GMs: Guiding Morals in GMing

[Celebrim]

So this is incorrect for two reasons:
1) A GM isn't trying to win, they are trying to challenge, under the expectation that a challenge will be more enjoyable. The Players are trying to win, not to challenge the GM. Under your example of Chess, both sides are trying to win ideally, with offering a challenge often being seen as desirable. Mind, this is all ideals, and comes ultimately back to being a moral principle for me. I won't play with a GM who is trying to beat me.

It always amazes me that people disagree with me over things that I fully agree with. Yes, I agree with every point you make in your first reason.

But I don't see how it is a strong objection to what I wrote, because I think it should be clear that I think the GM limits himself by writing defeatable challenges. The GM has infinite resources. The GM in theory could set the PC's against unwinnable scenarios quite easily and with only a small exercise of imagination. The GM when creating anything limits himself to the sort of resources implied by the setting, and by throwing out hooks to problems that the players can defeat. Then, having created reasonable and beatable challenges, the GM then does his best to run the NPCs in those scenarios as cunning adversaries behaving according to their own instincts, intelligence, and motives. The NPC's have the odds subtly stacked against them, but the GM switches hats at the time of the combat and goes from his hat as designer to his hat as advocate for the adversaries. He does this not because he wants to win and beat the PCs, but because that's what makes it fun for the players. The players don't want to win because they see the NPCs being stupid. The players don't want to win because the NPCs are pushovers. They want to earn that victory.

2) Chess only has a single moment of random chance, that being who goes first. Every other moment is purely coming from player choices. While there are TTRPG that has limited randomizing, they are in the minority in the extreme. Random elements can and do lend themselves to exciting moments. But they can also lead to boring, frustrating ones. Part of this is encounter design, but all GMs should be prepared to make alterations when situations call for them.

Likewise, this doesn't seem to be a strong objection, and in fact I find it to be a very spurious one. Returning to my point that the GM is omnipotent and has unlimited resources and power, one of the ways the GM limits his power over the game is by preparing "myth" for the game that he then as an act of discipline adheres to. The GM limits himself to only those resources he declared a priori exist. But the other way the GM limits his power over the game is as an act of discipline he submits himself to the outcome of the dice. If he's not actually going to do this, then what is the point of rolling the dice but illusion? Why do you feel the need to pretend by rolling the dice if you don't care what the result is and you are only going to validate the dice if they give you the result that you want?

Fundamentally, the problem with Illusionism is that everyone seems to agree that the fun goes away if you stop lying to the players and take the curtain away and show them what you are really doing. And that implies I think a deep problem with the methodology.

I don't deny that there could possibly be times when Illusionism is justified and you the GM ignore the Rules, your Myth, or the dice and run the game entirely by fiat, but what I am stating is that you should as an Artful GM endeavor to minimize those occasions and that you should especially do so if you are a novice GM. The reason for this is that it is very easy as a GM to trick yourself about your own motives in these situations, where you keep telling yourself that you are doing it for the good of the game. But at some point, you have started indulging the idea that what the GM wants is what is good for the game and that's a bad habit to get into.

Also, something that I am seeing understated/overlooked: Demanding rules fidelity be the first guiding principle of running a game overlooks a glaring reality: No rules are perfect. Most rules, are in fact, a work in progress. You need only look to these very forums to show that people constantly fiddle with the rules as written to improve the game experience at their table. I was 8 years old when I saw that the rules for encumbrance were no fun...

I am the GM that famously has a 600 page house rules document for 3e D&D. I have yet to run a game that I don't want to change the rules for. Every RPG I run gets house rules. When I run Blood Bowl or Necromunda as a league commissioner it comes with extensive house rules. The idea that I'm some sort of hidebound GM that is afraid to modify the rules to obtain the experience I want is funny.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I think you are focusing on changing the outcome of a combat; the strawman here is the thought that people who adapt
encounters mid-flow are railroading GMs who want their version of the story to occur, no matter what.

No, the only strawman here is you think that because I choose not to do it that I don't know how to do it, or you think that because I choose not to do it that I must have some different goal in mind than you do.

My statement was that your focus on changing the outcome of a combat as the only reason to adapt encounters mid-flow is a strawman. You reject that characterization, but then in the rest of your post you return to it:

One way a player can recognize that illusionism is if the GMs plans for the encounter never quite seem to go awry.

