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

[RuinousPowers]

I wouldn't be interested in playing with a DM who fudged. It would call into doubt all the events of the campaign- did the DM save Suzie's character because the DM thought her dying to a random encounter was anticlimactic? Did the DM not save my character, or actually fudge to kill him, because he deemed it was dramatically appropriate?

 

[Flamestrike]

I wouldn't be interested in playing with a DM who fudged. It would call into doubt all the events of the campaign

You're aware that all the events of the campaign are only there because the DM put them there right?

 

[Flamestrike]

"A DM only rolls dice for the noise they make" - Gary Gygax.

 

[iserith]

OK, lets try a hypothetical.

You're DMing. Your (4th level PCs) players are exploring a dungeon. They're dragging their heels, and have been having a reasonably easy time of it; HP are close to full, the Barbarian has 1 rage left, most Hit Dice have been used, plus a few 2nd level slots. The PCs have enough time remaining for a Short rest however. The BBEG isnt far off (a few rooms away), and the players are getting a little side tracked with table talk and deciding what to do next. You decide to throw a quick 'random' encounter (to focus their attention, and weaken them a little for the BBEG) is in order. The session is due to end in around an hour or two.

You had nothing planned, so you roll on a table provided in the module you're running. You roll an '89'. The players dont see the roll, and have no access to the chart even if they did.

The result tells you '1d6 Werewolves'. You roll a 6. Werewolves don't really make sense in the context of the adventure.

You know your PCs have no silver or magical weapons, and this encounter will almost certainly result in a TPK. You also note that on the same chart, the result of an '88' gives a much more manageable encounter for them, and also ties into the BBEG a lot better (it's the BBEG's henchman, obviously sent out to 'deal' with the PCs).

Do you:

A) Just throw the Werewolves at them because 'the dice say so'?

or

B) Alter the result to an 88, and use the more sensible encounter, that better serves the story and the outcome desired (and the reason you rolled in the first place) and that wont result in a crushing TPK?

Which is it?

There's another option, C, in which the DM doesn't roll and just chooses the encounter they prefer. If I can't live with the result of 6 werewolves, I'm not going to roll the dice with them as a possibility. (Having said that, I can totally live with the result of werewolves in this hypothetical.)

This again goes back to the DM creating stakes that they can't accept. It's heads-you-win-tails-you-lose and, oops, I got tails, so uhhhh all tails equal heads now. Why are we flipping a coin then? More than anything, that's why I don't fudge - I only roll for stakes I can accept.

 

[RuinousPowers]

You're aware that all the events of the campaign are only there because the DM put them there right?

Are you saying that it is ok for the DM to script all the encounters, or just some of them?

 

[iserith]

I’d really rather neither, but if the DM feels they made a mistake serious enough to require changing the parameters of the fight, I’d rather they be open and honest about it than do it in secret. Even if it’s adjusting the HP mid-fight, they could say “this isn’t going like I thought it would. What do you all think if I lower the HP values a bit?”

I don’t feel like “be open and honest with your players” should be such controversial advice. In every other situation people advise it, but when it comes to fudging? Oh, no, for some reason that’s different and suddenly it’s better to go behind the players’ backs. I don’t get it.

Yes, fostering trust in the DM is very important in my view, and I don't want to do anything that is going to risk losing the trust of the players. Even fudging in their favor can introduce the possibility that the DM may also fudge to their detriment. Better to avoid it in my view. If I'm going to roll, the roll is in the open and it stands.

 

[Flamestrike]

There's another option, C, in which the DM doesn't roll and just chooses the encounter they prefer.

What's the difference between that and B?

All he did at B was choose the result he preferred, that was better for the story, more fun for the PCs and didnt lead to a TPK.

 

[TheSword]

I'm not wedded to that in particular, I'm just saying that players recognizing that's a thing can be a perfectly reasonable process that echoes in an indirect way what their characters would know. There are cases where genre-specific mechanics are dependent on characters not acknowledging their existence to work, but I don't think this is one of those.

That’s fair. To be honest I don’t have a problem making assumptions about monsters without having encountered them previously. Using fire on trolls can easily be understood to be characters having heard tales of trolls and fire. When players challenge the DM as to what monsters should be, is where the hackles rise for me. In my game trolls might need cold to prevent regen, in which case that’s what it is. There’s no need for session zero on this, other to maybe say don’t make assumptions about monsters. I’d have that as a blanket rule anyway.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Who says they don’t?

Let's just say that if you think the reaction to fudging on the GM's part gets some hostility here, its not a shadow of the response to a player doing the same.

 

[Flamestrike]

Are you saying that it is ok for the DM to script all the encounters, or just some of them?

The DM scripts the encounters anyway. A Module is a script. Here is the map, here are the monsters, here is the outline, here is the antagonist etc.

You're ignoring the obvious. Your characters only see and encounter what the DM puts in front of them.