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

[Cadence]

My campaigns don't "end with disappointing TPKs" that are "nearly the end of the group." I don't roll behind a screen. I don't have a "story" except what might emerge incidentally through play. And I don't fudge rolls.

What guides your choices for how you construct the random wandering monster tables? (Is it the background world design? Do they ever have potential plot development hooks?)

[And thank you by the way for always answering everything. Your chosen style might not match mine in many cases, but I always feel like if I dig deep enough I learn something.]

 

[Flamestrike]

I don't fudge rolls.

Ok, so the answer to both scenarios was 'keep the rolls, and TPK the party'.

There, that wasnt hard was it?

Personally, I abide by the guidance and RAW of the DMG and fudge rolls in both scenarios.

 

[Maxperson]

They are regular intervals that the players know about. There are no real surprises in my game except those that are generated in the emergent story as the players interact with the content. And those will be a surprise to me, too, often.

I find it amusing that your "random" encounters happen at regular intervals that the players know about.

 

[iserith]

What guides your choices for how you randomly construct the wandering monster tables? (Is it the background world design? Do they ever have potential plot development hooks?)

[And thank you by the way for always answering everything. Your chosen style might not match mine in many cases, but I always feel like if I dig deep enough I learn something.]

Generally terrain type is what guides my choice since a lot of that work is already done for me, adding and removing whatever is needed to fit anything particular to the setting. Usually most of the table is pegged to a particular level of difficulty with outliers on either end of the table. Roll very low and it could be very low difficulty and roll very high and it's very high difficulty (as in the example I posted upthread).

In most games, I don't really have a plot per se, just a number of different situations that exist on their own and may change depending on how things go. Sometimes I even put that on a random table (e.g. Faction A does this generic thing) that is rolled in intervals which I then flesh out and introduce into play. But any given result can impact the emergent story in small ways or large. I can't really say what that will be in the abstract without the player's input. It's a story we're creating together.

 

[Maxperson]

Like the infamous DM mentioned on these boards who didn't even record the damage and just let the monsters die when they felt like it!

Huh! I don't even know who that is.

 

[Maxperson]

If they can generate a result the DM doesn’t want to be possible, then it is the DM who has screwed up in when/how they used the dice.

Or else it's a chart where as the DM I'm fine with 90% of it, so I just eliminate the others before I roll, rerolling if one of the eliminated numbers comes up. That's perfectly valid, not a screw up, and not fudging.

 

[Cadence]

I find it amusing that your "random" encounters happen at regular intervals that the players know about.

Going through B1 and B2 recently, I think they gave a time interval of like 30 minutes at which point I was supposed to roll. (I was modding it, so didn't).

 

[iserith]

Ok, so the answer to both scenarios was 'keep the rolls, and TPK the party'.

There, that wasnt hard was it?

Personally, I abide by the guidance and RAW of the DMG and fudge rolls in both scenarios.

There are a lot of asterisks after what you consider the answer to be that need to be taken into consideration since your hypotheticals are never likely to arise in any game I ever run. But in general I don't care if a TPK happens. We get some other characters and play on. Usually there are other characters ready to go anyway. This further allows for the DM to buy into life and death stakes when they arise since it does not halt play.

The D&D 5e DMG says you can fudge if you use a screen, but not to do it too often. I don't use a screen though and fudging goes against my GM principles anyway.

 

[iserith]

I find it amusing that your "random" encounters happen at regular intervals that the players know about.

I prefer to call them wandering monsters usually, but the random part is which random monster it will be!

 

[jasper]

If you want to tell a story, go write a novel. If you want to play a game, roll some dice to see what happens next. RPGs are not novels. RPGs are not movies. RPGs have emergent story, not predefined plots with a set beginning, middle, and end and rails preventing any possible deviation. Games have agency; stories do not.

bravo