Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories Continued (not really)

[JAL_1138]

I have a hard time saying any potentially-useful tool in a DM’s arsenal is always, inherently, without-qualification-or-exception bad. That includes railroading, fudging, and quantum ogres.

But like a lot of tools, they’re extremely specialized, and used improperly and/or in the wrong circumstances, they can really, really screw things up. You wouldn’t shave with a chainsaw, because that will very likely end very badly. When there’s a tree down across your driveway, it’s a great tool, but even then you’ve got to use it carefully so you don’t end up cutting off your own foot or having the saw kick up and hit you in the face. Obviously that’s a more extreme set of consequences than simply fudging a die roll, but it makes for a good analogy—use a highly specialized and potentially dangerous tool in a situation it’s not called for and without care and caution, and it’s likely to be a problem. And the situations where they’re really and truly called for are likely to be very few and very far between, particularly for quantum ogres and fudged rolls.

It might be worth a fudged roll if the crit and high damage rolls you actually got while DMing an Adventurers’ League game would insta-kill the character of the eight-year-old kid playing their first character in their first combat of their first TTRPG game ever before they’ve had a chance to act in initiative (not that I would ever have any personal experience with that highly specific example scenario...I definitely just rolled low and there was no crit...*cough cough*). It might be worth the occasional fudged roll if you’ve told your players “hey, on rare occasions I might bend the rules or ignore the dice to prevent an absolutely absurd result and keep the game moving, but I’m not going to do it just to screw you over,” if you were truthful about that and the players have agreed to it. It’s not worth doing it anyway and lying to them about it if the players have clearly expressed a preference for never fudging rolls and letting the dice fall how they may.

[King of Nowhere]

I
No, I changed it because my players dont like the outcome. I dont need them to tell me they dont like a pointless TPK of a bunch of characters they've been playing for a long time, and have a connection to to a random encounter, for no other reason than bad dice rolling.



No it doesnt. DMs lie, obfuscate and misdirect all the time. The DMG tells us to. Magicians do it as well.

You know, this reminds me of Sanderson's short novel perfect state. It's set in a future where it was decided that in the face of dwindling resources and rampaging overpopulation, the best solution was to put most people in a matrix-like simulation where they would be happy. Everyone has a world, and everyone gets to be the most important person in that world. It's like being in a videogame where you are the protagonist. People are told this when they reach 50 years of age (out of a life expectation of about half a millennia). they may leave their world and go mingle with other real people if they wish.
the problem is, the simulation is meant to test you, it pretends to make you earn your place, but it really does not. Everyone succeeds. So when people who have been the most important people of their world go around and find out that all their accomplishments meant nothing, it takes a lot out of them.
The book revolves on the interaction between the protagonist, who settled comfortably in his role of god emperor and is content to follow the plot hooks that the simulation throws at him, and his nemesis, who decided to destroy her own world and go around to mess with other people to kick them out of their complacency and start a rebellion. They both had good points.
It's a really good story, and it should be available in electronic format for no more than a couple euros.

It has a lot in common with your described style of DMing. You are trying to impose your "perfect state" on your players, and you have the best intentions, but should they realize that you're actually making it easy on them, they would feel robbed of any sense of accomplishment, and they may be pissed.

[Florian]

It has a lot in common with your described style of DMing. You are trying to impose your "perfect state" on your players, and you have the best intentions, but should they realize that you're actually making it easy on them, they would feel robbed of any sense of accomplishment, and they may be pissed.

Nope, then you don't understand what the core argument here is about.

Actions have consequences and choices should be meaningful. There's nothing here to hide behind illusions or fudge anything about - reap what you saw. What were talking about instead are dire consequences as the result of random, often quite meaningless things.

For example, when I shell out a good 100 euros on something like the Giantslayer AP, read thru and prep some hundreds of pages of material, then, while yes, I use random encounters because they are part of the appeal of an overland travel campaign, what matters are the actual set-piece battles and how the players approach those, not death by a random Bodak or Banshee. Death and failure in the first is acceptable, in the later? Absolutely not.

[King of Nowhere]

Nope, then you don't understand what the core argument here is about.

Actions have consequences and choices should be meaningful. There's nothing here to hide behind illusions or fudge anything about - reap what you saw. What were talking about instead are dire consequences as the result of random, often quite meaningless things.

For example, when I shell out a good 100 euros on something like the Giantslayer AP, read thru and prep some hundreds of pages of material, then, while yes, I use random encounters because they are part of the appeal of an overland travel campaign, what matters are the actual set-piece battles and how the players approach those, not death by a random Bodak or Banshee. Death and failure in the first is acceptable, in the later? Absolutely not.

I understand it, but I was going on a bit of a tangent.
That specific quote reminded me of the story, and the story is relevant because one of the themes that was discussed here is "it is right to rob people of the meaningfulness of their actions with the purpose of making them feel better about themselves?", and that (plus "what does it do to those people?") is a central theme in the novel.

Plus, I always try to ship Sanderson books when I can

EDIT: but may I inquire what is the point of running random encounter if failure is not acceptable? If I have a combat where failure is not a real risk (or resource expenditure is not a real things to worry about), I don't even roll the dice, I simply say "you win, you are way too powerful for that

And what the hell, what's all this fear at killing pcs? there are resurrection spells exactly for that reason, and they do exactly their job: turn a "game over" scenario into a moderate loss. Something that keep the feeling of risk, without the risk being too bad. Even a second level party can put together their resources and afford to pay for a raise dead.
And if you're running a game without resurrection, then as others have said you either don't roll dice or you change the consequence of failure.

EDIT 2: since you're arguing that robbing people of their agenda is not the same as fixing ludicrous dice rolls, well, rpg combat is already stacked in the player's favor. so the only thing that could screw them is bad rolls, so you are, in fact, robbing them of their agenda. Plus, "I accept a small risk" entails accepting that the unlikely may happen. If you accept a small risk with the understanding that you are not really risking anything, then it is not a risk.
Now, deciding by consensus to ignore a dice is something else entirely. When my pc died to a crit in a random encounter the turn before disengaging, the DM asked me if I was fine with that, and I said go ahead, I'll be raised and lose a level, it was part of the risk. If it had been a game without resurrection, I may have asked to survive instead. Anyway, the point is that I don't like the idea of fooling your players. It sucked? Well, every hero has to face challenges and setbacks. failure would be unacceptable? then don't roll. a long string of awkward rolls lead to total disaster? ask the players what to do with it.
I would only lie to my players if I considered them too immature to deal with it like adults.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I would only lie to my players if I considered them too immature to deal with it like adults.

And really, why would you be playing with people like that in the first place?

[geppetto]

I love a couple of the ridiculous assumptions by the non fudging crowd.

First that it removes chaos.
No, no it doesnt. If we roll 100 times in a session and I fudge one of them I havent "removed chance" i have added 1% more structure and order. The overwhelming majority of chance is still there.

Everything is all or nothing.
Nope, no it isnt. Life and gaming are both about nuance and shades of grey. Changing an undesired outcome for 1 fight doesnt mean you do it with every fight. Changing it with one skill, even an important one doesnt mean changing it for all important skill rolls. And a little white lie to your friends to make a fun evening of storytelling doesnt mean your going to steal their wallet and nail their wife while maniacally cackling and twirling your cartoon mustache... because your a bad person doncha know?

