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

[Vaalingrade]

I don't really know another term to express how it looks from here. While there can be exterior reasons to keep using a system that actively does things you dislike, both doing so and not houseruling it to make it do that less is a--I don't know, contrarian? Like I said there doesn't seem a good synonym with less semantic loading--position unless forced into it by a lot of exterior situations that would have to be pretty abnormal.

I'll freely admit to always being baffled by people who seem to be using the wrong tool for the job, it just gets really hard for me to understand when they clearly recognize that at least in some ways its the wrong tool for the job.

Well for one, it's not like we're describing the entirety of our playstyle; just that occasionally I don't care for the full range of the dice.

And there's not system that does everything perfectly. I'm rolling my own and some things end up needing to be done to make rules usable by others rather than have subsystems that are just Calvin Ball for all I care.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well for one, it's not like we're describing the entirety of our playstyle; just that occasionally I don't care for the full range of the dice.

Your response seemed rather stronger than "don't care for". That's why I wondered why you had not done something to avoid the problem systematically (and there's a lot of ways besides going diceless).

And there's not system that does everything perfectly. I'm rolling my own and some things end up needing to be done to make rules usable by others rather than have subsystems that are just Calvin Ball for all I care.

Yeah, but it seems a difference between "This does some things that somewhat annoy me" and "This does this to a degree I'll do direct GM intervention on-the-fly to correct it.".

 

[CleverNickName]

"...and the monster flees the battlefield in search of easier prey."
-me, ending a dull battle

"...as you cower beneath the trees, the dragon roars as it passes overhead. The roar grows faint as the dragon vanishes in the distance. You don't know how long you have until he comes back."
-me, adjusting the timing of an encounter so that the party can rest/heal before initiative is rolled.

"...your hand slips! You slide helplessly down the rock face, smashing your head hard against an outcropping before you can find your grip. You're alive, but your slip has cost you several hours of daylight as your friends work to rescue you. You have 10 hit points remaining."
-me, accounting for a failed Climb check on a 1000-foot cliff but sparing the character

And so on. Technically this is fudging, but I don't fudge the dice.

 

[Cadence]

So summary statements aren't useful? Sorry. I am confused.

Your summary failed, for example, to note that the range of things you were lumping together went from the seemingly widely accepted to things no one had brought up or considered.

I would say that not all summary statements are useful.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because some people don't like it. Again, they aren't required to share your views that's functionally the same. I can pretty much promise you if you unpack that there will be people in this thread who will find it unacceptable.

There's a pretty big gap between "some people find X dampens their fun, so they would rather it never happens in their game" and "X is so controversial for some folks that it will almost guarantee an argument if discovered, and has a very high chance of damaging the group." Don't try to paint all these things as though they are the same, or just slight variations. They aren't.

Call it unhealthy if you want (I think that's a pretty harsh characterization, but not my job to tell you how to see things), its still the practical reality of how some people want it done.

All expectations of unremitting perfection in performance are unhealthy. Human beings are not capable of performing without error 100% of the time. Mistakes can and will happen. I don't see how this is an extreme position: don't expect your DMs to be perfect, and don't lead others to believe you are perfect as DM. This isn't rocket science.

I find it hard to see fudging as anything other than the GM making the decisions while pretending that the dice are taking some of the responsibility.

Yeah, there's certainly an undercurrent of that.

I suspect many of us (even firm anti-fudgers like myself) might agree that a GM changing a random encounter roll is not really fudging, as it's not so much a part of the resolution system as a means of giving the GM ideas (YMMV). Encounter tables are in the GM's domain.

Yeah, I have no inherent problem with "hey dice, give me an idea. [roll] No, dice, give me a GOOD idea." Particularly when, as you say, the tables are not something the players could even in principle have knowledge of. If the point is simply to spur on DM creativity when the well of improvisations has run dry, then the roll has no effect on player agency nor their ability to learn to play the game. Though even then I still VASTLY, OVERWHEMLINGLY prefer not disregarding rolls. I just wouldn't be upset if someone else chose to do that.

Where we disagree is in the middle - combat and general skill resolution. Are the dice and associated resolution mechanisms just a suggestion, a way of giving the GM ideas that they can then choose to override? Or are they outside the GM's control, not so much in the players' sphere as no-one's sphere, a kind of no mans land where the outcome is neutrally determined?

