Do you "save" the PCs?

[Fifth Element]

What is "most conducive to success at the social endeavour of having that player become a continuing participant in RPGs" is not "pulling punches" in the sense of giving the player a false sense of accomplishment, but rather "pulling punches" in the setup itself, so that the framework is relatively easy to deal with, but any accomplishment is real.

I think you're splitting hairs here. It's okay to pull punches - but only in certain specific ways and not others.

Any accomplishment in an RPG is false, of course, because it's just a game. There's no real accomplishment to be had. So differentiating between "false" accomplishment at a difficult task and "real" accomplishment at an easy task is meaningless. Especially since the DM sets the difficulty to begin with.

I strongly disagree that fudging the results helps the new player, or anyone.

But fudging the setup is okay? I fail to see any real difference.

 

[C.W.Richeson]

Nope. For harsh games, the possibility of death makes it more interesting. Though even in that case we may give the player more narrative control over how exactly they died, perhaps with a slightly more interesting narration than "the goblin stabbed you."

For other games death simply isn't an option. Being taken out or losing the encounter could mean injury, forced retreat, capture, or any of a number of different outcomes. It still hurts because the PCs failed to achieve their goal, and it tends to generate more interesting long term consequences to failure.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It's okay to pull punches - but only in certain specific ways and not others.

There are a lot of things that are okay only in certain specific ways and not in others. In fact, it is a nearly universal truism. Next time you go through an intersection when the light is red, be sure to tell the officer that he is just splitting hairs.

Any accomplishment in an RPG is false, of course, because it's just a game. There's no real accomplishment to be had.

That is obviously untrue.

It is so obviously untrue that one wonders why it continually rears its head as the last, false hope of "fudging" not being a damaging choice for a Game Master to make.

A bare minimum of consideration demonstrates its falsehood:

If one accepts that chess is a battlefield simulation, then winning at chess does not mean that you have won a real battle. It does, however, mean that you won at chess. That is a real accomplishment.

If I play you chess, but I spot you my queen, and you beat me, it is still a real accomplishment (though not so great an accomplishment as it would be if I had not spotted you my queen). OTOH, if I engineered the game so that, no matter what you did, you would win, there would be no accomplishment (minor or major) on your side at all.

In the case of a role-playing game, overcoming obstacles is an accomplishment regardless of how easy or difficult those obstacles may be. The degree of accomplishment is, of course, directly related to the degree of difficulty....just as in the chess example, just as in the baseball example upthread.

No, getting the Gold Crown of Hoopla from the sinister dragon Hufflepup doesn't give you a real crown in the real world. But neither does it need to in order to be an accomplishment.

EDIT: I wonder if you also believe that Olympic gold medallists have accomplished nothing, because they were just playing a game? Or the team that wins the Stanley Cup? Or the World Chess Champion. Etc., etc., etc.

But fudging the setup is okay? I fail to see any real difference.

Shennanigans.

How, exactly, is the setup being "fudged"?

Are you saying that you see no difference between your winning a game of chess with me after I spot you the queen, and your winning a game of chess with me because I engineered it? Really?

EDIT: Let's take this a bit further. I want you to "stick with" chess, so I continually engineer the games so that you will win. You feel a real sense of accomplishment because you don't know I am doing so. What happens to your self esteem once you play against someone else, who doesn't consider it a favour to engineer your victories? What happens when you discover that, far from being a great player, you've been trained to make moves that cause opponents to easily defeat you? How do you think you would feel about those chess games we played then? How do you think that the average person would feel?

Again, this does no one a favour, except the GM, who gets to hide his or her errors, and that (usually) only for a while. Perhaps Susy will have moved when she discovers what you have done, and you will not have to explain why you did it to her.



RC

 

[Nagol]

But fudging the setup is okay? I fail to see any real difference.

You don't 'fudge' a setup; you design a less risky encounter set. Typically, this will involve low challenge creatures with appropriate rewards in the encounter.

The big difference from my perspective is one method allows the player to begin to build play experience on a foundation that is true to the game engine. This will help the player to develop expectations that fit the actual risk/reward levels in the game and aids the player in formulating appropriate choices in light of known information.

The other method provides an experience that is unlike the generalised play experience in the game engine. This can lead the player into developing expectations that differ from risk/reward levels seen in games closer to the generalised game engine expectations. This may be fine if the GM is going to consistently rule in a particular way (at which point as a player I would expect the courtesy of being informed of the house rules in play) and the player expects to play under no other GM.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Well put, Nagol.

