DM Cheating

[eyebeams]

As a player, I accede to Rule 0: the DM cannot cheat. Fudge, or don't fudge, I don't care; just please don't tell me about it. Knowing that the DM has fudged for you is almost emasculating, while not knowing... well, ignorance is bliss. I also acknowledge that the DM is allowed to fudge against me, also. There have been occasions where the DM has changed monster stats on the fly to counteract meta-gaming, or upped the HP on a creature on-the-fly to increase dramatic tension in a session.

The degree to which GMs moderate results and the way in which they do so are powerful tools for setting the tone of the game. I think most RPGs do a fairly poor job of explaining how to successfully moderate RPG rules.

What I find funny is that the clain that moderation exists as a design-driven imperative pushed on hapless players is often implied by critics, but is completely false. Early games typically avoided fudging and used a "tournament" model, and its rise as a technique came pretty much entirely from spontaneous invention at the player/GM level (in fact, IIRC, it actually first came to light in a big way in a psychological study on D&D which was reported by Dragon magazine later).

What designers and writers did do was promote the idea of "silent" fudging, which has become so common that people assume it's the only way to use the technique. It got really entrenched by AD&D 2nd. Certainly, the player/GM wall of silnce idea is pretty dumb unless deluiberately used for effect.

 

[buzz]

Naturally, systems that can provide what you want are necessarily limited in scope...

A. If the game is doing what I want (or alternately, if I enjoy what the game does), why would I care if it's limited in scope?

2. See my point above about "consistently."

iii. Can you provide an example of a game that is "limited in scope"? I mean, I mentioned above that D&D passes my "fun w/o fudging" test; is D&D limited in scope, IYO?

This doesn't actually remove moderation though...

I'm not sure I said anything about removing moderation, although I'd be more sure if you could explain what you mean by "moderation."


EDIT: Those are not scare quotes above, but actual punctuation I hope adds clarity. FYI.

 

[eyebeams]

A. If the game is doing what I want (or alternately, if I enjoy what the game does), why would I care if it's limited in scope?

It really depends on how often you play it. The demands on a weekly D&D campaign are different than those levied by semiannual sessions of Traumatized Samurai Only Go to the North Pole to Discuss Paradigm Shifts.

2. See my point above about "consistently."

You can't expect consistent results from an RPG. You can expect a large sample of results to follow certain trends *when considered collectively*, but that's not the same thing as whether or not *this* orc in *this* encounter is tough or not.

The DMG says that an encounter of a certain CR uses up a certain amount of resources, but it is silly to assume that a given encounter actually does this. Hell, it's silly to assume that this estimate is even correct, since the possible permutations of a given CR are not practically testable. They are educated guesses about trends, not descriptions of what happens in real game sessions. In that, a lot of game design resembles disastrous 90s hedge fund trading.

The fact is that even though a group of orcs looks like a decent encounter on paper, it might still kill the party too quickly not once, twice, but ten times in a row, without ever violating the theory behind its design. Orcs can get lucky.

Fudging (DM side moderation) exists as *part* of the game's design for this reason. It is not external to the way D&D works because strange, off-trend results should be expected. The DM's role is to allow the intent of the system to express itself while accepting a certain amount of randomness.

iii. Can you provide an example of a game that is "limited in scope"? I mean, I mentioned above that D&D passes my "fun w/o fudging" test; is D&D limited in scope, IYO?

I'm not sure D&D passes your fudging test the way you describe it.

I'm not sure I said anything about removing moderation, although I'd be more sure if you could explain what you mean by "moderation."

Fudging is GM moderation of the game's mechanics. Many systems just spread the fudging past the GM or provide lose enough results that fudging is required, or hand out points that let you fudge the rules. None of these are significantly different from traditional fudging, except, perhaps, that they more effectively disguise moderation and make people feel better.

 

[frankthedm]

I've found that it is way more interesting - and tense - when the player himself is rolls attacks and damage against them, especially when the dice explode and they roll a massive damage roll that will likely cripple or kill their character. Plus, there is never the remotest thought of GM intervention on the dice; they fall where they fall. (And as a side benefit, from the GM perspective, having the players roll frees me up to do other things.)

And it turns those 'lucky dice' against thier owners.

 

[buzz]

Fudging (DM side moderation) exists as *part* of the game's design for this reason.

Where in the DMG does it advise you to alter die rolls?

I'm not sure D&D passes your fudging test the way you describe it.

Only if: 1) you're suggesting that I'm fudging die rolls unconsciously, 2) dice gnomes* are messin' with my dice when I'm not looking, or 3) you're using a different definition of fudging than I am.

I'm suspecting it's #3, though I had hoped to stave that off by defining what I meant by fudging a few posts back. You seem to be equating it with what you're calling moderation, which I think is broader in scope. E.g., as I said above, I do not consider tweaking an encounter that you readily can tell you screwed up to be fudging, especially if you're open about it. "Guys, I WAY underestimated these orcs. Let's say that the last three of them aren't there anymore."


