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

[Thomas Shey]

It feels like most DMs on here who fudge let the dice decide the cast majority of the time, with some people being explicit they use it rarely.

Presumably the players also don't want the DM saying "and then I decided the town would be based on this book I read and I came up with these five plot hooks for you if you wanted, here they are" instead of just describing the town and having the hooks show up as appropriate among the narration and responses to player actions.

Though, honestly, I'm not sold that going through a lot of backflips to have people locate plot hooks is always worth while. I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with just going "These things have come to your attention."

 

[Cadence]

It's been nice rolling in the open online recently (just the rolls not the bonuses showing on rolldicewithfriends) because one player has made some (I think mostly in jest) snide remarks when I've managed to have a lucky string of rolls against their high ac.

"I can send you the link if you want to see all the rolls, they're sitting there for the whole night."

I haven't gotten any comments on how I tracked hit point totals or brought in reinforcements or not.

 

[Cadence]

Though, honestly, I'm not sold that going through a lot of backflips to have people locate plot hooks is always worth while. I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with just going "These things have come to your attention."

Fair enough!

How about: "In the next room you see an AC 16 bag of 60 hit points that gets +7 to hit and does 2d8+4 damage, resistance to cold" doesn't seem like a fun way to describe an encounter. ;-)

 

[Umbran]

Exactly. And we don't want them to know we're only pretending to let the dice decide do we?

Mod Note:
Ask yourself whether this is a good way to conduct a conversation.

Ask yourself if you ever want people to be snide to you.

Then, treat others as you would want to be treated. Be better than this.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

Yes, I do.

Hello. My name is Ezekiel Raiden. You fudged my roll. Prepare to...hm. Perhaps Inigo is not the best choice of role model here!

Care to put a bet on it?

No. I do not make nor take bets for any reason, so my refusal to do so is not a matter of confidence, but a matter of principle. Were I a betting man, yes, I would 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.

That was the whole point of this thread. More importantly, there are additional factors in play:
1. This thread demonstrates there are at least some people for whom any presence of my narrow sense of fudging (others go for broader sense) is an absolute dealbreaker. To the best of my knowledge, no one here advocates the position that the absence of fudging would be a dealbreaker--in fact, IIRC even the most strident proponents of fudging hold that it should be used very sparingly.
2. You keep inserting this notion that a diegetic solution has to involve "interrupting the flow." It doesn't--no more than any other form of DM improvisation or extemporization requires "interrupting the flow." Now, perhaps I'm not entirely clear on what you mean by that phrase, but my assumption has been that you mean both maintaining sufficient speed so that the play-experience is not jarringly interrupted, and maintaining sufficient thematic consistency so that the play-experience continues to be appropriate (e.g., if the group likes "zero to hero," heavy on the zero, then thematic consistency places certain restrictions on appropriate responses). The burden of proof is on the "fudging is needed" side to show that it is, in fact, genuinely necessary to include fudging as a solution to these problems. And that should be super easy: just give an example of a situation that cannot, even in principle, be solved without fudging and you're golden.
3. Many have noted that they do not mind fudging so long as the DM discussed it in advance, but have also noted that they have never had DMs who DID discuss it in advance. Now, of course, as was noted before, "I haven't seen" establishes less than "I have seen." But for several different people, all of them active in the TTRPG community, to have never had a single DM in literally decades of play who had that kind of conversation in advance? That's what turns the absence of evidence into evidence of absence. Meanwhile, in this thread and numerous other threads, I have seen numerous people who claim that DMs should never, under any circumstances, tell their players that they fudge--that they should even explicitly deny fudging to their faces. I have seen it discussed on numerous D&D-related blog posts and essays, pretty consistently with the the "if you fudge, never, EVER let your players find out" aspect.

So...yeah. I am privileging whose ox gets gored. I'm doing so because there are reasons: the asymmetry of the problem (most folks don't mind fudging, but a solid minority actively despise it), the lack of an established need for it when other solutions exist and do not seem to run afoul of your requirement to avoid "interrupting the flow," and the demonstrated player expectation that DMs be open about doing it before play begins contrasted against the clear pattern of DMs not only not doing that but actively trying to prevent players from ever finding out.

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.

Is there some parallel? Sure. But they absolutely should not be lumped into a single category together as though there were no difference.

People are bothered, perhaps annoyed, maybe even frustrated by the occasional "interrupt[ion of] the flow." Such players are at the very least a plurality of players, very likely an actual majority.

Other people are outright angered, or feel betrayed or cheated, by even a single instance of fudging, regardless of whether it was for a good reason or whether it was in their favor or against them. Such folks, even if this thread has massively over-inflated their prevalence, are actually quite likely to appear in any given game: if there's even a 15% chance of having such a negative response to fudging from any given player, then the odds of someone in a five-player group having that response are more than half (55.63%). If it were 20%, then one would expect on average most groups would have at least one person who feels that way (slightly more than 2/3 of all five-player groups would have at least one person who is vehemently opposed to fudging).

When the slight majority side has a mild disapproval of an avoidable problem with not using Method X, while a sizable minority side has a massive disapproval of an unavoidable and inherent characteristic of Method X, yes, the moderate and reasonable approach is to not use Method X, and instead learn how to address the issues that can (occasionally) arise from not using Method X.

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.

The logic behind my statement there has nothing to do with fudging specifically. It is a general maxim of life: do not expect people to exhibit perfect performance, and do not lead others to believe your own performance is perfect. Doing so leads to unhealthy behaviors. That's simply a fact of life. It just happens to apply here.

 

[Charlaquin]

I never said anything about not mentioning it in session 0. I'm just not going to stop the game to argue about it in media res. 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.

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.

I consider fudging to be one of the most anti-player things a DM can do. Once I know a DM is fudging, I can never trust that the results are fair. Did that monster crit because the DM rolled a natural 20, or because they thought it would make the fight more dramatic? Did that monster miss because my AC is higher than its attack roll, or because I’m at low HP and the DM is worried I might feel bad if I die? When/if my character does die, I’ll be wondering why they didn’t decide to fudge things to save them. It completely erodes any sense that the game has objective rules. It’s all just whatever they think will make “the best story” or whatever criteria they use. No, thanks.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's one valid way to do it. Another is not out in the open. Secrecy =/= deception. If I roll a 20 and want to change it to a 15 and I say it hit, nobody was deceived. There was never a crit and there was only ever a hit. The dice don't rule the situation.

Yes, there was a crit. Otherwise, you could not have changed anything.

Like, for real here Max. The die rolled something. That's a fact. You can either report that fact as it is, or you can choose to report something other than that fact. Reporting something other than that fact is deceptive when the expectation of play is that rolling a die determines a result. Unless you tell your players "I will ignore the dice if I don't like the results," that's a deception.

If you do tell your players that, then it's not deceptive, it's just secretive. I would not play at your table regardless, given the many disagreements we have had over the years, but I would at least respect your candor.

 

[Charlaquin]

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?

See my post just above this one. (Two above, actually. @EzekielRaiden suck in between my two posts.)

 

[Charlaquin]

Neither does fudging, as I proved. If I roll a 20 and your AC is 16, by RAW I can announce a miss and it is in fact a miss. No lie or deception there. The monster objectively missed and that miss was reported to you.

That’s not how attack rolls work…

 

[Vaalingrade]

I consider fudging to be one of the most anti-player things a DM can do.

That's great.

I don't.

And that's where the story ends. No need for slinging insults and accusations.