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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8694998" data-attributes="member: 6790260">In that case, if it's "I didn't use what the die said" in literally any situation ever, then yes, I do """fudge."""I just never, ever "fudge" in a way that is all three of (a) secret, (b) not learnable by the players, and (c) actually affecting the results of play. So if I do it openly, I don't consider that fudging...because there's nothing untoward going on, players know what's up. Or, if I do it "secretly," but in such a way that the players can tell SOMETHING is going on, and by digging deeper they can learn exactly what is going on and how to counter it, that's also fine. Or, finally, if the die roll doesn't actually interface with the rules or the consequences in any meaningful way (e.g. rolling up a random NPC's eye color, if for some reason I was doing that, has no impact on anything, so there's no reason why I couldn't decide after the roll "actually, purple sounds more interesting than brown, I'll go with that.")The vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of the time, when people speak of "fudging," they mean secretly ignoring die rolls and/or rewriting monster stats (same thing mathematically), almost always while specifically making it so players THINK you're using those things fully legitimately, and doing everything in your power to make it so your players never, ever discover that you deceived them.Okay, so...I don't understand quite what's going on here. If the NPC shows up in either place, why not just flavor it as "the NPC was following you and only just now caught up to you here." That way, there's no need for quantum superposition--the NPC ends up where they do for fully natural, understandable reasons. Or perhaps multiple NPCs were sent out, going to multiple locations, so that the person who sent them would be quite sure ONE of their messengers would meet the PCs. That's another perfectly cromulent explanation.I'm sure I could come up with more if I needed to. Point being, there are tons of ways to have fully legitimate, non-railroad reasons why an NPC will be there regardless of where the party goes. You don't need to resort to railroading.Then it seems to me you and I don't really disagree very much here.I do not do things that deceive my players. I rely on a mixture of planning (but not too much, because I know that that's a huge temptation for me), dynamic improvisation, and scrupulous self-consistency.I will choose not to use dice, or choose to disregard the rules, should that be a useful thing to do--but I will either do so in a way that is fully explicit and open with the players, or which is not fully explicit and open, but which is clearly hinted at, turning my choice to ignore the rules into an adventure hook for the players to dig into. (I very, very rarely need to do this.) My prep-work plus my improvisation is enough to handle essentially everything I run into. I've literally only once had to even bend things a bit, and even then, it was more "I can fix this diegetically by exploiting an already-established fact that just hasn't yet been applied to this specific fight." Sooo....yeah.</blockquote>

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