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

[iserith]

Mine was that it was an emergency response tool. Some of the things I consider emergencies you don't (again your gig) but at least one general class you seemed to just deny ever happening. My point was that "it hasn't happened IME" is not a response to people who say it has in theirs, unless its to imply they're lying or are extreme outliers.

In the particular case you quoted, the issue was one of improvised description that fell short of communicating what was intended which the poster, I believe, suggested could be worked on. Better to focus on that, in my view, than fudge.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The correction is simply setting stakes you can live with instead of ones you can't. If you say heads is life and tails is death and you flip the coin and it comes up tails, but you can't live with that result, why on earth did you set those stakes?

There are some limits-of-resolution problems this ignores. You can be quite okay with most of the consequences of a chain of rolls without in all cases being okay with their cumulative effects (not a place I tend to step in, but I can get people who do even if I think if they're doing it too often they're probably doing my aforementioned wrong-tool-for-the-job they're trying to do).

 

[Thomas Shey]

In the particular case you quoted, the issue was one of improvised description that fell short of communicating what was intended which the poster, I believe, suggested could be worked on. Better to focus on that, in my view, than fudge.

You seemed to be directing this rather more broadly, however, in your comments about "hard to believe examples".

 

[iserith]

There are some limits-of-resolution problems this ignores. You can be quite okay with most of the consequences of a chain of rolls without in all cases being okay with their cumulative effects (not a place I tend to step in, but I can get people who do even if I think if they're doing it too often they're probably doing my aforementioned wrong-tool-for-the-job they're trying to do).

If one is rolling dice for some amount of resolution in the game, it doesn't strike me as all that wise to not be okay with any outcome. But one can, as an example, take death off the table altogether if character death is something the group doesn't enjoy.

 

[Scott Christian]

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.

That is different than...

I'm not sure that's a useful summary statement.

and...

I didn't question it's accuracy.

So the statement is accurate, but fails in your opinion. Ok.

 

[iserith]

You seemed to be directing this rather more broadly, however, in your comments about "hard to believe examples".

Again, I don't understand your point here. There are many examples that look very contrived to me in this and the other related thread, which is common in discussions where posters are trying to craft examples to try to justify positions that don't require any justification. That is all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If one is rolling dice for some amount of resolution in the game, it doesn't strike me as all that wise to not be okay with any outcome. But one can, as an example, take death off the table altogether if character death is something the group doesn't enjoy.

Sure. But sometimes its not even "death" that's the problem but, say, "trivial death". Now I think it'd be better to just say that death only happens in dramatically appropriate cases, but that's getting more structuralist than some groups are comfortable doing.

 

[Cadence]

That is different than...

and...

So the statement is accurate, but fails in your opinion. Ok.

To be specific, I think it failed to be useful and explained why I thought so.

 

[Mordhau]

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.

In that case why not roll the die out in the open and then fudge? Why the secrecy and deception?

"Sorry Bob, it looks like the Orc crit"?
"Damn. And I'm down to 0 hit points"
"You know Bob let's say that 20 is actually a 02".

Fluid interpretative art right there.

 

[iserith]

Sure. But sometimes its not even "death" that's the problem but, say, "trivial death". Now I think it'd be better to just say that death only happens in dramatically appropriate cases, but that's getting more structuralist than some groups are comfortable doing.

That's a pretty easy fix too - player decides if their character actually dies. Otherwise they're knocked out or the like. This way they can decide when something was suitably dramatic.