Dragon Mountain defeated without even entering it!

[James McMurray]

Thank you Carnifex. Of course, it seems like every update post I make for my campaign turns into a fudge vs. no-fudge thread.

I agree completely that DM's shouldn't fudge. Had I wanted that dragon to live, nothing the players did could ahve possibly prevented it. Besides, I could always bring him back later if it was necessary.

Actually, I was talking with my wife, and we feel he should come back at least once. He'll be raised by a kobold cleric who is unhappy with the new leader of dragon mountain (the green great wyrm). Arthax will attempt to kill this femal dragon the same way he killed his mother, but will be seen through instantly, since the party now has all of his cool anti-snese motive magic items. The green will kill him again and also kill the offending cleric, and the party may never even find out about it. Hopefully I'll be able to work it into a game at some point, as I think they'd get a kick out of that, but if not, my wife and I had fun thinking it up.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

I don't know much about Dragon Mountain, but it would be cool to rework the plot to make the juvenile dragon not the "Big Bad Boss". Perhaps the juvenile dragon is just a pawn in a greater dragon's nefarious plot. Perhaps the wyrm that they made a deal with is manipulating them into unleashing some powerful evil into the world by going into the plane-shifting mountain. Perhaps the mountain plane-shifts not to keep things out, but to keep something in.

 

[spacecrime.com]

That's several months of planning down the tubes.

Bummer. But it sounds like everybody had a pretty good time, so your best bet is probably to declare victory and move on to the next plot (or campaign, if this one is essentially over).

yours,

 

[James McMurray]

Spacecrime.com: I will be. there's tons more adventures to be had that don't require that dragon to make them happen. He may reoccur far down the line, if the party ever goes to the abyss, but then again, he might not.

Psychotic Jim and Zarrock: That requires way too much effort from me, and I'm looking forward to Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

Wolfspider: If you fudge, then you ARE railroading. By making it so that the party cannot defeat their enemies, you are raildroading them into a position where they must face them on your terms, when you want them to. I prefer to allow my players free reign over their fates. Not only does that require not railroading them in the classic "follow the plot to the letter" sense, but also in the less obvious types of railroading, such as fudging.

My players also wnjoy an epic confrontation, but they're not so stupid that they won't take revenge when they get the chance too. . .

 

[Wolfspider]

Well, we'll just have to disagree then on this point, because I just can't look at minor and judicious fudging as a bad thing.

My own rpg experience has shaped my gaming philosophy, of course. I'll never forget the time that I spent hours coming up with a character concept and lovingly detailing the character's history and motivations. Then we all started to play. Ten minutes later, in a random encounter, my character was hit by a ghoul and then enjoyed a full round of being pounded on by it and its three other companions. Suffice to say, my character died. If I hadn't been paralyzed due to one unlucky role, I would have been able to retreat. Instead, my character got carried off to be eaten, no raising possible.

You can criticize the DM for setting up an encounter that was too hard for our group. I guess you can criticize me for...well, entering the dungeon and occupying a certain space. Most of all, I blame the DM for having a policy that all rolls were to be made in the open. This kind of policy seems like a chain on a DM's creativity to me.

Learning from this lesson, when my girlfriend, in her first D&D game, in her first role-playing situation, was struck blind by a cleric and made the victim of a sneak attack by his accomplice, I could have gone by the results of the dice and killed her outright, an hour into her very first game of D&D. I'm sure that would have showed her how much control she has over her fate. Instead, I merely knocked her out. She was chastised enough with just being taken out of the combat so easily.

Fudging works both ways--to the DM's advantage (when he or she modifies a roll to make the game more interesting) and to the players'. Most of all, it works to the advantage of the game, and that's all that should matter, not some slavish devotion to what a little plastic polyhedron says.

 

[med stud]

To James McMurray: Glad you had a good time! But the adventure is hardly down the drain; while your PCs havent seen the dungeons you made, you can just recycle them, maybe with some minor modifications. That's what I always do

Wolfspider: I think it is rude to tell people how dragons should behave in THEIR campaigns.

 

[Wolfspider]

I'm sorry if I came off as being rude. That wasn't my intention at all. I thought I made it clear that the wimpy portrayal of dragons in Dungeons and Dragons was a pet peeve of mine. I meant no personal insult to Mr. McMurray. He seems like a well-spoken person. I respect him for his opinions and of course agree that he, as Dungeon Master, can do whatever he wants in his own campaign--Just so long as his dice don't decide to outvote him.

 

[Tsyr]

Try playing under a DM that fudges things for a while Wolf...

But always in his favor...

And you might have a different opinion.

I'm tired of playing under DMs who's "pets" will never fumble, who's "pets" never botch, who's "pets" always have the EXACT spell or item needed on hand...

I'll accept an unlucky character death or two from an "open dice" policy to avoid this type of crap.

If players have to play "as the dice fall", then so do DM creatures, IMO. DMs can already make the rules whatever they feel like on a moments notice, the odds always favor the DM's "home court" advantage... they don't need the ability to freely cheat too.

Why not play a diceless roleplaying system if you are going to ignore the dice? I hear Amber is pretty good, though I've never played it.

 

[Wolfspider]

So I should have killed off my girlfriend's character, eh? Hmmm. I guess I'll just have to do that next session, to prove my integrity as a DM.

Seriously, I do fudge when it's necessary for the overall enjoyment of everyone in the game. I don't do it regularly. I don't play favorites with my beasties.

In fact, I have played in games where DMs are obviously changing all the rolls to their advantage, and this is horribly frustrating. Frustrating does not equal fun, so I would never do this in one of my games.

The key words are minor and judicious, as I said above. Not everyday and haphazard. I'm sorry if I'm not making the differences between these two things clear--my own weakness as a writer, I guess.

I just don't see the kind of fudging that I do as cheating. When a player lies to me about every roll, that's cheating. When a DM changes rolls to make sure his side wins everytime, that's cheating. When I modify dice rolls to make sure everyone has a fun time, that's fudging.

I still look at D&D as a game, the object of which is for all of the participants to have fun.

 

[Tsyr]

So if a player seemed upset with what happened after one of your fudgings, you would reverse time?