D&D General Dice Fudging and Twist Endings

[iserith]

Well, that's frankly insane. I guess it was bound to happen to somebody. Besides, the overlap between sequences of rolls does make 6 d20s a little more possible. Congrats on your incredible luck Maybe you should grab a lotto ticket!

I suspect this was a sleight of hand situation like the cups and balls trick, but swapping out for a d20 with one that has 20s on every side.

 

[Imaculata]

I suspect this was a sleight of hand situation like the cups and balls trick, but swapping out for a d20 with one that has 20s on every side.

I've played with a player in the past who was clearly using loaded dice in D&D. That baffles me honestly. Why would someone do that? Seems to me that if you always succeed in combat and with every check, there are no stakes, and you rob yourself of a lot of fun.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I've played with a player in the past who was clearly using loaded dice in D&D. That baffles me honestly. Why would someone do that? Seems to me that if you always succeed in combat and with every check, there are no stakes, and you rob yourself of a lot of fun.

Winning is fun, losing is not fun, therefore you should always win if you want to have the most fun

/sarcasm off

 

[Clint_L]

Oh no, I roll with a dice cup. I make it a habit to shake it vigorously before each roll, so everyone at the table can see my rolls are legit.

During the same session, one of our other players kept rolling several 1's, and never higher than a 3. Bad luck streaks and good luck streaks do happen. Just not often.

Yeah, in this case, once in 64 million not often.

However, that's not as unlikely as you might think, given how many games of D&D are being played and therefore how many D20s are being rolled. Let's say, I dunno, a million games of D&D are happening per week (total hypothetical) and the average player rolls a D20 10 times (again, these are totally made up numbers to illustrate the point). Then we would expect a streak like yours to happen somewhere pretty regularly. It's cool and interesting that it happened to you, but it's not bending the laws of nature, or anything.

 

[tabletopreloaded]

Yeah, in this case, once in 64 million not often.

However, that's not as unlikely as you might think, given how many games of D&D are being played and therefore how many D20s are being rolled. Let's say, I dunno, a million games of D&D are happening per week (total hypothetical) and the average player rolls a D20 10 times (again, these are totally made up numbers to illustrate the point). Then we would expect a streak like yours to happen somewhere pretty regularly. It's cool and interesting that it happened to you, but it's not bending the laws of nature, or anything.

Yeah, you're right. Besides, I was fixated on the 1 in 64mil odds, but those odds only apply if we declare a 6-roll sequence from the outset. But that's not how we think about patterns as humans. We don't think, "I'm going to roll my next six d20s and see if I land a 20 on all of them" Instead, we only start counting when we land that first 20, which effectively raises the odds 20-fold by eliminating anything but 20's from the first roll (I want to say the new odds are 1 in 3.2mil, but the math isn't quite so simple) So granted, the total sequence had a 1 in 64mil chance of happening. But from our perspective, it really was more like 1 in 3.2mil for the perceived pattern to emerge.

 

[tabletopreloaded]

Winning is fun, losing is not fun, therefore you should always win if you want to have the most fun

/sarcasm off

Haha, so true. Jokes aside, some of the best games I've played ended with player deaths.

I used to run a basic dungeon I'd homebrew when bored. I'm not particularly creative, so I dubbed it "The Cave" and wrote some simple rules. It was your typical dungeon with a simple twist: the map was endless. Any time you enter a new room, one party member would roll for a Perception. If you succeeded, you'd find a blinding area of sunlight along with an exit. If you failed, you weren't so lucky: the party would get "lost" in the cave, wandering to a lower level and unable to find their way back. Each lower level had stronger monsters, more loot, and larger rooms.

But there was a catch: you never could return to a higher level. Every time you failed a check and descended a floor, the DC for a successful Perception check went up, with a lower and lower chance of finding a way out. If you happened to find one of those rare, stray beams of sunlight at a lower floor, your party could escape the Cave with sizeable fortunes. But if greed enveloped your party and you chose to plunge for "just a bit longer," you risked losing yourselves forever in the maddening riches and endless hordes of cave-dwellers.

The Cave was brutal. I think it had a 30-40% TPK rate anytime I introduced it into a campaign. Ultimately, I had to restrict access to it because we were killing off PCs so quickly. But I enjoyed running the Cave and they enjoyed playing it. Even as they lost themselves in the underworld of glittering gold and glistening stalagmites, we always wondered aloud whether the brave, vainglorious PCs would soon emerge as newly minted royalty or whether they were merely destined to carry their live corpses to some dank burial ground of the caverns. Either way, the whole group had a blast running it. Good times!

 

[ad_hoc]

Yeah, you're right. Besides, I was fixated on the 1 in 64mil odds, but those odds only apply if we declare a 6-roll sequence from the outset. But that's not how we think about patterns as humans. We don't think, "I'm going to roll my next six d20s and see if I land a 20 on all of them" Instead, we only start counting when we land that first 20, which effectively raises the odds 20-fold by eliminating anything but 20's from the first roll (I want to say the new odds are 1 in 3.2mil, but the math isn't quite so simple) So granted, the total sequence had a 1 in 64mil chance of happening. But from our perspective, it really was more like 1 in 3.2mil for the perceived pattern to emerge.

Yep.

That is why Poker is so profitable. It takes a lot of discipline to resist tilt in the face of variance.

 

[Imaculata]

ah yes, i thought this discussion was missing something, the 'the players always know when you're fudging' argument, maybe we should add 'intense music plays in the background' to that list of 'obvious signs' of fudging. /j

I wouldn't say I can always tell. But I CAN tell sometimes, and I'm certainly not alone.

To all the DM's who think their players don't notice the fudging. Sometimes we do.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

ah yes, i thought this discussion was missing something, the 'the players always know when you're fudging' argument, maybe we should add 'intense music plays in the background' to that list of 'obvious signs' of fudging. /j

Is it any better than its mirror twin, the argument that the DM is absolutely flawless at hiding all fudging, such that players will guaranteed never, ever find out?

Because I've heard that argument a hell of a lot more than the "players always know" argument. As in, I've never heard the latter. I've heard the former in literally every single thread discussing fudging.

Even the most stridently pro-fudging DMs recognize that players don't tend to respond positively when they find out about fudging. In fact, almost every advocate for fudging makes painfully clear that you should never let your players find out, or it would be Very Bad for the game, possibly even fatal for some groups.

 

[soviet]

Is it any better than its mirror twin, the argument that the DM is absolutely flawless at hiding all fudging, such that players will guaranteed never, ever find out?

Because I've heard that argument a hell of a lot more than the "players always know" argument. As in, I've never heard the latter. I've heard the former in literally every single thread discussing fudging.

Even the most stridently pro-fudging DMs recognize that players don't tend to respond positively when they find out about fudging. In fact, almost every advocate for fudging makes painfully clear that you should never let your players find out, or it would be Very Bad for the game, possibly even fatal for some groups.

100%.

'It's for the good of the game, it increases everyone's fun. However if they ever found out, it would cause big problems.'