GM Confessional: I fudged like a Banshee (just not on the dice rolls)

[innerdude]

I'm going to make a confession: During last year's 8-month Pathfinder campaign, I fudged NPCs like crazy.

Oh sure, I took the time to fully stat the 3-4 potential recurring nemeses the players might encounter (as well as 2 or 3 regular NPC advisors and cohorts). But for the rest of the stuff?

Fudge city.

I pulled stuff from everywhere. The Bestiary. The Advanced GM Guide. The NPC guide. The Pathfinder Rival Guide. Dungeon and Dragon magazine. Old PC character sheets.

Oh, I tweaked some of the numbers. Changed weapon and armor proficiencies, tacked on an extra feat here or there. But really I felt no compulsion to be 100% accurate down to every BAB, skill, and bonus.

In essence, I was doing what Fantasy Craft does out of the box--taking a combat challenge, and "fudging" the difficulty to match the current party level. Those CR 3 rogues from the Advanced GM guide? Tack on +5 more BAB, up the AC and HP, stack another dice of sneak damage, and add +3 to their stealth skills, and bam, now they're CR 6 or 7.

(I also discovered that mostly I wanted a system that better supported my ability to do what I was already doing. But that's another post for another day.)

And I guess I'm sort of interested in hearing from EnWorld on this kind of GM style. I know there's a wide variety of opinions on the idea of fudging dice. But I don't know if I've seen much discussion of this kind of encounter-building.

In my experience, it was the perfect solution to Pathfinder's increasing complexity over time. If my players knew I was fudging stats, they didn't let on. And they didn't seem to mind in the least during combat (we had some great, memorable combats over that 8 months).

But I'm curious to hear if what I was doing is unusual, or just "par for the course" for GM-ing.

 

[Holy Bovine]

About halfway through my second 3E campaign and nearing a burnout on DMing I got some advice I will never forget and live by to this day;

Rules are for players.

I know at first this seems scoff worthy but the more I thought about the more I realized that some DMs can get a lot of mileage out of this. It boils down to just what you are describing - the NPCs, monsters even things like spells (as long as you have a plausible clause to say why what the NPC is doing is not something the PCs can do) - don't have to be 100% accurate - hell they don't even have to be 100% finished. As long as the thing in question has enough going for it to work at the game table it is good to go in my book. Don't ever ask to see that sorcerer's spell list though - there's only the 4 spells on it that he got off before you killed him!

 

[innerdude]

About halfway through my second 3E campaign and nearing a burnout on DMing I got some advice I will never forget and live by to this day;

Rules are for players.

I know at first this seems scoff worthy but the more I thought about the more I realized that some DMs can get a lot of mileage out of this. It boils down to just what you are describing - the NPCs, monsters even things like spells (as long as you have a plausible clause to say why what the NPC is doing is not something the PCs can do) - don't have to be 100% accurate - hell they don't even have to be 100% finished. As long as the thing in question has enough going for it to work at the game table it is good to go in my book. Don't ever ask to see that sorcerer's spell list though - there's only the 4 spells on it that he got off before you killed him!

"Rules are for players"--LOL, I'll have to pull that line out during my next GM-ing stint.

I guess for me it came back to what you say, as long as it has enough going for it to work, go with it. I think I recognized that what my players mostly wanted was to just feel challenged, in a variety of ways and situations. And that frankly, coming up with the exact reason that a rogue has a 20 AC (instead of their typical 14 or 15) was far from important to me. (Incidentally, AC is BY FAR the hardest thing to "fudge" for 3.x NPCs. There's only so many ways you can do it, and most of them involve magic. 3.x DESPERATELY needs a good defense bonus system separate from armor class.)

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I'd call that par for the course. I have no problem making up monsters based on whatever abilities it's convenient for them to have. I see no problem with doing the same for NPC.

 

[Tovec]

To paraphrase; Good DM's borrow. Great DM's steal.

You SHOULD fudge with the game. Mess with it, mold it. Beat it into submission shape. If anything I'm surprised there aren't more rules about this.

The worst offender are skills checks and save DCs, I'm sorry after the first couple of levels I never use DCs out of the box, ever. The party does, sure but they're supposed to. I make things up when I go along CONSTANTLY. Hell, if I can get away with it I change locations, names and NPCs around to fit the story better.