Again you are implying that the only reason to modify encounters mid-flow is to enforce "GM Plans" and now you are adding the implication that the GM is going to do this every single time! So let me try once more to state why I modify combats: To make them fun

"to make the challenge closer to how we had envisaged it."

We? We? How many people were involved in planning this combat
And oh boy does fudging to make an encounter closer to how you imagined it would be exactly describe the very process that I discourage novice DMs from fixating on.

Ah, I was not clear enough in my statement; the "it" in the above statement refers to the challenge, not the encounter (technically that's the correct way to read the sentence, but I should have been more explicit). As a group, we have a consensus on how challenging a campaign is, and therefore on how challenging combats are. I explicitly call this out when setting up the campaign.

As examples, for an AD&D game I ran, the group set the expectation that the world was very dangerous, and that it was to be expected that the players might face overwhelming challenges that might kill them if they did not run. Whereas in a 13th Age game, the group expectation of challenge was that fights should be "worth running" (not pushovers) but that death was only likely for climactic battles or against major nemeses.

So, EVERYONE was involved in envisaging how we expected challenges to be, and as a GM my job was to uphold the group's decision, so if an encounter failed to match up to what the group has agreed the challenge should be, then that's my failure and I need to fix it

You find difficulties with my approach of modifying to making things fun, namely:

The first falsehood is that the GM is omniscient and so can tell at any point whether modifying the situation does result in more fun. The GM isn't omniscient and can't predict accurately how things are going to go if he changes or doesn't change the situation,

You don't have to "omniscient" to modify encounters! Such extreme language! All you have to know is roughly what you expect will happen. As a trivial example, if I modify an encounter to have the opposition run away, I'm pretty confident that I can tell how things are going to turn . Or if I increase the damage done by a monster's attack, I can be pretty sure it'll make the combat harder to some degree.

I agree that it can be hard to predict how the outcome of the combat will be changed, but that's your concern, not mine. I'm modifying combats to make things more fun, and based on our relative experiences, that seems much easier to do!

If you decide to at all times freely change the outcomes so that you are omniscient, you are no longer playing to find out what happens. You are just letting the players experience your story.

Yet again with the strawman that the only reason to modify a combat is to change outcomes

If you are always protecting the outcomes from being anything but you envisioned them to be, well sooner or later the players are going to figure that

Yet again with the strawman that people do this all the time.

@Celebrim, I think I get where you are coming from, but it's incompatible with where I am coming from. I get the feeling you are attacking a version of play that isn't close to what I'm doing, so maybe rather than trying to attack that position, can we come up with some statements that are more focused about the differences between the outcome-changing and fun-changing methods? Are the following notes at least roughly in alignment with your thinking?

• Modifying encounters mid-flow so as to change the outcome is hard to judge well and can easily lead to the GM railroading players to fit into their desired plans, if they have them. It's recommended that GMs do this very rarely if at all.
• Modifying encounters mid-flow so as to make an encounter more enjoyable, potentially affecting the outcome but without that being the purpose, is much easier for the GM and is something that can be considered a GM's style, neither inherently good or bad.
• GMs should consider their groups and session zero discussions when they think about modifying encounters mid-flow. Groups that are more gamist and enjoy the puzzle-like challenge of roleplaying, will generally prefer less modification -- maybe none at all

 

[Celebrim]

@GrahamWills: I feel that you are repeatedly make appeals to two different phrases that I confess I don't understand what you mean by them. First, you seem to be using "outcome" in a private technical sense. What is and isn't an outcome in your mind? Secondly, you keep saying you don't make changes to change outcomes but only to "make more fun", but I find this to be a begging the question fallacy. You are assuming your argument in that statement, turning everything into some sort of tautology. I don't see how you think you can make fun without changing outcomes.

I consider the following to be changing the outcome:

a) Causing the fight to go shorter than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
b) Causing the fight to go longer than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
c) Causing members of either side of the fight to survive or to avoid or receive other long-term consequences such as capture, gear loss, or being maimed, where a different result would have been obtained without the fudging.
d) Changes to the produced transcript of play as the result of fudging such as changes who gets the glory, kill shot, or spotlight as a result of the fight.

