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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8962468" data-attributes="member: 6790260">All but the last are things I would put in the same general category of fudging. Altering HP is exactly equivalent to forcing specific damage rolls (whether lower or higher), you're just altering the other side of the equation. Same for AC and hit rolls. Altering spells known on the fly and reinforcements is shifting the world beneath the players' feet, making what was false true and potentially making what was true false, with no way for the players to know that.Willingness to take prisoners, on the other hand, is a dispositional thing: it depends on the mood of the person in question. Dispositions can change pretty fluidly, even mercurially. Unless there's a very good established reason why someone definitely wouldn't ever take prisoners, I expect that they'll be able to stop, think, reconsider, and decide how best to proceed. Because that's what any thinking being would do. Maybe they think they'll get a good ransom, for example.Sometimes, being caught is as bad as, or worse than, taking whatever risks one needs to take to try to win. But in general I don't have sapient opponents fight to the death unless they have good reason (e.g., cultists who despise non-believers and refuse to be subjected to what they consider false "mercy.") Conversely, killing your opponents when you could extract information from them is often unwise, especially in a world where intrigue is fairly important.Sure. I'd never have unjustified reinforcements show up as a secret "DM oopsie" patch, because I see that as fudging. That's one of those things where you either learn to prepare in advance, or you learn to make it an interesting plot point, how DID these reinforcements know to show up? etc.People talk a lot about "don't you trust your GM" etc., but very rarely seem to consider that trust is something a GM must earn, not something that the GM is simply entitled to. Indeed, it isn't just earned, it must be actively sustained, cultivated. Pulling moves that boil down to "I'm the GM, don't you trust me?" are exactly the sort of thing which spends much more trust than is generated, even when the trust is appropriate/warranted.This is one of the areas where I find it so incredibly frustrating that there's such a pearl-clutching fear of "player entitlement," and yet a near blindness to the very possibility of GM entitlement. As though it couldn't possibly be the case that the GM could be demanding or petulant in a game-damaging way, that every expectation the GM has must be definitionally productive.Personally, I've actually found it much more productive as a GM skill-building exercise that I can't do that (DW doesn't allow secret perception-type rolls.) It forces you to do a lot more of the work, to really think through not just what the players should know, but what they do know. I've found it also largely prevents "gotcha" type surprises.</blockquote>

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