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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Argyle King" data-source="post: 8172951" data-attributes="member: 58416">I prefer to roll in the open.I vastly prefer not to fudge. I would say that I almost never fudge.On rare occasions, the dice produce a result which is implausible* -even by fantasy standards. In such a case, I will modify the results.Also, when dealing with new players (or systems,) I will likely be lenient during the first session or two -if I feel a decision was made due to misunderstanding the game or the situation. However, once we get into the swing of things, the training wheels come off. (I feel similarly about players forgetting to add things. During the first few sessions, I may be lenient about rewinding. However, after a few sessions, I expect that people know their stuff... at least well enough that I'm not halting the game to go back several turns and ad something. I've found that players tend to learn their abilities when not learning means I don't constantly remind them.)In both cases, even if I do fudge, I attempt to be transparent about it. Most likely, this comes in the form of something like "ok, the rules say Joe should lose his leg from the ogre's frisbee toss... would you prefer that or being knocked unconscious?"For me, I prefer to not fudge because I believe it helps to keep myself honest, in dividing my role as referee arbiter from that of the role of controlling the actions of antagonists and NPCS.If a possible outcome of the dice being rolled produces something which ruins the game, I'm of the belief that such an outcome should not be among the list of possible outcomes.Edit: *when this does happen, I typically take time to look more closely at that part of the system, to determine if maybe the result was due to something other than the dice. For example, maybe a random table contains some weird results which don't fit or a rule is explained in an ambiguous way (which leads to weird results). If it happens multiple times and appears to be due to some underlying design of the game, I would modify the game and communicate that I had done so to the players. ("house rules")</blockquote>

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