I once had an advisor to the king in one kingdom be the same guy who advised the king in the next one over. The party never noticed the change in kingdoms/kings but remembered the evil advisor so it worked out great.

Coming up with unique, unexpected or downright broken effects has been some of the coolest things to ever happen in my games. I remember when I gave the party a little glass sphere that could heal them up a number of times a day, or when I had Nerull have several high level contingency spells that would go off when he was killed, or when the party encountered a door that remained sealed even after they disintegrated the building that supported it.

Coming up with new stats for monsters is just the easiest way to modify things. I love the GMG for giving me so many NPCs to play around with but too often they aren't the right level so I have to fudge with the numbers to make it work. When that happens I'm not going through character creation all over again so I just figure out the difference.

Need something identified? I had an NPC with a magical mirror that could tell the true properties of something. I once gave the party a cloak which would allow them to phase through walls but they didn't know how it worked.

Doing these kinds of things keeps my game fresh, unique and most importantly keeps magic magical because they can never be positive on what is going to happen or what a certain effect might truly do.

If you have gotten to the stage where you are fudging stats, encounters, even dice rolls when needed then I congratulate you and welcome you to the fraternity of DMs. I find it is a skill all DMs must learn eventually.

 

[Fenes]

I wing stuff a lot, and I recycle all statted NPCs very often. There are several ways to lessen the load on GMs, I listed some here.

 

[Loonook]

I personally have two very different viewpoints... My forum/blogging method of presentation and my in-game presentation. When I am posting to a forum I try to maintain an understanding of balance through the unique language we are all granted by the rules. Forumspeak is the formal RPG language for me; its the type of RPG language I use to score gigs, get paid, and have a very specific perspective on what is available. This sort of RAW speech really is a vital tool to any storyteller/DM because when you are presented with a problem it is nice to have a universal method of presenting your solution. The best ways I can explain it are formal 'office speak', or a cross between architectural/mechanical drafting and symbolic logic. There is an X, and I must get to it through A-W.

Then, there's the table. My table is a place of averages, 'close enoughs', kludge, house rules, and development. The table is a fully creative space. It takes the mechanical skills I learned presenting my formal, logical forms on a forum or any nitty-gritty mechanics discussion and extrapolate it to my personal game. And to be honest I cannot see someone playing most rules-moderate to rules-intensive games WITHOUT the rules. The skills I hone in my conversations about the theory of gaming help to develop my practice. I get to make the impossible probable, and still maintain a consistency within my personal game that would be too difficult to truly draw out in the very formal presentation of strict crunch.

I feel that a good group of DMs and players really strengthen the whole through both sides. I know DMs that have the best creative minds, far better than I have on my best day... And I know guys who are sages of the rules of a dozen systems and their iterations. But personally? I emulate the guys I was lucky enough to get to play with in my early days, who took both sides and could discuss them on a competent level. Yeah, we may go to our Storytellers to hash out a tricky plot point, and yeah we may go to the Rules Sage to get a strong understanding of the maths and structure inherent to a specific series of actions, but we take the disparate elements and mush them together into a delicious treat.

So hell yeah I fudge creations. But I know when to fudge and how to manipulate the numbers to what I want BECAUSE I don't let fudge take over my entire mind. And when I can use those same Orcs from Session 4 in Session 25 and 103 with a twist here, a shake here, and a strong plot element...

It's effortless. Some players will come out and hate the idea, and some players feel cheated. Screw it. The world will spin right round... And if I didn't tell you you wouldn't know .

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Lwaxy]

I do that all the time. I hardly ever waste time on statting out anything save the main NPCs. Especially not the cannon fodder monsters.

 

[Derfmancher]

I do alot of fudging. I take whatever I need from where ever I can find it. For instance for tonights run I started with a heroic npc from Core, added a material from Inner Sea Guide, AP, and my own head. I meshed it together. The result should have been a CR 9 caster NPC for the group to fight. They killed him before he could kill himself with his detonate spell (It was my last night running things, so I wanted to go "out with a bang")

I think as long as it is in the interest of the game, and does not break things beyond repair, its fine. What I have issues with is when a GM runs a character in the same game and treats it differently.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I wing it. I fudge. I make stuff up on the fly. I recycle maps, npcs, old characters and whatever else I can get.

And in the end, as long as everyone at the table is having fun, who cares?