You can do these things by fudging. For example you previously stated things like:

So I do quite often add or remove monsters, add or ignore their powers, or add or ignore terrain and effects to make an encounter more fun. Sometimes fun is just not spending 10 more minutes defeating surprisingly tanky enemies, sometimes it's upping mooks' hitpoints because they were not up the standard of the main enemies, sometimes it's having enemies run away because everyone is yawning and it's time to wrap up. Sometimes it's keeping the enemy alive for a turn to let their nemesis have a chance at delivering the KO blow

All those things to me either actually change the outcome or potentially change the outcome. You seem rather oddly focused on questions of whether or not the party wins or loses. And yes, changing the outcome to the extent that wins become failures or failures become wins is the most extreme case, but you are still effecting the outcome of the fight even when you go to a lesser extreme. But more to the point, if you are in a fight with 10 goblins and in turn three the goblins are down to 4 goblins and you are like in your head thinking, "This fight has not been challenging enough. It's a walk over. Let's have 3 goblins show up as reinforcements to make it more fun.", you can't know whether or not the next round you're going to roll two natural 20's for the now 7 surviving goblins and confirm criticals, and now suddenly you have two different players that are dying, a player that has to spend their turn keeping allies from dying, and the party is now down 75% of its offensive power and you've got a situation where one PC is taking on 5 goblins solo to try to protect the party and suddenly those 3 extra goblins feel a bit overwhelming. My suspicion is that if that happens, well you just fudge the fudging at some point and everything becomes fudge all the way down. My point about fudging to make things more fun is you as a limited person with limited insight into the future can't always predict what is going to make things more fun.

Similarly with things like upping hit points. Upped them too much? Well fudge them back down again. Eventually it all becomes this big illusionary dance.

You say:

"You don't have to "omniscient" to modify encounters! Such extreme language! All you have to know is roughly what you expect will happen. As a trivial example, if I modify an encounter to have the opposition run away, I'm pretty confident that I can tell how things are going to turn . Or if I increase the damage done by a monster's attack, I can be pretty sure it'll make the combat harder to some degree.

But how much harder? And even having opposition run away can have unpredictable effects in the sandbox. Fleeing monsters can be hugely problematic - much more of a problem than the monsters standing and fighting. Consider if for some reason you are running something like 'Glacier Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl". Now the structure of this module is that Gygax has subtly weighted the things in favor the players by having a whole army of Frost Giants split up into small separate encounters that don't intersect. If the PC's had to face the whole army outside of the Glacier Rift, the PC's wouldn't stand a chance. The whole purpose of the fortress is to cripple the monsters and make it almost impossible for them to defend themselves! It's a deliberately terrible fortress. If you decide, "The monsters are going to try to run away", there is good chance that you are going to TPK the PC's. Because what actually then happens is sort of like extra pulls when running a raid instance. Your fleeing giants pick up more giants until you have an overwhelming number of giants in some later fight.

I just don't agree that you can know what is going to be more fun in the general case. If you up the monsters damage early in the fight to have a bigger impact, you don't know if the whole party is going to roll like 8 or less on every attack for a round (it happens) and then suddenly your party is struggling more than you intended. Is that more fun? Do you fudge again if it isn't?

From my perspective you are just saying, "I'm altering outcomes in ways that I think will be more fun." You can alter outcomes (see definition of outcomes above) but there is no magic "fun" button to push that makes things more fun without altering outcomes. I don't see how you think it is a strawman to say that you modify outcomes. It's not so much that I think that the only reason to modify combat is to change outcomes, it's just that I think changing outcomes is the inevitable side effect of modifying combat. "To have more fun" is the why, but it's not the tool. The tool is altering outcomes. "More fun" is your intended result.

If you kill steal my PC's moment of awesome because you've decided it would be more fun if another PC gets the glory, don't expect me to necessarily agree with your ideas about what is fun.

Are the following notes at least roughly in alignment with your thinking?
Modifying encounters mid-flow so as to change the outcome is hard to judge well and can easily lead to the GM railroading players to fit into their desired plans, if they have them. It's recommended that GMs do this very rarely if at all.

Yes.

Modifying encounters mid-flow so as to make an encounter more enjoyable, potentially affecting the outcome but without that being the purpose, is much easier for the GM and is something that can be considered a GM's style, neither inherently good or bad.

See I don't even see the above statement as having meaning. It comes back "Does not compute". Rewriting to something that is a true statement looks something like:

"Modifying the encounters mid-flow so as to change the outcome with the purpose of making the encounter more enjoyable is something can be considered a GM's style, neither inherently good or bad."

