D&D 5E Do you want your DM to fudge?

[iserith]

"The Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery."

"One player, however, takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM), the game’s lead storyteller and referee."

"Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils."

- Basic Rules, page 2

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Yep, much like the umpire or referee and the players tell a story. Miracle on Ice is one of the greatest sports stories ever told. So is the Jackie Robinson story, which would have been a pretty crappy story if some racist umpire had fudged the rolls and called Jackie out every time he came to bat.

 

[Nytmare]

Yep, much like the umpire or referee and the players tell a story. Miracle on Ice is one of the greatest sports stories ever told. So is the Jackie Robinson story, which would have been a pretty crappy story if some racist umpire had fudged the rolls and called Jackie out every time he came to bat.

It's written right there in the rules. No one is saying you have to like it, or expecting you to play by those rules against your will, but there's little reason to insist that there's malevolent intent behind the people who decide to do it that way, and refusing to acknowledge that their motivations or the end result might not be positive.

- Nytmare, the Chaotic Good Racist Umpire





[EDIT] Any chance of this being a lesser known corollary to Goodwin's Law?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Sorry, that's not an argument. I'm not saying no one can ever fufge either. The point of this thread was to assess how many people fudged and how many people didn't and their reasons for doing so. I'm somehow wrong for posting my thoughts? I haven't accused anyone of "malevolent intent." I'm saying I won't play in a game where an umpire intentionally misses a call or a dm who fudges a roll. And yes, I believe such a game experience is inherently a poorer one. The baseball analogy is a good one. If you are not going to abide by the roll of the dice, why roll the dice at all? Or take the results you don't want out of the equation. I wouldn't want to play in such a game. To continue the baseball analogy, it would be like playing in a game where you would ignore strikes and outs and the home team always wins.

 

[Maxperson]

Except that he has. He has turned an out into a run or a perfect game into a one hitter - nah, that could never happen.

Note that reality has not been changed when he does that. Reality is that he made a bad call and people know it. A similar action by the DM would be as follows.

DM: The knight swings his sword and decapitates your character. He misses!

That doesn't happen, though. The game reality is that when you fudge, there was never a hit to change into a miss. It was always a miss.

 

[Maxperson]

Incorrect. Fudging means something that would have gone against you goes for your or vice versa.

At no point did I claim it must always equal 'you winning.'

"you realize there's no point to thinking as it provides no benefit, and it ceases to be a challenge, just you waiting for the GM to decide to let you win."

You should be more careful with your words then. You did in fact equate fudging with winning.

What I said was it removes challenge--because challenge proceeds from the knowledge that your decisions matter. Fudging changes the degree to which they matter, thus lowering the amount of challenge whether its win or lose or just adding difficulty or reducing difficulty.

So if I fudge a miss into a crit, it got less challenging for you? Also, your decisions do still matter when I fudge a roll. Given that I only fudge rolls when extreme bad luck invalidates your actions, and then only enough to make your actions matter again, your actions would always matter in my game.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

That doesn't happen, though. The game reality is that when you fudge, there was never a hit to change into a miss. It was always a miss.

In other words, there was never an opportunity to decapitate him. So why describe it as such? For instance, if a dm doesn't want a lich to show up on a random encounter check, he should not fudge the result. The lich shouldn't be on the chart in the first place if he's going to ignore it. If it's always a miss, why are dice needed?

 

[Nytmare]

In other words, there was never an opportunity to decapitate him. So why describe it as such? For instance, if a dm doesn't want a lich to show up on a random encounter check, he should not fudge the result. The lich shouldn't be on the chart in the first place if he's going to ignore it.

"Whoa! There's a lich on this random encounter table? That doesn't make sense. Ah look the next thing on the list is 1d4 racist umpires, that makes way more sense since they're at a baseball game. I'll use that instead."

 

[JRRNeiklot]

"Whoa! There's a lich on this random encounter table? That doesn't make sense. Ah look the next thing on the list is 1d4 racist umpires, that makes way more sense since they're at a baseball game. I'll use that instead."

I've played and ran games with a lich on the random encounter table. Explain to me why that could never make sense? There's never a chance for the lich to come home while the pcs are looting his lair?

You know what, nevermind. My ignore list, that's going on 16 years just got it's 2nd entry.

 

[Maxperson]

In other words, there was never an opportunity to decapitate him. So why describe it as such? For instance, if a dm doesn't want a lich to show up on a random encounter check, he should not fudge the result. The lich shouldn't be on the chart in the first place if he's going to ignore it. If it's always a miss, why are dice needed?

I'm not sure why you are saying that. I was just pointing out what the equivalent to the umpire action would be in D&D, not what I describe. Fudging =/= what umpires do when they get calls wrong.