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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2745993" data-attributes="member: 26473">Okay.And I love it when I sit down with a group of gamers to enjoy a roleplaying game together.It is?See, I thought you said the following back in post no. 59:So advocating fudging a dice roll was just a hypothetical exercise, then?As GM I develop the campaign-world, the adventures, and the encounters, including the places, the non-player characters, and the critters, and then turn the players and their characters loose. Where a random result is called for at some point in the action, we roll dice, and we interpret the results through roleplaying and in-character description.Gaming is a shared experience for me, not a power trip.So bad luck has no place at all in the games you play?"Yay, we win again." *yawn*Without the mechanics, is it still a game?Wha-huh?!?Now you're just flat-out contradicting yourself: you RUN the game, remember? YOU decide what happens. YOU are the god of your roleplaying world. YOU decide what makes a memorable encounter. YOU are responsible for providing the fun at the table. Any of this sound familiar? Do I need to go back and dig up these quotes, too?Why the sudden change of heart, DonTadow?Like compensating for poor encounter design? Or to protect your plot from the mechanics of the game?A short quote from the section on "The GM's Best Friend":The monster pulling up slightly, losing its footing, or being distracted is covered by the existing mechanics of combat - if the monster misses or the adventurer hits, then those are possible reasons why. Sunder covers damage to armor.It seems that the only "special situation" here is that you are reducing the challenge in the belief that it adds to the fun for your players.It also goes on to add the following:If a circumstance bonus or penalty is warranted, I'll advise the player before the roll is made - that's not the same as deciding after you see the roll to bump it one direction or another.Houserules and fudging are not the same thing - we've already covered this ground, and the footing doesn't get any better by repeating the trip.My changes on the fly are reactions to what the adventurers do, not to the results of the dice.Mine too, thank goodness, because the game would be awfully predictable if I could anticipate everything they were going to do.Of course, in the games I run, the luck of the dice play a part in this process as well - since I anticipate the possibility of weird things happening, I design my encounters to handle stochasticity and therefore there are fewer adjustments needed. Or maybe I just accept that fact that my best laid plans can be sundered and rather than force a correction, I let those events play out.Improbability Happens.I don't need to make up "stunts" - I tell the players to do what they want and we'll find a way to resolve it by using the rules as written or a logical extrapolation where no rule exists.The Iron Heroes stunt system was presaged by an outstanding column by Rich Redman on the d20 Modern boards, by the way - Redman's "Notes from the Bunker" article highlighted ways to extend the existing rules to cover circumstances not expressly addressed, such a hockey-shirting an opponent.Once again, however, this isn't the same thing as turning a 13 into a 15. Houserules are not fudging - changing or ignoring the numbers on the dice is.Wha-huh?!?Find the quote where I compared roleplaying games to solitaire or chess.This bulletin board isn't one of your games, DonTadow - you don't get to just make things up here when it suits you.This is nonsense, since I never drew any such analogy, and I'll thank you not to misrepresent me this way.There are more than two kinds of GMs in the world - we see a range of opinions in this thread that touch on both ends of the spectrum as well as points in between.Why do you keep resorting to analogies? Why can't you just talk in terms of playing roleplaying games?As soon as I saw the quarterback thing again, I stopped reading that paragraph, so please forgive me if I just move on....How do I GM roleplaying games? I create a setting and a campaign and adventures, I roleplay the non-player characters and critters, and I adjudicate the rules of the game. I try to make the setting an immersive, interactive environment, the campaign and adventures exciting and engaging, and the non-player characters three-dimensional figures with goals and a place in the world, who act and react in response to the player characters and the events of the game.When the dice aren't on the shrine in our living room, resting on a gold tray placed on a purple velvet cloth, surrounded by flickering votives and wreathed in incense, I use them to generate random numbers that may determine the success or failure of an action where appropriate.The story is what happens after the actions are spoken, after the dice are rolled, not before.Are the players' characters allowed to fail in my games? Yes. Is that fun? It depends. A character death, for example, may be moving, or it may be bittersweet, or it may even be frustrating. To the extent that I'm willing to accept any of those emotions, rather than manipulating the players toward one outcome and one outcome only, then yes, I'm okay if the game isn't 'fun' sometimes.It helps that I play with adults who understand that a roleplaying game doesn't follow a script, that success and failure are both possible, that sometimes the heroes lose. The fact that there is a chance of failure, of meaningful consequences, makes their successes sweeter, makes the challenges more intense.My goal isn't to create a good story - it's to provide an exciting experience. If I succeed, a good story is the inevitable byproduct.</blockquote>

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