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

[soviet]

Apparently if I draw a map of a dungeon and don't reveal it to the players, I'm deceiving them. And if I don't divulge the NPC elf's alignment, motivation, treasure, spells, and every other piece of info about him, that's concealment and I'm deceiving the players!!

You're putting up a physical screen so the players can't see your rolls, you're changing the results of those rolls, and if the players were to ask you if you'd changed the result you would lie to them. That's a bit more of an active deception than not giving the players a map of the dungeon in advance.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm actually quite curious about this.

Firstly from a definitional point: If there are strict rules then (known to the players or not) it's not really fudging - it's just application of a rule ie Adjudication. For ex. If the rule is (completely arbitrarily just for ex.) every time a d20 rolls a 11-12, I treat it as a 13 - well ok. I don't think that's fudging if it's a strict rule and it's simple adjudication of that rule!

But second, what warrants strict rules on changing the result? Is it something like: If a creature with multiple attacks rolls a crit, I only count 1 of the attacks as a crit?

Genuinely curious.

While I don't have too much to contribute to this, it seems to me 13th Age has a whole lot of special-case abilities that effectively do this sort of thing. I know the way the represent two-weapon fighting is to allow anyone using two-weapons to reroll any 1's, for example.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If one of the players at the table thinks someone else is dishonest, it doesn't matter if the person doing the action doesn't agree. The table has a problem that might end the campaign.

It doesn't matter if you are right, if your actions lead to the game dissolving and people thinking less of one another, then everyone has lost.

While you're not wrong, that gets back to the whole communication thing; you can only avoid problems you know, and at some point if someone has enough tripwires, avoiding them all can be more trouble than its worth (this does not say the one specifically at hand is "too many", though depending on other people's game culture, it can add up to that).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, but that kind of emphasizes the importance of these threads, exposing that there are other players and DMs that interact with the game differently.

Yes, but people have to also believe what they see isn't a case of quirky outliers. You see people dismiss that for things that come up on discussion all the time. We've had at least one person in this thread who's more or less done it to the whole class of "people bothered by fudging."

 

[Maxperson]

You're putting up a physical screen so the players can't see your rolls, you're changing the results of those rolls, and if the players were to ask you if you'd changed the result you would lie to them. That's a bit more of an active deception than not giving the players a map of the dungeon in advance.

I put up the screen so I can have my books and maps out and open, and for the information it provides. I roll behind the screen because it's convenient. Do assume about me.

I also said a few posts ago that I would tell them about it if they asked. Don't call me a liar again.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Eh, that's getting pretty muddy, especially if the 'houserule' is part of the monster rules. The GM certainly is not obligated to tell the players the stats and rules of the monsters. I alter and homebrew the monster statblocks all the time, and I'm not usually telling the players. (Though recently I told them when they were struggling with certain monsters, that they were actually nerfed* from what the MM said.)

(* And good thing I had read the statblock carefully and done so.)

Though I think even if you don't want players to know what individual monsters can do (I find I don't really care), there's a difference between "this particular monster has this special trick" and "monsters generically get to do this." I think the players ought to know about the latter.

 

[Thomas Shey]

On the contrary. If a game ends because it was discovered there was that large of a fissure between the playstyles of all the players, I think everybody wins. Because now they can go find other players who better suit them.

Assuming they can. Sometimes the available players are very limited for one reason or another, and it'd been nice to find out about those fissures and see if they could be bridged before someone falls in one.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's just it: I can't trust a fudging DM to be either impartial or consistent in his fudging.

It occurs to me that the bit that keeps getting referenced here is in the DMG, meaning that technically it's not player-side info. Unless there's a corollary reference in the PH or some other player-side book, a player in theory has no way to know that fudging is allowed by RAW and thus has every reason to feel misled or distrustful when (not if) she notices it occurring.

I think you're assuming far less players read DM guides than do, personally.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's certainly a new thing.

You are literally the first person I've every seen raise an objection and that was like only a year or two ago.

Before that, not fudging was just a piece of plausible deniability for killer DMs; the 'I'm just playing my character' of TPKs.

But that was before it became 'badwrongfuning' to malign railroads, so we may well have plunged beyond the event horizon into a realm of madness.

Dude, a simple google search on the topic turns up blog posts from the aughts that are anti-fudging! I mean, totally get your position (it's not at all something I want or like, but sure), but these claims that it didn't exist and it's a new thing is just showing that you weren't exposed to it in a way you remember, not that it hasn't been a hot topic since the game pretty much came out!

 

[Hussar]

/snip

If you hide the dice from your players, and you change the results from time to time, how are they ever supposed to trust the roll results you tell them? They have no way of knowing if you’re telling them the real results or making it up.
/snip

Swimming upthread a bit, sorry, but, teasing this out.

They trust me because I take the time to build up that trust by providing an enjoyable game. If they are enjoying the game, then the fact that I fudge (or, to be 100% truthful as I have been all the way along and, by the definitions of this thread, I DON'T) is part of that enjoyment.

Again, this is people making a far bigger deal about things than it needs to be. There are a thousand ways I, as DM, can influence the game. This is just another tool. Is it a tool I use personally? No. I don't. Have I done it in face to face games? Yup. I certainly have. Would I do it again in a face to face game? In 5e, likely not since the game is already pretty forgiving and it's unlikely to be needed in my games. But, again, since we're specifically talking about changing die rolls, and nothing else, I'd say that no, I don't do it.

But, my whole issue is that if you have this huge reaction to someone shifting a die roll, why not everything else? Why are dice suddenly given such a prime position that any rolled die MUST NEVER BE ALTERED, when the DM can simply alter one of a thousand other things and get the same result?

It's tempest in a teacup.