I run "clean" in every game. I don't want even the barest hint of a chance that my reputation for running games might be tainted by "fudges rolls". Uh-uh. Cardinal sin.
For that matter, I do all my rolling on the table, no screen. I encourage my players to see failure as "part of the game" and expect it myself, too.
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In your scenario, I would align with the first option. Succeeding in the face of failure, or even failing in all likelihood of success, has created excitement in my games. Depending upon the story and actions involved, sometimes the DM will fudge his/her portion of the rolls in favor of driving story or promoting further excitement/suspense.
Following in thought of the second option, observing dice rolls is all but negated if their impact is openly disregarded by the DM. It may be just me, but I can't imagine how this would prove entertaining over the course of a campaign.
Following in thought of the second option, observing dice rolls is all but negated if their impact is openly disregarded by the DM.
I'm sorry, I'm definitely not understanding you, and think you may not be understanding me either.
What do you mean by "observing dice rolls is all but negated if their impact is openly disregarded by the DM."? It seems like you are meaning for that sentence to be talking about my non-fudging approach of either A) rolling dice and the results of those dice being used as-is to determine success or failure of an action, or B) declaring the result of actions without involving die rolls in the event that only one outcome is viewed as acceptable, but never telling the player you are doing A and then actually doing B secretly, but the words used (openly disregarded by the DM) are words that seem more at place to me in a description of what fudging is unless the DM is doing it while claiming they don't do it (openly disregarding dice rolls when seen fit by the DM).
I have "played" D&D in a long car ride - with no dice... just straight making decisions. You could call it "fudging" if you will, or don't call it "playing", but it was still collaborative story-telling - which I believe is what this game is all about. With that said, knowing that the dice are there to help inject some "random" into your collaborative story-telling, is it really fudging at all?
I have "played" D&D in a long car ride - with no dice... just straight making decisions. You could call it "fudging" if you will, or don't call it "playing", but it was still collaborative story-telling - which I believe is what this game is all about. With that said, knowing that the dice are there to help inject some "random" into your collaborative story-telling, is it really fudging at all?
I've always understood fudging a roll to mean that a roll was made and the results were ignored. So what you are describing wouldn't be fudging, just playing without randomizers.
I do not fudge, as all rolls are in the open. I make decisions instead of rolls sometimes, like focusing tougher monsters on tougher characters as long as there is a fluff explanation as to why, and sometimes I decide on encounters and other times roll for them, but in all cases I am either deciding or rolling and neither are fudging.
I'm not a master DM or anything (I'm still working on it). I fudge rolls, but only in combat situations and never against the players (turning a miss into a hit). My players know that I may fudge them, but I tell them everyone gets one which I will never tell them when they get it. So far it seems to work out well and the players don't try and take advantage of it.
I have "played" D&D in a long car ride - with no dice...
So what you are describing wouldn't be fudging, just playing without randomizers.
That's fair. I guess what I was trying to get at was that if the dice are just a tool towards the spirit of the game, and not really required, then philosophically speaking, can it really be fudging at all?
There is only one circumstance under which I would ever fudge rolls and that's if I realise I, as the DM, have made a mistake that unfairly disadvantages the players.
Otherwise I strongly believe that fudging is bad for the game and bad for the table. I'll walk away from any game where I know the DM is doing it.
When you always get a medal for participating, victory is meaningless and failure has no impact.
I don't fudge rolls. I do, however, empower my players to fudge their own rolls via defined houserules. This gives them the agency to choose when something is bad enough to need a reroll or slight boost without trivializing everything. Each player has a limited pool of points they can spend to do this fudging, and the points recharge some every session. Sometimes a player is perfectly ok with a bad roll because they want to see the consequences of the failure. (If anyone is interested in the actual mechanics behind my system, let me know and I can put up a thread in the houserules forum). I still roll privately because my players would metagame the roll results otherwise.
When I need to ensure something happens one particular way for the sake of story, I simply narrate that thing happening and don't involve dice at all. Making impossible-to-hit DCs isn't really fun for my players, because I'm only giving them fake agency and possibly wasting their fudge points. My players are all understanding of this, and agree that this is the best way for our group. Your table may be different, talk with your players and figure out what works best for all of you as a group.
I don't like fudge rolls as despite what the intentions may be it is still cheating. Also you may think you are guiding the story or helping players have fun, but some of the best and most memorable experiences I have had in groups is due to bad rolls and things taking an unexpected turn which we got to explore and develope together as a group.
Also it only takes one person having a bad day and accuse you of picking on him because he knows you fudge and he keeps getting hit, This could not only spoil the session but also sour the whole campaign and perhaps the break up of the group.
I only fudge rolls to stop things from being boring. If people die they die. Crit fails and enemy crit successes are fun. The PCs doing 4 damage on a monster with 5 hp left that they've been fighting for 2 hours when it should have taken 30 minutes isn't.
