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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Professor Phobos" data-source="post: 3980855" data-attributes="member: 18883">Not necessarily. One could fudge merely to narrow the range of possible outcomes to focus on the "more interesting" ones. One of the best ways to fudge is to simply not request a dice roll, even if the rules, strictly speaking, demand one for that particular situation.For example, I usually handwave combats I don't think would be a meaningful contest and just let the PCs do what they will. If they're up against foes so inferior there'd be no tension to a fight scene, then I prefer to have the narrative (and game time) dwell on that- do they offer mercy? Do they let their opponents flee? Massacre them? Torture them for information? Whether or not they lost a marginal amount of resources in a pointless fight scene is, to me, irrelevant. Things of that nature. Or, for a more classic example of fudging- let's say I have a group of NPCs intent on capturing a PC. Unfortunately, in the battle the PC is hit by a surprise critical and instantly killed. Now I, as a GM, have a choice between letting the death happen (a valid  and interesting way for a PC to go) or quietly moving the lost hit points up a few notches so he's merely badly wounded and helpless. Then I can do the whole "Captured by the Bad Guy, Hears Evil Plan, Escapes/Is Rescued" story.Now, I might ask the PC- "Hey, you're dead- but if you trade in some Action Points, you can be captured instead. Or if you trade in a lot of 'em, you can be left for dead and escape." I do this often in my preferred system because it has such a metagame resource (Drama Points, in Unisystem) but in games without we usually just work out some arrangement. My contention is that both are reasonably valid uses of the GM's authorial control. If the whole "Captured and Escaped!" story is something the PCs end up enjoying I really don't see how it is bad gaming. This is especially valid in groups that share authorial control- I'll fudge in a particular direction if a PC requests a particular sideplot.As another example. Say I want to do an "Enemy Within" story, where one of the PCs is suborned or mind controlled or possessed. So I go to a player I'd expect to be amenable and ask if they'd be willing to go secretly evil for a few sessions. They agree, and we fudge the "Possession Roll" so that the demon/spirit/whatever automatically succeeds. Is that wrong? I don't think so.Nah, not really. The GM usually has a lot of influence over how the story goes, but ideally...1. The players have a large amount of input and authorial direction as well, making things unpredictable.2. The randomness of dice rolls at least sometimes comes into play, making things unpredictable.The whole point of a narrative RPG is emergent story. As in, the story doesn't appear until the game is over- at the end of the day you've got an interesting tale. It's not normally viable to go into it wanting a particular set of outcomes. Obviously you have to go into with a good story hook or setup for a story, but preparing the ending in advance is not how it should go, IMHO.</blockquote>

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