* "Step three... PROFIT!"

 

[eyebeams]

You seem to be equating it with what you're calling moderation, which I think is broader in scope. E.g., as I said above, I do not consider tweaking an encounter that you readily can tell you screwed up to be fudging, especially if you're open about it. "Guys, I WAY underestimated these orcs. Let's say that the last three of them aren't there anymore."

Again, you're assuming that there must be some error when the orcs are too tough -- either the DM's error or the designer's error. There's no error, Buzz. None. Fudging happens all the time when nobody's made any encounter design mistakes at all.

Sometimes orcs are tough because chance defies trends over enough instances to encompass an encounter.

This is very important:

Statistical trends and expected outcomes are not the same as what actually happens in a game.

Please read this again. And again. No really. I say this because this is one of those things that really does require a great deal of thought to absorb without appealing to the biases of the subculture, which, when they come to this sort of thing, are almost uniformly wrong. People tend to confuse a trend with individual instances. The fact that the orcs you designs have a BAB of +5 does not in fact mean the encounter will proceed as if the orcs always roll 15. maybe the orcs keep scoring 20+ in the encounter, even though they have a +5 bonus. The chance of them *not* getting a 15 is very good. The chance of you or I predicting whether it will be higher or lower and how this plus into PC tactics is not good. It's terrible.

In essence, you are asking a game design to adhere to systems whose outcomes only look relaible. They aren't, though people like to hear otherwise because gamer culture is fond of crude hubris. There is simply no reason to expect that a game will provide optimal results all the time, and in fact, it is doubtful that, strictly speaking, they do so even some of the time. But gamers apply various narrative fallacies to rehabilitate results they don't care for, while disguising actual, contentious results from systems they want to defend.

But to be crude myself, I'll say that a lot of gaming consists of people justofying crappy results post hoc and bragging about it, and that there's nothing whatsoever you can efver, ever do, no matter how hot you think a game is, to do any better. This is the dismal, necessary truth, and when people talk about designing minimum-fault systems they are essentially discussinghow to best enable self-deception. Sorry.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

As a GM, I prefer to simply let the dice fall where they may 9 times out of 10.

But I'm also a story-based GM at heart, with the players being the stars of the story (though I will confess to having a couple GMPCs in the distant past that stole the thunder more times than they should have; I was a teenager, sue me ). I have no issues with players failing at certain tasks, as failure often serves to heighten the tension, and thus get the group more involved. Nothing's more fun than asking for perception modifiers, and then telling the group they don't notice anything, mostly due to there being nothing to see in the first place (as long as it's done in extreme moderation, and when the players are already tense).

Combat is by nature tense, and if the mooks get a lucky shot in during a battle that's tied to the overall adventure, so be it. But I'm also willing to bend the results a little if it would make for a better story, or if I think that someone who's done a great job of playing their character and making the game fun for everyone deserves a little kharmic break. The plucky hero that's been crusading to avenge the death of his beloved for several years isn't going to get felled by random minion #894 when at last facing the fiend responsible for the beloved's death. Makes for poor drama, and robs the player of the goal they've been seeking for some time. But if the murderer gets the killing shot in, so be it.

Oddly enough, my dice rolls have a frightening tendency to turn incredibly lethal when I roll in the open, especially after being accused of cheating rolls by a player. This even happened when using a dice-rolling program on another player's PDA, which had been rolling lousy for him the entire night.

 

[buzz]

Sometimes orcs are tough because chance defies trends over enough instances to encompass an encounter.

Them's the breaks.

When I play poker (which is seldom), I don't demand my money back because I was getting lousy hands all night, nor because, frankly, I really suck at poker. If I'm not in the mood to risk losing, I simply don't play. I definitely wouldn't want the dealer to cheating in my favor, either, as that'll probably just get one or both of us punched in the jaw at some point.

Similarly, if you're not interested in playing a character whose survival is left partly to the vagaries of fate, then it's probably a good idea to avoid RPGs where your character's survival is left partly to the vagaries of fate. And, yeah, mitigating death with house rules (that everyone's privy to) along the lines of what ThirdWizard mentioned is a reasonable solution.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Again, you're assuming that there must be some error when the orcs are too tough -- either the DM's error or the designer's error. There's no error, Buzz. None. Fudging happens all the time when nobody's made any encounter design mistakes at all.

Sometimes orcs are tough because chance defies trends over enough instances to encompass an encounter.

This is very important:

Statistical trends and expected outcomes are not the same as what actually happens in a game.

Please read this again. And again. No really. I say this because this is one of those things that really does require a great deal of thought to absorb without appealing to the biases of the subculture, which, when they come to this sort of thing, are almost uniformly wrong. People tend to confuse a trend with individual instances. The fact that the orcs you designs have a BAB of +5 does not in fact mean the encounter will proceed as if the orcs always roll 15. maybe the orcs keep scoring 20+ in the encounter, even though they have a +5 bonus. The chance of them *not* getting a 15 is very good. The chance of you or I predicting whether it will be higher or lower and how this plus into PC tactics is not good. It's terrible.