No one ever dies if you fudge.
Do you play with more then 1 person? Seriously I'm curious. Because to most of us theres a big difference between a run of really bad luck means 5 PC's all die and theres a TPK. And a challenging fight drops 1 or 2 members and the rest have to use some limited resources to recover from the battle. To a fudger the first option is a no go, the 2nd option is not only okay it might have been the purpose of the encounter.

GM is acting like he knows what the players want.
Umm yeah I am. We dont need to have a group therapy session for me to know that the players dont want to spend their night off gaming for an hour then randomly dying and spending their limited time rolling up new characters or dealing with some trite dues ex machina that derails the whole session while they escape from some contrived way to avoid the consequences of a TPK.

GM doesnt have consent.
You know your sitting down to campaign I came up with, prepped and wrote adventures for. And you know your sitting down to play a game that I am running. Yes I do have implied consent to run that game in a way that I think will be best for everyone. Thats the job of Game Master.

And finally "just play another game".
Yeah this is about the worst advice you ever see online. You mean theres more then just D&D? Gosh golly out here in the hinterlands we'd never heard of them thar other systems. Thank you kindly sir you just solved all my challenges.......

Or maybe you play with some friends that you've known for a long time and played together for a long time. And maybe like my group 2 or 3 of these busy adults have flat out told you in no uncertain terms that they will not buy any more books or take the time to learn another system. And so if you want to play with your friends (and you do) you play what they are willing to play whether its the ideal system for that particular adventure type or not.

And while i'm at it its also terrible advice because a campaign should have lots of different kinds of adventures, so theres a variety of stories and challenge types. So unless your seriously advising switching systems mid campaign because I happen to want to run a story focused haunted house adventure or a murder mystery after we finish a tactical wargame style dungeon crawl for variety the whole "just play a different game" is less then useless.

[Pelle]

For example, when I shell out a good 100 euros on something like the Giantslayer AP, read thru and prep some hundreds of pages of material, then, while yes, I use random encounters because they are part of the appeal of an overland travel campaign, what matters are the actual set-piece battles and how the players approach those, not death by a random Bodak or Banshee. Death and failure in the first is acceptable, in the later? Absolutely not.

That's all well and fine, but why can't you admit this to the players if they ask before you start the game? That's what the main objection is to for most people, not to the fudging per se.

[Kardwill]

I love a couple of the ridiculous assumptions by the non fudging crowd.

First that it removes chaos.
No, no it doesnt. If we roll 100 times in a session and I fudge one of them I havent "removed chance" i have added 1% more structure and order. The overwhelming majority of chance is still there.

Please note, though, that adding rolls does not always reinforce chaos. A combat where you have dozens of rolls to wittle away the HP bar of your opponent will be far less random than a combat where you have a single roll to see who wins. The more you roll, the more you'll tend toward the medium, and the more the stronger party will be at an advantage.
There is chaos only if the stakes of an individual roll are important (Meaning usually that most to-hit rolls are not that important since you get to reroll them again and again, but you really don't want to miss that critical "climb" check when you're hanging from the cliff and the bad guy is running away)

So yes, if you crop out the outlier results (that 1/100 result), you might consistently diminish chaos at your table. Which is not always a bad thing, mind : Myself, I don't GM "high chaos" games like Runequest or Call of Chtulhu anymore where a single unlucky roll can kill a PC, and all my games have some form of random control either built-in or added (usually "hero points" of some sort, that the players can spend for a reroll, a crit or a save)

As for your argument about trying different playstyles during a campaign, well, I played enough murder mysteries, diplomacy sessions and big battlescenes with Redbox D&D to know what you're talking about

That said, even if you don't want to change game because you prefer to stay in your confort zone, you can change the game. If most illusionists are firm believers in rule zero that says that a rule can be changed or ignored, then I can change and ignore them for real, rather than paying them lip service while secretely fudging. Make houserules or in-game rulings so that rolls won't be able to destroy our fun, while still being meaningful. Give the players the opportunity to make a concession and lose a fight on their own term, or give them a limited ressource to alleviate a streak of bad luck, say that mooks don't get to crit...
For D&D, it can be as simple as saying "0 HP means you are taken out of the action. Wether that means killed, serioulsy hurt, KO, routed, captured isolated or some other sort of inconvenience will be dictated by circonstances and what the table/the DM thinks appropriate." And if that seems a little too arbitrary, then I can set up the stakes before the combat, and drop hints so that the players know they're entering a fight to the death when the big bad boss appears.

Outside of combat, fudging and "weak rerolls" (their player-rolled counterpart, where the GM negates the consequences of a player's roll) are quite often due to the GM asking for a roll that they know can produce a block, an arbitrary kill or an unfun result.
"You're hanging from the cliff, and the root you're holding to is breaking. Make a climb roll!"
*Roll "Damn, I got a 3. Do I fall?"
"Err, let me check if the root breaks" *rolls dice conveniently behind the screen, and barely looks at the result* "Nope, it holds out!"

Or "Roll to find the clue-that-will-allow-you-to-continue-the-game"
"I miss"
"Okay, you search the desk for 5 minutes without finding anything. Do you want to roll again?"

Or "The police car is closing in. Will this adventure end with you behind bars while the cultists finish the world-destroying ritual?" *Roll-and-fudge* "Nope, they lose control of their car and hit a telegraph pole"

(Okay, pretty weak examples, but I think any GM that dabbled like me in fudging and illusionisme had quite a few of these. ^^ And our players learn to recognise them too...)

In those case, the GM rolled or asked for a roll when he knew one of the results would be unfun. But in this case, why ask for a roll? Or, more to the point, why ask for this precise roll with these precise stakes. Instead, you could :
- Narrate the result without rolling (The police car is blocked in the crowed market street / You find the clue in the desk drawer/Your climb skill is 40%? OK, you climb the cliff inch by inch, but it's slow and quite stressful)
- Create tension by putting a choice on the players (In your rearview mirror, you see the police car hit a telegraph pole, hard. A sinister plume of smoke and some flames rise from the busted hood. Do you want to stop to check on them, or let them burn and hurry to the ritual site?)
- Change the stakes of the failed roll, or offer "success with a price" (You lost the police car, but you're pretty sure the officer saw your face/You find the document, but it took too much time, and a guard opens the door/You lose your hold and fall off the cliff. The good news : There was an outcrop a few meters down, so you're alive. The bad news : You hit hard, and broke your ankle. You'll need help getting out of there.)
* Note that to ramp up the tension, you can either tell the players the stakes before the roll, or hint at them, so that they know what they're getting into
* Oh, and I try to decide and give them the difficulty of the roll beforehand, too (even one of my own rolls), otherwise there is also a strong temptation to "fudge the difficulty" (How many of us did the old overused "12 on my attack roll? How lucky for you, the difficulty was 13!" trick?)
- Mix'n'match, by putting the players against a choice that appeared because of the roll (mine or theirs), so that they have a hand in the stakes of this failure (You're too heavy, you'll never make it up the cliff in time. Unless you drop your backpack, of course/You find the clue, but a servant opens the door. A witness, the very thing you didn't need. What do you do?)

[AMFV]

Please note, though, that adding rolls does not always reinforce chaos. A combat where you have dozens of rolls to wittle away the HP bar of your opponent will be far less random than a combat where you have a single roll to see who wins. The more you roll, the more you'll tend toward the medium, and the more the stronger party will be at an advantage.
There is chaos only if the stakes of an individual roll are important (Meaning usually that most to-hit rolls are not that important since you get to reroll them again and again, but you really don't want to miss that critical "climb" check when you're hanging from the cliff and the bad guy is running away)

I think that you're missing the methodology of the fudging crowd. You're making the assumption that they are fudging a lot of roles as we can see later in your post. But any individual roll or set of roles can be significant even in games with lots of rolls, this is because of the "Critical" mechanisms in the game. The thing is that I like those mechanisms, I just don't want them to always have impact on the players, because there are situations where those are not as useful or interesting.