And, yeah, that's rewrite is a true statement, but it comes with a big caveat. It's only functional GMing if it happens to be that you don't have a party where any player cares about Illusion of Success and so basically has a "do not care" around the process of play, and only cares about the produced transcript of play. And further, you probably don't have anyone in the party that is overly concerned about their agency so that they don't mind having less room to express themselves compared to how much they enjoy the story you are giving them. So for example, most parties I've ran are going to not have more fun if they learn you stole an important kill from a PC to give it to a different PC you felt was more deserving. The PC that missed out on the kill is going to be disappointed, and the PC that got the kills is going to feel it was unearned and so both will feel you robbed them.

GMs should consider their groups and session zero discussions when they think about modifying encounters mid-flow. Groups that are more gamist and enjoy the puzzle-like challenge of roleplaying, will generally prefer less modification -- maybe none at all

Absolutely. And like, I think if you do this you'll find that the more you reveal about the Illusion by lifting the curtain up, the more feedback you'll get from most groups that they prefer you stop with the Illusion. Illusionism typically only works and is fun if it isn't seen through, which is yet another reason it should be rare.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I think we're pretty close to agreement here!

@GrahamWills: I feel that you are repeatedly make appeals to two different phrases that I confess I don't understand what you mean by them. First, you seem to be using "outcome" in a private technical sense. What is and isn't an outcome in your mind?

I consider the following to be changing the outcome:

a) Causing the fight to go shorter than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
b) Causing the fight to go longer than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
c) Causing members of either side of the fight to survive or to avoid or receive other long-term consequences such as capture, gear loss, or being maimed, where a different result would have been obtained without the fudging.
d) Changes to the produced transcript of play as the result of fudging such as changes who gets the glory, kill shot, or spotlight as a result of the fight.

In your previous notes, I didn't see examples of (a), (b) or (d) above -- a lot of your language was focused on "putting on kid gloves", "avoiding fights going bad" and essentially focusing on (c) above. So thanks for your explanation.

Now, just to confirm. You previously have said that most of the time when you tried to do things like the above, you failed. Is that true for all those categories, or just for (c)-like adjustments? That means that most of time you shorten a fight that is effectively over, it causes your group to have less fun?

On the difference between adjusting to make the challenge fit and adjusting to make the outcome fit:

if you are in a fight with 10 goblins and in turn three the goblins are down to 4 goblins and you are like in your head thinking, "This fight has not been challenging enough. It's a walk over. Let's have 3 goblins show up as reinforcements to make it more fun.", you can't know whether or not the next round you're going to roll two natural 20's for the now 7 surviving goblins and confirm criticals, and now suddenly you have two different players that are dying, a player that has to spend their turn keeping allies from dying, and the party is now down 75% of its offensive power and you've got a situation where one PC is taking on 5 goblins solo to try to protect the party and suddenly those 3 extra goblins feel a bit overwhelming. My suspicion is that if that happens, well you just fudge the fudging at some point and everything becomes fudge all the way down.

This is the sort of fudging we both agree we don't like: Fudging to achieve a desired outcome in the sense of success/failure or deciding party survival / death. Here's the way I do it: Modify to achieve a desired level of challenge. When I see the above situation I don't think "is this encounter going too easily?", I think "is this encounter not challenging enough?". If the reason the goblins are doing so badly is that they have rolled badly and the magical rolled max damage with a fireball and the party have had several critical, then no, although the encounter is going easily, the challenge was appropriate and so I don't do anything.

If however, the players have rolled meh, and the goblins relatively well, and it's still looking like a pushover, then I might well add 3 goblins. I am now happy with the challenge of the combat and we carry on. If the goblins are then super lucky and start winning, I apply the same logic again: The encounter is not going well, but the challenge is appropriate, so I don't do anything.

I'm pretty sure I've never counter-adjusted as you indicate. I don't think it has ever lead to a TPK but honestly, TPKs are not a big feature of the games I like to run anyway.

My point about fudging to make things more fun is you as a limited person with limited insight into the future can't always predict what is going to make things more fun.

Nope. Not 100%. But I'd argue about 90%. Because, like you, I think I'm a good GM

If you kill steal my PC's moment of awesome because you've decided it would be more fun if another PC gets the glory, don't expect me to necessarily agree with your ideas about what is fun.

