DM Cheating

[eyebeams]

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.

Lethality is the example (with the orcs), not the point.

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.

Now that I've clarified we're not talking about lethality, feel free to revise your response.

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.

We're not talking about chess, actually.

In an arbitrarily large number of collaborative storytelling games, events will never, ever transpire without player consent.

Sure. That's fudging enabled in the system.

I'm skipping over your next points as they either don't address RPGs at all or address game systems that are basically forms of formal fudging.

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.

Nah, it's the same thing. It just has a different ritual attached to it and makes people feel better because it's written down in the text.

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.

Of course, I'm not referring to any such thing. I'm talking about the fact that people can utilize the fudging function built into narrative mechanics for all kinds of things, including things that not everyone at the table likes. This even happens in groups of reasonable people. Eventually there's some kind of compromise, but this compromise still treads upon somebody's autonomy, even when you mark off points.

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

I'm sure it does if your group sucks and you have *no* intermediary communication between nothing and leaving.

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.

Actually, the way you describe it you'd just end up with the defeat of whoever could field the highest unanswered bid. This would normally result from the order of play, which would end up being fairly arbitrary. This is a common problem with bidding systems.

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.

Strawman, as we are not of course talking about fiat as a property of one side of a competition, unless you think of the GM as some kind of enemy or competitor, which is pretty much not what traditional GMing is all about.

 

[eyebeams]

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.

The ability to play poker has to do with social acumen at the table, which makes it very much like fudging.

Mind you, the jump from RPG to competitive game keeps happening for some reason, even though it's not topical unless you're talking about competitive RPGs.

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.

If you have no particular expectations of a system when it comes to adhering to its design goals, then this undercuts many arguments about the merits, or lack thereof, of game systems, period. Orcs with a 25% chance to kill you and orcs with a 80% chance to kill you make you equally dead.

 

[MINI]

Much of this to me boils down to DM - Player trust. Does the player trust the DM to decide what is best or the dice? Another dilemma is the value beat into the characters of the game. If your forced to fudge dice most likely it is to prevent a character death to turn the story arc in a direction, or to keep the story from going in a really bad direction. In games where story is the primary concern losing a major PC to a freak critical hit is rather catastrophic. In dungeon crawl games with not much of a stoary your character can easily die and be replaced as fast as you can roll those same dice that killed the old character.

As a DM I think you can avoid fudging altogether with good planning. Guage encounters properly. I have run fights with characters dropping into teh negatives, healing and dropping once again and yet no one ends up dead. I have aslo run battles that were purposefully easy (the CR was low) for teh sake of an RP Combat that added flavor to 3 hours of straight RP with the monsters becoming some sort of drive for teh story. Good planning means less cheating.

 

[IcyCool]

DMs can't cheat.
But DMs can SUCK.

QFT.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

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.

So, to summerize: Fudging is useful to counteract spikes in the randomness of a series of dice rolls.

Is this a valid statement of your overall feelings, or just the one point against Buzz?

 

[Hussar]

When I DM, I always roll out in the open. I started doing this when one group of players asked me to. The exceptions to this are things like refresh rates for Breath Weapons, and secret skill checks like you listed.

What I've found is that character deaths have gone up with me not being able to fudge the dice, and that players really pay attention to what I roll. It has also resulted in them metagaming and tracking what the attack bonuses and damage bonuses that the opponents have. I really don't mind, but I know it would drive other people crazy.

Now, when I'm playing, there are certain DMs I've played with that I trust to keep their rolls secret, but there are certain ones that I wish would roll in the open. I've had way too many instances of "I rolled a 20, now to confirm whether it is a crit or not" from one of them. I started tracking the 20s against me for a couple of sessions, and it was in the 30% range. A wee bit above average. Other players in the game didn't seem to have the same average either, but were suspicious. Sigh. Oh well, I muddled through, and visited the Cleric a lot.

So, I guess, I don't mind having DMs roll secretly and cheat to help the party or the game, but I'm not a fan of possibly cheating on secret die rolls if it is hurting my character.

This has been my experience as well. When I started rolling 100% in the open, PC casualties skyrocketted. I had no idea that I was fudging as much as I was until I stopped. It was a real eye opener.

 

[Darklone]

Some years ago, I cheated once per evening per PC in a very deadly campaign. Nowadays I roll everything openly. It's more fun that way.

Check the story in my sig. It would be pretty lame if the players wouldn't have seen the dice fall. They would have assumed I'd have cheated.

 

[eyebeams]

So, to summerize: Fudging is useful to counteract spikes in the randomness of a series of dice rolls.

