D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?

[Vaalingrade]

*If

(Sorry, couldn't resist disrupting the smoothness. Makes everyone feel better, right?)

:-(

Your character explodes.

Heh. 'It's hard to kill characters in 5e' they say. You, the reader's character also explodes.

 

[TheSword]

I mean, I do change things about monsters - I primarily use custom monsters. I also don’t see anything at all wrong with players recognizing patterns in the design and acting accordingly. Seems very realistic to me that a group of people who are constantly fighting monsters would come to recognize commonalities in certain monsters behaviors and develop counter-strategies.

What that every solo creature they fight can ignore 3 failed saves… by some miraculous coincidence.

It reminds me of this sketch. With all the frustrated tedium it mocks. Wouldn’t the game be more interesting if legendary creatures had between 2 and 4 legendary saves?

 

[Cadence]

Your character explodes.

One time when my 12.5 yo did something he knew he shouldn't IRL, instead of taking away screen time or whatnot, I said "<character name> is dead.".

I didn't really do it of course, but from the look on his face he was really scared for a minute.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Again, I don’t think D&D is so immersive that this would make a significant difference.

To me it absolutely would. Intentionally and needlessly doing so would be a sign of extremely bad GMing to me.

As opposed to hiding the exact same incompetence and inability to fix it smoothly.

As others have noted, if they fixed it smoothly without me noticing, then they were not incompetent. They might have made a mistake, but my play experience was no harmed by it, so it's all good.

I already know it’s fake.

And we know the movies are fake. We still usually don't want to listen the director's commentary when we are watching the film the first time and trying to immerse into it.

And, yes, I would also rather play with a DM who wouldn’t do this. But, as much as I would dislike playing with a DM who did this, I would dislike playing with a DM who fudged in secret even more. That’s my point.

I care about my play experience. It is negatively affected by the GM pausing the game to tell us it is fake and asking the players how they should GM the game. My play experience is not affected by the GM secretly fudging sometimes.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, I do change things about monsters - I primarily use custom monsters. I also don’t see anything at all wrong with players recognizing patterns in the design and acting accordingly. Seems very realistic to me that a group of people who are constantly fighting monsters would come to recognize commonalities in certain monsters behaviors and develop counter-strategies.

Indeed; here the players are picking up on the patterns just as their PCs are. Great! Love it!

It's when the players know (or think they know) the patterns before the PCs have had any in-game chance to learn said patterns that it becomes an issue.

 

[overgeeked]

One time when my 12.5 yo did something he knew he shouldn't IRL, instead of taking away screen time or whatnot, I said "<character name> is dead.".

I didn't really do it of course, but from the look on his face he was really scared for a minute.

That's uh...wow.

 

[Vaalingrade]

See, legendary saves are actual cheating.

 

[LordEntrails]

I disagree. Not announcing a fudge is more about how it's not important to waste time talking about it and doing so would go against the purpose of using fudges to smooth pace and end up as too much inside baseball cruft.

Fi they just fudged and no one made a big deal about it, it would have been fixed smoothly.

The fact is you probably won’t know your DM is keeping the secret and your DM definitely isn’t going to tell after reading the posts so let’s all smile and nod and pretend all is normal.

As others have noted, if they fixed it smoothly without me noticing, then they were not incompetent. They might have made a mistake, but my play experience was no harmed by it, so it's all good.

All of these point out or come back to one thing to me. DMs thinking they know best. Thinking they know what their players want, and assuming that if/when they fudge the players don't know about it. I can tell you, as a player, players figure out when DMs regularly fudge. Sure, once or twice a campaign is all good and probably goes without notice or concern. But when DM's use fudging in every encounter, players know. To think otherwise makes me think of hubris.

There is some tipping point, to me, when fudging goes from being a tool to smooth out mistakes, to being simple a crutch of a DM style I do not want or enjoy. And given that I don't know where that tipping point is, or when my players would notice I have fudged, I just make sure to do it so rarely they. i.e. I would rather err on the side of caution and long term campaign health than to worry about the outcome of any single encounter.

 

[Fifth Element]

Ah yes, "for whatever reason." Never mind all the reasons laid out. Just, you know, whatever.

Very uncharitable. It's not "no reason" it's "whatever reason" meaning that there are a variety of reasons being presented.

 

[Fifth Element]

IMO there's certainly something amiss if those same players who won't accept a run of bad luck will gleefully accept a run of good luck. It does not reflect well on them.

It might be better if we didn't choose to judge people based on how they like to play recreational games with their friends.