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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 3991772" data-attributes="member: 9522">WARNING: Large amount of text ahead. Contains personal bias. I'd like to present an example of what can happen when everyone goes by the dice, without any discretion whatsoever.Many years ago, I was in a game (not D&D) inspired by a popular fiction series all the players and the GM were fans of. One aspect we particularly enjoyed was when we interacted with certain characters from the series, as the GM was very good at playing them. He really brought them to life, and kept them to character. We had ties to some of these characters, and one was actually our PCs' day-job employer. ( If she knew of our sideline, she never spoke about it. )Thus when our characters' employer was kidnapped, they of course went to save her.At the pivotal, do-or-she-dies moment, I rolled a fumble. The system had a luck point system, but it couldn't turn a fumble into a success - just convert it to a normal failure.Our GM (No, I don't mean DM - this wasn't D&D) went strictly by the book back in those days. No fudging. No exceptions.As I said, it was the pivotal moment - we'd all acted that round, the next action was the villain's.The GM took a break for a few minutes trying to think of an out. We weren't meant to fail. He'd awarded luck points mid-session to ensure we had some up our sleeve, so nothing short of a fumble could have stopped us. Unfortunately the villain's declared action didn't require a dice roll since the hostage was in his hands and unconscious. In order for us to prevail, either that fumble would need to be somehow re-interpreted as a success that carried a drawback, or someone would need to be somehow granted an extra action on the spot. Neither was allowed for in the RAW.So, when play resumed, my attempted action failed and the villain executed the hostage - a central character from the setting, and a major person in the PC's lives.We played out the session, including the funeral, and despite a heroic effort by the GM we all, GM included, went home feeling quite dissatisfied with how things had gone. And we never played another session of that campaign, or that system, again.A single dice roll had ended the campaign.So, for those taking a strict no-fudging policy, who insist that GMs should stick strictly to the rules no matter what: I hold this up as an example of how that can be a bad thing for a campaign.Nowadays, we'd probably rule that the fumble meant that we saved the hostage, but the roller of the fumble would have suffered a serious injury (as in surgery and hospital time required) in the process. The fumble would still have weight, but in a way not spelled out by the rules. Some people will arguing that this is cheating. My question to this is: "Who, exactly, is having their enjoyment of the game diminished by this?"You see, I think that the previously-stated definition of cheating is missing a critical component. For me, cheating is an act of deliberately breaking the rules of a game at the expense of another player. Exercising a power of discretion explicitly granted by the rules is not breaking them, and a good GM will use it to enhance his (or her) player's enjoyment of the game, not diminish it.So yes, I am in favour of a mechanic that grants players a limited ability to overrule the dice. I don't regard it as cheating. I regard it as a necessity to prevent a bad dice roll at a critical moment from derailing an evening's fun. And I firmly believe that any GM/ST/DM/Ref should always be able to override game mechanics.You see, I've seen what can happen when they don't.</blockquote>

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