Is this a valid statement of your overall feelings, or just the one point against Buzz?

Well randomness doesn't "spike." It's more that it is not just a remote possibility that even a well designed encounter will not have the anticipated effect. While thousands of dice rolls will usually end up averaging the way you'd expect, single dice rolls usually don't.

Now you can say, "Let the chips fall where they may!" but when you do that, this kind of silences you as an effective critic of a system's results. At that point, you don't care about the system -- you care about game mechanic results. So to my mind, it's incoherent to be concerned with both balance and an "automated" way of getting results, with one exception: instances where rules lack clarity. But that instance is also interesting in terms of this discussion.

RPGs are caught in a trap of subjectivity that only seems to increase with attempts to stamp it out. (WARNING: Observations you may not want to hear follow.) Generally, systems are criticized for allowing too much GM intervention when they are loose/light -- but solutions to this generally increase complexity (if not in the game itself, then in the number of cases for reference by the GM/players), requiring more and more rulings on how game systems apply. These required rulings do not minimize fudging -- they disguise it in a GM's ruling on whether there's a possible AoO or how a given magic item, feat or other game artifact applies. Even WotC engages in this kind of "fudging" by introducing interpretations of systems that were probably not a part of the original, intended design (monks and INA anyone?) This observation is something that comes from observing RPG sessions as a non-participant, deliberately taking notes. One of the things I observed was how fudging tends to attach itself to complex systems when the GM/DM uses it as a pretense (I noticed this in particular when it came to rogues; lots of DMs make debateable calls about sneak attack to restrict its use).

Of course, if you stick with a loose system you end up with fudging being made "official."

Does this mean that rolling in public, etc. is bad? No, of course not! But there's a difference between saying that GMs who feel it's *necessary* to fudge are engaging with a "broken" system, or that systems that encourage GM moderation are also "broken."

People should also recognize that when they do let the dice fall where they made, they are *also* engaging in a form of social and system manipulation. There is really no such thing as a truly "hands off" style, as much as social strategies that suit different groups.

 

[Storyteller01]

My thoughts exactly. Without that threat, I'd rather not play.

Ditto. When I want a predetermined ending I'll read my books.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Lethality is the example (with the orcs), not the point.

Fair enough - albeit it's a GOOD example, because it's generally the thing people care most about in-game.

Now that I've clarified we're not talking about lethality, feel free to revise your response.

I'll scrap the initial points regarding lethality, but as the rest of the post addresses the isssue as an example, it needs little revision.

We're not talking about chess, actually.

Why not? It's a game, it has a system, it's been rather extensively studied. Figuring out where and how another game differs is a useful exercise. Of course, I get the impression you hold tabletop RPGs outside the broad continuum of games in general, whereas I do not.

Sure. That's fudging enabled in the system.

I'm skipping over your next points as they either don't address RPGs at all or address game systems that are basically forms of formal fudging.

I suggest you re-read them, then.

Chess is example 1). OK, you don't want to talk about chess. The other part of example 1), collaborative storytelling games, is *not* formal fudging, because you can't *fudge* a system that's nonexistent.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised you excise Final Fantasy from a list of RPGs. You're welcome to your view of the series, but point 2) actually has little to do with the game it originated in - it just happened to be a subtraction based defense system I figured more people would be familiar with than HERO. You can, however, get the same results in HERO - certain values of certain types of Defense make *any* offensive action taken by certain characters irrelevant, regardless of randomness. It's not even terribly uncommon due to the way offense and defense are costed; if your attacks are all energy based and your target has excellent RED, you may simply not be able to hurt him under any circumstances.

I'll address the narrative mechanics from 3) below, because you seem to have a very skewed idea of what these are.

Buzz is saying he considers the range of results possible within D&D 3.5 acceptable to him and his group - including the outliers. That matches example 4), although example 4) discusses tactical wargames rather than RPGs. In a group where the results of the rules are acceptable to all, regardless of the type of game, no fudging is required. Note that this is how essentially all games other than RPGs are played (albeit sometimes with house rules).

Nah, it's the same thing. It just has a different ritual attached to it and makes people feel better because it's written down in the text.

Because it's written down in the text, it's incorporated into the rules.

More, it's incorporated into the rules in a formal, limited way. It has a precise function in the game, provides a resource to expend to achieve that function, and encourages the player to manage that resource over the time period in which it refreshes.

As well call 'spells' the same thing as fudging; after all, they can break the basic rules of the game (and the rules of reality as we know it, no less!)

