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

[overgeeked]

I've put up a companion poll.

D&D General - DMs how do you feel about players fudging?

This is a a companion thread to the other poll on fudging. I think DM responses matter on this issue. It needs no further description: whatever you consider "fudging" to be, what do you as a DM think of players doing it? Word of warning: you cannot change your vote. Pick wisely!

www.enworld.org

It'll be interesting to see how opinions differ and why.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's a pretty big gap between "some people find X dampens their fun, so they would rather it never happens in their game" and "X is so controversial for some folks that it will almost guarantee an argument if discovered, and has a very high chance of damaging the group." Don't try to paint all these things as though they are the same, or just slight variations. They aren't.

That's a one dimensional axis, though. Are there people who would get in an argument about this if it happened? Do you know for sure? Care to put a bet on it? But even if true, are the numbers of people on both sides the same, or are there less people who care about fudging than about interrupting the flow? Unless you know, you're just privledging who's ox gets gored.

So while they aren't necessarily the same, trying to claim there's no parallel isn't something I feel a need to cede here.

All expectations of unremitting perfection in performance are unhealthy. Human beings are not capable of performing without error 100% of the time. Mistakes can and will happen. I don't see how this is an extreme position: don't expect your DMs to be perfect, and don't lead others to believe you are perfect as DM. This isn't rocket science.

But that's only relevant if the way to paper over that imperfection without you having to deal with it bothers you. Again, you're coming at as though your posture on this is universal, or at least majoritarian. I don't really have much sign that's true.

 

[CleverNickName]

But there's nothing secret about it. That's just as critical as "did it change any numbers?"

I can see how that distinction is critical to the argument you're making, sure.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't see it as something that needs to be a critical degree to require fudging.

And that's where you lose me.

 

[iserith]

Not to be too blunt here--but different people can have vastly different experiences. Positive experience ("I've seen X") thoroughly outweighs negative ("I've never seen X") because both of them can be true, while the second one only says why the second person feels as they do, while not being able to say the first hasn't come by their feelings legitimately, too.

I can only speak for myself and my experiences. I can't speak for others. What I understand of others' experiences still doesn't justify fudging in my view since what I see can be corrected upstream of the need to fudge.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can only speak for myself and my experiences. I can't speak for others. What I understand of others' experiences still doesn't justify fudging in my view since what I see can be corrected upstream of the need to fudge.

Nor should it. But when others explain why, saying "I haven't seen it" is not a terribly useful response other than to say why you don't. It doesn't say anything about it as a general policy.

 

[Cadence]

I can only speak for myself and my experiences. I can't speak for others. What I understand of others' experiences still doesn't justify fudging in my view since what I see can be corrected upstream of the need to fudge.

Does that cover everything you've said upthread? Would "Some can be corrected upstream, and some (like TPKs or new players dying, or strings of awful rolls) don't need any. correction." get the rest of it?

 

[iserith]

Nor should it. But when others explain why, saying "I haven't seen it" is not a terribly useful response other than to say why you don't. It doesn't say anything about it as a general policy.

I don't understand what you're trying to get at. To be fair, I haven't read most of your posts, so I don't really know your position or if you're referring to something you've said previously.

 

[iserith]

Does that cover everything you've said upthread? Would "Some can be corrected upstream, and some (like TPKs or new players dying, or strings of awful rolls) don't need any. correction." get the rest of it?

The correction is simply setting stakes you can live with instead of ones you can't. If you say heads is life and tails is death and you flip the coin and it comes up tails, but you can't live with that result, why on earth did you set those stakes?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't understand what you're trying to get at. To be fair, I haven't read most of your posts, so I don't really know your position or if you're referring to something you've said previously.

Mine was that it was an emergency response tool. Some of the things I consider emergencies you don't (again your gig) but at least one general class you seemed to just deny ever happening. My point was that "it hasn't happened IME" is not a response to people who say it has in theirs, unless its to imply they're lying or are extreme outliers.