I only fudge rolls to stop things from being boring. If people die they die. Crit fails and enemy crit successes are fun. The PCs doing 4 damage on a monster with 5 hp left that they've been fighting for 2 hours when it should have taken 30 minutes isn't.
Intelligent monsters can surrender, non-intelligent monsters and beasts can try to flee. Wearing everything down to the last hitpoint can be avoided in ways other than dice rolling.
If you are going to fudge a roll, I think you need to be able to roleplay yourself as being completely fair, transparent, and a hard believer in the outcome of the die.
And then take the truth with you to the literal grave.
If your players KNOW you fudge rolls, it cheapens the game (especially if they know which rolls). If they suspect, that is different and not too bad. I think a fudge now and then for the sake of humor or to push the story along is a good thing.
I only fudge rolls if I feel like I have made a terrible mistake.
Just to share a DM who refuses to fudge does in the same circumstance:
When I feel like I have made a mistake, I tell my players "Sorry, I think I've made a mistake." and work out how to fix the mistake with their input.
I've never had it cause any negative impact on anyone's enjoyment of game-play, but have had players thank/compliment me for doing it instead of fudging and pretending I don't make mistakes.
I understand why some DMs fudge rolls, but I can't do it. It feels like cheating, even when it's in the players benefit. As a player, if I lied about what my rolls were in order to make the outcome what I want, that's cheating and wouldn't be tolerated by any DM I've ever played with. As a DM, it feels like I'm cheating by lying about the rolls to change the outcome to what I think will be more fun for the players.
I just can't do it. It feels like I'm cheating the players and putting my ideas of what the story should be over the story that is being told together with the players and chance.
I only fudge rolls if I feel like I have made a terrible mistake.
Just to share a DM who refuses to fudge does in the same circumstance:
When I feel like I have made a mistake, I tell my players "Sorry, I think I've made a mistake." and work out how to fix the mistake with their input.
I've never had it cause any negative impact on anyone's enjoyment of game-play, but have had players thank/compliment me for doing it instead of fudging and pretending I don't make mistakes.
Agreed. Sometimes I miscalculate the difficulty of a given situation, and I do tell my players after we end session that I messed up with placing X encounter and I apologize. However, I'm not going to let a PC die because a) I seriously miscalculated the CR of a creature and b) they had the good sense to run away pretty quickly. I'm not going to punish them for my mistake, and I don't feel the need to take away that sense danger or relief they had when they were able to get away, or their realization that they don't have to fight and kill everything that I put in front of them. I've been a DM for nearly 30 years, and only started running 5th edition in the last year or so. Previously, I stuck to 1st and 2nd editions, so the whole CR thing was brand new to me, but I learned from it, refined my approach, and still sometimes miscalculate just because I think monster X is cool and does cool things and I'm going to use it here "it'll be fine". Sometimes it is fine. Sometimes the creature runs away. Sometimes the party runs away. Sometimes there's a truce and parlay. And on a very few occasions I just fudge a die.
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Fudging rolls runs the risk of the players feeling like the outcome wasn't legitimate, which can undercut their "wins" with feelings that they were gifted to them, and overlay any "loss" with a feeling that they didn't actually have a chance.
I've found, from experience, that even a DM that believes they are acting in the players' best interest when fudging a roll can alter an outcome the player doesn't actually want altered - a specific example being a DM that put the party up against overwhelmingly powerful opponents, told me how much damage my character took from an attack, and then fudged after I told him that killed my character with "Really? How many hp did you have? Oh, well I meant that the monster did [enough damage to leave me down, but not dead]" because he thought I'd rather my character live thanks to a gimme than die at the whim of the dice.
So I've developed a strong policy - one that started the very first time I ever read a DMG, as it encourage me to alter or ignore dice rolls after I've made them and I had the immediate 12-year old reaction of "That's bad advice 'cause it's not fair to do that.", and matured as I saw the effects of other DMs that did fudge - that no die shall ever be rolled unless its outcome will be used.
If you will only have one thing happen no matter what the die says, then just say that is what happens and skip the roll - it's the same end result without adding a lie (white, or otherwise) to the process.
TOTALLY Agree with you AoB! If you, as the DM, are lookgin to get a certain result, then roleplay to the result rather than have characters roll and then do that regardless of the number on the die (or something similar). I personally have found that roleplaying combat from time to time can get the group engaged and rolling a die can pull them out of it.
That said, I won't claim that I haven't fudged a roll from time to time... but I try to not do it often.
Fare thee well.
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I run "clean" in every game. I don't want even the barest hint of a chance that my reputation for running games might be tainted by "fudges rolls". Uh-uh. Cardinal sin.
For that matter, I do all my rolling on the table, no screen. I encourage my players to see failure as "part of the game" and expect it myself, too.
