Do GMs really go to great lengths to hide it? Do players really get upset about it?
If it was really such a taboo thing to do, why does this sort of question pop up so often across the interwebz?
I mean, sure, we hear lots of anecdotes to that effect around here, in a forum full of opinionated grogs. But surveys tell us that we here are not a representative sample of D&D gamers. Out in the rest of the world, among the vast majority of gamers who are newer, more casual, and/or have a huge diversity of reasons they play, I would seriously question this assumption about the sanctity of the dice.
Sure we do. It crops up in a much, much,
much bigger field than TTRPGs, as already mentioned earlier in this thread:
video games.
Video games contain computer opponents, and a significant chunk of them
cheat heinously. This is not, strictly, because designers
want the computers to cheat--it is rather that the very limited automated "AI" scripts cannot hope to keep up with more than an extremely inexperienced player. Designing these "AI" scripts (they really aren't artificial intelligences--they're waaaaay to simple for that) so they don't need to cheat is very hard. Only a few games I've ever played reach that point, e.g. Galactic Civilizations has some
really excellent AI that can do some very long-range plays, truly earning the "intelligence" part of the term AI.
Game AI designers are pretty open about this: they say
"cheat wherever you can"...and also "never get caught cheating." That's not just for show. Getting caught cheating can
really upset your players. It can upset them to the point where they will not just stop playing your game, they'll actively campaign against it, trying to encourage other people not to buy it. Machiavelli might have been writing satire with
The Prince, but his advice was still good there: "
Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred; because he can endure very well being feared whilst he is not hated..." Probably the only thing that inspires more hate in gamers overall than cheating (whether it be player cheating or AI cheating) is a pay-to-win cash shop.
The rules for a monster aren't "real things" in sense comparable to a die roll. The DM either adopts them or creates them, and changing them at any point is little different from any other form of DM improvisation.
What is the point where you feel the DM is no longer allowed to use any of their creative freedom in monster design? Is it when initiative is rolled, or is it when they sit down at the table that day? Or can they only ever run vanilla, WotC approved monsters exactly as published? My stance is that they can keep making judicious adjustments to a stat block until the imaginary critter draws its last imaginary breath, so long as they do so in good faith.
I was very clear about this already. As soon as the creature enters the state of play, depending on what specifically the party is doing. Once the mini/token/etc. is on the battlemap (or has entered the combat if TOTM, etc.), they've entered play.
Also, you have taken me to a much, much greater extent than I said...even though I've been very clear about this several times in this thread. I didn't say DMs could do
nothing whatsoever. I said they shouldn't do it
secretly. Justify the changes. Make it diegetic. Make it something the players can potentially learn about...and, more importantly,
do something about. You still have an enormous amount of creative freedom without needing to resort to fudging. This is not an issue of "never ever change anything." Nor am I saying "never make anything mysterious or unanswered." Instead, I'm saying, "if you change things, the players should be able to learn about and respond to that change." Give them exactly the same opportunity to discover the
in-the-world aspects of what you're doing as they have for any
plot-related stuff you're doing. You don't have to show them how the sausage is made, but you shouldn't tell them it's 100% all-beef sausage when it's 20% chicken hearts and 10%-30% vegetable protein.
Misdirection, illusion through guided assumption, deception, & showmanship don't work as well if the audience is told how it was employed to draw out desired emotions or play off expectations.
This is a great book on it because it includes sources where you can read deep into interesting topics over a wide range of subject matter.
There is a difference between "showmanship"--which is a matter of
performance--and straight-up lying to people about what things they're doing or achieving. Plus, at a magic show, people actually consent to being deceived, they (almost never) actually play any part in the trick, and (most importantly of all)
have no skin in the game.
[Citation needed.] Video gamers respond
exceptionally poorly to any perception of "cheating" on the part of the AI in a game. This is an objective fact. Indeed, they respond so poorly even to the
perception of cheating that some games are designed with slightly player-favoring RNG to prevent the rare, but statistically completely possible, runs of success for the AI or failure for the player. (I've been dealing with a bit of this myself lately in a game--I was having chains of five consecutive "severe failure" events, when the game explicitly says this should only occur 15% of the time, meaning getting a string of 5 consecutive failures should only happen about one in every 13169 attempts...and this was happening on my
third attempt at this event chain.)
I've been at a table where a player of mine who GM's mentioned how players would be shocked how often GM's fudge things in the PC's favor & openly discussed it without issue while running a combat. When the combat was over someone asked if I fudged anything & stared them dead in the eye with a flatly emotionless "no, I never fudge anything. dice rule all things & DCs are set in advance before I call for them." or something that left them with the exact impression of having no idea if I was being sarcastic honest or dishonest that I wanted to.
I feel like I'm missing something with this anecdote. That is, I understand what you've said, but I don't see what you're going for with it.
The reason for why telling the players that something was fudged is the same reason a magician doesn't explain the trick to the audience & an adult doesn't tell a kid that they threw a game deliberately. Telling them spoils the illusion & resulting endorphin rush that goes with both the victory of a win and the tension that leads up to it.
Okay but...hear me out...
What if you just didn't? You wouldn't need to deceive them. Then it wouldn't be
possible to "spoil the illusion." It wouldn't be
possible to take away the endorphin rush or ruin the tension. The tension, the win, the endorphins--they would all be
real (for, y'know, an appropriate definition of "real" that allows for us being nerds pretending to be elves and half-demons and quarter-flumph ex-vampires.)
A magician's trick is not suddenly made pointless when it turns out the trick was
real all along. Indeed, to reveal that it was
actually real, rather than merely a known and tolerated illusion, usually enhances the experience greatly.
IME players who get upset about things like that are playing to win a game that has no winners. Some might get frustrated if they feel like or suspect the GM is taking it easy on them because it cheapens the struggle & victory, but that's really not quite the same as being upset though.
Well, I can certainly tell you that is
not me. I do enjoy well-done tactical combat, but my true love is the roleplay angle. I
adore a really good setting and context where I can realistically examine how my character would react to things and play through their struggles and moral choices. That's why, in the DW game I run, I've told my players not to worry about character death. Even if their characters die, that just means a new adventure for trying to bounce back from that death, possibly with yet further revelations as a result of their afterlife journey. Because the
real challenges, the
real victories and defeats, lie in the choices they make. The mistakes and the oaths, the alliances and betrayals. Challenging the numbers on their character sheet is easy. Challenging the
player with choices where
only they can decide what the "right answer" is...THAT is what is beautiful to me, as both DM and player.
And yet, I still vehemently oppose fudging.
So if you don't fudge because you don't need to because you get what you are expecting 99% of the time. But math says that you don't actually get what you expect with near that certainty.
You're committing the same error as the above: assuming that the
only possible way to change things is secretly. It's not, and never has been. Sure, don't shout from the rooftops "I AM MODIFYING THIS MONSTER!" But you can make your changes diegetic, observable, accessible to the characters. The players may fail to capitalize on that accessibility, that's perfectly fine. But if you did at least make a good-faith effort at that accessibility, go ahead! Change literally anything that is reasonable to change, if it should lead to better results.
Again, I gave an example earlier in this thread of doing exactly this thing. I can control difficulty
without needing to fudge. The extremely slight increase in difficulty is more than compensated for by, as noted above, turning it from magic trick to magic truth. And even then, I have not really needed to modify things that much--though some of that, I admit, comes from me being willing to
let a fight be "disappointing" or "too strong" if that's what results.