I often change things to make the game more or less interesting at any particular, randomness is not the enemy, uncontrolled randomness is. As you're the arbiter of the world, part of the job of a DM is to decide when to accept a random outcome.

So yes, if you crop out the outlier results (that 1/100 result), you might consistently diminish chaos at your table. Which is not always a bad thing, mind : Myself, I don't GM "high chaos" games like Runequest or Call of Chtulhu anymore where a single unlucky roll can kill a PC, and all my games have some form of random control either built-in or added (usually "hero points" of some sort, that the players can spend for a reroll, a crit or a save)

What if they've had a run of bad luck and they are out of "hero points". That's the kind of situation where fudging is appropriate to my mind. Because sometimes a player or an entire group will have a run of bad luck. You're not smoothing out the edge results as a DM, you're saying, "Okay I'm not going to let a random result make the game worse." That's your job, you're supposed to make the game better, if you could be replaced by random tables, why are you even there?

As for your argument about trying different playstyles during a campaign, well, I played enough murder mysteries, diplomacy sessions and big battlescenes with Redbox D&D to know what you're talking about

I don't think you have, because you're still advocating for changing from a system that's working to one that isn't. In fact the OP here is one who refuses to fudge (even on random encounter tables) and people were recommending fudging as a way to fix it, BECAUSE IT WORKS. They have been playing that way, and it works, people at their tables are having fun.

That said, even if you don't want to change game because you prefer to stay in your confort zone, you can change the game. If most illusionists are firm believers in rule zero that says that a rule can be changed or ignored, then I can change and ignore them for real, rather than paying them lip service while secretely fudging. Make houserules or in-game rulings so that rolls won't be able to destroy our fun, while still being meaningful. Give the players the opportunity to make a concession and lose a fight on their own term, or give them a limited ressource to alleviate a streak of bad luck, say that mooks don't get to crit...

But I don't necessarily want mooks to be unable to crit in every situation, and I do challenge Players. If there is a situation where PC death is appropriate I allow for it. If say a random encounter would screw them, then I'll fix it. Let's say golems or trolls or things like that who show up on random encounter tables and require special resources to defeat, that's a perfect time to fudge. The thing is that you aren't fudging 100% percent of the time, if I was then I would make a rule, as you suggest. But I have the rule, I can fudge on the very edge case that requires it, and they're really rare. So I already have the solution and it works, just fine.

For D&D, it can be as simple as saying "0 HP means you are taken out of the action. Wether that means killed, serioulsy hurt, KO, routed, captured isolated or some other sort of inconvenience will be dictated by circonstances and what the table/the DM thinks appropriate." And if that seems a little too arbitrary, then I can set up the stakes before the combat, and drop hints so that the players know they're entering a fight to the death when the big bad boss appears.

But I want players to be able to die, I just don't want a TPK in a situation that is not plot-relevant. I don't want a random encounter to ruin my day. I don't want the players to KO my plot villain before he has a chance to teleport away. I arbitrate the world and the campaign, if the dice are working against the campaign working I'll ignore them, but it doesn't happen very often. I run challenging combat encounters often, I don't fudge every session or even every other session typically.

Outside of combat, fudging and "weak rerolls" (their player-rolled counterpart, where the GM negates the consequences of a player's roll) are quite often due to the GM asking for a roll that they know can produce a block, an arbitrary kill or an unfun result.
"You're hanging from the cliff, and the root you're holding to is breaking. Make a climb roll!"
*Roll "Damn, I got a 3. Do I fall?"
"Err, let me check if the root breaks" *rolls dice conveniently behind the screen, and barely looks at the result* "Nope, it holds out!"

That's not a situation where you would use fudging, bud. At least not as a competent DM.

"You're hanging from the cliff, and the root you're holding to is breaking. Make a climb roll!"
*Roll "Damn, I got a 3. Do I fall?"
"You don't fall, but you're unable to scramble up the cliff side as several feet of root are pulled out, you're now dangling precariously by a few feet of root around feet further down that you were before"

Notably that's actually RAW in the editions I've played, a failed climb check either means that you lose height or that you fail to proceed up.

Or "Roll to find the clue-that-will-allow-you-to-continue-the-game"
"I miss"
"Okay, you search the desk for 5 minutes without finding anything. Do you want to roll again?"

Nope, they don't find the clue. You never EVER have a mystery hinge on finding a single clue. You have to prepare for the players missing probably two out of three clues or potentially missing the whole mystery. You can surreptitiously add a new clue to some place where they are going next if you really want them to have that bit of information.

Or "The police car is closing in. Will this adventure end with you behind bars while the cultists finish the world-destroying ritual?" *Roll-and-fudge* "Nope, they lose control of their car and hit a telegraph pole"

That might be an okay situation to fudge. I would say though that not knowing the system you're talking about I would be careful about that sort of fudging, players will notice if you're fudging and also breaking the rules openly. But frankly being caught by the cops here is not necessarily a bad thing, that produces more drama, higher stakes, and the opportunity to break out of prison, I'd probably let that one ride.

(Okay, pretty weak examples, but I think any GM that dabbled like me in fudging and illusionisme had quite a few of these. ^^ And our players learn to recognise them too...)

This is the problem, you are assuming that your own skill level in terms of "fudging and illusionism", as you call it, is everybody else's skill level. I mean not to be mean here, but your examples don't show a lot of skill with fudging or illusionism, in which case you shouldn't use it. But if you have that skill, then no reason not to use it.

In those case, the GM rolled or asked for a roll when he knew one of the results would be unfun. But in this case, why ask for a roll? Or, more to the point, why ask for this precise roll with these precise stakes. Instead, you could :

Because sometimes I do want to leave things up to chance, but I don't necessarily want everything up to chance. For the non-combat roles typically instead of fudging I'll have a range of outcomes, failing a climb check in most systems is not instant death, but it does introduce complications.

- Narrate the result without rolling (The police car is blocked in the crowed market street / You find the clue in the desk drawer/Your climb skill is 40%? OK, you climb the cliff inch by inch, but it's slow and quite stressful)

Sometimes this can be good, but players generally speaking want the illusion that you are not just telling them a story. If I just narrate the end result of a car chase that's been going on for a few minutes, and had rolls before, they're going to feel gypped, so if I started the car chase narrating, then I can finish it narrating, but if it started out with rolls, then it ends with rolls.

As far as the clue in the desk drawer, I don't think I would have somebody roll for that, as long as they had time to search. Unless it was like buried in a stack of papers or was hidden somehow. Noticing that something is inside a drawer is not really a good use of anybody's time, of course, noticing that something is significant is. So I would probably introduce red herrings at that point and see how they went.

If I let the player climb the cliff without rolling then I am screwing over the players that spent points on improving their rolling, do you not see how that is? Like I might fudge particularly if it wasn't the player's fault but, I wouldn't let them just auto succeed.

- Create tension by putting a choice on the players (In your rearview mirror, you see the police car hit a telegraph pole, hard. A sinister plume of smoke and some flames rise from the busted hood. Do you want to stop to check on them, or let them burn and hurry to the ritual site?)

