D&D General How do players feel about DM fudging?

[LordEntrails]

...not going to define anyone else's experience, and probably should not be used for extrapolation lightly.

You might want to try engaging in some empathy and asking questions an dlistening to answers with an open mind, rather than just resisting without understanding the situations others experience.

What's up with this? You misread my first post and show you lack any empathy towards my position, and then claim I'm doing that with my next post?

No where did I dismiss others experience. I was clearly stating my experiences. Perhaps we should leave it there?

 

[Umbran]

No, I am not. I said "it makes me feel...". I understand that logically it might not.

Okay. Fair enough.

I understand that there might be other reasons. I'm saying how it makes me feel, and that those feelings lead towards eroding trust.

So, that brings up a few questions. Are you seeing it happen and allowing your trust to erode, or engaging the GM in a discussion about it?

Feeling and emotions are valid, even when not logical.

Sure. But, as already noted, we owe it to others on the table to address those emotions in a mature manner. Simply allowing trust to be eroded silently isn't great behavior either.

 

[GreyLord]

I also like fudging so much as a player that I don't even bother wasting my time going to look for it. I have no idea if / when or how my DM fudges because I do not care. So I never have to ever feel like my victory was "unearned"... because I never once bother to even go and check.

I call it my "suspension of disbelief". I willing believe I'm pretending to be a dwarf fighting dragons just like I willing believe everything we do is exactly the way it was supposed to go and it happened just like it meant to. To do anything else is to ruin the magic.

Except for when the players roll their HP...if a player knows I'm fudging or have fudged something, I'm doing something wrong.

If they know all my Monster HP, stats, and other items as well as what a dungeon or adventure is stocked with...something has gone very wrong.

If it is because the player cheated and looked at my stuff (I have rather strict rules about what is or is not DM information), that is not cool...but I think that's far more fudging on the player's part than what any DM has ever done.

If done right, a fudge shouldn't be something players even realize when done in game. It may be that other playstyles the DM just tells players what the statistics and abilities and HP are of the enemy they are fighting. That's never been the way I do it though, so players shouldn't feel as if their victory was unearned. How would they even KNOW what an enemy can or cannot do or how many HP the foe has (and in my campaign, they wouldn't unless they cheated rather heavily themselves).

 

[FrozenNorth]

Are you saying that a run of bad luck ruining someone's day is immature?

I said that in a game where you roll a lot of dice and that runs of bad luck are therefore inevitable, dealing with such runs of bad luck maturely is important.

You are spending the evening hanging out with your friends, playing a game that you enjoy, and specifically, a game that allows you to contribute in a bunch of ways even if you have an off-night. You could let the fact that you’ve rolled 3 nat 1s consecutively ruin your night, but if so, you’re not focussing on what matters.

I often play games like Pandemic, Gloomhaven, or Forbidden Island with my kids. Often, we fail the game. We all still have fun and play again.

 

[Umbran]

What's up with this? You misread my first post and show you lack any empathy towards my position, and then claim I'm doing that with my next post?

No where did I dismiss others experience. I was clearly stating my experiences. Perhaps we should leave it there?

There's a couple of points I'm heading to here.

I opened up with a statement about what seemed to be happening for a reason - so you could be aware of the seeming, and so you could correct it, it if was inaccurate.

And here, I am raising the point that simply stating a negative reaction is not, in and of itself, constructive. Like, if you were on boards about cooking:

Them: "I made this wonderful chocolate souffle last night. I used {technique} and {brand of ingredients}. How have you guys made chocolate souffles?"

You: "The last time I had a chocolate souffle, I got food poisoning."

The food poisoning is a truth, and a negative experience, sure. But is the comment supposed to go somewhere? What do you hope that folks making chocolate souffle would do to avoid giving people food poisoning? Or, are you confused about how you got food poisoning? What about this experience do you want to discuss?

 

[loverdrive]

Except, nobody here is actually following formal debate rules, and the only rules to discussion are about being good to people.

I get the general point that Oberoni is making, but the final conclusion is just about as flawed as citing Rule Zero in that manner.

It's still a discussion stopper, though. What's even the point of talking about rules, when we assume that they can be just changed on a whim?

That said, now I'm thinking Oberoni principle doesn't apply here, but "the rules say [X]" still isn't a valid argument in a discussion about whether the rules should say [X] or not.

 

[Flamestrike]

I think the point here, though, is that when they are used as a random number generator both a) the number so generated and b) whatever effects and-or outcomes that number would lead to have to be honoured.

I disagree on this, but to each his or her own.

 

[Flamestrike]

Good for you?

So is lying. But I know what you are doing is for "good" reasons. For me, deceiving my players is something that is only done very rarely, for fun, and revealed or over come by events very quickly.

Deceit?

It's deceit like a magician is deceiving his audience. As a DM you're one part showman and entertainer.

You're not just there to randomly generate numbers.

 

[aco175]

I'm trying to think of all the things I did in the last game that me or others here may think is fudging on my part. The 2nd level group was attacking a cult hideout with kobolds. They were getting to the large room with a ritual going on and expected to fight 4 kobolds, a caster kobold, and a hobgoblin. There was a chance that the noise could be heard from the cultists in the room down from a ledge overlooking the big room. These are all things I did during play as the big fight was going on.

1 I did not have anything written down for the DC to climb the wall to the ledge. I have a 2nd level group and went with a DC12 Athletics. It was a 20ft wall, so the PCs needed a double move to get to the top, the rogue did not climb.

2 I changed the caster's healing potion from listed at the table to on him so he could take it since he nearly died in the first round of combat.

3 The custists did hear the fight and the leader came to the ledge and was going to use cool power to float down and fight, but most everyone in the room was dead, so he was going to wait until the others that could not fly could circle around and attack from the PCs rear. I had wrote that it would take 3 rounds, but changed that to only 2 and allowed them to have the kobold cooks join them since the PCs went past the cooks. In reality, the 3 rounds should have been 4 if they stopped to collect the cooks, but I could argue that the cooks hears the fighting and came to peek in and were in the hall and not the kitchen.

4 I changed the hobgoblin's crossbow to a spear so he could throw it.

5 I allowed the burning hands spell to destroy the animal skins blocking the doorway so the PCs could see the remaining cultists behind the cooks after the spell killed all of them.

6 I did allow one of the PCs to have advantage on the save from the casters dragon breath ability, since they were behind a column.

7 I did lower the cooks attack to +2 and only deal 1d4 since they were old and feeble, but also since I just added 4 more monsters to the encounter. They all took a burning hands for 13 or half, so it did not matter.

There may have been a few more things I did that I do not recall. Some of the things were because nothing was written for that part of the encounter, or the PCs actions were not planned for and I needed to adjust. Curious to see what people think on whether or not all the things are fudge or adjusting.

 

[Cadence]

You are spending the evening hanging out with your friends, playing a game that you enjoy, and specifically, a game that allows you to contribute in a bunch of ways even if you have an off-night. You could let the fact that you’ve rolled 3 nat 1s consecutively ruin your night, but if so, you’re not focussing on what matters.

I often play games like Pandemic, Gloomhaven, or Forbidden Island with my kids. Often, we fail the game. We all still have fun and play again.

A game designed to be over in a few hours feels a lot different to me than one that's designed to go on for weeks and might have built up some attachment to a long term goal or character. (I mean they certainly shouldn't ever storm out, or throw the dice, but having something you've worked on for months crash to a halt because of 1 in 8,000 bad luck feels like kind of an evening ruiner).