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

[billd91]

What I’m saying is, your position implies that the DM should have the power to override the dice whenever they want without notice or permission, because they “care about the game.” Frankly, given your generally pro-player stance, I’m pretty surprised that you would take such a position.

Why? The dice aren’t fans of the players, while the DM, in some play styles, is. What is this assumption that a DM fudging has to be anti-player?

 

[CleverNickName]

Usually it's an issue of DM machismo to brag about how you roll in the open to justify your body count.

And I am pro-player. I'm just not pro 'the game is about letting the dice fall where they may' as a style I'm going to involve myself with.

For a lot of us, it's not really a style choice or justification, and it has nothing to do with "machismo." (Also: what?) I play on a virtual tabletop, so I pretty much have to make my rolls in the open. Foundry VTT and Roll20 won't easily let me "fudge" anything without the players knowing it...even add-on tools and widgets designed to allow it can be detected by players who know where to look.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is kinda true and also one reason why I personally don't like to fudge.

But it is also a bit misleading. In a game where the GM is basically in charge of everything outside the characters, ultimately everything happens because GM lets it to happen. Even if you don't fudge the dice, you could have always have an ally to come to the characters' aid, have the enemy decide to not kill the character, etc. Ultimately there really is not escaping of that responsibility.

That's what I've been advocating though! Take responsibility without fudging. You can, just as you say, always achieve the desired end without fudging because, y'know, phenomenal cosmic DM powers.

Which is exactly why I told my players that permanent, irrevocable, random character deaths won't happen in my game. There might be PC deaths (none so far, but nothing is guaranteed!), but they will either be temporary, reversible, or the result of an agreement between the player and me. No player needs fear totally losing the character they're invested in. That does not mean there are no stakes. I have made my players agonize over choices multiple times, or fear for the places and people they love, or consider (and occasionally take) risks where they KNOW they don't know the full story and are possibly playing into a wicked NPC's hands. And as a result of my choosing to do this, my players are more relaxed. They can try some zany things, knowing that they won't lose the character and story they have been exploring. They're still overall very gunshy, treating risk as something to either mitigate to oblivion or simply avoid completely, but I am slowly persuading them to consider more flashy means.

I'm sorry you feel my example is contrived. I had hoped a simple example would be more illustrative of my point that a more fleshed-out example would be, but apparently not.

Stepping away from the example, do you always communicate intel to your players accurately, and do they always take away from it what you intended them to? If not, how do you personally prefer to address such errors and miscommunications when they arise?

My issue (which I think is the same as Iserith's) is that I don't make errors of the kind you describe. Like...that is just completely orthogonal to the ways players gain information about threats they might face. Let me give an example from my actual game.

Recently, the players went on an expedition to investigate an ancient genie-rajah city, once lost to the desert, now uncovered: Al-Shafadir, the City of Fire and Water, located in a dormant caldera (think a small city built inside something like Yellowstone crossed with Crater Lake, just with less lake.) This was something of a more casual, palate cleanser adventure, as we'd had a lot of high drama, high plot stories prior. Since they knew it would be a volcanic caldera, they did some preparation for the plausible threats, and investigated what they could, but records are limited when the city has been lost for two millennia. But they learned what they could, getting some idea of the kind of threats they'd likely face: fire spirits, maybe basilisks, maybe flying creatures who could reach the caldera from the air, curses and traps left behind by the former occupants, bandits or rivals trying to strip the most valuable stuff right away, etc.

None of that required any amount of "this threat is definitely easy" or "you're going to struggle to fight this." It instead is heavily qualitative: these are some likely creatures or entities, and these are the characteristics your research indicates these things possess. But research is rarely so accurate or precise that it gives a comprehensive and objective threat assessment, so the players planned for possible problems, buying antidotes, fire resistance potions, and tools, supplies, and equipment for a moderately long stay should it prove necessary.

So I'm just kind of at a loss about your question. This type of error just...isn't one that occurs in my game. Not because I am incapable of error (I assure you, that is emphatically NOT true), but because the way player research and investigation work does not produce the kind of result you describe, and I'm frankly not sure how they could do so. Hence, the example seems contrived.

It isn’t really controversial, happens all the time. The people that object to it, just don’t know it’s happening.

For all your protests, you’ll never know if your DM is doing it. And because you want your players to think you don’t, nothing you can say can convince me that you don’t do it either

Wow. I just...wow. Thank you, Sigmund Freud. So glad to know that my open repudiation (to the point of intentionally stepping back my rhetoric after generic mod admonition to the thread) is simply proof that I'm in denial—or worse, outright lying to everyone.

