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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5181825" data-attributes="member: 18280">It is my opinion that fudging is always bad, in that I believe that there is always a preferred solution (although not always by the time the actual fudging occurs).  While I believe fudging is always bad, I agree that it is sometimes a necessary bad, that some people cannot achieve a preferred solution, and that some people's strengths and weaknesses as GMs combine so that they should not use what would normally be a prefered solution.I've been pretty explicit about this.Let me put it into D&D terms for you, by way of analogy.  In 3e, the alignment descriptions say that killing is associated with evil, and that preserving life is associated with good.  I would argue that, in 3e, killing is always an evil act.  However, I would also argue that killing some creatures is often a necessary evil, for which PCs and NPCs alike should not be penalized.  In some cases....one may argue, in many cases....all one can do is weigh the situation to try to determine the lesser of two evils.The difference between a "Good" character performing a necessary evil and an "Evil" character using expedient means (in 3e) is this:  The Good character views killing as a measure of last resort (albeit, in D&D, this last resort comes up frequently), whereas the Evil character believes killing is justified regardless of what is being killed, or what other options there were, so long as there are no obvious (or immediate) problems caused to that character as a result of his actions.The Good character accepts and understands the larger implications; the Evil character either does not accept them, or does not understand them, or both.(And please note that I am not claiming that fudging DMs are in any sense "evil"; that is a strawman I will not even respond to.)Jump for a moment to the conversation you are having about illusionism with Celebrim.  If you understand his point (as I believe you do), you can see how what he calls "hard illusionism" may damage the experience of the game.  Fudging, specifically, is a form of hard illusionism.  IMHO, and in my argument, the good GM accepts and understands the larger implications; the poor GM either does not accept them, or does not understand them, or both.And, again, please note the IMHO.  I am not claiming that what I view as a quality of poor GMing is the same as what you do.  You may love and admire qualities that I believe belong to poor GMing.  I am not arguing what your opinion is; I am stating what mine is.  That is another strawman that I will not follow up on any more.It is not my opinion that "fudging cannot work. That in every game, if the DM fudges, the players will be unhappy and the game will fall apart." (as you characterized it.)It is my opinion that "fudging is a generally bad decision.  If the DM fudges, the players are almost certain to discover it, which will lead to the game being less than what it could be.  If the DM is capable of resisting the urge to fudge -- especially if he can do so because he has elminated the urge through better prepwork -- the game will almost always be better.  There is a set of people to whom this does not apply, but IME it is a vanishingly small set, and if you tell me that you are one of them, I am not likely to accept that as plausible without some evidence that it is so."  (I went on to say that I do accept that Piratecat was a member of that vanishingly small set.)There is a difference.EDITS:  (1)  Even the hypothetical DM who I mentioned above, who should fudge, should nonetheless understand the potential pitfalls and problems associated with fudging.  IOW, if that DM is a good DM, it is very likely because he has an understanding of what he is doing, not because he somehow "lucked" into it.(2)  A person who claims to be a member of that (IME vanishingly small) set of GMs who fudge successfully can evidence this by demonstrating an understanding of the potential pitfalls implied (as, IMHO, Piratecat has done).  A person who claims to be part of that set, while claiming that there are no pitfalls, that rationality doesn't apply, or that it doesn't matter because it's only a game, is actually demonstrating that they are very likely not part of that subset, IMHO and IME.  EDIT EDIT:  I also specified that the foregoing only applies to role-playing games (using my definition of game, which is narrower than how some people use it, and which you may or may not agree with, but which you and I at least have discussed in length, and which came up at least tangentially in the first thread....though, luckily, others covered it so that I did not have to).  There are certainly role-playing activities to which it does not apply.Before?I would have said No.Now?My experience has taught me otherwise.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />RC</blockquote>

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