Do you "save" the PCs?

[Raven Crowking]

More than one DM in this thread explicitly discussed the issue with his players while the thread was going on. The players' reactions were acceptance.

Do you know why doctors cannot date their patients, or why teachers cannot date their students? There is a disparity of power involved. The general gist is that the person in a position of authority can influence those he/she has authority over, even if neither party is aware of it.

There is a difference between accepting that your DM is going to fudge, and wanting your DM to fudge. Also, the "not thought through" was related to the follow-up question, not the primary.

If anyone in this thread has asked their players "Would you rather I rolled the dice out in the open?" or "Would you rather I let the dice fall where they may?" or "Would you rather I didn't fudge?" they haven't reported it.

"Do you mind if I fudge occasionally?" is a different question, and one that might offend the DM if answered "Yes"......especially if that DM is ensuring that the responses he receives are "ironclad" or finds it personally insulting that others believe fudging to be a bad idea in general.

So, let us say, in the particular cases involved, the degree to which the player responses are accurate is the degree to which fudging is okay within those games. As I said upthread, some folks do beat the odds!


RC

 

[billd91]

Again, it may help if we were able to discuss an example of fudging that is not intended to cover a weakness in design or implementation, or to promote the outcome the GM desires.

I know I keep saying this, but you could (one assumes) by example demonstrate my starting assumptions to be wrong quite easily.

Can anyone give me one such example?

(That, btw, would qualify as "evidence".)
RC

Given your previous posts in this thread and your prejudice that the set of GMs who can run a successful game with fudging is vanishingly small, I don't have much confidence in your ability to approach any evidence as unbiased.

 

[Fifth Element]

However, I would then ask, how do you explain that others, who also cannot plan for everything, do not have to fudge die rolls to compensate? I think that there is more involved than this.

Because they have different players than I do, would be my first thought. If my players were the types to find a completely fudgeless game more fun, then that's what I would give them. Player preferences is one of the many variables involved here. Don't assume that all players like the same things. If a DM's group feels there is nothing to compensate for, it makes perfect sense for them to not compensate.

Every game ever invented is make-believe. Because there is no real knight, it is not any less dishonest if I "fudge" where I am allowed to move my piece.

Sounds like we're back to chess, which if of course a terrible analogy for RPGs. But we've been over that.

"Contrary to the rules" is not dishonest. Not telling the truth is dishonest.

Pedantic, but irrelevant. There's all kinds if things I withhold from my players during the game, in order to make it a more fun experience. You could call them "lies of omission" if you were so inclined. I'll often discuss it with them afterwards, to get their input on it. But doing so in play would be disruptive to my group, so we don't do it. Again, it's a preference for my group.

Why not let the players give the a number of tokens, each of which must be "spent" to fudge the dice? As I said earlier, this would do two things: (1) puts the players in the driver's seat as to how much fudging goes on, and (2) maintains tension because the players can see that the token pool is decreasing. If the players feel like it, they can always add tokens back into the pool.

Why add another mechanic when things are fun the way they are? Players put me in the drivers seat as DM. They trust me to deliver a fun game for them. They have never given any indication that they would prefer having such an option to leaving it to my discretion. There are many games that have such mechanics in their core rules. My players have shown no inclination to play those games. It seems they prefer to leave it to the DM's discretion, like so many other things in the game.

You assume fudging destroys trust. I'd say if trust is established, fudging is no issue, and does nothing to hurt that trust by itself.

 

[Fifth Element]

Do you know why doctors cannot date their patients, or why teachers cannot date their students? There is a disparity of power involved. The general gist is that the person in a position of authority can influence those he/she has authority over, even if neither party is aware of it.

Do you know the difference between real authority and imaginary authority? Teachers have very real authotiry over their students. DMs have no real authority over the players by dint of being DM. They have authority over what happens in a made-up imaginary world, which I daresay is quite a different thing.

You're assuming a whole lot here. Again. Apply Occam's razor. You have assumed the answers are not completely truthful either because of how the question was phrased, or because the DM is influencing the answers due to his "power" over the players. The simpler explanation is that the players don't actually mind the fudging.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Given your previous posts in this thread and your prejudice that the set of GMs who can run a successful game with fudging is vanishingly small, I don't have much confidence in your ability to approach any evidence as unbiased.

I wouldn't ask you to accept anyone's statements without considering observer bias.

Why add another mechanic when things are fun the way they are?

<snip>

You assume fudging destroys trust. I'd say if trust is established, fudging is no issue, and does nothing to hurt that trust by itself.

I tip my hat, and agree to disagree.

Or, let me say, I agree to disagree on the general principle. I am not disagreeing about your particular group (which I, obviously, have no direct experience of). It may be that fate has handed me a horribly skewed sample to work with (so the set is larger than I believe it to be); it may be that you truly beat the odds (so that you are part of a vanishingly small set).


