Quote from: jeff37923;1057492Funny thing is, i had noticed it, but thought that a 1 in 800 chance was pretty unlikely.



What I did after fudging the roll was declare that this was the Mother Of All Directional Misjumps instead of a TPK. The original campaign idea was scrapped since the ship with the PCs was now over twenty parsecs into uncharted territory. They spent the next year of game time fixing their ship and jumping back to charted space while encountering pocket empires, wildcat colonies, and pirates.

It seems like you created the best possible outcome from your decision (that campaign sounds rad). I still fail to see, however, how "%chance to completely end campaign, irrevocably" is a worthwhile thing to include on a single die roll in the first place.

Rather than having so much conclusion from a single %chance roll, I'd much rather have it deposit the players in a terrible situation (like your ruling did). Same thing with ship travel in d&d: I'm theoretically fine with a small %chance that "ship sinks" occurs per journey, but I think that should just jump us to the point in the action where the ship is taking on water and the heroic PCs have to do something to save the crew from a watery grave.

I mean sure, that could still end a campaign, but it'd be more than a single roll between the campaign and its conclusion.

I roll everything in the open. If we as a group were to think a particular result too instantaneously odious, then I we'll change it in the open also. Player belief in the possibility of terrible outcome is absolutely essential to any sense of real danger for their characters. If a player ever catches -- or even suspects -- fudging behind the screen, that belief is shattered.

Conversely, a player who witnesses with their own eyes a disaster unfold on the dice, even if that result is redacted, is set all the more on edge as the game moves forward. It can happen any time, death is around the corner ... this is the feeling of an adventuring character, and when the players buy in immersion is well-served.

But worse for me, as the one who usually sits behind the screen, is that my own immersion is wrecked if I fudge the dice. I'm there to have fun too, and I want to believe in the characters' danger. I am as anxious for each die roll as my players are. And of course if my immersion is ruined, that's going to bleed over to others at the table.

Quote from: jeff37923;1057492What I did after fudging the roll was declare that this was the Mother Of All Directional Misjumps instead of a TPK. The original campaign idea was scrapped since the ship with the PCs was now over twenty parsecs into uncharted territory. They spent the next year of game time fixing their ship and jumping back to charted space while encountering pocket empires, wildcat colonies, and pirates.

You certainly did the right thing there!

Just edit that damn table.

Had an epic PC death in Stonehell Dungeon today as a result of no fudging - unfortunate elven princess PC is looking at old tapestries of the fall of King Magrathor the Sterling Potentate, when he reaches out from the tapestry and squeezes her heart...

22 damage - turned out she had exactly 22 hp.
5e rules so Death Saves.
Fails the first one.
Rolls the second save with Inspiration - rolls on d20 x2: '1' & '1'. :eek:
Arise, corpse-bride of dead king Magrathor...

Quote from: jeff37923;1057492Funny thing is, i had noticed it, but thought that a 1 in 800 chance was pretty unlikely.



What I did after fudging the roll was declare that this was the Mother Of All Directional Misjumps instead of a TPK. The original campaign idea was scrapped since the ship with the PCs was now over twenty parsecs into uncharted territory. They spent the next year of game time fixing their ship and jumping back to charted space while encountering pocket empires, wildcat colonies, and pirates.

Personally I consider altering the outcome of the result to something more acceptable than insta-death rather different from negating (fudging) the roll. The roll stood, you just changed it from death to a likely death that they can RP and potentially alter to just very inconvenient.  

Quote from: S'mon;1057528Had an epic PC death in Stonehell Dungeon today as a result of no fudging - unfortunate elven princess PC is looking at old tapestries of the fall of King Magrathor the Sterling Potentate, when he reaches out from the tapestry and squeezes her heart...

22 damage - turned out she had exactly 22 hp.
5e rules so Death Saves.
Fails the first one.
Rolls the second save with Inspiration - rolls on d20 x2: '1' & '1'. :eek:
Arise, corpse-bride of dead king Magrathor...

and this is the kind of epic game experience that can be lost if fudging becomes the norm for a GM.