So what if they stop? And they miss the ritual, you've done something much worse than mess with the odds, you've given the players an actual choice that could derail your campaign. Not that that's always a bad thing, but you can't do that unless you're willing to cope with either outcome, so if one might end up with them in prison when the backup car gets there, be aware that is now completely on the table.

- Change the stakes of the failed roll, or offer "success with a price" (You lost the police car, but you're pretty sure the officer saw your face/You find the document, but it took too much time, and a guard opens the door/You lose your hold and fall off the cliff. The good news : There was an outcrop a few meters down, so you're alive. The bad news : You hit hard, and broke your ankle. You'll need help getting out of there.)

That's a really bad option probably, your player would definitely feel slighted at an obvious Deus Ex Machina more likely than they would an invisible roll.

* Note that to ramp up the tension, you can either tell the players the stakes before the roll, or hint at them, so that they know what they're getting into
* Oh, and I try to decide and give them the difficulty of the roll beforehand, too (even one of my own rolls), otherwise there is also a strong temptation to "fudge the difficulty" (How many of us did the old overused "12 on my attack roll? How lucky for you, the difficulty was 13!" trick?)

I don't do that one often, that's how you get caught fudging. Because they'll remember.

That's all well and fine, but why can't you admit this to the players if they ask before you start the game? That's what the main objection is to for most people, not to the fudging per se.

The thing that is the problem is that people are treating minor fibbing about a game as though it's the worst thing that somebody could possibly do.

[Pelle]

The thing that is the problem is that people are treating minor fibbing about a game as though it's the worst thing that somebody could possibly do.

It seemed like you changed your opinion on it, and you said you wouldn't lie to a player asking about it. If so, I have no objection to your practice.

Yes, it's just a small bit, and a minor thing for the game. What I think you are missing, is that for the players who care about it, the problem isn't that the game isn't exactly how they prefer. That would be ok if they had the right expectation and were not playing under false pretenses. The problem is that you have fooled them into wasting X hours of their life on something they don't really care for. If they knew they could have spent that time with their familiy, gone out dancing or do something else instead. You are robbing them of the opportunity to decide how to best spend their valuable time. That is why they get pissed when they find out, not because the game itself is slightly different. If you lie to them, they can't make an informed decision.

So to avoid doing that I think it's better to tell these players upfront that I can't promise to never ever fudge if I think it is in the best interest of the game.

[Cluedrew]

I love a couple of the ridiculous assumptions by the non fudging crowd.

First that it removes chaos.

OK, most of these I am at least aware of. Even as someone in the switch systems crowd I understand that even finding the system to switch to takes time and energy. That being said if you can I still think the results are better. Qualifying exactly what counts as consent could be a topic but that is just shifting a line a bit. On the other hand this one...

Yeah, I thought that was the point.

So let's take a step back. If you are not fudging dice to take unsatisfying results off the table, hence reducing the outcome space and therefore reducing "chaos", than why are you fudging? And to the other pro-fudging people, do you agree with this or is this another all to common case of people being complicated and not fitting into continent little boxes.

[AMFV]

OK, most of these I am at least aware of. Even as someone in the switch systems crowd I understand that even finding the system to switch to takes time and energy. That being said if you can I still think the results are better. Qualifying exactly what counts as consent could be a topic but that is just shifting a line a bit. On the other hand this one...

The thing is, again, the fudging is working for the "pro-fudging" folks. They're not fudging in a desperate attempt to make their games work, it is making their games work. Why would they change a working system? Again, this came up because Tal basically implied that changing the results on a random encounter table (that resulted in both him and his players not having fun) would amount to a sort of cheating. That's the thing, people here aren't fudging and looking for a change in rules, they're suggesting that maybe Tal should have fudged that encounter table rather than screwing over his players, particularly since not fudging WASN'T WORKING. That's what's happening, fudging works, it's being recommended as a working strategy for this sort of thing.

Yeah, I thought that was the point.

So let's take a step back. If you are not fudging dice to take unsatisfying results off the table, hence reducing the outcome space and therefore reducing "chaos", than why are you fudging? And to the other pro-fudging people, do you agree with this or is this another all to common case of people being complicated and not fitting into continent little boxes.

No, people are fudging to take unsatisfying results off the table. But nobody here (I think) is removing all unsatisfying results, which would make switching systems and altering rulesets more worthwhile. It's very occasional, which means that a general rule can't really be applied to achieve the same effect.

It seemed like you changed your opinion on it, and you said you wouldn't lie to a player asking about it. If so, I have no objection to your practice.

Yes, it's just a small bit, and a minor thing for the game. What I think you are missing, is that for the players who care about it, the problem isn't that the game isn't exactly how they prefer. That would be ok if they had the right expectation and were not playing under false pretenses. The problem is that you have fooled them into wasting X hours of their life on something they don't really care for. If they knew they could have spent that time with their familiy, gone out dancing or do something else instead. You are robbing them of the opportunity to decide how to best spend their valuable time. That is why they get pissed when they find out, not because the game itself is slightly different. If you lie to them, they can't make an informed decision.

So to avoid doing that I think it's better to tell these players upfront that I can't promise to never ever fudge if I think it is in the best interest of the game.

Yes it would probably be better, what I'm arguing against is having to tell players that you're possibly going to fudge as a general announcement without being asked. This is doubly the case in systems (like 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder) where rule zero means that fudging is a possibility baked into the system rules itself (since the DM has the liberty to alter things).

[Florian]

That's all well and fine, but why can't you admit this to the players if they ask before you start the game? That's what the main objection is to for most people, not to the fudging per se.

Because that would actually kill/diminish their enjoyment of the game. Talking D20 specifically, resource management is a core concept of how the underlying mechanics ought to work. One of the reasons to have multiple encounters per day/session and use random encounters in the first place is a measured depletion of resources, so that the actual tactical and strategic decision taken in the battles when it really counts can truly shine.

It´s a bit like the same when withholding the Monster Manual/Bestiary from the players: Without knowing the stats, they have to rely on the fluff and other external input to gauge the threat and their achievement by overcoming it.

For example, a recurring "Boss Monster" is the Sandpoint Devil, a monster with more or less standard stats, but with a build-up and mounting tension going on for 3-5 sessions and I have, so far, never had a group which was not entirely satisfied and full of themselves when they defeated that "legend".

[King of Nowhere]

What if they've had a run of bad luck and they are out of "hero points". That's the kind of situation where fudging is appropriate to my mind. Because sometimes a player or an entire group will have a run of bad luck. You're not smoothing out the edge results as a DM, you're saying, "Okay I'm not going to let a random result make the game worse." That's your job, you're supposed to make the game better, if you could be replaced by random tables, why are you even there?

this is considering a very extreme case, though. This discussion has gone on to consider more and more niche cases.
One thing is fudging a roll if a single roll has gone bad.
Different is fudging a roll if a whole encounter has gone bad with multiple rolls.
Yet different is fudging a roll if a whole streak of encounters have gone bad with multiple rolls.
Really, what are the chances of so much bad luck happening? The law of great numbers dictates that it probably happened a few times in the history of roleplaying, but it's a very specific case. Once in a lifetime. And no, in that case you don't need to tell your players and you are not cheating them. It's really different from the implication of fudging rolls on a regular base. It's the difference between telling a mild lie once, and cheating your way through eveything at life.

