddie trips and falls on his sword and dies." when I reach that 1-3 hp range and don't want to do yet another round of combat. I don't ask and I don't penalize the party for it.))

 

[Sammael]

To use an example different from the usual "crit to whiff" fudging. Imagine a party is exploring the dungeon and they've had a few bad encounters. They are injured, low on resources and otherwise worse for wear. It's a half hour before session ending time and the players decide they want to push through one more room before calling it a night, without resting in game. Assume they have a reasonable chance of suspecting that any given room they might explore will result in an encounter like they have been having, but also that there's tougher and weaker encounters throughout (not to mention traps, tricks and unguarded treasure). The door the party chooses to break down happens to access the most dangerous fight on the level, a tough go even at full rest.

Do you alter the difficulty of the encounter to accommodate the party's current state, or do you let it play out as designed? Important note: this might be a "tough" encounter (CR-wise or whatever) but assume it is otherwise balanced and fair.

I would not alter the difficulty of this encounter. I would, however, modify the encounter to ensure that the PCs have a clear escape route, and I would strive to describe the encounter setup more carefully in order to better impart the information about its deadliness.

If the PCs decided to run away, I would likely avoid pursuit (or make pursuit a half-assed effort on the monsters' part). However, if it made sense, I would redesign the encounter to be even more difficult the second time around (since the creatures now know the PCs are coming and can prepare). Of course, this depends entirely on the monsters' intelligence (or lack thereof).

 

[steenan]

To use an example different from the usual "crit to whiff" fudging. Imagine a party is exploring the dungeon and they've had a few bad encounters. They are injured, low on resources and otherwise worse for wear. It's a half hour before session ending time and the players decide they want to push through one more room before calling it a night, without resting in game. Assume they have a reasonable chance of suspecting that any given room they might explore will result in an encounter like they have been having, but also that there's tougher and weaker encounters throughout (not to mention traps, tricks and unguarded treasure). The door the party chooses to break down happens to access the most dangerous fight on the level, a tough go even at full rest.

Do you alter the difficulty of the encounter to accommodate the party's current state, or do you let it play out as designed? Important note: this might be a "tough" encounter (CR-wise or whatever) but assume it is otherwise balanced and fair.

Why would I change anything at all? Players made a decision to push forward, they decided to take the risk. If I modify the encounter, I take the choice from them, I make it meaningless.
Let it play as it is. If they win, they will rejoice. If they lose, they will be more careful next time. Both are good outcomes in my eyes.

That does not mean I would never fudge. I may do it if a monster, trap or another challenge proves to be much harder or much easier than I envisioned when designing it, not due to luck or players' choices, but because of its inherent traits. In general, I strongly prefer pre-emptive houseruling to changing anything on the fly.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Then you are making absolutely no sense. It doesn't help that you throw around jargon like "slippery slope fallacy" where it does not apply -- and right after making a "slippery slope" argument!

Come on. I wasn't pulling your leg when I said it's really quite simple. It is. You are arguing against yourself, here.

You've been warned about rudeness here http://www.enworld.org/forum/5158481-post198.html and by PM. That's enough

Banned for a week.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Do you alter the difficulty of the encounter to accommodate the party's current state, or do you let it play out as designed?

From your description, this sounds like a traditional D&D, static encounters type of setup so I'd say no, not in this case. It would be weird to play most of the game one way, then change things. The players presumably know that the DM doesn't tailor encounters in this game (or at least, not to the degree of considering hit points and spells available).

You raise an interesting point about it getting late and the players being tired though. I've noticed that the quality of decision making goes waay down in these situations. How does one handle that kind of thing in a game which is mostly about challenging the players?

One option would be for the DM to call a halt to proceedings (though if he's tired too it's unlikely he'd notice). Another would be to allow a redo next session if it was felt that everyone had been 'off'.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is true, but it doesn't address Fifth Element's point. RC asserted that the set of possible games that are improved by DM fudging is "empty," i.e. that no such game exists, regardless of whether RC is playing in it.

Or so close to empty that it makes little practical difference whether there is an empty set or a set in which .00000000001% of games fall.

I do believe that there are GMs who believe that thier fudging helps their game; that is quite a large set. The GMs who are right about this is a vanishingly small set.

It may be that any given GM's game is improved by judicious use of fudging as one of the many tools available to the DM in running the game, but, as the man said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof".

Now, the above is, of course, only IMHO and IME. YMMV, as they say. You can decide that the size of the "GMs who successfully fudge" set is extraordinarily large, if you like. Nobody's stopping you.

You can say that GM's who don't fudge harm their games and make them worse. Nobody's stopping you. (And, if you did make that statement, you would not be saying that those who said otherwise were "lying untrustworthy liars", but rather that you believed that they were mistaken in thier belief.)

If a game has mechanics that allow the GM or players to fudge without attempting to deceive the other party, said fudging causes no problem IMHO. But, the minute you (and not your NPCs or PCs) are trying to deceive the other party as to how you are using the game rules, there is, IMHO a problem.

You might view it as being a problem either way; that those who do not do it are causing a problem. The DMing advice from 2e onward (and, as has been pointed out, a line of Gygax advice as well) has certainly pushed in this direction.

It is my opinion that anyone is a position of special authority has a greater obligation to be honest about how that authority is used. The GM is in a position of special authority. Using that authority to deceive damages the mandate which gives that authority.

IMHO, YMMV, etc.

For what it's worth, I also think that cops who break the law do more harm than ordinary citizens who do the same, and that this damages trust in all cops -- even those who have never done so much as jaywalked or taken a paper clip from work.

Likewise politicians, doctors, etc.


RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

I have no difficulty with the concept of arbitrary changes to die rolls on the part of the DM if (a) the player group has explicitly agreed to the use and (b) the DM calls out the correct result and then changes it. In that case, the DM is being honest and is merely exercising in a clear manner power granted to him.

I agree with this.


RC