D&D General Dice Fudging and Twist Endings

[Cadence]

IMO, admitting and addressing your mistakes is an incredibly important thing. Expecting every DM to maintain a facade of absolute perfection is one of the biggest reasons people fear starting (that and the belief that they must have absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of both the game rules and all possible scenario components the players might ask about.) Teaching DMs that it is perfectly okay to make mistakes, and that dealing with them calmly and rationally is healthy and leads to (much) better DMing, is a far, far, far better lesson than "you can trick your players into thinking you never make mistakes if you just never allow them to know."


Again, I disagree. Either it is a crutch--as you say, something that should be eliminated by changing one's process--or it is a deception. Neither of these is good. It should be avoided. Anything productive that can be achieved with fudging can be achieved without. No one has ever presented me with a single situation that could only be solved by fudging, and almost all of the "edge cases" you speak of are terribly, terribly contrived to begin with.

I guess I don't see how "have it use much weaker option A instead of strong option B so an extreme roll doesn't mangle things" is tons different from "rolling two smaller dice than the two big ones called for" is tons different from "fudging the die rolls so they don't exceed what the two smaller dice would have done".

But if I had a player who hated one of those I would avoid doing it if there were other options when it seemed called for.

 

[CreamCloud0]

There’s always the far end of the bell curve, even if you did want consequences sometimes the dice align in the exact wrong way for the perfect disaster and you need to step in and say ‘no, this is not ‘fun’ this is just a mess’, some groups would rather wipe to a random encounter on the road to the final confrontation than have dice be fudged but for another group that would be the worst most anticlimactic end and would retroactively ruin the whole adventure if that’s how it ended, fudging or not needs to be decided for your table and there is no true answer to if it’s good or bad because it’s personal

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I guess I don't see how "have it use much weaker option A instead of strong option B so an extreme roll doesn't mangle things" is tons different from "rolling two smaller dice than the two big ones called for" is tons different from "fudging the die rolls so they don't exceed what the two smaller dice would have done".

But if I had a player who hated one of those I would avoid doing it if there were other options when it seemed called for.

Well, if you want my answer (which need not be anyone else's answer):

Tactics are not something well-defined within the rules. The fictional positioning and situational status of entities in the world are within the player's purview: a regular player plays their PC with whatever attitude they desire, within the limits of decorum for the group, and a DM "player" plays NPCs and opponents likewise. Why does a monster choose to ignore the downed Cleric and focus on the Wizard nearby? Because it has some reason to--perhaps the party can figure it out, perhaps they can't, but the act of choosing to do that is obvious to everyone participating. There's no secret, hidden choice that makes it look like the monster is actually targeting the Cleric when they're truly targeting the Wizard. There is no difference between appearance and (fictional) reality.

I'm afraid I don't really know precisely what you mean by the smaller-vs-bigger dice, but I'm going to assume this is (for example) choosing to roll d4s when a monster crits instead of d12s or whatever. My issue here is that this takes away the stakes of play, in a way the players cannot see or learn about, but which actually does affect the consequences of their actions. It is the DM interceding in the connection between "player made unwise choice" (even if that unwise choice was "trusting the dice too much") and "player suffered a negative consequence as a result," in a way that cannot be learned from. The player will construct false "knowledge" from this, believing they've learned about how the game works, but actually only learning "the DM will interfere when it suits them to secretly protect us from the results of bad decisions and/or protect our opponents from unexpectedly powerful results." That does not mean that DMs shouldn't do something to address problem cases! It means that they should not pretend these consequences are what follow from the choices made, whoever made them. Both DMs and players learn by facing the problem and addressing it, rather than sweeping it under the rug and pretending there was never a problem to begin with.

The latter is just pretending you run a game by rules and instead running it by whim. In that sense, it's not actually much different from the preceding example; the previous example just puts in an intermediary of choosing smaller dice by whim, rather than choosing the smaller result directly by whim.

The thing is, you can get all of the benefits of fudging in this way, without ACTUALLY fudging! You can have your smaller dice, or even your chosen result if that really tickles your fancy, without preventing the players from ever knowing it. Instead, you make the change diegetic. Something--perhaps even you don't know what!--prevented the damage from being as much as it should be, or narrowed the range, or whatever else. That something is real, and at least for combat stuff, most characters should have some idea of the fact that a blow didn't hit as hard as it should have or didn't swing as far as it should have or whatever else. That's a clue that something hinky is going on. The players may ignore it, or they may fumble their investigation (because that happens sometimes!), or they may draw erroneous conclusions about it--all of that is perfectly fine, as long as they had a legitimate chance to learn.

Which is why I say there is nothing productive you can do with fudging that you can't do without fudging. Because the only things you can do with fudging that can't be done without it directly depend on ensuring the players cannot even in principle know that something happened. The only time fudging is required is when deceiving the players is the whole point. Everything else can be addressed some other way.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There’s always the far end of the bell curve, even if you did want consequences sometimes the dice align in the exact wrong way for the perfect disaster and you need to step in and say ‘no, this is not ‘fun’ this is just a mess’, some groups would rather wipe to a random encounter on the road to the final confrontation than have dice be fudged but for another group that would be the worst most anticlimactic end and would retroactively ruin the whole adventure if that’s how it ended, fudging or not needs to be decided for your table and there is no true answer to if it’s good or bad because it’s personal

Again: See above. There are routes to getting literally identical results, with nothing whatsoever changed about the game state, which do not, at all, require that you be deceiving the players and preventing them from discovering that deception. Diegetic changes that can be made, and thus found, and thus build into some new story. If, as you and others say, this is something that only occurs at "the far end of the bell curve," you should only need to make such diegetic changes extremely rarely, and thus it shouldn't be a massive burden to do so. It would, of course, help to do a little bit of prep work to explain why/how such changes could occur, but it isn't strictly necessary.