The thing is, again, the fudging is working for the "pro-fudging" folks. They're not fudging in a desperate attempt to make their games work, it is making their games work. Why would they change a working system? Again, this came up because Tal basically implied that changing the results on a random encounter table (that resulted in both him and his players not having fun) would amount to a sort of cheating. That's the thing, people here aren't fudging and looking for a change in rules, they're suggesting that maybe Tal should have fudged that encounter table rather than screwing over his players, particularly since not fudging WASN'T WORKING.

The original case with the random encounter table is an even different concept. in that case, I'd feel free to change the table and call it houserule if I decided that the table was flawed. It's not fudging a roll, it's changing a rule, and as a DM I advocate for myself the power to change rules, and I make it clear in session 0.
This is an especially egregious case as, if I recall correctly (ignore this paragraph if I am not recalling correctly) the table itself was homebrewed. So saying "oh crap, this table that I made has given a result that would kill you all. It's not doing what I intended it to do, so I fix it now" is legitimate even for a rule lawyer.

[Talakeal]

The thing is, again, the fudging is working for the "pro-fudging" folks. They're not fudging in a desperate attempt to make their games work, it is making their games work. Why would they change a working system? Again, this came up because Tal basically implied that changing the results on a random encounter table (that resulted in both him and his players not having fun) would amount to a sort of cheating. That's the thing, people here aren't fudging and looking for a change in rules, they're suggesting that maybe Tal should have fudged that encounter table rather than screwing over his players, particularly since not fudging WASN'T WORKING. That's what's happening, fudging works, it's being recommended as a working strategy for this sort of thing.

The original case with the random encounter table is an even different concept. in that case, I'd feel free to change the table and call it houserule if I decided that the table was flawed. It's not fudging a roll, it's changing a rule, and as a DM I advocate for myself the power to change rules, and I make it clear in session 0.
This is an especially egregious case as, if I recall correctly (ignore this paragraph if I am not recalling correctly) the table itself was homebrewed. So saying "oh crap, this table that I made has given a result that would kill you all. It's not doing what I intended it to do, so I fix it now" is legitimate even for a rule lawyer.

Did I say that? I don't know, I always considered random encounter tables to be more suggestions than rules, they are one of the few things that I don't have a problem fudging, although I typically do so for thematic reasons rather than mechanical ones, for example ignoring things that don't make sense in that particular time and place or monster types that the party has (or will soon) already encountered that would make for a dull and repetitive session.

Honestly, I don't know that the random encounter table wasn't working. Sure, I have one salty player who got screwed over by the RNG and doesn't like to lose*, but the rest of the group seemed fine ok with it, and being defeated might have even enhanced the game in the long run because it makes the world feel more real and / or dangerous and because it will feel really good when they finally track down that revenant and get their revenge.

Also, hindsight is 20/20, but I had no way of knowing the encounter was to result in defeat; sure it looked bad on paper, but my player's have pleasantly surprised me plenty of times and figured out a clever tactics that could easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and if I fudge every encounter that looks bad on paper I am denying them that opportunity.

*I already did retcon the consequences for him, which is kind of fudging in a way; but this is a player who seriously doesn't like to lose and will pout when his character goes down regardless of the circumstances or how the rest of the party fared.

[AMFV]

this is considering a very extreme case, though. This discussion has gone on to consider more and more niche cases.
One thing is fudging a roll if a single roll has gone bad.
Different is fudging a roll if a whole encounter has gone bad with multiple rolls.
Yet different is fudging a roll if a whole streak of encounters have gone bad with multiple rolls.
Really, what are the chances of so much bad luck happening? The law of great numbers dictates that it probably happened a few times in the history of roleplaying, but it's a very specific case. Once in a lifetime. And no, in that case you don't need to tell your players and you are not cheating them. It's really different from the implication of fudging rolls on a regular base. It's the difference between telling a mild lie once, and cheating your way through eveything at life.

First, the odds have to be pretty good, because I have seen that happen on average every probably eight to ten sessions. So not once in a lifetime, not irregular enough to never happen though. Because of how odds work, there will be times when you see something like half a dozen rolls over fifteen in a row, or half a dozen below. It's just how things break down sometimes, and that's certainly not a "once in a lifetime" thing. The odds of getting higher than 10 are about half, the odds of getting higher than fifteen are around twenty-five percent, so it's entirely possible to have a string of rolls where you get over fifteen or where players get five or lower. That's not an extreme edge case.

Second, most of the people aren't fudging because a "roll has gone bad" they're fudging because the circumstances in which the roll went bad weren't appropriate, either in a narrative sense, or because it's a string of bad luck for a single player, or for any number of reasons. As the DM you are arbitrating the rules, that means that you can change them when it would benefit the game to do so, that includes points where you are changing how a die result should be interpreted.

Third, "cheating your way through life"? Honestly. Rule fricking zero, a DM CANNOT cheat in a game where that is present. The DM decides the rules. There is no ability for them to cheat, their only win condition is when everybody is having a good time. Me "fudging" a roll is the same sort of thing as if I decide that the monster gets a disadvantage modifier on something (which I can do), they're acceptable things. Generally though fudging isn't cheating. It's a tool, and it can be used well.

The original case with the random encounter table is an even different concept. in that case, I'd feel free to change the table and call it houserule if I decided that the table was flawed. It's not fudging a roll, it's changing a rule, and as a DM I advocate for myself the power to change rules, and I make it clear in session 0.

The power to change rules like how to interpret a given roll of the dice? That's the thing, for a DM there is fundamentally no difference between altering a rule and fudging dice. Both are tools. Changing a rule is good for solving permanent problems, fudging dice is good for solving occasional small problems.

This is an especially egregious case as, if I recall correctly (ignore this paragraph if I am not recalling correctly) the table itself was homebrewed. So saying "oh crap, this table that I made has given a result that would kill you all. It's not doing what I intended it to do, so I fix it now" is legitimate even for a rule lawyer.

Yes indeed it is.

Did I say that? I don't know, I always considered random encounter tables to be more suggestions than rules, they are one of the few things that I don't have a problem fudging, although I typically do so for thematic reasons rather than mechanical ones, for example ignoring things that don't make sense in that particular time and place or monster types that the party has (or will soon) already encountered that would make for a dull and repetitive session.

True, and those are good reasons to fudge encounters. But it's also about pacing. A series of increasingly difficult encounters is more fun than being constantly blasted by encounters of extreme difficulty or extreme ease. Basically you should only have one or two high stakes encounters in any given session, because that preserves their specialness.

Honestly, I don't know that the random encounter table wasn't working. Sure, I have one salty player who got screwed over by the RNG and doesn't like to lose*, but the rest of the group seemed fine ok with it, and being defeated might have even enhanced the game in the long run because it makes the world feel more real and / or dangerous and because it will feel really good when they finally track down that revenant and get their revenge.

Dude, your whole party got screwed over, but you decided that only one of them would have meaningful consequences, in most games your entire party would be rerolling their characters.

Also, hindsight is 20/20, but I had no way of knowing the encounter was to result in defeat; sure it looked bad on paper, but my player's have pleasantly surprised me plenty of times and figured out a clever tactics that could easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and if I fudge every encounter that looks bad on paper I am denying them that opportunity.

Yes, and if your players hadn't already had to do that in a previous encounter, because you had one challenging encounter, then you had another, it wouldn't matter. That's the issue, it's pacing.

*I already did retcon the consequences for him, which is kind of fudging in a way; but this is a player who seriously doesn't like to lose and will pout when his character goes down regardless of the circumstances or how the rest of the party fared.