In essence, you are asking a game design to adhere to systems whose outcomes only look relaible. They aren't, though people like to hear otherwise because gamer culture is fond of crude hubris. There is simply no reason to expect that a game will provide optimal results all the time, and in fact, it is doubtful that, strictly speaking, they do so even some of the time. But gamers apply various narrative fallacies to rehabilitate results they don't care for, while disguising actual, contentious results from systems they want to defend.

But to be crude myself, I'll say that a lot of gaming consists of people justofying crappy results post hoc and bragging about it, and that there's nothing whatsoever you can efver, ever do, no matter how hot you think a game is, to do any better. This is the dismal, necessary truth, and when people talk about designing minimum-fault systems they are essentially discussinghow to best enable self-deception. Sorry.

So, essentially, all game systems are ultimately beholden to randomized results (Chess begs to differ; so does Amber Diceless), all game systems are inherently lethal (Monopoly begs to differ; so does Toon), and all random lethality produces undesirable results. The last, at least, is a matter of personal taste; the others are simply wrong. Eruditely stated and re-stated, dressed in the full flowery prose of RPG theory - but simply, factually, wrong.

If "all game systems" translates roughly to "RPGs you've played," you may be correct. Fortunately, the latter is a subset of the former, not synonymous with it.

Your statement fails on a factual level as soon as you realize that there are games in which chance does not play a part. In an arbitrarily large number of chess games, a rook will never, ever do something a queen could not. In an arbitrarily large number of collaborative storytelling games, events will never, ever transpire without player consent.

It also fails when chance plays a very small part. In an arbitrarily large number of Final Fantasy games, a creature that does 0 damage on a critical will never, ever kill a PC, and a PC that can kill a creature in one hit with a spell regardless of damage variance will always do so.

It also fails when narrative controls are distributed among the participants. In an arbitrarily large number of games in which players begin play with a narrative resource they can expend to narrate events, a PC will never, ever go down to a mook unless his player chooses to allow it.

It also fails when the participants do not consider the range of probability allowed by the game unacceptable. In an arbitrarily larger number tactical wargames in which victory is not assured but competition is, a player will never, ever have cause to complain if the end result of fair use of the system is not him winning.

To address another of your statements that is, frankly, factually wrong:

Fudging is GM moderation of the game's mechanics. Many systems just spread the fudging past the GM or provide lose enough results that fudging is required, or hand out points that let you fudge the rules. None of these are significantly different from traditional fudging, except, perhaps, that they more effectively disguise moderation and make people feel better.

Once again, well said - and wrong.

The games in question do not 'hand out points that let you fudge the rules.' As a part of the rules, they state: "Here is a resource that lets you decide what happens. Spend Wisely." This is not 'fudging' the rules, it's using a part of the rules in the intended manner. Just because in a traditional RPG, this function would be restricted to the GM and the GM could do it an unlimited number of times does not mean it's the same thing.

Narrative mechanics are limited by the rules. They say what the mechanic does, when and how you can use it. They, like spells in D&D or money in Monopoly, are an expendable resource that renews in a set way within the rules, and provide a set result.

You can abuse a narrative mechanic, failing to mark off uses or account for points spent (although the usually dramatic results can make this challenging), but if you do so, you are CHEATING.

GM fiat is limited by nothing (except the players' ability to walk away from the table).

Here's a simple test to demonstrate the difference:

You can insert a narrative mechanic identical to the one I described above into any pure, competitive wargame in which chance plays a factor - Star Wars Minis, for example, or Warhammer. In that context, each player would likely get an equal number of Narrative Points, or could purchase them in the same way as purchasing more figures. You could spend those points to simply DECLARE a result - my Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter DOES crit your Yoda, Jedi Master, or your High Elf Archers all miss my Night Goblin Spearmen. As long as the points were even (or could be bought at the same cost), then the game would remain competitive.

You could not insert fiat into the same system without removing the competitivness. If you tried, the player who had fiat could simply declare "I win" in every game; if he played the game out, it would be ONLY as a courtesy to the other player or to "see what happens." If the player with fiat won, it would be suspect. If the player without fiat won, it would be only at the sufferance of the one who had it.

 

[Thurbane]

If the party seems to be in serious trouble I sometimes suggest they might want to consider running for it - or remind a player about a magic item he or she has but might have forgotten in the heat of the moment (after all, the character probably wouldn't have forgotten).

Actually, I'm kinda the opposite - I'd rather fudge the occasional roll than have to remind people about their own characters abilities. I'll often have items that I know will be useful in upcoming enouncters in treasure hoardes, only to have the players totally forget they have them, and then complain "Well how the hell are we supposed to beat this monster???"...