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

[EzekielRaiden]

Right, and I admit to the same in that thread. It's still fudging though, even if done in favour of the characters

Not necessarily.

I have given my definition of fudging already, but to reiterate: fudging is altering the result of a mechanic (usually a rolled one), done specifically in secret. If the GM is playing with their cards face up, no secrecy around it? It isn't fudging, it's having a conversation with the players. Overriding the rules publicly, where the players can see it, know it, approve it, etc.? Very different beast.

"Hey, this fight's pretty much done, you wanna skip the clean-up?" is not fudging. Yes, it is skipping over the complete mechanical process prior to it reaching its conclusion under its own power. But it is being offered as a question, not a demand. That, I think, is most reasonable--and has none of the manipulation or deception that is implied in how folks use the word "fudging" in general.

I do agree, however, that things which really are fudging (manipulating rule results, usually dice or the modifiers to dice, secretly/deceptively) are so regardless of whether it is favorable or unfavorable to the players in that moment.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In 5e 2014 DMG235

If you roll dice where the players can see, they know you're playing impartially and not fudging rolls. Rolling behind a screen keeps the players guessing about the strength of their opposition. When a monster hits all the time, is it of a much higher level than the characters, or are you rolling high numbers?​

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Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don't distort die rolls too often, though, and don't let on that you're doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don't face any real risks-or worse, that you're playing favorites.​

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In 5e 2024 that changes to

Should you hide your die rolls behind a DM screen, or should you roll your dice in the open for all the players to see? Choose either approach, and be consistent. Each approach has benefits:​

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Hidden Die Rolls. Hiding your die rolls keeps them mysterious and allows you to alter results if you want to. For example, you could ignore a Critical Hit to save a character’s life. Don’t alter die rolls too often, though, and never let the players know when you fudge a die roll.​

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Visible Die Rolls. Rolling dice in the open demonstrates impartiality—you’re not fudging rolls to the characters’ benefit or detriment.​

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Even if you usually roll behind a screen, it can be fun to make an especially dramatic roll where everyone can see it.​

That certainly seems to encourage deception. Not my style, and not the kind of "this can't be questioned", iron-clad proof of its widespread use that was insisted upon in the claim.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The advice is out there, and may even be prevalent, but that isn't irrefutable proof that many, many GMs do it. My issue here is the intensity and lack of wiggle-room with which @EzekielRaiden made their claim.

Why should I? He made the claim. Why is it my responsibility to look into the evidence he didn't provide?

The sky is irrefutably blue. Now I will cite textbooks proving that the sky is in fact blue.

Sometimes, a thing is irrefutably true because people can just observe it directly. Because the evidence is literally all around them.

A substantial proportion of GMs--hence, "many, many" GMs--fudge. Period. That is simply the truth. I can't "prove" that to you any more than I can "prove" that many, many GMs use the bog standard vaguely-Tolkien pseudo-Medieval setting, yet I know for a fact you accept that one on faith, almost surely without having ever seen a single survey on whether homebrew campaigns typically take that form.

Your demand for evidence is, simply, not worth responding to. If you cannot see the evidence littered across the internet and woven into the very books people use, there simply is no conversation to be had. We will not ever be capable of having a meaningful conversation if our worlds are so sundered from one another.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It feels better because it's in the open and those rolls can still fail.

Its openness is precisely what makes it not a problem anymore. That it is a roll that could fail is, frankly, irrelevant.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is the best way.

It absolutely is not. And if you had actually read what I posted, you would know that I have no problem with a thing occurring within the world that isn't what it appears to be. Because I said as much.

You're also literally not using the words @clearstream was using. Because when they used the word "illusion", they were not talking about some kind of spell being cast or whatever. They were talking about the things imagined by us, the players, when we choose to play a roleplaying game.

 

[Maxperson]

Do you mean that you don't think something that operated across games beyond this game would count as transcending that particular instance of play?

By italicising this game I hoped to indicate I meant one instance of play, e.g. this game of Monopoly. This session of Monopoly. The Monopoly metagame transcends that session to take into consideration other sessions.

Gotcha. I was reading what you said as meaning learning strategies and tactics from a different RPG and then taken into say D&D was what you were talking about.

 

[nevin]

Not necessarily.

I have given my definition of fudging already, but to reiterate: fudging is altering the result of a mechanic (usually a rolled one), done specifically in secret. If the GM is playing with their cards face up, no secrecy around it? It isn't fudging, it's having a conversation with the players. Overriding the rules publicly, where the players can see it, know it, approve it, etc.? Very different beast.

"Hey, this fight's pretty much done, you wanna skip the clean-up?" is not fudging. Yes, it is skipping over the complete mechanical process prior to it reaching its conclusion under its own power. But it is being offered as a question, not a demand. That, I think, is most reasonable--and has none of the manipulation or deception that is implied in how folks use the word "fudging" in general.

I do agree, however, that things which really are fudging (manipulating rule results, usually dice or the modifiers to dice, secretly/deceptively) are so regardless of whether it is favorable or unfavorable to the players in that moment.

generally the fudging I've seen with DM's has possibly messed up the encounter, or just had a stupidly long string of ridiculous rolls, and I don't want to break thier game, kill the player etc. I think you are in general talking about handwaiving of trivial things which is not the same as fudging dice, which generally seems to happen in a big moment with big consequences where perhaps the DM doesn't want to allow random bad luck to decide how it went. I've seen more tables fall apart over the DM sticking to Die rolls no matter what than the DM fudging. But this is not a thread where anyone's mind is going to be swayed in any way by anything anyone says so on we go into mud to beat that dead horse some more.

 

[Lanefan]

I had specifically chosen to not mention that section because I have significant issues with it. But yes, it does exist, and I have no better opinion of it than you do, I suspect.

Don't get me wrong - I've seen times when as a DM I want to bail the PCs' collective ass out of a jam, be it of their own making or mine, and I'm sure you've had similar moments.

Fudging behind the screen, though, isn't the answer. Instead, make the bail-out obvious and put it in the fiction!

A divine intervention or blessing of some sort is usually the easiest to both pull off and explain; and done in rarity, such events can make for good "war stories" later. Further, events like this can provide useful adventure fodder: for getting them out of trouble then, a deity wants a favour now.....

 

[Lanefan]

The advice is out there, and may even be prevalent, but that isn't irrefutable proof that many, many GMs do it. My issue here is the intensity and lack of wiggle-room with which @EzekielRaiden made their claim.

If the DMG flat-out said "don't fudge, ever" then sure, the burden of proof would be on ER to back up his statement.

But unfortunately, it says pretty much the opposite; and I think from that it's safe to assume there's a whole lot of 5e DMs* doing it, no proof required.

* - much less clear would be how many DMs running earlier editions do any fudging, and if so how much; as it wasn't RAW-accepted practice before 5e as far as I know.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If the DMG flat-out said "don't fudge, ever" then sure, the burden of proof would be on ER to back up his statement.

But unfortunately, it says pretty much the opposite; and I think from that it's safe to assume there's a whole lot of 5e DMs* doing it, no proof required.

* - much less clear would be how many DMs running earlier editions do any fudging, and if so how much; as it wasn't RAW-accepted practice before 5e as far as I know.

For what its worth, I saw a lot of GMs talking about doing it back in the OD&D days though. Most of them at least claimed they were doing the thing Nevin said above and fudging to backstop really bad die roll chains, but if they were willing to do it there, its hard to see as a given they wouldn't do it for other reasons if they told themselves they were benign.