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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8137696" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Ummmm...no it's absolutely not?Fudging means concealing the actual result/world from the players and explicitly saying that something is the case when it's not, and then preventing the players from knowing that this concealment occurred. Properly speaking, your first example isn't a fudged roll if the DM explicitly says they've changed a 20 to a 3. It's certainly not "letting the dice fall where they may," but it's not fudging, because you didn't conceal anything from the player.Again, I really don't want to get into a debate about fudging because I have extremely strong opinions on this topic and it tends to be very high-emotion. But I emphatically DO NOT fudge, never have, never will. I see it as actively deceiving my players and preventing them from being able to make real choices, and that is bad.To respond more to your chosen example: firstly, since I run Dungeon World, only players roll to determine thing 99% of the time. I use rolls only when I need DM inspiration. So what would actually happen is that a player would roll poorly on the self-defense move, "Defy Danger." When a player rolls poorly on any move, I as DM get to make a "Hard Move," which means I am empowered to do something that directly costs, threatens, or harms the character, things with "immediate consequences" that the players must now labor under and try to bounce back from, rather than try to prevent or avoid. Damage is one option for a hard move. Separating the party is another, as are "use up their resources," "turn their move back on them," "show them a downside of their class, race, or equipment," and "reveal an unwelcome truth" (a personal favorite). So if the tarrasque hitting them would kill them and I consider that a boring outcome, I am explicitly empowered by the rules to choose a different move with more interesting consequences...such as revealing that Gozilla has been released to fight the Tarrasque and now the party has TWO kaiju to contend with in order to save the city! Or that they were saved at the last second...by Count Badman, their nemesis in the royal court, to whom they will now owe a life-debt which he will exploit to the fullest. Or that they were thrown aside by the tarrasque's claws, amazingly unhurt apart from some near guaranteed soreness tomorrow...but now their artifact sword is lodged in its leg, and the pain has enraged it--they'll have to act fast if they want to both drive it off AND recover the sword before it leaves! Or that they were teleported out of the way at the very last second and into a cavernous, dark chamber, where their magic patron sits looking very disapproving; she says, "I expect better of you, my servant. This...makes me question the worth of my...investment. Let us discuss terms for how you will rectify this shortfall, shall we? You will be returned to your...associates in good time."In every way, these represent real costs, real losses, real setbacks. They're just not setbacks that come in the form of "throw away that character sheet and start a new one." And, again as I have explicitly said, I DO allow for death to still happen! It's just that it will either always be reversible ("but at what cost?") or it won't be sudden/unexpected ("Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die, serve right and justice one last time, seek one last heart of evil, still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend, and then farewell.") Either the character CAN come back, or the player is okay with them NOT coming back--and if they DO come back, it's going to cost something precious, require them and their allies to do something they'd rather not do, or seriously hurt their efforts to succeed at their goals. Death is not permanent in my games unless the players decide it is. But consequences ARE permanent--there is always a price to failure, and it will never be as simple as just leaping back into the fray, guns blazing. I simply choose either to (a) use other kinds of consequences besides death, or (b) permit the party to substitute a different unpleasant consequence in the place of a death that has already occurred. I find this is much more exciting, interesting, investment-driving, and overall enjoyable than having random unavoidable/irreversible death.</blockquote>

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