 

[Kingreaper]

FUdging a first play session is perfectly reasonable IMO.

But effort should be made to make it unneccessary. A scenario with a 1 in 400 chance of PC death, fudging to avoid death is sensible with a newbie, because death wouldn't give them an accurate idea of what the game is NORMALLY like. (they'd come to believe death was common, and that might put them off, even though it's not true)

A scenario with a 1 in 3 chance of death? No, death is to be expected if you design a scenario like that, fudging will give the player a false sense of what the game is like.

 

[coyote6]

If one accepts that chess is a battlefield simulation, then winning at chess does not mean that you have won a real battle. It does, however, mean that you won at chess. That is a real accomplishment.
[...]
In the case of a role-playing game, overcoming obstacles is an accomplishment regardless of how easy or difficult those obstacles may be. The degree of accomplishment is, of course, directly related to the degree of difficulty....just as in the chess example, just as in the baseball example upthread.

Your analogy fails for me in that chess is a game that can be won; you can't win an RPG. Personally, I don't play RPGs to "accomplish" imaginary things; it seems like a silly idea to me. I play RPGs to have fun; that's the only accomplishment that matters, in the end.

For me, running a special "training mode" adventure just for a new person would be a time-sink I wouldn't be interested in participating in. Teach someone how to play the game, sure; maybe run a one-shot with others as taste-test, okay; but run a special training session?

Besides, that's so video-gamey!

 

[Janx]

I much ado is being made about nothing.

When next I speak to my friends, I'll ask them if they care if the DM fudges die rolls to save their PC, or if they even notice that it HAS happened in games they have played (even where I was a player).

I'm pretty sure the answer will be, "no, they don't care." After the game, nobody talks about how the Gm fudged a roll that totally saved the day. Much like somebody letting out a fart, it is quickly forgotten.

Those of us with tactical minded brains probably get a sense of satisfaction out of playing through a scenario where the details of our choices matter (do we tap the floor with a 10' pole or mark the wall with charcoal instead of chalk, because it's harder for another monster to notice it).

Most of my friends care about that kind of thinking. I've got a few friends who are "dumber" than the rest. They don't think that about such things. Playing full on "D&D is a mental puizzle" with them for their first game would not be a fun experience for them.

That doesn't mean they couldn't stand to benefit from learning to think about such things, but the first session is NOT the forum for that. You got to entice them into the water with some successes first.

While you can learn a lot from D&D, and it can reshape and expand people's minds, it is not expressly a teaching tool. It is not my job as GM to TEACH players to think tactically in order to navigate the game space.

Thus, I have no problem putting on some training wheels for some players, so they can at least go for a bike ride with the other kids. I don't want to have to do that forever, but if I have to pull some strings so my friends can have some fun, so be it. It's not like fudging a die roll is guying to hurt me or them. Not unless they are som mentally fragile that maybe they shouldn't play with others.


Really it comes down to "know your audience". I know mine. Odds are good other casual gamers don't care about fudging to save their PCs. The audience on ENworld is more likely to be serious gamers and smarter than the average person. That's a different audience, and given most of us are old hands, we don't need training wheels.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Your analogy fails for me in that chess is a game that can be won; you can't win an RPG. Personally, I don't play RPGs to "accomplish" imaginary things; it seems like a silly idea to me.

And, yet, this entire thread is predicated on the premise that some outcomes are prefereable to others. If one cannot "win" or "lose" within the context of an RPG (a premise I believe to be false), then why bother fudging to save the doomed newbie?

The answer is obvious -- some outcomes are "wins" and some are "losses". To use the chess analogy again, sessions of the game are like individual chess matches within a tournament (this is esp. true in the case of an AP set-up, where there is an "end" to the game where the PCs either accomplish their goals or do not). Simply because part of the overall structure continues (the tournament, or the game) does not mean that you didn't "win" or "lose" a match, an encounter, or a session.

Sorry, but I call shennanigans.


RC

 

[coyote6]

And, yet, this entire thread is predicated on the premise that some outcomes are prefereable to others. If one cannot "win" or "lose" within the context of an RPG (a premise I believe to be false), then why bother fudging to save the doomed newbie?

(A) I'm not sure you can't "lose" -- having a game crash to a halt by any number of means, and no one had a good time, seems close enough to losing to me.

(B) I didn't say I bought the premise of the thread, either.

Sorry, but I call shennanigans.

Shenanigans is a supervillain in my M&M campaign; you don't want her calling back.