The latter. That's what they're for. They provide a truly neutral arbiter, incapable of bias or favoritism, assuming the dice are fair and not weighted. If I don't like possible outcomes, I as DM have the power to change them. If there are no actual costs for failure, the dice shouldn't be involved. If I have invoked the dice when I should not have, it's literally as easy as "oh, y'know what, you just succeed, forget about the roll." That kind of statement should not be even the slightest bit controversial and accomplishes the exact same goal. (Likewise the closely related "calling the fight" stuff: there's no fudging involved, because you are openly skipping the invocation of the mechanic, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.)

Learning how to set the outcomes so you are comfortable with all the results is a vital DMing skill. Fudging is a crutch to avoid needing to learn that skill, and is not even necessary for correcting any errors that crop up. It is always within the DM's power to address any such errors diegetically, and in so doing, creating new hooks and opportunities. None of the controversy (since some amount of diegesis is essential to all forms of roleplay, that's literally the thing that makes it not merely numbers on a spreadsheet), all the benefit.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yeah, but it seems a difference between "This does some things that somewhat annoy me" and "This does this to a degree I'll do direct GM intervention on-the-fly to correct it.".

I don't see it as something that needs to be a critical degree to require fudging.

"This living speedbump is about to crit down a PC. Fiddle-dee-dee, that won't do. Let's just make that a hit instead. There. All better."

It's straightening a crooked picture for me, not putting out a fire. Something dumb as going to happen because of dice. I made something dumb not happen.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And so on. Technically this is fudging, but I don't fudge the dice.

I have consistently said none of these things are fudging. You did not secretly change the result of a roll, nor the mathematical modifiers to a roll, nor the numbers increased or reduced by a roll. Therefore, as I have used the term over the course of this thread (and every other related thread), none of these are fudging. They are diegetic exercises of DM power to adjust the experience.

That third one in particular is an excellent example. You chose to use a softer meaning of "failure" than might be indicated by the result. It was still a failure, one that could potentially be very costly; if, for instance, the party is in a race against time to prevent some horrible event, losing several hours and having an ally battered and broken is a serious setback, one that might ensure their overall failure and radically change the direction of the story. E.g. if the race is to prevent a murder, they might arrive too late now, or find the victim already poisoned but not yet fully dead, leading to an adventure to resuscitate them rather than having them as an ally right away. (I'm envisioning something like "the Countess lies poisoned and at deaths door, which allows her crooked nephew to assume the responsibility over her forces while she's comatose. You'll never get the help you need from him! Saving the Countess may be your only hope...")

If it's diegetic, by my definition, it cannot be fudging. If it isn't secret, then by my definition, it cannot be fudging. If it doesn't actually affect the result of a evaluative mechanic (e.g. damage dice, attack rolls, skill checks, saves, etc.) then it cannot be fudging. I have been very, very consistent on this: only the secret modification of rolled results or extant values (with the later allowance for modifying creatures that have gone completely untested by/unknown to the players), as in the stats of a monster that is already on the battlemap and engaged with the PCs, is fudging, as I use the term. Everything else may be like fudging, may be abusable in its own way, may have its own flaws, but none of that is relevant to "fudging" as I have defined and used the term.

 

[Maxperson]

That's why GMing is an art not a science.

And part of that art is knowing that when you roll the dice it's so the dice take some responsibility. If I decide the Orcs attack I decide there's a chance that they kill the PCs. I don't decide they kill the PCs, I don't decide if the PCs live. The players don't full decide that either. It's understood there's an element of chance.

I find it hard to see fudging as anything other than the GM making the decisions while pretending that the dice are taking some of the responsibility.

And I find it hard to see that as anything other than basic deception. If it's time to decide, decide, if it's time to roll the dice roll the dice.

Except that fudging = DMing art and anti-fudging = DMing science. The anti-fudgers want to treat rolls as if they are hard scientific fact, rather than fluid interpretive art.

And as you say, DMing is an art, not a science.

 

[CleverNickName]

@EzekielRaiden Well, I mean, that failed Climb check is definitely fudging the rules...since I'm not rolling 100d6 points of damage for the poor character. But yeah, I can concede that the others aren't fudging per se.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@EzekielRaiden Well, I mean, that failed Climb check is definitely fudging the rules...since I'm not rolling 100d6 points of damage for the poor character. But yeah, I can concede that the others aren't fudging per se.

But there's nothing secret about it. That's just as critical as "did it change any numbers?"