RC

 

[Jeff Wilder]

But in this thread I would say that that is not okay, because those GMs who fudge are our peers, they have thought about the issue deeply and they have discussed it at length. At that point, to say that you know, or even think you know, what is best for another fellow's game is going too far.

I, personally, believe that Fifth Element and Umbran are okay with fudging. I believe that's their preference, and because it's their preference, I believe that they enjoy it.

However, I don't believe it is the best way to play a game. Even if Fifth Element and Umbran are excellent DMs, I believe that they would be better DMs if they didn't fudge. Perhaps I'm wrong, but (like Raven Crowking), literally all of my experience is that I'm right.

I believe that fudging is dishonest, that it robs players of meaningful choices and risk by substituting DM caprice for the game mechanic provided for outcome determination, and that this is the primary reason that DMs keep fudging secret from their players.

Even more to the point, regarding speculating on what is best for "another fellow's game," all I have to go on -- aside from my general experience -- when it comes to Umbran's and Fifth Element's players, is that Umbran and Fifth Element tell me that their players are happier with fudging than without.

I believe that Umbran and Fifth Element believe that. I do. But I do not believe that it is true. And my believe that it's true has nothing to do with thinking that Umbran and Fifth Element are lying about it, but rather to do with thinking that Umbran and Fifth Element are wrong about it ... that they have, possibly in complete and wide-eyed honesty, perhaps allowed their stated preferences for fudging to color their perceptions of how their players feel about fudging, for example.

Apparently it's somehow bad form to make this observation, but I'll do it anyway: this is exactly why hearsay is not considered relevant evidence. It is -- many exceptions aside -- inherently unreliable when person X tells what person Y believes, especially when person X has a very good reason to say that Person Y believes a particular thing.

So, again, I'm not saying that I know what Umbran and Fifth Element prefer for their games better than they do. I don't.

I am not saying they're bad DMs. I am saying that if they didn't fudge they'd almost certainly be better DMs.

And I am saying that I'm not going to take their word -- over my own experiences -- that their players are happier in a game with fudging than they would be in a game with no fudging. Maybe they are. But I'm not taking Umbran's and Fifth Element's word about the feelings of another person as evidence in support of their position.

 

[billd91]

"Do you mind if I fudge occasionally?" is a different question, and one that might offend the DM if answered "Yes"......especially if that DM is ensuring that the responses he receives are "ironclad" or finds it personally insulting that others believe fudging to be a bad idea in general.

How is this significantly different from a DM who asks if they'd like him to roll in the open but the players would prefer a bit more leniency from the unsympathetic dice? Won't there also be the possibility of offending the DM by giving a response he doesn't like? Sounds like there are people quite passionate around here about rolling in the open who feel that fudging would be personally dishonest.

But from the tenor of the thread, it sounds to me like fudge-friendly DMs are a bit more flexible on whether or not to fudge than the non-fudgers are toward fudging the dice. So, frankly, I'd expect the offense to go mostly the other way than what you are suggesting if the thread participants here are any indication of the general population.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Do you know the difference between real authority and imaginary authority? Teachers have very real authotiry over their students. DMs have no real authority over the players by dint of being DM.

You're right, of course.

No one has ever accepted playing with a DM they didn't think up to snuff because it was the only game in town. No one has ever disliked DM Fiat, but felt unable to complain about it because doing so would mean no gaming.

This has never been mentioned on EN World numerous times. This has never come up often as a reason why the "take the DM out of the equation/rules for everything" was a good idea when folks complained about it re: 3e.

I withdraw the objection.


RC

 

[Fifth Element]

... that they have, possibly in complete and wide-eyed honesty, perhaps allowed their stated preferences for fudging to color their perceptions of how their players feel about fudging, for example.

There's a chink in your armour here. You're assuming that I fudge because I prefer to fudge in general. That I have a predisposition to fudging. That's incorrect. I've played many a game that involved not one bit of fudging, and had a grand old time while doing so.

I fudge because my group prefers it. Not because I prefer to fudge, and my group hasn't complained. I have not imposed fudging on the group.

 

[Fifth Element]

But from the tenor of the thread, it sounds to me like fudge-friendly DMs are a bit more flexible on whether or not to fudge than the non-fudgers are toward fudging the dice. So, frankly, I'd expect the offense to go mostly the other way than what you are suggesting if the thread participants here are any indication of the general population.

I think I agree. If me players asked me to roll all the dice in the open, I would roll all the dice in the open. If that would help them enjoy the game, we'd do it.

If Raven Crowking's players asked him to fudge at times, what would his reaction be?