You retconned the encounter but didn't fix any of the underlying problems in expectation and in the campaign, and as in every other advice you've posted you've have dodged every piece of advice given to you.

[Talakeal]

Dude, your whole party got screwed over, but you decided that only one of them would have meaningful consequences, in most games your entire party would be rerolling their characters.

That's a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? Just because I choose to let the players roll in the open doesn't mean that I am deciding on the results.

But yes, bad things happen to PCs, sometimes nobody is to blame but the dice. I don't think that's a bad thing, and none of the other players were upset by what happened OOC.

You retconned the encounter but didn't fix any of the underlying problems in expectation and in the campaign, and as in every other advice you've posted you've have dodged every piece of advice given to you.

Serious question, aside from not starting my campaign (which aside from a two session hiccup has been going great) over entirely or starting to fudge dice and lying to my players about it, what advice have I ignored?


I already rewrote my campaign's house rules and removed almost all of the randomness. I had an OOC talk with the players about motivations and what happened. I told the players that they could remake their characters. I honestly don't remember any other suggestions in this thread, just a lot of finger wagging about mistakes that are in the past and borderline trolling.


I have also acknowledged that there is an underlying disconnect in trying to run an old school hex-crawl but keeping the PCs under Dragonlance style plot armor, and I do also acknowledge that there is some merit in putting the player's enjoyment over the fidelity of the setting or the integrity of the dice rolls, but those are long term adjustments to gaming style rather than magic bullets.

[Malifice]

I have also acknowledged that there is an underlying disconnect in trying to run an old school hex-crawl but keeping the PCs under Dragonlance style plot armor,

Why are those things (Hex crawls and Plot armor) exclusive?

I ran the Pathfinder Hex Crawl and the PCs had Plot armor. Im currently running ToA Hexcrawl in 5E and the PCs have plot armor.

And by Plot armor, the assumption is they're the protagonists and the heroes, the game is about them, their actions matter, and they can expect a level of protection from random meaningless deaths (whether they know it or not).

I do also acknowledge that there is some merit in putting the player's enjoyment over the fidelity of the setting or the integrity of the dice rolls.

Therin lies your fundamental problem to date. That it took this long for you to priorise your players enjoying the game you're running for them over random rolls of a dice.

I say that from a position of experience mind you. I used to make the same mistake. Im glad you've seen (what should have been blindinly obvious to both of us from day one) which of those is more important.

If given a choice as a player, between a game of mainly random wandering from place to place, and the occasional death of my Character for no other reason than 'the dice say so', and where the players enjoyment of the game was secondary to some other concern, as opposed to a game where I was enjoying myself, engaged with the story we (the players and DM) were all trying to tell, and I felt like the protagonist and that my actions mattered, and that the main purpose of the game was my (and the other players) enjoyment, I choose the later every single time.

Wouldnt you?

I mean, I have limited spare time. When I devote my spare time to playing games, I like to be entertained, engaged, challenged and to be having fun. That's a self evident truism that all too many DMs forget or are blind to.

Note the fun as a DM comes from a different place. It's about (as DM) enjoying the fact your players are entertained (which gives you a feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment). I always liken it to the feeling you get when you give a nice gift, or host a great party. That moment when you (as DM) can sit back and watch the players looking at the world through their characters eyes, the room around them dissapears, and they're engaged with the story and the challenges in front of them, and are thinking, acting, roleplaying and working together.

I kind of liken it to you (the DM) being the Conductor, and the players being the Orchestra. You're really only there to maintain the tempo, ensure they're all working together and not drowning each other out, are engaged and creating something larger than the sum of its parts.

I used to think games like that were unicorns (mythological creatures that didnt exist in reality) but over the years, I've come to realise that with a change in attitude and a bit of work from the DM (and most - if not all - problems in a game can be traced back to the DM) such games are not only possible, but most sessions should run this way.

[AMFV]

I have also acknowledged that there is an underlying disconnect in trying to run an old school hex-crawl but keeping the PCs under Dragonlance style plot armor, and I do also acknowledge that there is some merit in putting the player's enjoyment over the fidelity of the setting or the integrity of the dice rolls, but those are long term adjustments to gaming style rather than magic bullets.

I don't think there is. I think that the fundamental problem you're having is that different players are suffering different consequences from failing an encounter. That's the issue, fundamentally one of fairness vs. unfairness, not that you have given your players "plot armor" it's that "some plot armor is better than others". I'll switch tracks here since I suspect it'll be more productive.

If you're going to have failure conditions other than death when players "lose" a combat encounter, they either need to be really comparable for all the players or... they need to be partywide failure conditions. Which actually can work pretty well. If one player loses equipment (because they were captured) so should everybody. If one player owes a favor to a mobster for rescuing them... they all should. Basically it will keep them invested as a group rather than getting weird things as individuals. If one player has a "serious injury" that needs healed, they all should. That would be how I would alter that.

Also there's the fundamental issue of building characters for players that don't want that. That's a pretty rough issue, it's not a complete stop, there are plenty of old school games where that was a convention. But if you're detecting that a player is not into it, and self-destructive behavior like gambling away all their funds is evidence that they're not that into the character. Here I would say that you can offer them a new character, if you're constructing their characters it should be one built by you.

Also a hex crawl has fundamentally a lot of problems with character involvement. Some players are really good at involving themselves in those sort of scenarios, basically once you notice that players are getting interested in specific plot threads and pulling on those, you want to adjust your randomness to fit those plot threads, so now the "random" encounters have better odds of encountering something dealing with those plot points. That gives the feeling of a more cohesive story and will improve engagement, which is, I suspect, your big issue.

[Cluedrew]

No, people are fudging to take unsatisfying results off the table. But nobody here (I think) is removing all unsatisfying results, which would make switching systems and altering rulesets more worthwhile. It's very occasional, which means that a general rule can't really be applied to achieve the same effect.

OK ... by my intuitive definition that still feels like reducing chaos, but at this point I think the only disagreement is what exactly chaos means. And I don't think it is a term used to formally grade statistical distributions.

But have you tried or considered, as an example, hero points? Something to let the players push themselves up out of the worst situations? If so what was wrong/why did you reject the idea? On the surface it is a relatively infrequent mechanic, perhaps not "very occasional" (which is once every eight to ten session or there abouts?) but it can help out then and be used for other reasons the other times.

[AMFV]

OK ... by my intuitive definition that still feels like reducing chaos, but at this point I think the only disagreement is what exactly chaos means. And I don't think it is a term used to formally grade statistical distributions.

Well it is always reducing randomness in some way. But it isn't always reducing "chaos". Basically the dice are a tool for the DM to use. The results on the die are basically just random numbers, you use them to produce a variety of outcomes, as the DM you get to define what those range of outcomes are (with the rules as a useful guideline for doing that). The "fudging" is you defining a range of outcomes on the fly rather than using a predefined range. Which actually means more chaos not less, since you're making judgement calls. Now the more judgement calls you have to make the more likely it is that you're going to make one that isn't advantageous for the game, so you want to find the right balance.

But have you tried or considered, as an example, hero points? Something to let the players push themselves up out of the worst situations? If so what was wrong/why did you reject the idea?

I have tried that. There a few problems.

1.) Players don't always know when to use them, and they are not always good at judging the particular value of any die roll, typically players tend to hoard them.