It's not like I use a system where DMs almost never roll, or like I use a Discord bot for all rolls so it's impossible for me to change the results or conceal them from the players...

• if a DM told you they reserved the right to fudge (modify a die roll that had already been made) during Session Zero, how would you feel?
• if you realized during play that a DM fudged rolls and they didn’t tell you up front, how would you feel?

Former: If it was any kind of serious game (which is 99.9% of my gaming) then I would thank them for telling me and leave the table as politely as possible. I have no interest in playing a relatively serious game where the DM reserves the right to tell me they know better than I do what I will find fun.

Latter: I would tell the DM in private exactly how I feel about such tactics and then leave. If it's a particularly egregious example, I might walk from the table then and there.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For a lot of us, it's not really a style choice or justification, and it has nothing to do with "machismo."

It's how it used to be almost universally discussed when fudging came up. The implication that you weren't playing 'manly' D&D unless you let the chaos blitz your PCs into a smooth salsa.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

And frankly, I think it's a weird thing to have to mention in session 0 because I never saw this discussed as an issue on the player side until like last year. Usually it's an issue of DM machismo to brag about how you roll in the open to justify your body count.

This is just not how it is, not here in this thread, or elsewhere. I get it--all the talk of TPKs makes me itchy, and wonder why people still play a game where TPKs are ever a thing, mechanically. But that's not the only result in question, at all. There's plenty of talk in this thread about fudging to keep things immersive or interesting, including making sure an NPC enemy doesn't get ganked earlier than the GM would have preferred, or turning a player's frown upside-down by artificially breaking a streak of bad rolls.

So you've created a really specific straw man. That's how these sorts of threads go. But I'm confused, because your overall hard-fightin', down-with-the-old-school position seems inconsistent, since you're also going super hard in the paint for that hoariest of old school POVs--the GM is god, and that's that. Nothing gets in their way, especially not these uncaring dice. You can frame it as being a pro-player, kinda-sorta-storygame-ish approach, but constant, shameless fudging is just GM force turned up to 11.

ETA: Not going to delete, but yeah, I'm falling for it. There's a very specific and effective way to troll these discussions, which is to only drop super short responses that are as inflammatory as they can possibly be, without violating forum rules. Nothing but hot takes. So congrats, you baited me. Here's hoping we all wise up to this schtick.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So you've created a really specific straw man. That's how these sorts of threads go. But I'm confused, because your overall hard-fightin', down-with-the-old-school position seems inconsistent, since you're also going super hard in the paint for that hoariest of old school POVs--the GM is god, and that's that. Nothing gets in their way, especially not these uncaring dice. You can frame it as being a pro-player, kinda-sorta-storygame-ish approach, but constant, shameless fudging is just GM force turned up to 11.

Maybe because I see it as a useful tool to improve the game for my players because it's legerdemain to keep the game running smooth and not force?

Maybe because I'm not talking about 'constant, shameless fudging' and that's just loaded language designed to frame the discussion in a less than favorable way?

 

[CleverNickName]

It's how it used to be almost universally discussed when fudging came up. The implication that you weren't playing 'manly' D&D unless you let the chaos blitz your PCs into a smooth salsa.

Heh. Yeah, we all like to think that the "Meat Grinder" style of play went extinct in the 1980s, but it's still alive and well.

Speaking for myself only: I feel that random dice rolls are intended to inject chaos...they are supposed to be wild and unpredictable. Whenever a roll is made, both the player and the DM should be just as ready and willing to accept a nat-2 as they are a nat-19. Otherwise, I don't see the point of rolling in the first place. Others clearly disagree with me, and I don't mind. But that's where I stand.

Chaos is a feature, not a bug.

 

[billd91]

For a lot of us, it's not really a style choice or justification, and it has nothing to do with "machismo." (Also: what?)

Oh, I think that qualifies as a detectable subtext for some of the anti-fudgers.

 

[CleverNickName]

Oh, I think that qualifies as a detectable subtext for some of the anti-fudgers.

I'm not sure I follow. It sounds like you disagree with me?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Others clearly disagree with me, and I don't mind. But that's where I stand.

But... you're still going to accuse everyone who disagrees dishonest, anti-player, power-tripping, etc right?

Right?

Come on dude, we need this!