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

[RuinousPowers]

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.

What does that have to do with the DM deciding that a character needs to die for "story reasons"?

 

[Cadence]

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).

Right. So deciding to roll a d5 on the table instead of a d6 is just like crossing off the monster they didn't like from the table.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

Who said anything about the players challenging the DM as to what the monsters should be?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Well, the simple answer is because its a no-win situation.

Some people really hate fudging as such and would much rather you just outright fix it in plain sight. Some people find that really disruptive and would rather the GM just quietly adjust things and move on. And its entirely possible to have both kinds of people in the same group. So though they don't think of it this way, GMs, even ones that are not trying to screw around with the first group end up doing a dark internal bargain; they figure if they just quietly do it and no one notices, they don't harm either group.

Ideally, some sort of protocol should be worked out up front, but even doing that can be a problem if both groups feel strongly (and even bringing it up is fraught).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Because they don't know you're altering the results.

There is no conflict there. If the players are having an easy time of it due to luck (I'm rolling poor, and they're not) I can alter that luck.

I am not a slave to the dice, and as DM can overrule the results of the dice at my discretion. There are higher priorities at play here (the enjoyment of my human players) than the dice.

Of course that assumes that part of the enjoyment of same players is you not doing that. And no, "what they don't know won't hurt them" is not a particularly useful answer, because almost no one is as good at concealing this as they think they are.

 

[Charlaquin]

Well, the simple answer is because its a no-win situation.

Some people really hate fudging as such and would much rather you just outright fix it in plain sight. Some people find that really disruptive and would rather the GM just quietly adjust things and move on. And its entirely possible to have both kinds of people in the same group. So though they don't think of it this way, GMs, even ones that are not trying to screw around with the first group end up doing a dark internal bargain; they figure if they just quietly do it and no one notices, they don't harm either group.

Ideally, some sort of protocol should be worked out up front, but even doing that can be a problem if both groups feel strongly (and even bringing it up is fraught).

I feel like there’s a pretty obvious solution here that keeps both camps happy: Don’t fudge at all, whether openly or secretly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

All the set-up is. All the events aren't.

 

[Maxperson]

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?

Can you see the difference between the various kinds of fudging that have been brought up?

 

[Laurefindel]

Fudging is a thing. Fudging is part of the DM’s toolkit. I understand that my DM might be fudging, but if he/she does, then I don’t want to know about it, and it better not show, otherwise I feel like the kid whose dad let him win.

 

[iserith]

Right. So deciding to roll a d5 on the table instead of a d6 is just like crossing off the monster they didn't like from the table.

That's right. Now, in effect, it's akin to fudging (as I've noted with several other scenarios under discussion), so I avoid this by having roll tables with possibilities I can always live with.

As it happens, my players are dealing with just such a situation now (to be continued this Friday night). There is an apex predator in my current hex crawl, which is a reskinned and modified adult dragon. Compared to their level (5th), it is very nasty. They've encountered it a few times before, but it never attacks first. What it does is swim past the PCs and its aura has a curse. Fail the save and you will tend to attract more wandering monsters until the curse is removed. Alternatively, you can give it an offering of gold and it won't curse you, but since gold equals XP in this game, that's a tough choice for the players to make.

A few sessions ago, they encountered it and, on a whim, decided to attack it. They barely escaped with their lives after some very clever use of plant growth (if you can believe it) to slow it down enough where they could get away. But now it has it out for them and is hostile by default. At the end of last session, the random encounter generator spun up and this monster showed up again. I decided that was a good cliffhanger since we were close to time anyway.

They've since been discussing whether to flee or attack it and it looks like they're going to face down this threat, having learned a few things about it since their last encounter. They intend to slow it down to a crawl and then try to pick it off from afar. It might just work and, if it does, it's worth a great deal of gold to them (which means fast leveling), so having just gotten a long rest, they're going to chance it. I'm interested to see how this turns out, and Friday can't get here quick enough.