2.) If I do use hero points, I don't want them to be used by the players to avoid the results of a random badroll, I want them to be used to represent where their characters are putting greater effort out. Like a moment of heroism rather than "getting lucky on a petrification save in a random encounter." It's a supplement to fudging outcomes, not a replacement.

3.) Those are completely player controlled, sometimes as the DM you want to be able to control the outcomes, and you know what? In most systems I play the DM has license to alter rules as needed for a funner or better table. I don't mind the players having a mechanism to control rolls to some extent, but it's answering a different issue than fudging is (for almost every system, there are a few where there's a lot more player narrative control, although that's not my favorite).

4.) I don't reject the idea, I use hero points in my games. But again, it doesn't replace or 'fix' fudging.

[Pelle]

Yes it would probably be better, what I'm arguing against is having to tell players that you're possibly going to fudge as a general announcement without being asked. This is doubly the case in systems (like 3.5 D&D or Pathfinder) where rule zero means that fudging is a possibility baked into the system rules itself (since the DM has the liberty to alter things).

Allright, fair enough. That's probably ok, though it depends on the culture of your group. But in the example where explicitly the player brought it up, you first said you would lie to him, which was what I objected to. Later you changed opinion about it, so I have no problem, but still several others here maintain they would lie to the player in that situation.

Because that would actually kill/diminish their enjoyment of the game.

No, it wouldn't. The player is saying he absolutely understands that the game ends if they TPK to a random encounter, and say he prefers that over a game with plot armor. He says that he absolutely wants the possibility to die from a random Bodak. You don't want that, that's fine. The player understands why you want the possibilty to fudge. The player just wants a different experience from the game than you. Why can't you let him find that experience elsewhere, instead of pretending to give it to him? What I object to is that even as the player describes his preferences, you are essentially saying that you know better what the player really prefer.

[Malifice]

The player is saying he absolutely understands that the game ends if they TPK to a random encounter, and say he prefers that over a game with plot armor. He says that he absolutely wants the possibility to die from a random Bodak.

Im sure he changes his tune after his 5th character in a row dies before it reaches 5th level due to losing a coin toss he had no control over, and where his actions simply didnt matter.

He died simply because the dice said so.

I dont know. I can think of much better ways to spend my spare time than that.

Seriously; imagine a video game with permadeath that just spawned random monsters of varying power (many beyond your ability to defeat). How long could you play that game, constantly creating a new character only to see it die horribly and have to start all over again, through no fault of your own, but due to random chance (and design of the game designers)?

Seriously. It would suck.

When I get together to play DnD I place my trust in the DM. The players form a social contract to work together to advance the overarching plot and story, in a collaborative manner, roleplaying characters in a fantasy world. The overall reason they do this is for fun. The DM is entrusted to assist the players in this goal, while providing challenging and engaging encounters and adventures.

The DM has overall veto on any rule or result that works against this goal, and towards you having fun.

Sometimes deaths happen of course; but generally speaking the player should have some say in how that happens (a valiant last stand or doing something silly, or as a consequence of their own actions). Never simply because I rolled a 17 instead of a 7, or because a coin came up heads instead of tails (unless the player put his character in such a position willingly and knowingly, such as drawing from a deck of many things being fully aware of the consequences).

[Malifice]

In one PF game I played in the DM required us all to create detailed backstories for our PCs. I worked with him and did just that, tying my PC into his world, the campaign setting, the plot and so forth.

15 minutes into the game we had our first encounter. A Tazelwyrm was hiding nearby. Perception checks were called for. It required an absurdly high Perception check of 20+ to spot (I failed), it gained surprise, used its pounce ability on my PC, reduced him to 0 HP (and dying) and then on round 1 of the combat, it won initiative, and dragged me underwater to my death.

There was literally nothing I could do about it and I had zero agency in the encounter (other than should I have both rolled 19+ on my perception check, AND won initiative - two things totally out of my control). I was an observer in my own characters death.

The disconnect was strong. Why ask for detailed backstories and plot engagement, if I was only going to get killed by a coin toss (that was heavily rigged against me) in round 1 of encounter 1, 15 minutes into the game?

It wasnt so much that I was angry that my character had been killed after putting so much work into it for the DM. It was the disconnect over what kind of game was being advertised, and what kind of game was being delivered. The DM didnt have to listen to the dice and let them decide my fate. He didnt have to have the creature drag me off. He could have made the encounter challenging and fun, but instead it turned into a gotcha that I had no real chance to do anything about, and zero agency (the encounter was always going to happen, regardless of what I did or did not do, and I was always going to die barring some freakishly good rolls).

Games like that, I dont want to play. I have better things to do with my spare time than invest in a DMs game world, plot and story, and invest in a character in his world, only to see it die a meaningless, pointless and sudden death, with the character having no agency in that death 'because the encounter was scripted and the dice said so.'

[AMFV]

Allright, fair enough. That's probably ok, though it depends on the culture of your group. But in the example where explicitly the player brought it up, you first said you would lie to him, which was what I objected to. Later you changed opinion about it, so I have no problem, but still several others here maintain they would lie to the player in that situation.

I'm fairly sure I DID NOT say exactly that. I said that if you started out not fudging and then decided to fudge at a later date that you don't really have an obligation to tell people that, and if they ask you point blank "did you just fudge that roll" you don't have any obligation to tell them. And that if you are playing a game with rule zero present that you have no obligation to disclose something like that at the start of the game.

No, it wouldn't. The player is saying he absolutely understands that the game ends if they TPK to a random encounter, and say he prefers that over a game with plot armor. He says that he absolutely wants the possibility to die from a random Bodak. You don't want that, that's fine. The player understands why you want the possibilty to fudge. The player just wants a different experience from the game than you. Why can't you let him find that experience elsewhere, instead of pretending to give it to him? What I object to is that even as the player describes his preferences, you are essentially saying that you know better what the player really prefer.

If the player believes that is the experience they're receiving... then it doesn't matter. This is all about the player's belief and perception, not what's actually on the table or on the dice. The player isn't going to have a fundamentally different game experience if you fudge results than if you don't, unless he is aware of the fudging. So if the DM isn't bad at it, it shouldn't affect player enjoyment at all.

[Satinavian]

Im sure he changes his tune after his 5th character in a row dies before it reaches 5th level due to losing a coin toss he had no control over, and where his actions simply didnt matter.

Now i do have player who want a real chance if death. And whom i have seen happily accepting death.

And yes, those players would still complain after the 5ths character dies before level 5. But they wout complain about the character dying when the rules say he would. They would complain about challenges and plot structures and maybe about whatever else leads to such a high lethality. If characters die all the time and that is not intended, then something is wrong. Usually with the structure of the adventures, mabye with the rules.

15 minutes into the game we had our first encounter. A Tazelwyrm was hiding nearby. Perception checks were called for. It required an absurdly high Perception check of 20+ to spot (I failed), it gained surprise, used its pounce ability on my PC, reduced him to 0 HP (and dying) and then on round 1 of the combat, it won initiative, and dragged me underwater to my death.

There was literally nothing I could do about it and I had zero agency in the encounter (other than should I have both rolled 19+ on my perception check, AND won initiative - two things totally out of my control). I was an observer in my own characters death.

Sounds ****ty. But not because the character dies, but because there was a pre-scipted encounter that would most likely result in you losing a deadly fight before you could make any tactical decision. That is just bad.

