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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8597758" data-attributes="member: 6790260">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! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />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.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.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.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.</blockquote>

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