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In your scenario, I would align with the first option. Succeeding in the face of failure, or even failing in all likelihood of success, has created excitement in my games. Depending upon the story and actions involved, sometimes the DM will fudge his/her portion of the rolls in favor of driving story or promoting further excitement/suspense.
Following in thought of the second option, observing dice rolls is all but negated if their impact is openly disregarded by the DM. It may be just me, but I can't imagine how this would prove entertaining over the course of a campaign.
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I'm sorry, I'm definitely not understanding you, and think you may not be understanding me either.
What do you mean by "observing dice rolls is all but negated if their impact is openly disregarded by the DM."? It seems like you are meaning for that sentence to be talking about my non-fudging approach of either A) rolling dice and the results of those dice being used as-is to determine success or failure of an action, or B) declaring the result of actions without involving die rolls in the event that only one outcome is viewed as acceptable, but never telling the player you are doing A and then actually doing B secretly, but the words used (openly disregarded by the DM) are words that seem more at place to me in a description of what fudging is unless the DM is doing it while claiming they don't do it (openly disregarding dice rolls when seen fit by the DM).
I have "played" D&D in a long car ride - with no dice... just straight making decisions. You could call it "fudging" if you will, or don't call it "playing", but it was still collaborative story-telling - which I believe is what this game is all about. With that said, knowing that the dice are there to help inject some "random" into your collaborative story-telling, is it really fudging at all?
For the purpose of advancing the story, DM fudging is perfectly acceptable as long as it does not directly lead to PC death.
I'm not a master DM or anything (I'm still working on it). I fudge rolls, but only in combat situations and never against the players (turning a miss into a hit). My players know that I may fudge them, but I tell them everyone gets one which I will never tell them when they get it. So far it seems to work out well and the players don't try and take advantage of it.
There is only one circumstance under which I would ever fudge rolls and that's if I realise I, as the DM, have made a mistake that unfairly disadvantages the players.
Otherwise I strongly believe that fudging is bad for the game and bad for the table. I'll walk away from any game where I know the DM is doing it.
When you always get a medal for participating, victory is meaningless and failure has no impact.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
I don't fudge rolls. I do, however, empower my players to fudge their own rolls via defined houserules. This gives them the agency to choose when something is bad enough to need a reroll or slight boost without trivializing everything. Each player has a limited pool of points they can spend to do this fudging, and the points recharge some every session. Sometimes a player is perfectly ok with a bad roll because they want to see the consequences of the failure. (If anyone is interested in the actual mechanics behind my system, let me know and I can put up a thread in the houserules forum). I still roll privately because my players would metagame the roll results otherwise.
When I need to ensure something happens one particular way for the sake of story, I simply narrate that thing happening and don't involve dice at all. Making impossible-to-hit DCs isn't really fun for my players, because I'm only giving them fake agency and possibly wasting their fudge points. My players are all understanding of this, and agree that this is the best way for our group. Your table may be different, talk with your players and figure out what works best for all of you as a group.
I don't like fudge rolls as despite what the intentions may be it is still cheating. Also you may think you are guiding the story or helping players have fun, but some of the best and most memorable experiences I have had in groups is due to bad rolls and things taking an unexpected turn which we got to explore and develope together as a group.
Also it only takes one person having a bad day and accuse you of picking on him because he knows you fudge and he keeps getting hit, This could not only spoil the session but also sour the whole campaign and perhaps the break up of the group.
I only fudge rolls to stop things from being boring. If people die they die. Crit fails and enemy crit successes are fun. The PCs doing 4 damage on a monster with 5 hp left that they've been fighting for 2 hours when it should have taken 30 minutes isn't.
If you are going to fudge a roll, I think you need to be able to roleplay yourself as being completely fair, transparent, and a hard believer in the outcome of the die.
And then take the truth with you to the literal grave.
If your players KNOW you fudge rolls, it cheapens the game (especially if they know which rolls). If they suspect, that is different and not too bad. I think a fudge now and then for the sake of humor or to push the story along is a good thing.
I only fudge rolls if I feel like I have made a terrible mistake. Otherwise, Tymora's will be done.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
Just to share a DM who refuses to fudge does in the same circumstance:
When I feel like I have made a mistake, I tell my players "Sorry, I think I've made a mistake." and work out how to fix the mistake with their input.
I've never had it cause any negative impact on anyone's enjoyment of game-play, but have had players thank/compliment me for doing it instead of fudging and pretending I don't make mistakes.
I understand why some DMs fudge rolls, but I can't do it. It feels like cheating, even when it's in the players benefit. As a player, if I lied about what my rolls were in order to make the outcome what I want, that's cheating and wouldn't be tolerated by any DM I've ever played with. As a DM, it feels like I'm cheating by lying about the rolls to change the outcome to what I think will be more fun for the players.
I just can't do it. It feels like I'm cheating the players and putting my ideas of what the story should be over the story that is being told together with the players and chance.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....