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

[iserith]

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.

In B, the DM rolled then ignored the roll (or changed the result), which is fudging.

This may be considered somewhat less important than fudging an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check result, but it's the same thing - the DM rolling dice for stakes they cannot accept. For some games, rolling for random encounters can very much be on par with those mechanics if there is a set system for content generation such as wandering monsters at specific intervals or given certain triggers using specific tables the players have come to understand and make decisions based on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

No, I really don't need or want GM to be 'open and honest' about their reasoning for how the things run behind the curtains. I don't want the GM to strop the game and ask "It seems this fight is not going well for you, would you mind if I had some allies to come to your aid?" or "This session is starting to get a tad boring, would you mind if I sprung some bandits or a goblin ambush on you?" Seriously, just run the game the way you think is the best, I trust you, and I don't want you to ruin the game by explaining your decisions and asking permission.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I feel like heists-in-RPGs might be its own subtopic, though, since I think they're actually incredibly hard to do in an interesting or genre-appropriate way at the table.

That's fair, but its not the only place where this happens; its just one where the potential failures of process are obvious. There are other situations where the same result can occur, which is, the players go in with what seems like a reasonable approach, both to them and the GM, and somewhere along the way a single or small number of die rolls makes the whole thing come apart. And the nature of a D20 means its entirely more possible, simply from timing, than with some other resolution methods.

Especially since a lot of the best heist narratives wait to reveal the full plan to the audience. No trad game that I've seen provides the mechanics to hide that sort of info from the PCs--meaning stuff that they themselves would have already had to plan.

Depends how tightly you define "trad". But you're generally right.

Which, if we're being honest means it's time to break Forged in the Dark! Or at the very least steal some of its mechanics. I'm running a heavily-modified Shadowrun game right now, and that game always been about heists, while also being terrible at heists, since no edition offers mechanical support for the kind of narrative shenanigans that heists rely on. So we use a version of Blades' flashbacks, as well as the Heat and Wanted mechanics, etc. It works like a charm, and it's honestly pretty depressing that through six editions, Shadowrun has just avoided ever even trying to figure out what makes heists cool or feasible.

Well, I'll be honest: SR and other cyberpunk games are probably the gaming genre that in the end of the day looks most like a lot of D&D style games in most ways. They usually aren't played like heists; they're played like raids. Partly for the reason you mention, partly because the person playing the street sammy doesn't want to be standing around while other people do the interesting things that matter.

(Its not the only way its like that, either; its also the genre where a big part of the motivation for everything is at least avowedly money (though as I've argued with D&D, that's not really what going on as a motivation).

 

[iserith]

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

He also said that "most females don't play RPGs because of a difference in brain function." In 2005.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So, how do the people who think it's ok for the DM to fudge feel about players doing the same?

I find most of the time I just can't make myself care.

 

[Cadence]

In B, the DM rolled then ignored the roll (or changed the result), which is fudging.

This may be considered somewhat less important than fudging an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check result, but it's the same thing - the DM rolling dice for stakes they cannot accept.

Would it be not-fudging if they had decided what rolls to ignore before rolling? (Thinks to self "this is a d5, I'm not getting were-wolves). Is that different than just picking?

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

Well, first off, I wouldn’t force an encounter just because I felt like the players were doing too well and the boss was going to be too easy, so this hypothetical is already pretty dubious for me.

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.

If werewolves don’t make sense in the context of the adventure, why would I have included them on the random encounter table?

You know your PCs have no silver or magical weapons, and this encounter will almost certainly result in a TPK.

Again, why would I have even put 1d6(!!) werewolves on the random encounter table if I knew this?

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?

Now, here’s what I would consider the important part of your question - “do you fudge rolls on random encounter tables?” To that question, I would answer “sometimes.” I try to seed my random encounter tables so that they are well-suited to the location and whatever I roll will fit. But, when a random encounter comes up, I don’t always even roll on the table. Sometimes I’ll just pick a result. Or if like a I’ve rolled the same encounter several times, I might decide to do a different one. This, in my view, is categorically different than fudging attack rolls, saves, checks, damage rolls, HP values, etc. because it doesn’t take agency from the players. The players’ choices have no real way of impacting the results of a random encounter roll (though they do impact when such a roll is made, hence why I wouldn’t force a “random” encounter that wasn’t really random). Whether the result is chosen by me or a die, doesn’t make a practical difference to their experience, whereas a monster hitting more or less often or dying faster or slower because I decided so does.

 

[Charlaquin]

No, I really don't need or want GM to be 'open and honest' about their reasoning for how the things run behind the curtains. I don't want the GM to strop the game and ask "It seems this fight is not going well for you, would you mind if I had some allies to come to your aid?" or "This session is starting to get a tad boring, would you mind if I sprung some bandits or a goblin ambush on you?" Seriously, just run the game the way you think is the best, I trust you, and I don't want you to ruin the game by explaining your decisions and asking permission.

Bully for you. Someone asked me to elaborate on my preference, so I did.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'll never be able to trust whether those trolls were there because that's where their long, rich lives led them to be under that bridge, or because the DM wanted us to have a fight.

 

[iserith]

Would it be not-fudging if they had decided what rolls to ignore before rolling? (Thinks to self "this is a d5, I'm not getting were-wolves). Is that different than just picking?

Fudging is rolling the dice and ignoring their results. Like railroading and metagaming and a bunch of other RPG terms, people force a lot of definitional drift to them over time which just needlessly confuses things in my view. The DM gets to pick which content goes into the game and that includes what is on the roll tables. If you want to roll for content and some of that content is not acceptable, take it off (or find a way to live with it).