D&D General Thread about fudging dice rolls

[AlViking]

Skilled play isn't about knowing how to do the things in real life. It's about knowing how to circumvent random resolution systems by identifying solutions that fall outside their boundaries, and persuading the GM to allow you to succeed automatically.

The bolded is the most important part and why personally I was never fond of "skilled play". It was usually "how well do you know what the DM has in mind".

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

The real purpose of narration (as implied in @billd91 's post) is to create situations where the DM feels comfortable not making players roll dice at all because the narration was felt to be good enough to supplant the need for dice to determine success. This is the push/pull of roleplaying games between the two ends of 'improv' and 'board game'.

The 'improv' end is using standard improv rules and one player making an offer of something occurring, and the other player accepting that offer as true and then continuing the scene. Which in D&D would be one player narrating how their character is accomplishing a task, and the DM accepting that narration as true and moving the scene forward without needing to "check" if it is indeed true via a dice roll.

The 'board game' end is one player deciding on an action in the game as per the game rules, rolling dice to see if that action succeeds or fails based upon those rules, and the DM continuing the next turn of the game based upon the success or failure of that die roll.

Where any particular DM's game falls upon that number line between 'improv' and 'board game' will tell us how important narration and/or dice rolling is to the accomplishment of actions within the scene and story.

But, what about the third option DM.

The DM that insists on a narration AND a die roll? Because, IME, that's generally what happens whenever someone calls for a check. The whole "well, if you naughty word your way through well enough, you won't have to roll" never seems to happen. And, again, I'm sorry, but, I simply don't care to make the DM "comfortable". That sort of Mother May I stuff just drives me up the wall. Particularly, again, this is my experience, no matter how detailed and "good" the narration is, it's always going to come down to a die roll anyway.

My approach is to stop wasting the table's time. If the narration isn't going to impact the die roll in any way, then narrate AFTER the die roll. I far, far more want the DM to simply ask me what I'm trying to achieve. What is my goal. Then he can tell me how I can do that. I have zero problem with that at all. Which, frankly, is exactly how I handled the situation at the time. I just told the DM that I wanted my character to climb that wall. I had no idea how I could achieve that, so, just tell me what I have to do and I'll do that.

I really strongly dislike the notion that I have to jump through hoops to make the DM "comfortable". The player has told the DM what the player wants to achieve. Just tell the player what to do. What's the point in the back and forth? IMO, it's far more productive if players simply tell me what they are trying to achieve and go from there. The how is largely dictated by the die roll AFAIC.

Player: I want to search the room to find if there are any secret doors.
DM: Ok, make a Perception check (or Investigate, I'm not picky).
Player: 17.
DM: You search the room, looking high and low and discover ______.

The whole, "well, did you search THIS spot? What about THIS spot? How about THIS spot?" thing just makes me want to stick a pencil in my left nostril and push.

 

[payn]

Skilled play isn't about knowing how to do the things in real life. It's about knowing how to circumvent random resolution systems by identifying solutions that fall outside their boundaries, and persuading the GM to allow you to succeed automatically.

My memory might be faulty but I don't ever remember the automatic part.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Skilled play isn't about knowing how to do the things in real life. It's about knowing how to circumvent random resolution systems by identifying solutions that fall outside their boundaries, and persuading the GM to allow you to succeed automatically.

Basically yes. But, again, like I said, there are two problems with this. First, it's very, very rare IME that the DM will allow things to succeed automatically. You have to narrate just to get the roll is much more common IME. Secondly, persuading the DM who knows nothing about the topic is, again, the blind leading the blind. I have to guess based on no information what narration will satisfy someone who has no idea about how to resolve the task.

Let's take a real world example. I freely admit my ignorance about how to fix a car's engine in a new car. I know that you need to plug in some sort of computer and that's about as far as my knowledge extends. OTOH, I'm fairly sure that most people reading this also have very little idea about how to fix a modern car. Now, what kind of narration would satisfy a DM that I could fix a broken modern car? I don't even know where to start. And, again, neither do most of us. Where do I even begin to build a narrative that would satisfy a DM?

 

[AlViking]

But, what about the third option DM.

The DM that insists on a narration AND a die roll? Because, IME, that's generally what happens whenever someone calls for a check. The whole "well, if you naughty word your way through well enough, you won't have to roll" never seems to happen. And, again, I'm sorry, but, I simply don't care to make the DM "comfortable". That sort of Mother May I stuff just drives me up the wall. Particularly, again, this is my experience, no matter how detailed and "good" the narration is, it's always going to come down to a die roll anyway.

My approach is to stop wasting the table's time. If the narration isn't going to impact the die roll in any way, then narrate AFTER the die roll. I far, far more want the DM to simply ask me what I'm trying to achieve. What is my goal. Then he can tell me how I can do that. I have zero problem with that at all. Which, frankly, is exactly how I handled the situation at the time. I just told the DM that I wanted my character to climb that wall. I had no idea how I could achieve that, so, just tell me what I have to do and I'll do that.

I really strongly dislike the notion that I have to jump through hoops to make the DM "comfortable". The player has told the DM what the player wants to achieve. Just tell the player what to do. What's the point in the back and forth? IMO, it's far more productive if players simply tell me what they are trying to achieve and go from there. The how is largely dictated by the die roll AFAIC.

Player: I want to search the room to find if there are any secret doors.
DM: Ok, make a Perception check (or Investigate, I'm not picky).
Player: 17.
DM: You search the room, looking high and low and discover ______.

The whole, "well, did you search THIS spot? What about THIS spot? How about THIS spot?" thing just makes me want to stick a pencil in my left nostril and push.