Actually, the last time I did this it was prompted by the player. We had one character who was known as "giant killer" and a different character did a critical to an important giant. The player said "oh no, Cian Giant-Killer should really have the killing blow", so I gave the giant a very few extra hits and let Cian have a swing. If he had missed, I wasn't going to keep doing that though, but since the group agreed that the fun thing was for Cian to make the killing blow, I felt my duty as a GM was to help that be so.

And maybe that's another big difference. I think you described your players as liking problem-solving and challenges, so they might be more likely to characterize a GM as "stealing" and that whole more adversarial feel. My players are not only generally happy to share, but good about making their happiness known, so I don't have the kind of issue you're describing.

Rewriting [Graham's statement] to something that is a true statement looks something like:

"Modifying the encounters mid-flow so as to change the outcome with the purpose of making the encounter more enjoyable is something can be considered a GM's style, neither inherently good or bad."

And, yeah, that's rewrite is a true statement, but it comes with a big caveat. It's only functional GMing if it happens to be that you don't have a party where any player cares about Illusion of Success and so basically has a "do not care" around the process of play, and only cares about the produced transcript of play.

Oh, we were doing so well! But now you are re-introducing the notion of modification only to be concerned with success/failure -- the very thing you were saying was not true at the top of the post! I don't want to try and answer you with two different definitions you are using, so I'm just going to ignore this statement of yours and move on.

And further, you probably don't have anyone in the party that is overly concerned about their agency so that they don't mind having less room to express themselves compared to how much they enjoy the story you are giving them. So for example, most parties I've ran are going to not have more fun if they learn you stole an important kill from a PC to give it to a different PC you felt was more deserving. The PC that missed out on the kill is going to be disappointed, and the PC that got the kills is going to feel it was unearned and so both will feel you robbed them.

This is a straight up no. I have players who like each other and like each other's characters. When one of them feels that it would be more appropriate for a different player to take an action, they are generous and will try and make it happen, and are happy for me to join their attempts. I mentioned the story of Cian Giant-Killer above as an example, and that's really common.

I think you see players as more competitive than I do, so you see this action as "stealing" the agency away from one person, whereas for my players it's giving them additional agency -- the character for whom it is important (as agreed explicitly or implicitly by the group) is given a chance to do something that otherwise a random dice roll would have deprived them of.

I feel that your language ("stole an important kill", "you felt was more deserving") suggests that your experience of players is a bit less co-operative than mine has been. If you have players who regularly get annoyed with you for helping other players have fun, I guess that could explain why you do it less!

Illusionism typically only works and is fun if it isn't seen through, which is yet another reason it should be rare.

Agreed. Most of the time I let people know when I'm adjusting an encounter: "Well, those goblins were a bit under-powered, let's see how you deal with three more!" or "Although it seemed like Sir Owaine felled the giant, the giant seems to have just a little life left as Sir Cian readies for him", "given that the players are all yawning, the opposition too seems unsure if they want to keep fighting and they have a bit less will than you might have expected"

I hope this makes my viewpoint more clear; thanks for your comments.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@GrahamWills: I feel that you are repeatedly make appeals to two different phrases that I confess I don't understand what you mean by them. First, you seem to be using "outcome" in a private technical sense. What is and isn't an outcome in your mind? Secondly, you keep saying you don't make changes to change outcomes but only to "make more fun", but I find this to be a begging the question fallacy. You are assuming your argument in that statement, turning everything into some sort of tautology. I don't see how you think you can make fun without changing outcomes.

I consider the following to be changing the outcome:

a) Causing the fight to go shorter than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
b) Causing the fight to go longer than it would have without the fudging, resulting in fewer resources being expended by the party - less loss hit points, less spells expended, less consumables expended, etc.
c) Causing members of either side of the fight to survive or to avoid or receive other long-term consequences such as capture, gear loss, or being maimed, where a different result would have been obtained without the fudging.
d) Changes to the produced transcript of play as the result of fudging such as changes who gets the glory, kill shot, or spotlight as a result of the fight.