And when you make those changes diegetic, you actually empower both yourself and your players. For yourself, you apply the Bob Ross treatment: there are no mistakes, just happy accidents, because when you do make a mistake, you leverage it, turn it into something greater. For your players, they are rewarded for being observant, tactical, and investigative. Their engagement pays dividends, and transforms what would be a weakening of their skills into a strengthening thereof. There are, quite literally, no downsides, so long as you are willing to do just a little bit of prep work (e.g. "How might the party be saved from Bad Stuff?"/"What might deny strength to these <gnolls/hobgoblins/minotaurs/etc.>?"), or at least willing to be flexible and come up with an explanation after the fact ("You know that SHOULD have been a deathblow...but it wasn't. Why or how, you don't quite know, but you've been given a second chance. Use it wisely.")

These are the seeds that can grow into whole adventures, if you let them.

 

[Blue]

Edit: Ninja'd by @Xamnam while I was looking for it

I kind of like how the 5e DMG goes into it in the section on "Table Rules":

View attachment 276894
View attachment 276895

Thank you, and @Xamnam . I learned something today. I was wrong, it is listed in the rules, and even calls out fudging as one of the valid options.

 

[Blue]

Heck, in this game, the GM was clear - if one of the players felt so strongly that their fun meant that they needed to fudge some rolls themselves, that was okay. Player fun was more important than absolute truthfulness.

I don't expect anyone did lie on a roll, but wouldn't have cared if they had.

I've played at a table where one player "repeatedly misread dice". When spoken to, it was to create a better story. And it did - create a better story for their character. He was consistently the MVP of any scene his character had appropriate skills for.

As another player in the game, I disliked the amount of spotlight that he stole from us. So it's not just about the DM being okay with it. It impacts the whole table.

 

[Umbran]

As another player in the game, I disliked the amount of spotlight that he stole from us. So it's not just about the DM being okay with it. It impacts the whole table.

Sure. That's what discussing things like adults in Session 0 is for.

The point being that "never fudge, or the game will be crummy" thing is about the particular people at your table, not the game universally.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It is the DM interceding in the connection between "player made unwise choice" (even if that unwise choice was "trusting the dice too much") and "player suffered a negative consequence as a result," in a way that cannot be learned from. The player will construct false "knowledge" from this, believing they've learned about how the game works, but actually only learning "the DM will interfere when it suits them to secretly protect us from the results of bad decisions and/or protect our opponents from unexpectedly powerful results."

Heh heh... well here is most likely the thing that is the playstyle block between both sides of the equation.

I don't believe players can or should "learn" anything about the game while playing because since the DM controls everything and the game is always different... there is nothing TO learn. Everything in the world of D&D can and will be different. Consistency is not constant. At least not in any game I participate in.

D&D is not a tactical board game. There aren't set moves that all players and creatures will always do that you can strategically plan around. The way the events and encounters play out is always changing based on story and DM fiat, and no player can take anything for granted (except in the cases of playing with a DM who does everything exactly the same every time.)

I mean look at the most basic thing players have "learned" over the past 40 years: Trolls can't regenerate if they are burned with fire.

What's more universal than that in D&D? The ultimate "learned tactic"? And yet... what do we hear DMs constantly talk about in all the arguments about "using meta knowledge" in games? How to include trolls in the the game who DO regenerate even after being hit with fire. Because DMs have seen that this standard tactic is BORING and pointless, and thus they want to do something different to keep players on their toes. Even if the players have dealt with fire-vulnerable trolls before and have "learned the tactics" of dealing with trolls... a lot of DMs will still be perfectly fine with the idea of throwing out a fire-resistant one on an occasion just so the players don't get complacent and because it makes for an interesting story of how these fire-resistant trolls exist when all the others are vulnerable? THAT'S what is interesting, not "learning the tactic" in the first place.

All manner of DMs do stuff like that. Take a supposed "truth" of the game and change it. To keep the players guessing. In a world of magic, there is nothing you can necessarily believe is a truth in reality, because magic changes reality. I don't believe players should "learn" anything, because in a game like D&D, you can't take anything for granted and shouldn't take anything for granted.

And I firmly believe this to be the case. If the players have "learned" something tactically advantageous based upon consistent trial and error... like for instance tapping the ground ahead of them with a 10' pole to find all the pit traps... then I will most definitely on occasion play with that expectation and their "tactically sound" choice. Because to do otherwise is to truly turn D&D into nothing but a board game where players can just check off their list of "standard tactics" as they play, confident that they can "win"... while the DM just sits there like a robot saying "Yes" and "No" with no impact or influence on the game. And to me that is the death of the game at my table. I might as well just be running a game of HeroQuest. And I will NEVER play D&D that way.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What does honesty have to do with "don't roll when you don't need to"?

I believe the connection would be:

Don't roll when you don't need to so that you don't feel the need to fudge if the roll is bad. --> Don't fudge because they players need to know you are being honest with them so they can "learn" from what happens.

Seems pretty self-explanatory.

 

[nevin]

It's not my job as a DM to be honest with the players. It's my job to give them a fun story. I manage my games you obviously simply adjudicate them. Your strategy is fine if you do nothing beyond dungeon crawls and monster encounters but then it's really a complicated board game. You might as well set up cards shuffle them and do the encounters as they pull up.