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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7754335" data-attributes="member: 5142">Agreed! Well you are being dishonest with dice rolls and using your authority to break with the rules at certain junctures. I will echo Hussar's remark that I am not really imparting a value judgment here when I say that this is "cheating." It is what it is, and my preference is honesty about what it is rather than pretending that it something than it's not. And we can get into an argument of semantics about whether this constitutes "cheating," as we have for many pages, but that this seems to be understood in common parlance as cheating. There are lots of D&D advice videos on YouTube, for example, that variously titled along the lines of "should you cheat as a GM?" or "when should you cheat as a GM?" Many videos do not hide behind double-speak such as "the GM can't cheat!" or "fudging is not cheating." The act is called for what it is. Regardless of whether the GM has authority or not, the nature of the act is implicitly recognized as institutionalized cheating. I think there are legitimate reasons to argue as such, but I would also say that one of the critical differences between these mechanics and our discussion of GM fiat to fudge, is that the former constitute delineated mechanics while the latter is not. In order for this to be equivalent, the GM would need their own mechanic, such as a limited token pool for when they could cheat or fudge dice. Fate provides the GM with a limited amount of fate points when they run a scene. Or something akin to the GM Intrusion mechanic from the Cypher System that makes the "fudge" transparent and "honest" about when it occurs. I wonder if this distinction of playstyles is this what pushed Forgotten Realms over Greyhawk in D&D's gaming culture? Players increasingly preferred an Ed Greenwood way of gameplay? But that discussion is perhaps for another day. It doesn't help that many of the people against the word "cheating" still invite this moral judgment to themselves when they admit that they are behaving dishonestly when altering the die results or secretly diverging from the rules. If you are worried that the word "duck" carries too strong of a negative connotation - we can call it something else like "Ente" or "Waterfowl" - but it is still looks, walks, and quacks like a duck. So like a team sport such as Fußball, Football, or Basketball where a victory trophy results from uneven contributions from the team?</blockquote>

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