You can do these things by fudging. For example you previously stated things like:



All those things to me either actually change the outcome or potentially change the outcome. You seem rather oddly focused on questions of whether or not the party wins or loses. And yes, changing the outcome to the extent that wins become failures or failures become wins is the most extreme case, but you are still effecting the outcome of the fight even when you go to a lesser extreme. But more to the point, if you are in a fight with 10 goblins and in turn three the goblins are down to 4 goblins and you are like in your head thinking, "This fight has not been challenging enough. It's a walk over. Let's have 3 goblins show up as reinforcements to make it more fun.", you can't know whether or not the next round you're going to roll two natural 20's for the now 7 surviving goblins and confirm criticals, and now suddenly you have two different players that are dying, a player that has to spend their turn keeping allies from dying, and the party is now down 75% of its offensive power and you've got a situation where one PC is taking on 5 goblins solo to try to protect the party and suddenly those 3 extra goblins feel a bit overwhelming. My suspicion is that if that happens, well you just fudge the fudging at some point and everything becomes fudge all the way down. My point about fudging to make things more fun is you as a limited person with limited insight into the future can't always predict what is going to make things more fun.

Similarly with things like upping hit points. Upped them too much? Well fudge them back down again. Eventually it all becomes this big illusionary dance.

You say:

But how much harder? And even having opposition run away can have unpredictable effects in the sandbox. Fleeing monsters can be hugely problematic - much more of a problem than the monsters standing and fighting. Consider if for some reason you are running something like 'Glacier Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl". Now the structure of this module is that Gygax has subtly weighted the things in favor the players by having a whole army of Frost Giants split up into small separate encounters that don't intersect. If the PC's had to face the whole army outside of the Glacier Rift, the PC's wouldn't stand a chance. The whole purpose of the fortress is to cripple the monsters and make it almost impossible for them to defend themselves! It's a deliberately terrible fortress. If you decide, "The monsters are going to try to run away", there is good chance that you are going to TPK the PC's. Because what actually then happens is sort of like extra pulls when running a raid instance. Your fleeing giants pick up more giants until you have an overwhelming number of giants in some later fight.

I just don't agree that you can know what is going to be more fun in the general case. If you up the monsters damage early in the fight to have a bigger impact, you don't know if the whole party is going to roll like 8 or less on every attack for a round (it happens) and then suddenly your party is struggling more than you intended. Is that more fun? Do you fudge again if it isn't?

From my perspective you are just saying, "I'm altering outcomes in ways that I think will be more fun." You can alter outcomes (see definition of outcomes above) but there is no magic "fun" button to push that makes things more fun without altering outcomes. I don't see how you think it is a strawman to say that you modify outcomes. It's not so much that I think that the only reason to modify combat is to change outcomes, it's just that I think changing outcomes is the inevitable side effect of modifying combat. "To have more fun" is the why, but it's not the tool. The tool is altering outcomes. "More fun" is your intended result.

If you kill steal my PC's moment of awesome because you've decided it would be more fun if another PC gets the glory, don't expect me to necessarily agree with your ideas about what is fun.



Yes.



See I don't even see the above statement as having meaning. It comes back "Does not compute". Rewriting to something that is a true statement looks something like:

"Modifying the encounters mid-flow so as to change the outcome with the purpose of making the encounter more enjoyable is something can be considered a GM's style, neither inherently good or bad."

And, yeah, that's rewrite is a true statement, but it comes with a big caveat. It's only functional GMing if it happens to be that you don't have a party where any player cares about Illusion of Success and so basically has a "do not care" around the process of play, and only cares about the produced transcript of play. And further, you probably don't have anyone in the party that is overly concerned about their agency so that they don't mind having less room to express themselves compared to how much they enjoy the story you are giving them. So for example, most parties I've ran are going to not have more fun if they learn you stole an important kill from a PC to give it to a different PC you felt was more deserving. The PC that missed out on the kill is going to be disappointed, and the PC that got the kills is going to feel it was unearned and so both will feel you robbed them.



Absolutely. And like, I think if you do this you'll find that the more you reveal about the Illusion by lifting the curtain up, the more feedback you'll get from most groups that they prefer you stop with the Illusion. Illusionism typically only works and is fun if it isn't seen through, which is yet another reason it should be rare.

Oh My GOD! I might change the outcome from its preordained result! The depravity of it all!

Get off your high horse man. There's no certain outcome which must result. Its an imaginary orc-squishing contest or whatever. Nor is there some law of nature that says that in G2 all the giants that run away must gang up. And so what if they do?! I guess you already decided what was SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN. Yup.

 

[Celebrim]

Oh My GOD!

