D&D 5E Do you want your DM to fudge?

[Maxperson]

Those are literally the only desires you can fudge for according to your own admission that you are assuming, not confirming, your player's desires.

Um, wrong. I correct the game when it breaks. Period. I know it makes the players happy because I know them. Two different things.

This statement reads as "I never fudge" to me, as bad luck, no matter how extreme, is entirely incapable of breaking the game.

Again, wrong. It's impossible for the game math to take extreme luck into consideration and at the same time be designed for a specific level of encounter. They are mutually exclusive positions.

What you are saying there is that you don't mind playing the game when it breaks, so you don't bother to fix it.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

No, Max.

 

[ad_hoc]

This is an incorrect assumption. I fudge and have no problems with PC deaths, TPKs, or boss fights that the players turn into cake walks. I do not fudge to make encounters more balanced. I fudge to make playing more exciting.

I am genuinely interested in how fudging can make the game more exciting.

I find myself bored in a lot of action movies because the result is known ahead of time. Of course the good guys will win because story.

In D&D no one knows what will happen. That's great. But with a DM who is fudging rolls, that means there is a writer who is determining the outcome.

 

[Hussar]

Because he's speaking for all the players, not just for himself.

"Please make rolls that affect only my character in the open" would be more reasonable. Any problem with that?


In a sense, all the 5e DM's 'Empowerment' is with the tacit approval of the players. In the sense that they could walk away from the table, for instance.

This has zero to do with DM empowerment. Not a single thing. This is a playstyle issue, pure and simple.
[MENTION=6695652]Nyte[/MENTION]mare - I have no idea either way. My point was the next time you feel compelled to alter results, don't do it. Make a conscious decision that you won't. See what happens. IME, it results in much better games.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

For people who don't want their DM to fudge, does that mean that they don't want their DM to hide any rolls?

Since I can only speak for me: I have nothing against rolls being made behind a screen. It doesn't add or remove any tension for me, at least I don't think it does--having had both DMs that did everything "out in the open" and DMs that rolled some things in secret. I usually have more than enough brainspace to hold the story and the numbers, so that's not really a concern either.

So, for me, I am vehemently anti-fudge, but I'm not at all anti-secret. I can even be persuaded to "allow" (that doesn't feel like the right word, but I can't think of a better one) the DM to take a roll behind the screen that would normally happen in the open. A roll like, for example, whether I can detect the presence of mind control affecting an ally, or whether I can tell if someone is lying to me. That sort of information makes sense as a roll that occurs in secret--but I expect that, one way or another, the truth will come out in the end.

For everything else, though, I prefer open rolling.

 

[Nytmare]

I am genuinely interested in how fudging can make the game more exciting.

I find myself bored in a lot of action movies because the result is known ahead of time. Of course the good guys will win because story.

In D&D no one knows what will happen. That's great. But with a DM who is fudging rolls, that means there is a writer who is determining the outcome.

I am honestly flummoxed.

Just because something is determined by some means other than chance doesn't mean that it can be expected.

Just because something is determined by some means other than chance doesn't mean that it doesn't look like it was determined by chance.

All of the times that you HAVE been surprised by a movie, do you think it was because the screenwriters were rolling dice to see what the outcome was?

All of the times that you have been surprised by something that happened in an RPG due to a die roll, if you didn't see the die roll, would you have still been surprised?

 

[steenan]

For people who don't want their DM to fudge, does that mean that they don't want their DM to hide any rolls?

Yes, I don't want the GM to hide any rolls, unless the system itself dictates that some rolls are hidden.

I trust people I play with, so I won't demand rolls in the open if they are technically hard to make (eg. we play in a train, with no table, so the GM uses a roller in her laptop, where she also keeps her notes).
But other than such edge cases, I expect to see all rolls.

 

[Nytmare]

[MENTION=6695652]Nyte[/MENTION]mare - I have no idea either way. My point was the next time you feel compelled to alter results, don't do it. Make a conscious decision that you won't. See what happens. IME, it results in much better games.

What I'm saying is that feeling compelled to alter the results and making a conscious decision not to do it is something that is already happening every time a DM who fudges feels compelled to alter the results and makes a conscious decision not to do it.

That's what each and every one of those decision points is. "Should I change it? What are the consequences? What are the benefits? Is it worth it? No, let's see what happens."

It happens all the time, and for those of us who continue to fudge, our experience is obviously that better games for us are the ones where we have the option to influence, chisel, and shape outcomes by doing it.

 

[Maxperson]

I am genuinely interested in how fudging can make the game more exciting.

I find myself bored in a lot of action movies because the result is known ahead of time. Of course the good guys will win because story.

In D&D no one knows what will happen. That's great. But with a DM who is fudging rolls, that means there is a writer who is determining the outcome.

Fudging =/= determining the final outcome. All it means is altering the die roll. I only fudge when extreme bad luck happens and breaks the game. At that point, the party will TPK through no fault of their own, even though they did everything right. When I fudge, though, it's not to make the party win. I just give the fight a nudge back into the unbroken range of the combat, giving the party a fighting chance. They key word there is "chance." They can still lose, and they can still TPK, but it won't be because extreme bad luck broke the game.

 

[Umbran]

There is no such thing as "a better game" in general. A game that is astounding and amazing for you might be a snorefest for someone else.

In this thread, we see so little respect given, that a GM might actually know what's better for their own players than you do. Never mind that they've played together for hundreds or thousands of hours, and you've never met them.

So much energy trying to get others to think of a practice as badwrongfun.

Sigh.