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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8598896" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Discovering a DM fudges IS the very thing that would induce me to do that though. That's my point. Fudging is THE thing maximally likely to make me "keep one eye open to make sure [my] games are on the up and up." Doubly so if I were to discover it after play has begun.It really, truly doesn't. Particularly since, as many have noted, even the 5e DMG's reference to fudging explicitly says to never let your players find out you do it. You keep banging on this drum and every single one of us has already conceded it. We get it. There are players cool with fudging who just don't want to hear that it is happening in the moment. That has zero intersection with whether DMs should be honest with their players about whether or not they "reserve the right" to fudge.If the dice have been actually invoked to resolve a contested situation? Essential. If the dice have not been invoked to resolve a contested situation? Extremely important, but not essential.Hence why I have said die rolls used merely to inspire the DM (quickly rolling up an NPC, frex) or speed up a non-adjudication process (generating a magic item, for example) are perfectly acceptable. The rules have not been invoked to resolve a contested situation.There is a vital difference: All of those things are in the open. The DM cannot, even in principle, conceal what tactics the NPCs use against the players because, in order to use them, the NPCs must diegetically interact with the PCs. The NPCs cannot conceal their threshold of surrender because they must openly attempt to surrender if that threshold is passed.You cannot even attempt to make these things "invisible" to the players.Exactly. Could not say it better.Yeah, I haven't explicitly called it out as such before (or at least not recently), but fudging by definition is a metagame action. Like, intentionally. Every single justification given for it is meta: avoiding hurt player feelings, preventing undesired story beats or guaranteeing desired ones, adjusting intended encounter difficulty. Fudging is inherently meta (and anti-diegetic). If people dislike metagame reasoning but are totally cool with fudging, that would baffle me. I'm opposed to both.Again: completely agreed. Dice (and player-facing rules generally) are invoked to resolve contested situations. That they are truly impartial, incapable of even friendly partiality, is the whole point!That's tough. On the one hand, as I have already said, I respect such candor, and the effort to "fix the fix" as it were also deserves respect. On the other, my opposition to fudging is so strong that even this is hard to accept, at least in such abstract form. But if the DM is willing to honestly talk about it and work out a table agreement, it would be rude to flip tables and leave. The devil's in the details, but...at least in principle I'm open to talking about it.Why not just...be honest with them about what you do and let them decide for themselves whether that's something they can handle? Why conceal this in this way? This is exactly the paternalistic "it's for your own good" mindset that fudging promotes and which I so vehemently oppose.I'm not the one concealing from my players that I secretly modify their rolls and actively work to prevent them from ever finding out!That, right there, is the deception you claim does not exist. You do something, which you not only conceal from your players, you actively work to ensure that they cannot find out that you have done it.If one of your players point-blank asked you if you fudge a roll, when you had in fact done so, would you say yes?I never fudge. Partly because we use a Discord dice bot, partly because I'm opposed to it. I also don't include random, irrevocable, permanent character death. You and others keep acting like fudging is the only way to achieve this end. It is not. The DM toolbox is full almost to bursting with tools to prevent or ameliorate unforeseen or undesirable consequences, and no other tool is so inherently anti-diegetic and controversial as fudging.That's a hot take and no mistake. "Your game group crashed and burned because of a preventable problem? Awesome!!!"Or, y'know, defuse the gorram bomb in advance. Avoid getting the cut that requires the bandaid. TALK to people! Good Lord, why is "talk to your players and get them on board in advance" such an onerous burden?!That it includes any text whatsoever about "don't let your players find out" is morally objectionable to me.Mad, I know arguing with you about the words you use is an exercise in transcendental frustration, but...Those are not "strict rules on when [you] fudge and to what degree." Those are barely even guidelines.As noted above, I find this very curious. Why does the inherently metagame nature of fudging not put it on equal footing with player-sourced metagame behavior?As above: I strongly oppose such a distinction, where blatant DM metagaming is acceptable but no form of player metagaming is acceptable.....Max, you DO realize that "endorsement" is a form of recommendation, right? And that you cannot recommend both doing X and NOT doing X? You can either recommend one or the other or have no stance toward either. But you cannot, of the same thing, in the same sense, simultaneously recommend X and recommend not-X. "You should do X, and you should do not-X" is a straight up contradiction.</blockquote>

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