Please don't blaspheme on my account.

And on top of that, I don't think you are reading me correctly at all.

 

[Celebrim]

I think we're pretty close to agreement here!

We are? I'm still uncertain whether or not we are completely talking past each other.

In your previous notes, I didn't see examples of (a), (b) or (d) above -- a lot of your language was focused on "putting on kid gloves", "avoiding fights going bad" and essentially focusing on (c) above. So thanks for your explanation.

I haven't changed my stance. I was trying to clarify what you meant by "outcome" by exploring the fact that I would consider even small changes in the transcript of play to be changes in outcome.

Now, just to confirm. You previously have said that most of the time when you tried to do things like the above, you failed. Is that true for all those categories, or just for (c)-like adjustments? That means that most of time you shorten a fight that is effectively over, it causes your group to have less fun?

I don't shorten fights that are effectively over. I only shorten fights that are actually over. If it is obvious that the party can win without expending resources - perhaps the enemy is paralyzed or cowering and can't resist - then I ask the party how they want the mop up to go with permission of the table I handwave to the end of scene. If it could happen that the party takes further damage or has to expend some limited resources, the fight isn't over. Sometimes intelligent foes try to flee and then the party has the option of pursuing or not. If they don't pursue, the fight is over. Depending on the circumstances, the foe may never be seen again or it might come back to haunt them.

As for my stance, I don't have a count in my head of the number of times I've fudged. Over 40 years of play, probably lots, though it's certainly not every session or even every third session. But I do have a feeling that my fudging rarely made the game better and a few bad experiences where I felt it actively made the game worse.

n the difference between adjusting to make the challenge fit and adjusting to make the outcome fit:

You keep trying to distinguish between the two and I still don't see how you do that. That said, you keep claiming I'm shifting my stance back and forth, and I don't understand why.

This is the sort of fudging we both agree we don't like: Fudging to achieve a desired outcome in the sense of success/failure or deciding party survival / death.

Wait. That wasn't the sort of fudging that was going on here. The sort of fudging that was going on here was to achieve a desired level of challenge, and this example it went wrong because of good luck by the monsters.

Here's the way I do it: Modify to achieve a desired level of challenge. When I see the above situation I don't think "is this encounter going too easily?", I think "is this encounter not challenging enough?".

There is no difference between those two assertions that I can see.

If the reason the goblins are doing so badly is that they have rolled badly and the magical rolled max damage with a fireball and the party have had several critical, then no, although the encounter is going easily, the challenge was appropriate and so I don't do anything.

Sometimes having drawn out the fireball or other major resource is in context sufficient attrition on the party but OK.

If however, the players have rolled meh, and the goblins relatively well, and it's still looking like a pushover, then I might well add 3 goblins. I am now happy with the challenge of the combat and we carry on. If the goblins are then super lucky and start winning, I apply the same logic again: The encounter is not going well, but the challenge is appropriate, so I don't do anything.

I don't get it. Is this more fun?

I think you see players as more competitive than I do, so you see this action as "stealing" the agency away from one person, whereas for my players it's giving them additional agency -- the character for whom it is important (as agreed explicitly or implicitly by the group) is given a chance to do something that otherwise a random dice roll would have deprived them of.

My players generally don't out of character negotiate with reality, and in a game that didn't feature an actual narrative currency it would never occur to me to even try to do so. Personally, as both a player and a GM I dislike the table atmosphere of "we are a group of script writers collaboratively working together on a script". Both as a player and a GM, emersion is a high priority aesthetic of play.

Agreed. Most of the time I let people know when I'm adjusting an encounter: "Well, those goblins were a bit under-powered, let's see how you deal with three more!" or "Although it seemed like Sir Owaine felled the giant, the giant seems to have just a little life left as Sir Cian readies for him", "given that the players are all yawning, the opposition too seems unsure if they want to keep fighting and they have a bit less will than you might have expected"

I hope this makes my viewpoint more clear; thanks for your comments.

Somewhat. It's interesting that you claim to be both using techniques normally associated with Illusionism, but also playing with the curtain raised so that the players can see you are adjusting on the fly. I've sat at a lot of tables but I have no direct experience with that style of play.

 

[pemerton]

Oh My GOD! I might change the outcome from its preordained result! The depravity of it all!

