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

[Maxperson]

Fudging is rolling the dice and ignoring their results. Like railroading and metagaming and a bunch of other RPG terms, people force a lot of definitional drift to them over time which just needlessly confuses things in my view. The DM gets to pick which content goes into the game and that includes what is on the roll tables. If you want to roll for content and some of that content is not acceptable, take it off (or find a way to live with it).

Saying to yourself before the roll that X number is not going to be accepted IS taking it off the table. I often roll on an encounter table, but eliminate certain results. I don't feel like picking, but a few results don't make sense so I remove them. That's not fudging a roll, that creating a brand new encounter table without those numbers on it. Except without the complete and utter waste of time that it would take to re-write the table prior to rolling.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That’s fair. To be honest I don’t have a problem making assumptions about monsters without having encountered them previously. Using fire on trolls can easily be understood to be characters having heard tales of trolls and fire. When players challenge the DM as to what monsters should be, is where the hackles rise for me. In my game trolls might need cold to prevent regen, in which case that’s what it is. There’s no need for session zero on this, other to maybe say don’t make assumptions about monsters. I’d have that as a blanket rule anyway.

There's a couple of things that can make this occur.

1. Some people have very strong feelings about what the range of things a GM should be able to do are. There are a variety of reasons for this, some more legitimate than others, but if you get a player like that in a game where the GM feels its within his rights and responsibilities there's going to be a conflict looking for a place to happen. As you say, its a good idea to have that up front, but not every player can let it go.

2. Sometimes there's a sense of bait-and-switch involved. Particularly with D&D, people are steeped in certain expectations of lore. Unless its made abundantly clear that lore is null and void, it can be hard to distinguish a GM who is simply changing things up from one who's playing gotcha, and the world is full enough of people doing that its easy for a player to assume the worst.

Either of these is at least made less likely by making it clear these sort of things will happen up front.

 

[Maxperson]

Right. So deciding to roll a d5 on the table instead of a d6 is just like crossing off the monster they didn't like from the table.

Which is the same as rolling a d6 and deciding to re-roll 3s. Re-writing the list to have 5 creatures, rolling a d5 and skipping that 1 creature, or deciding in advance to re-roll a 3 are all the same.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I feel like there’s a pretty obvious solution here that keeps both camps happy: Don’t fudge at all, whether openly or secretly.

Except, as I've noted, that only works until you've made a critical mistake as a GM. Neither group is going to be happy being rolled-over by one of those.

 

[iserith]

Saying to yourself before the roll that X number is not going to be accepted IS taking it off the table. I often roll on an encounter table, but eliminate certain results. I don't feel like picking, but a few results don't make sense so I remove them. That's not fudging a roll, that creating a brand new encounter table without those numbers on it. Except without the complete and utter waste of time that it would take to re-write the table prior to rolling.

It's not fudging as I've said, but it's akin to fudging, so I avoid that by making sure I can live with any result on a rolltable I use.

 

[Maxperson]

It's not fudging as I've said, but it's akin to fudging, so I avoid that by making sure I can live with any result on a rolltable I use.

It's not akin to fudging. The only difference between writing a new list with 5 creatures and mentally crossing off the 6th creature before you roll is you aren't wasting time and paper writing a new list.

Fudging is deciding to change or ignore the roll AFTER you roll.

 

[iserith]

It's not akin to fudging. The only difference between writing a new list with 5 creatures and mentally crossing off the 6th creature before you roll is you aren't wasting time and paper writing a new list.

Fudging is deciding to change or ignore the roll AFTER you roll, not before.

I agree that is what fudging is, but I do see changing the roll table as akin to fudging based on possible effects on the game, particularly as it relates to players being able to make reasonably informed decisions. Arguably the impact is a great deal smaller than changing the result of an attack roll, saving throw, or ability check, but it's in the ballpark, so I don't do it.

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that is what fudging is, but I do see changing the roll table as akin to fudging based on possible effects on the game, particularly as it relates to players being able to make reasonably informed decisions.

I'm curious about that. How does it affect their ability to make reasonably informed choices? They don't have access to the encounter table, so I don't see how they can make an informed choice about it at all, let alone a less informed one because I removed an option.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I feel like there’s a pretty obvious solution here that keeps both camps happy: Don’t fudge at all, whether openly or secretly.

What about those of us that would rather the DM run the game instead of dice?

 

[FrozenNorth]

There is some tipping point, to me, when fudging goes from being a tool to smooth out mistakes, to being simple a crutch of a DM style I do not want or enjoy. And given that I don't know where that tipping point is, or when my players would notice I have fudged, I just make sure to do it so rarely they. i.e. I would rather err on the side of caution and long term campaign health than to worry about the outcome of any single encounter.

I agree with this and I want to add a secondary point. While not all types of fudging require rolling behind a screen, some do. I find that rolling in the open has benefits for its own sake that are lost if you roll behind a screen in order to be able to fudge.