A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life

[Guest 85555]

Now I HAVE to know if they actually found Sect members at the tea house, in your game

I don't recall, but I am pretty sure in that campaign they ended up tracking down the leader's wife in an encampment and poisoning her.

 

[Guest 85555]

On Fudging, I very much prefer 'let the dice fall where they may'. I think that adds much more excitement and uncertainty to play (at least for my taste). I am not opposed to fudging, some groups like it and many players even expect it (I know players who feel the GM should fudge to let things play more in their favor for example).

 

[Ovinomancer]

For some of us fudging the dice isn't about forcing an outcome. Every so often, maybe once or twice a campaign, my dice are on fire and the players' dice are cold. They like super challenging encounters, but when the dice run like that during one it all but guarantees death. Now I could kill the PCs over nothing but bad luck, but that doesn't seem right to me. So I will fudge a little bit. Not to decide an outcome, but to give them a chance at survival. Maybe they win. Maybe they lose.

That's still forcing an outcome. You are overriding the mechanics to acheive a desired outcome, it's just that instead of a fixed result you're shifting the odds to something you like better.

This is actually a symptom of the system that losing is bad an ends the current effort in the game, requiring a restart instead of a continuation.

 

[Maxperson]

That's still forcing an outcome. You are overriding the mechanics to acheive a desired outcome,

What is my desired outcome?

it's just that instead of a fixed result you're shifting the odds to something you like better.

What do I like better?

This is actually a symptom of the system that losing is bad an ends the current effort in the game, requiring a restart instead of a continuation.

If you had bothered to read my rather short post, you'd have know that losing is equally possible AFTER I fudge, so I can have no desired outcome. At least I have no desired outcome that the fudging actually did anything about.

 

[Numidius]

This is why I'm attempting to understand why the Hard No's in the combat pillar are excluded from the definition of MMI.

@Bedrockgames has a narrow definition of MMI, and then you have a number of posters who ascribe all Say No adjudications to MMI, but appear to limit the definition to only the social and exploration pillars.



Saying Yes though is DM adjudication. This sentence seems to imply you prefer rolling than having a DM automatically Say Yes?

A Hard No in combat that really happened and was disappointing: after spending days defending a city from a siege, we eventually cleared the field and were ready to engage the big bad boss in command of the enemy forces: the Dm made him vanish with teleportation in front of our eyes.

On the Dm adjudication: it is a very fundametal part of play in most games, I believe more or less everyone agrees, the point is having a way of resolving things when agreement is not unanimous at the table, (or just for the fun of it, why not?) coherently with genre and fiction. Like imagine a Hard No in Akira Rpg* when the Psichokinetic Pc says "I teleport to the Moon and create it's biggest crater"

*I don't think it does exist

 

[Ovinomancer]

What is my desired outcome?

According to your post, to mitigate bad luck.

What do I like better?

According to your post, a situation where bad luck has less of an impact on PC success.

If you had bothered to read my rather short post, you'd have know that losing is equally possible AFTER I fudge, so I can have no desired outcome. At least I have no desired outcome that the fudging actually did anything about.

Max, if the situation after fudging is equally possible as before, why did you fudge? And, your pist, which I did read, says why: you are reducing the impact of bad luck on PC success. As I said in my post, this is still forcing an outcome as this result does not obtain without intentional GM intervention to cause it. Outcomes, as I noted and you seem to have glossed, don't have to be concrete results, they can be a shift in probabilities, which is what you are doing.

You don't get to say you aren't using GM force by claiming you've still left a possibility of failure (or success).

 

[Maxperson]

According to your post, to mitigate bad luck.

According to your post, a situation where bad luck has less of an impact on PC success.

Those aren't outcomes. They are processes. An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.

Outcomes, as I noted and you seem to have glossed, don't have to be concrete results, they can be a shift in probabilities, which is what you are doing.

Sure. I do give cases of extreme bad luck a nudge. Normal bad luck just rolls on by. But I don't change things enough to determine an outcome, so I have no desired outcome that my fudging has did anything about.

You don't get to say you aren't using GM force by claiming you've still left a possibility of failure (or success).

DM force? Using rules is DM force now?

 

[Aldarc]

Those aren't outcomes. They are processes. An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.

Are you mitigating bad outcomes through fudging or not?

DM force? Using rules is DM force now?

And there it is. When all else fails, the walls where defenders of DMs fudging retreat and hide behind.

On Fudging, I very much prefer 'let the dice fall where they may'. I think that adds much more excitement and uncertainty to play (at least for my taste). I am not opposed to fudging, some groups like it and many players even expect it (I know players who feel the GM should fudge to let things play more in their favor for example).

I agree. I'm not discovering play if I am altering outcomes produced by die results.

 

[Numidius]

Since [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] named it a few times, in Cthulhu Dark when anyone at the table feels a Pc is getting away with it too easily, a "negative" die will be added to the roll to increase chances of failure.

Neat, simple mechanic for sharing "realism" authority among the table.

Kind of reverse of Say Yes or Roll...

 

[Ovinomancer]

Those aren't outcomes. They are processes. An outcome is explicitly the way something turns out and my fudging doesn't cause an outcome to happen.



Sure. I do give cases of extreme bad luck a nudge. Normal bad luck just rolls on by. But I don't change things enough to determine an outcome, so I have no desired outcome that my fudging has did anything about.



DM force? Using rules is DM force now?

Fudging is not a DM rule. And, yes, GM force can be codified into rules.

Processes can be outcomes, but you haven't created a process, either. A process is a systemized set of prodecures that generate a specified outcome. Note that the outcome can be multiple things, they're just all within a known or general set. How to make an attack in 5e is a process, but it's outcomes are still variable.

So, outcomes of a tool or process can still be variable. When you fudge to reduce bad luck, the outcome is that you've modified the normal processes to alter the probabilities of success and failure to be more to your liking. Your fudging had an outcome. If it did not have an outcome, it would not have changed anything.

Seriously, leave it to you to turn an obvious thing into a definitional sematics game. I mean, why on Earth are you arguing that your fudging has no outcomes? What's your upside? To claim that you fudge but it doesn't change anything? That's a very odd position.