D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Hussar]

I do have to point out you can think its ethically OK but think there's a loss of something in the illusion of the game if its visible. I don't consider that a good enough reason, but its not an irrational or hypocritical one.

It might not be irrational or hypocritical, but, it is pretty thin. After all, it's not like the DM is asking permission beforehand. I seriously doubt any DM in their session 0 straight up tells the players, "Hey, from time to time, when I feel it's appropriate, I'm going to fudge die rolls. I'm not going to tell you when, but, I am going to do it". I'm pretty sure what the response from the players would be and it likely wouldn't be very positive.

Because, once you've made it clear to the players that you might, at any point in time, whenever you feel it's "appropriate" over rule the dice and any time you do it, you will not tell the players, you lose a fair bit of trust at the table. After all, they never know when you will do it, so, that makes every roll suspect.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It might not be irrational or hypocritical, but, it is pretty thin. After all, it's not like the DM is asking permission beforehand. I seriously doubt any DM in their session 0 straight up tells the players, "Hey, from time to time, when I feel it's appropriate, I'm going to fudge die rolls. I'm not going to tell you when, but, I am going to do it". I'm pretty sure what the response from the players would be and it likely wouldn't be very positive.

Because, once you've made it clear to the players that you might, at any point in time, whenever you feel it's "appropriate" over rule the dice and any time you do it, you will not tell the players, you lose a fair bit of trust at the table. After all, they never know when you will do it, so, that makes every roll suspect.

We actually do have at least one person on this forum--IIRC in this thread, but I fear I no longer remember specifically whom--who has point-blank told me that yes, they do in fact tell their players that they may, on fairly rare occasions, fudge rolls if they feel that doing so is genuinely in the group's best interest. Their players have apparently been mostly fine with that.

 

[clearstream]

"Fudging" is cutesy baby talk to obfuscate what you're actually doing: Cheating.

That depends upon the game.

It's stated in the game text that DM can alter rolls if they choose, so doing so cannot be cheating in D&D, just as altering adversaries midsession cannot be cheating in Daggerheart. On the other hand, it would be cheating in any game that places GM within the rules as a player and lacks such text.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That depends upon the game.

It's stated in the game text that DM can alter rolls if they choose, so doing so cannot be cheating in D&D, just as altering adversaries midsession cannot be cheating in Daggerheart. On the other hand, it would be cheating in any game that places GM within the rules as a player and lacks such text.

I disagree with this assertion.

Just because the books declare you can do it, doesn't mean it isn't cheating. Cheating is more than simply "did you follow the rules?" If someone developed a device that allows you to read other people's minds, and secretly used it in order to win at a poker tournament, do you think that they would not be classified as "cheating" just because the rules don't explicitly say that telepathy is cheating? Further, let's say you're in a chess tournament, and you learn only after that the waiver everyone has to sign actually included a deeply-buried clause saying that the referees may move any piece on the board to any location on the board that they could have reached by a valid sequence of moves. Would that not still be considered "cheating" by most people watching that tournament, even though technically speaking the rules specifically allowed for it?

"Cheating" is not simply "breaking an explicit rule". It is to participate dishonestly in some way. That's why we use it for related things, like breaking fidelity with one's significant other, or illicitly acquiring the answers to an exam in advance.

Given the book itself includes mention of not telling the players you do this, that would seem to be an admission that it is illicit--even if it is recommended by the book text, it is a violation of some kind, something worthy of the players' ire, should they discover it.

 

[Maxperson]

I suppose. I think that answer's a bit convenient though. "Everything is in flux, except for the things I don't like to be in flux" is hardly a very satisfying axiom for game design.

See, I have zero problem with the idea that everything is in flux up to the point where it is introduced to the table (initiative is rolled). I fully support that idea. But, I was told that things being in flux was the antithesis of sandbox play. Which kinda leads to my confusion. If things are "in flux" then doing something like adding a cook to the kitchen is perfectly fine - after all, who or what is in the kitchen is "in flux" until the door is opened. Rolling random encounters are perfectly fine because everything is "in flux" until it's established at the table.

I love playing this way.

But, we've just spent the last four or five hundred pages of posts absolutely denying that things can be "in flux" in a simulationist and/or sandbox game.

So, you'll have to pardon my confusion here.

I don't think it's an answer of convenience. Degree is the difference between a tap and a punch, or a glass of water and a swimming pool, or an ultralight and a 747 jumbo jet.

My last post had a question mark at the end because I don't know how "setting element" was used in your discussion, so I was was guessing. My guess was along the following lines.

Suppose I had a homebrew setting and as part of its history elves disappeared 10,000 years ago and since that time that has not been a single sighting reported. Elves are gone from my setting, and there is a critical reason for them to be gone. Changing that is going to be a crapton harder than deciding to hit the party with 4 orcs instead of 6.