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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9130216" data-attributes="member: 7035894">Going back to my last post, I was thinking about the reason I switched to open rolling, and that is the ever present temptation, as DM, to fudge the dice in favour of what I think would be the better or more fun outcome from a story perspective. And the catalyst for change was an interview with Matt Mercer - very usefully, Critical Role has, for years, done talk shows where cast members go over the events of the show and discuss what they were thinking, why they did what they did, etc. Mercer's responses give a lot of insight into his DM decision making, which I consider superlative (YVMV; he's a fairly old-school style DM, etc.).The specific instance was when the party killed a very memorable BBEG, an oni named Lorenzo, who had personally killed a player character, Mollymauk, a few episodes earlier. Mercer revealed that he loved Lorenzo as a character and after Mollymauk's death had made big plans for Lorenzo to become the party's nemesis for some time. But, in the  episode in question, the party made some smart choices and had a few very lucky rolls, managing to kill Lorenzo just before he successfully escaped, and foiling Mercer's plans. Mercer could have changed that outcome in a variety of ways to let Lorenzo escape as intended, but didn't.Mercer explained his philosophy that, as DM, you have to respect player choices and the dice, even when they go against what you personally wanted and felt would be a better story outcome. In his experience, he explained, the opposite is true: playing fairly and allowing the game to function as intended allows the players to feel like equal partners in the narrative, and this is always better in the end. After listening to that interview, I reflected a lot on my own long experience as a GM, and while I had generally respected the dice, I had certainly occasionally engaged in what I had always considered benevolent fudging, to achieve what I considered a better outcome for the players. I think now that this was arrogant of me, unfair, and disempowering to my players. They could sense that something was up, and this, I think, made them question the story at a fundamental level: was it my story, or their story? Was the end result arbitrary and capricious?I think we all understand issues of fundamental fairness, and I think it is integral to the game. I think when we are unfair, it often comes from a place of caring, but that doesn't make it right, because I think it also comes from a place of wanting to be in control. I will also add that the game is much more fun for me since I began open rolling. I truly never know where things are going to end up, and so I get to share in the group's thrill of excitement at the new and unexpected.</blockquote>

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