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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8599497" data-attributes="member: 2629">My major observation surrounding fudging is that when it happens, the DM is playing with themself more than with their players.  What I mean by this is that DMs that fudge tend to do so in order to make things follow a plan.  That plan may be specific, such as a tight railroad story, or it may be general such as 'it would be bad for the story for a PC to die right now, so I'll pretend that max damage crit did not take place'.When fudging takes place, it ends up shifting control of the game.  Under the RAW with no fudging, the game is directed by the designs of the DM, the choices of the players, and the luck of the dice.  Fudging shifts control of the game out of the decisions of the players (by reducing the impact of their decisions) and out of the impact of luck.  This puts more control in the unilateral control of the DM - and that ends up as the DM playing with themself.  I have firm rules for fudging as it relates to the two types of fudging I recognize: Changing mechanics and changing die rolls.1.) Once the players encounter something, it is locked.  I do not change the abilities of a monster, the mechanics of a magic item, or the mechanics of a spell.  I only violate this rule in cases of grevious balance issues, and I have encountered none of those in 3E, 4E or 5E official official RAW.  I have tweaked a couple homebrew things I initially allowed, but not RAW.  2.) As a DM, I do not fudge die rolls.  Ever.  The dice giveth, and the dice taketh away.  I am willing to let PCs die due to die luck.  I tend to not end a character story when the PC dies, but instead continue to have the backstory elements of the game impact the setting, keeping the PC 'alive' in the story even as the player runs a new character and we add other elements to support the new PC.  To that end, death is just a step in the story - and I know that a PC's death gives that story closure, which is often preferable to the campaigns that stop mid-way through a PC's story and leave their stories unresolved.As a player, I will occasionally decide to fail a roll.  I do this because it makes the story of the game better.  This is more common with inexperienced DMs that are not as prepared to handle a novel solutionto a problem.  Usually, this is above the board ("I rolled a 17 for a total of 26, but I think it'd be more fun if I had rolled a 3 and had a total of 12.  Can we say that happened?"), but I have on occasion done it without revealing that I was being deceitful about the dice when I felt like it was really necessary, and when the discussion of it might not go over so well.</blockquote>

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