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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8982936" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've been doing this like 40 years now and I can confidently say that reflecting on the times when I fudged things, I made things worse more often than I made them better at least 2/3rds of the times.   What typically happens is the PC's have a run of bad luck and you think, "Gee, this combat is going bad.  I should put on the kid gloves", and then the luck swings the other way and the PC's trounce over the encounter without further difficulty.  Or else, the NPCs are having a run of bad luck and you really think it's going to harm the drama and the BBEG is going to go down without a fight, so you fudge, and then the luck swings back the other way and suddenly you've got multiple PC's down and your facing down player deaths or TPK if you don't now fudge your fudging.  It doesn't really improve the narrative and the temptation to break the rules to improve the narrative is a really nasty temptation to greatly avoid.  You really should be playing to find out what happens and not deciding what is going to happen because you like that story more.  If you are frequently breaking the rules because you don't like the consequences, you should get different rules.  It's better to question whether the rules really are providing the sort of game you want to have than to resort to illusionism.On top of that, I've been a player who realized the GM was fudging and I got to tell you, it's not a good experience.   If the GM fudged and that's how you won, it robs the victory of its savor.  And if the GM fudged and that's why you lost a character or some other important resource, well that's a really hard thing to take.So learn to play without doing it or do it as little as possible.  Adopt rules that don't require it and which do deliver the game you want.  Gain system mastery so that you have more control over how things are going to play out.   Prepare for the situation more rigorously and carefully.  And have realistic expectations that you can't always predict or control which fights will be the dramatic and difficult ones, but that whatever happens and whatever the story the players achieve is the story that is meant to happen and not the private fantasies you had ahead of time while preparing.</blockquote>

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