Of course, I'm not referring to any such thing. I'm talking about the fact that people can utilize the fudging function built into narrative mechanics for all kinds of things, including things that not everyone at the table likes. This even happens in groups of reasonable people. Eventually there's some kind of compromise, but this compromise still treads upon somebody's autonomy, even when you mark off points.

If you're marking it off with points, it at the very least becomes a function of resource management. It is a part of the game that is every bit as tactical as deciding whether or not you take a 5-foot step or a Withdraw (to name one familiar, 3.5 example). How you can equate managing a resource provided by the system with stepping outside it to make an arbitrary and unlimited decision continues to amaze me.

I'm sure it does if your group sucks and you have *no* intermediary communication between nothing and leaving.

Ultimately, nothing else a player does can enforce a different result. He can ask the GM to do something different, even plead, bribe, rant or browbeat if he's of a particularly histrionic bent, but within the traditional RPG setup he has no actual, formal recourse.

Provided you have a decent GM, that's not a problem - but it's very different from a narrative mechanic formalized within and limited by the rules of the game. You seem to operate under the misconception that narrative mechanics allow the players (or the GM) to act in an unlimited fashion, just as a GM can in the traditional RPG setup. That's not accurate.

Actually, the way you describe it you'd just end up with the defeat of whoever could field the highest unanswered bid. This would normally result from the order of play, which would end up being fairly arbitrary. This is a common problem with bidding systems.

Wrong. That would only be true if the Narrative Points were completely unlimited (you know, like GM fiat). What you would instead have is the tactical challenge of deciding WHEN to employ this powerful, but limited, trump card.

If you could play a Narrative Point to say "I win," then you'd be correct.

But that would be a rather poorly designed competitive game.

Strawman, as we are not of course talking about fiat as a property of one side of a competition, unless you think of the GM as some kind of enemy or competitor, which is pretty much not what traditional GMing is all about.

Competitive games are an analogy, not the point. Feel free to revise your response.

(FWIW, however, I believe competitive RPGs to be a viable and underdeveloped market and hope to see that market explored in the future.)

Actually, after reading:

RPGs are caught in a trap of subjectivity that only seems to increase with attempts to stamp it out. (WARNING: Observations you may not want to hear follow.) Generally, systems are criticized for allowing too much GM intervention when they are loose/light -- but solutions to this generally increase complexity (if not in the game itself, then in the number of cases for reference by the GM/players), requiring more and more rulings on how game systems apply. These required rulings do not minimize fudging -- they disguise it in a GM's ruling on whether there's a possible AoO or how a given magic item, feat or other game artifact applies. Even WotC engages in this kind of "fudging" by introducing interpretations of systems that were probably not a part of the original, intended design (monks and INA anyone?) This observation is something that comes from observing RPG sessions as a non-participant, deliberately taking notes. One of the things I observed was how fudging tends to attach itself to complex systems when the GM/DM uses it as a pretense (I noticed this in particular when it came to rogues; lots of DMs make debateable calls about sneak attack to restrict its use).

I've also observed many RPG sessions as a non-participant; unlike a lot of people here, I truly adhere to the rpg.net maxim that "No gaming is better than bad gaming," and frankly I prefer it to mediocre gaming, too. Since I hang out with a fair number of gamers, that often puts me in an observational role.

In that role, I have observed something similar: many GMs *do* make questionable rulings, including in complex systems, and complex systems do not reduce fudging. I would contend that questionable rulings and fudging fall under different categories, but you're correct in relating the two. Both, IMX, come from an attitude that the GM is above the rules of the game.

That's a perfectly valid playstyle. It does allow for the vaunted 'openness' tabletop RPG enthusiasts often tout as the games' greatest strengths (admittedly, it's not the only way to achieve that result, but it's by far the simplest and most consistent to implement). Provided you have a decent GM, its drawbacks are slim.

However, it is not universal or necessary to have a good time with an RPG or RPG-like game.

A system that does not require judgement calls at all must provide a simple, rigorous framework for all activities within the game's scope. Every game other than a tabletop RPG has this responsibility from the outset. Good ones step up to the challenge by limiting the scope of play; great ones do so by providing a solid framework that is flexible in an explicit way.

I accept that not all tabletop RPGs will live up to that. I can perhaps buy that one has yet to arrive that does. I cannot, however, endorse the idea that it's impossible - or that designers should not make the attempt.

EDIT: Reading another response gave me a somewhat better idea of where you're coming from - even if I completely disagree, I at least get that you're not engaging in 100% sophistry So, edited for snark.