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Message: <blockquote data-quote="airwalkrr" data-source="post: 6119758" data-attributes="member: 12460">I recently learned that two people whom I thought were my friends decided not to game with me because they felt I was fudging dice and "cheating" as the GM. They didn't tell me this, I had to find this out from a third person. Personally, I find that cowardly, but that's not the discussion at hand.Did I fudge dice and alter numbers on the fly? Absolutely. The campaign was such that the player characters were grossly imbalanced (as I allowed the players the freedom to play whatever type of character they wanted to play) and I often made things more difficult on the player characters who were the most powerful. It was also such that the story was far more important than numbers. We weren't playing an incredibly well-balanced system. During role-play situations, things were fine as I could give everyone their chance to shine through role-playing interactions. But when combats arose, I had to do things to make certain characters feel relevant, especially when the players themselves (particularly those with the least powerful characters) were at a loss of what to do to feel effective. Incidentally, the two players who left the game had characters who were leagues ahead of the other characters. Think about the difference between a 20th-level character and a 3rd-level character in D&D. That's how far apart the power-level was. But as I said, this game was not about power or balanced combat. In fact, combat was a side-story, usually limited to climactic, cinematic-style encounters. I never felt beholden to dice in such a game. And I never once killed a player character or forced a player character to suffer negative consequences as a result of my fudging. But did I cheat? No, I feel I did not. The GM cannot cheat.I am not sure what to make of these players, as the situation might be related to something else (especially since I had to hear this from a third person perspective). But I have to honestly ask, is it possible for a GM to cheat? If you are a player, do you care if a GM changes rules behind the screen? My opinion is that the story trumps rules (and dice) all the time unless the campaign is specifically designed as a tournament-style challenge.</blockquote>

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