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<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5665695" data-attributes="member: 54710">I'll agree with you that there is no &quot;one true way&quot; to GM, and I'll also agree with you that a good GM won't fudge to keep the story going in the particular way the GM envisioned.&nbsp; That having been said, I think it's worth providing a contrary view for purposes of threat balance, if nothing else.&nbsp; In the games I prefer to play, a GM might decide to fudge the dice (or, better, the decisions of the NPCs) to prevent a PC from permanently dying when the player didn't do anything to put his character in an unusually risky situation.&nbsp; I don't favor PCs (or, worse, NPCs!) having total plot immunity, but I think it's important for the game to feel fair, as opposed to arbitrary and random.&nbsp; At least for me, the feeling of fairness sometimes requires human intervention.&nbsp; To create a hypothetical example, you could add a rule to D&amp;D that says: &quot;Every time you sit down at the table, you roll four d10s.&nbsp; If they all come up zero, you die.&quot;&nbsp; (This rule would be a little less stupid if you were playing in a world under constant meteor bombardment.)&nbsp; That rule is fair, in the sense that it is applied even-handedly, but many players would think it felt unfair if it happened to a character in which they had invested several years of gaming.&nbsp; There's nothing wrong with running a &quot;life is cheap&quot; game, but it's also reasonable to want an alternative, in which PC death only really takes place if the player decided to take an unusual risk to accomplish an important goal.-KS</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 5665695, member: 54710"] I'll agree with you that there is no "one true way" to GM, and I'll also agree with you that a good GM won't fudge to keep the story going in the particular way the GM envisioned. That having been said, I think it's worth providing a contrary view for purposes of threat balance, if nothing else. In the games I prefer to play, a GM might decide to fudge the dice (or, better, the decisions of the NPCs) to prevent a PC from permanently dying when the player didn't do anything to put his character in an unusually risky situation. I don't favor PCs (or, worse, NPCs!) having total plot immunity, but I think it's important for the game to feel fair, as opposed to arbitrary and random. At least for me, the feeling of fairness sometimes requires human intervention. To create a hypothetical example, you could add a rule to D&D that says: "Every time you sit down at the table, you roll four d10s. If they all come up zero, you die." (This rule would be a little less stupid if you were playing in a world under constant meteor bombardment.) That rule is fair, in the sense that it is applied even-handedly, but many players would think it felt unfair if it happened to a character in which they had invested several years of gaming. There's nothing wrong with running a "life is cheap" game, but it's also reasonable to want an alternative, in which PC death only really takes place if the player decided to take an unusual risk to accomplish an important goal. -KS [/QUOTE]

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