[Cluedrew]

To AMFV(): I read your last reply and I will say I still disagree with you, but on a completely subjective "that's not for me" level. It doesn't agree with my design sensibilities or with how I like rules to be laid out, but that is OK. I guess the only point I will stand on is you should never hide the fact that you use fudging, even if you hide when exactly you do it.

(Also I think Pelle is confusing you with Malifice, who said something like what Pelle said you said earlier in the thread. I think, I might be confusing people myself.)

[Talakeal]

Therin lies your fundamental problem to date. That it took this long for you to priorise your players enjoying the game you're running for them over random rolls of a dice.

That's not quite what I said.

Whether or not fudging the dice rolls (or preserving verisimilitude) leads to a better experience in the long run is not something that is easy to observe. People are extremely divided about the issue and lie on all points of the spectrum.

I have fudged dice in the past. I have played with good DMs that fudge. I have played with bad DMs that fudge. I have played with good DMs that don't fudge. I have played with bad DM's that don't fudge. I have played with good DM's that I couldn't tell if they were fudging, and I have played with bad DM's that I couldn't tell if they were fudging. And I have played under so-so DM's of all types as well.

I am currently in a pretty strong anti-fudging stance because I have just spent the last three years playing under a power-tripping control freak who fudged dice constantly to keep us on the rails (and occasionally for less charitable reasons) and my current group of players is unanimously pretty vocal about wanting a DM doesn't fudge. I also roll in the open because I physically don't like to use a screen, and tell the players the difficulty of tests before hand because it allows them to make informed decisions (and I do play with people who will actually challenge me and look up the rules if they don't think what I am doing adds up).

The problem is that it is really impossible to know what is going to happen in the future. As I said a few posts ago, fudging the dice so they don't have a hard encounter might save them from a defeat, but it also might rob them of an awesome story about how they managed to defeat a seemingly impossible foe.

I know from experience that it is really hard to feel any sense of accomplishment in games where you know the DM fudged because your victories feel pre-ordained.

I don't think there is. I think that the fundamental problem you're having is that different players are suffering different consequences from failing an encounter. That's the issue, fundamentally one of fairness vs. unfairness, not that you have given your players "plot armor" it's that "some plot armor is better than others". I'll switch tracks here since I suspect it'll be more productive.

If you're going to have failure conditions other than death when players "lose" a combat encounter, they either need to be really comparable for all the players or... they need to be partywide failure conditions. Which actually can work pretty well. If one player loses equipment (because they were captured) so should everybody. If one player owes a favor to a mobster for rescuing them... they all should. Basically it will keep them invested as a group rather than getting weird things as individuals. If one player has a "serious injury" that needs healed, they all should. That would be how I would alter that.

Also there's the fundamental issue of building characters for players that don't want that. That's a pretty rough issue, it's not a complete stop, there are plenty of old school games where that was a convention. But if you're detecting that a player is not into it, and self-destructive behavior like gambling away all their funds is evidence that they're not that into the character. Here I would say that you can offer them a new character, if you're constructing their characters it should be one built by you.

Also a hex crawl has fundamentally a lot of problems with character involvement. Some players are really good at involving themselves in those sort of scenarios, basically once you notice that players are getting interested in specific plot threads and pulling on those, you want to adjust your randomness to fit those plot threads, so now the "random" encounters have better odds of encountering something dealing with those plot points. That gives the feeling of a more cohesive story and will improve engagement, which is, I suspect, your big issue.

Wow, I thought we were going to get into another argument based on your previous post, but I actually agree with pretty much everything you said.

Just to clarify though:

I didn't build any of the PCs, all of the decisions were made by the players, I merely presented the choices to them in natural language and physically filled out the character sheets for them because they were new to the game and I felt it would have been kind of like throwing them into the deep end to simply dump so much new terminology on them all at once, and I had the experienced players do it to so we could do it as a group and have everyone make their characters together.

The player who is gambling away his money is doing so because he took a compulsive gambler flaw, and he is fine with his character. One of the OTHER players doesn't like his character.

I did tell the unhappy player he could remake his character. I then proceeded to reject what he gave me because it was min-maxxed to the point of lunacy and told him to come back to me with something more inline with the rest of the party, which he declined to do.

Also, I decided to give the random mishap table the axe over a month ago at this point.

[AMFV]

I know from experience that it is really hard to feel any sense of accomplishment in games where you know the DM fudged because your victories feel pre-ordained.

That's the thing, fudging is really negative when it's done badly. If it's done right you should never know that the DM fudged, bad fudging is much worse than no fudging.

I didn't build any of the PCs, all of the decisions were made by the players, I merely presented the choices to them in natural language and physically filled out the character sheets for them because they were new to the game and I felt it would have been kind of like throwing them into the deep end to simply dump so much new terminology on them all at once, and I had the experienced players do it to so we could do it as a group and have everyone make their characters together.

The decisions weren't though, because you made the mechanical nuts and bolts. As a player who loves mechanical nuts and bolts I would find that really frustrating it would definitely make me less involved in the game.

The player who is gambling away his money is doing so because he took a compulsive gambler flaw, and he is fine with his character. One of the OTHER players doesn't like his character.

This is an example of what you could call attention seeking behavior, and in this case, probably motivated by not being very engaged in the character. That sort of anti-team behavior complete with the "I'm roleplaying my character" schtick, is usually (in my experience) a sign that the player isn't engaged and that's something that should be addressed.

I did tell the unhappy player he could remake his character. I then proceeded to reject what he gave me because it was min-maxxed to the point of lunacy and told him to come back to me with something more inline with the rest of the party, which he declined to do.

That's probably mostly fixed by really strict rules about character creation.

Also, I decided to give the random mishap table the axe over a month ago at this point.

Honestly I actually like the random mishap table, it should be even across all the players though. Especially in a situation where you're hexcrawling that sort of plot hook is awesome. KO results could include things like owing a mafia boss or a lord who saved them a favor, having to recover their equipment, having to all get healed up from some disease.

[Pelle]

I'm fairly sure I DID NOT say exactly that. I said that if you started out not fudging and then decided to fudge at a later date that you don't really have an obligation to tell people that, and if they ask you point blank "did you just fudge that roll" you don't have any obligation to tell them. And that if you are playing a game with rule zero present that you have no obligation to disclose something like that at the start of the game.

Yeah, sorry, I see now you first said you would probably admit it having it as a tool. I guess I got hung up on that you didn't seem to agree on "accepting not to fudge, but doing it anyways" was bad. Promising not to, and later changing your mind about it without letting the player know (at the end of the session?) is not really ok to me either.

On hiding behind the rule zero; the player is asking you "is this a game with rule zero or not?". You can play D&D without if everyone decides to. The player deserves to know if he wants to.

If the player believes that is the experience they're receiving... then it doesn't matter. This is all about the player's belief and perception, not what's actually on the table or on the dice. The player isn't going to have a fundamentally different game experience if you fudge results than if you don't, unless he is aware of the fudging. So if the DM isn't bad at it, it shouldn't affect player enjoyment at all.

This is what it always comes down to in these discussion; if the player doesn't notice, is it ok or not? First, if the player doesn't notice and that the DM isn't bad at it are big assumptions. And if you are rolling everything behind a screen, I think the players already suspect you fudge now and then, and are completely ok with it. Second, if you know that the player will be really unhappy if he knew what you did, thinking you have wasted hours of his life, is it still ok even if he doesn't find out? Maybe it depends on how strongly the player care about it? To me it just seems very paternalistic, "I know best what you enjoy", and would rather listen to what the player actually says he enjoys.