What I do is determine if they're using magic or have discovered some other way to aid their search. Then it's a question of how thorough they want to be - leave no trace and a quick search or spend as much time as necessary and toss the room - so I can set a DC.

But the whole "I carefully pull out the desk drawer and measure the thickness of the base to determine if there's a secret compartment" ... nah. I don't require that any more than I expect the rogue to be able to express in detail how to pick a lock. I know some people enjoy that type of play, it's just something I've never cared for. Add some flavor and description if you have fun but don't expect me as a player to have the same expertise as my highly trained professional PC.

 

[Toe Knee Nose]

Then it's a question of how thorough they want to be - leave no trace and a quick search or spend as much time as necessary and toss the room - so I can set a DC.

Ahh, now there's a difference. For me, the DC was set before they even entered the room. Spending time would just result in rerolls. But, I would never alter a DC based on a narration. Like I said, I much, much prefer players to just tell me what they hope will happen - what are they trying to achieve - and then just work from there.

I've had FAR too many players who would endlessly play 20 questions, endlessly trying to poke holes in the scenery. I remember clearly one exchange a few years back where I had a player who just endlessly kept asking questions about a location. Exasperated, I finally said, "Look I can't answer your questions if I don't know what it is you're looking for. What are you trying to find?"

"I don't know," was the reply. "I'm just looking for stuff."

"Well, it's been a while, you haven't found anything, maybe you might want to MOVE ON!"

From that point forward I pretty much refused to answer questions from that player unless he would first tell me what he was trying to do. It was driving me to distraction that the player simply would never accept a variation of "There's nothing of interest here" and would drag out every single session like this. It was so frustrating.

So, yeah, now I've largely trained my players to now ask questions without making some sort of goal statement first. "I want to do X, how can I do that?" works much better for me.

 

[billd91]

Skilled play isn't about knowing how to do the things in real life. It's about knowing how to circumvent random resolution systems by identifying solutions that fall outside their boundaries, and persuading the GM to allow you to succeed automatically.

I'm not even sure that skilled play is about identifying solutions falling outside of the boundaries of a resolution on a regular basis. Prodding dungeon floors with a 10 foot pole as you explore is a classic, skilled-play method of looking for pits and other triggered traps - but it's very much within the boundaries of what would be covered by searching for traps.
Quite often, it seems more that it's a case of a player fishing for the keywords the DM is looking for or the DM decides some described action is cool enough to let work.

 

[bsss]

I love it when players telegraph intent and don't get bogged down in the details. For the reasons said directly above, it generally speeds up the game, removes the "GM may I?" factor, and lets players who are not skilled practitioners at whatever still have their characters excel at whatever. It also, to my preferences expressed how many pages ago, lets me or us go "well, you/I miserably failed/failed/barely succeeded/succeeded/completely owned it, let's describe what that means in the fiction respective to what you were trying to do" without feeling constrained by the specifics.

 

[AlViking]

Ahh, now there's a difference. For me, the DC was set before they even entered the room. Spending time would just result in rerolls. But, I would never alter a DC based on a narration. Like I said, I much, much prefer players to just tell me what they hope will happen - what are they trying to achieve - and then just work from there.

I've had FAR too many players who would endlessly play 20 questions, endlessly trying to poke holes in the scenery. I remember clearly one exchange a few years back where I had a player who just endlessly kept asking questions about a location. Exasperated, I finally said, "Look I can't answer your questions if I don't know what it is you're looking for. What are you trying to find?"

"I don't know," was the reply. "I'm just looking for stuff."

"Well, it's been a while, you haven't found anything, maybe you might want to MOVE ON!"

From that point forward I pretty much refused to answer questions from that player unless he would first tell me what he was trying to do. It was driving me to distraction that the player simply would never accept a variation of "There's nothing of interest here" and would drag out every single session like this. It was so frustrating.

So, yeah, now I've largely trained my players to now ask questions without making some sort of goal statement first. "I want to do X, how can I do that?" works much better for me.

Most of the time I shortcut skill checks and I don't care how the player describes it. Sometimes fluff can be fun but I never want it to get to the point of filler or playing 20 questions. It's more along the lines of the PCs are investigating the room the suspected bad guy is renting and they suspect that the longer they take the more likely they are to get caught in the act. So they can do a quick search or they can take their time. If they want to be really thorough it may also cause noise and there will be obvious that someone broke in. That kind of thing.

But I really don't get caught up in the "proper" way of doing things, it's mostly what the people at the table and the player enjoy. If someone wants to do an insight check on the shopkeeper they can just say they're making an insight check as they roll the D20. Just give me a second to think about it in case I hadn't thought that far ahead.

Background, descriptions, investigations, roleplaying, all of that is a big part of my games. Needlessly narrating how things are accomplished doesn't add much for me. Trying to find the magic words to convince me also doesn't buy anything, even if sometimes players come up with clever solutions I hadn't considered.

 

[Maxperson]

As a fourth, potentially unrelated, type of fudging, I wonder how many DMs wander off their preplanned notes or modules during game. Stuff like stocking a dungeon with X amount of encounters but then adding or removing them based on the how the adventure is going (adding encounters if the PCs are cake-walking, removing potential encounters if they are struggling). I could see an argument that it could be viewed as a type of cheating (since changing it robs the players of the spoils of good luck or the penalty for bad luck) while others see it as necessary course correction inherent in making the game flow.

I never do that. If the players figure out a way to get around encounters or through good planning make them trivial, that's awesome. I'm not going to take that away from them. That said, I will improvise details on the spot if it makes sense for them to be there and the adventure doesn't mention them. Adventure descriptions are rarely as detailed as the actual experience would be.