This discussion of fudging etc seems mostly relevant to D&D. In 4e, when I want to change the balance or the feel of an encounter, I have various ways to do it. The most obvious is introducing a new element into the scene. I do that from time-to-time.

I also have to make decisions about how the NPCs/monsters behave, and those decisions have an impact on balance and feel. Sometimes I decide on the basis of what seems to flow naturally from what's been going on, sometimes I make those decisions based on really trying to get inside the head of the antagonist in question, and sometimes I make those decisions by thinking "It'd be pretty cool to see what happens if the primordial colossus throws an elementally-charged boulder at the mage!"

Because all these transparent ways of doing things are available, and because the PCs in 4e have such depth of resources and are so resilient, I've never felt the need to do any secret fudging of hp totals etc.

To me, this is all just part and parcel of GMing the game. It's not the same ethos that should apply if GMing a classic D&D dungeon crawl, but 4e isn't the same game as classic D&D! I remember discussing this with @S'mon and others a decade or more ago.

For me, this goes back to the basic point that different RPGs, and the different play experiences they offer, invite us to use different methods informed by different ethoses.

 

[pogre]

My post will probably seem trite in the light of some of the discussions going on in this thread, but here goes:

Guiding principles of my games -

1. I am going to run the game as scheduled for the time it was scheduled. I will start running the game at the start time - if you want to talk about other stuff, get to the table earlier. Likewise, I will end when I scheduled the ending time - some people have driven a long way to get to the game and I want to honor their effort.

2. I have players at my table who enjoy my style of running the game. It may be our styles do not match and I might ask you to leave the group. We are still friends and I am not making a judgment about you as a player or person - we just see and play the game differently.

3. Regarding my style I will keep the game moving. Combats are fast moving, social interactions are fast moving, and if there is a lull in activity expect something to happen. If you are looking for a Critical Role style game with lots of PC to PC roleplay and relationship building our styles probably do not match. I watch CR on occasion and have come to enjoy it - so definitely not a judgment from me if that's what you enjoy.

4. Painted miniatures only. I know you're laughing - except, I am not joking. I have thousands - feel free to borrow one for the game. Miniatures and scenery are important components of most of my games. I do run theater-of-the-mind games too - so naturally this only applies to certain games like D&D.

5. I spend a long time on prepping the game. It's part of what I enjoy about the hobby. Help me out by accepting the premise or hook for the adventure. If you feel railroaded or don't like the premise - let me know during feedback after the game. I do try to tailor hooks to align with PC goals and natural directions.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This discussion of fudging etc seems mostly relevant to D&D. In 4e, when I want to change the balance or the feel of an encounter, I have various ways to do it. The most obvious is introducing a new element into the scene. I do that from time-to-time.

I also have to make decisions about how the NPCs/monsters behave, and those decisions have an impact on balance and feel. Sometimes I decide on the basis of what seems to flow naturally from what's been going on, sometimes I make those decisions based on really trying to get inside the head of the antagonist in question, and sometimes I make those decisions by thinking "It'd be pretty cool to see what happens if the primordial colossus throws an elementally-charged boulder at the mage!"

Because all these transparent ways of doing things are available, and because the PCs in 4e have such depth of resources and are so resilient, I've never felt the need to do any secret fudging of hp totals etc.

To me, this is all just part and parcel of GMing the game. It's not the same ethos that should apply if GMing a classic D&D dungeon crawl, but 4e isn't the same game as classic D&D! I remember discussing this with @S'mon and others a decade or more ago.

For me, this goes back to the basic point that different RPGs, and the different play experiences they offer, invite us to use different methods informed by different ethoses.

Well, in really serious narrative type games fudging would of course be fairly ridiculous. I guess players could do it? lol. 4e is a bit of a unique case, as it retains more of the structure of trad type games, and can be thought of as one. So you COULD fudge. As I stated a few posts back I think I've once or twice had a monster give up, or just plain die, when combat got down to a grindy endgame that was clearly going to end in a certain way. OTOH I remember this owlbear, it was totally stuck between 4 PCs and going noplace, and it seemed clear it was going down, but there was a very significant question of who's head might get bitten off in the process. So we played that out (though I don't consider that encounter very successful).

There's definitely a bunch of levers we have in terms of how the opposition behaves, and you can do things like give a player a better than average chance at some crazy stunt, etc. as well. I mean, generally we got to where we all just invented that stuff together at the table when it came up anyway.