Quote from: S'mon;1057527Just edit that damn table.

I honestly tend not to use that version of Traveller anymore except for fluff. Not because of possible instant death misjumps, but because it combines the most lengthy aspects of character creation from both Traveller and d20 System. Our average starting character level was 8 and it would take an entire session zero just to create them and then level them up through lifepath. Like a lot of d20 gaming, it just became too time consuming.

Quote from: Chris24601;1057452I fully agree with this sentiment. Unless you actually wrote the system (and sometimes not even then, I have horror stories about the Arcanis RPG design process) no GM is going to be aware of every little quirk of the system they're using and, from my experience, very few are versed enough in actual probability to be able to judge things related to it with any accuracy. So if something comes up in the rules that you think is just damned stupid as a mechanic (in this case because it completely derails the campaign before it even starts) and, after seeing that unexpected result come up you, as the GM, want to change that rule permanently to prevent the stupid thing from ever possibly happening again in your campaign... I don't think that's fudging the dice role... that's just making a ruling.

The notion that the rules even allow something like that to occur when there are so many more useful and interesting options is one of those things as a GM that just make me shake my head at what the designers were possibly thinking when they designed that mechanic.

Then again I've known legit game designers who thought 2d10+1d6 had the exact same probably curve as 1d20+4 because the average was 14.5 for both (No, I am NOT actually kidding; they thought they could replace the d20 with 2d10 and static ability modifiers with dice rolls while keeping the exact same target numbers as 3e D&D used and that it would have NO effect on the probabilities in the game).

So it's entirely possible the person who designed the mechanic actually failed to consider that "instant TPK" was going to eventually come up at someone's table because to them something like a 1 in 216 chance would probably never even come up in any given campaign and almost certainly not on the very first jump, though the probably of it coming up and wrecking someone's campaign on the first jump reached 100% once you had enough tables playing the game.

Changing or ignoring mechanics is different to changing dice rolls, though.

Quote from: Psikerlord;1057572Changing or ignoring mechanics is different to changing dice rolls, though.

Ignoring rules because the result is not what you want is not all that different.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1057580Ignoring rules because the result is not what you want is not all that different.

The edges get a little blurry but to my mind the lack of illusion is important.

If you think of it in computer game terms it's a bit like being able to restore from a saved game vs playing a game where you seem to keep just winning combats by the skin of your teeth but your avatar never actually dies no matter what happens.

In the first, the game is the game, and you either buy its premises or you don't, in the second the game is only fun until you reach the point where you see through the illusion.

Quote from: Psikerlord;1057572Changing or ignoring mechanics is different to changing dice rolls, though.

AGREED: changing rules conditionally, to suit your idea of what "should" happen, whenever you want to, without the knowledge and consent of the players, is fudging rolls.

You can change a bad rule and that's fine. There's no deception involved in repairing broken mechanics, or customizing the parts of the game that don't work for your table.

It's when you're ignoring everything behind the screen "for the good of the players!" that things go so hideously wrong.

I have to say, I've been guilty of fudging the the die in favor of the players... Not too often but I have done it to save a characters life. Not that I ever told any of the players.

I am in the no fudging camp but broken is broken.

And you can't always see it coming. GM's perogative. or if you're touchy feely "troup" perogavtive.

I mean, fuggit, it's your game, right?

Quote from: Azraele;1057593No, changing rules conditionally, to suit your idea of what "should" happen, whenever you want to, without the knowledge and consent of the players, is the same as fudging rolls.

You can change a bad rule and that's fine. There's no deception involved in repairing broken mechanics, or customizing the parts of the game that don't work for your table.

It's when you're ignoring everything behind the screen "for the good of the players!" that things go so hideously wrong.

This is the key in my book. Roll for misjump and sometimes take the result and sometimes not, fudging.

See the misjump rules allow results you don't want to play out so you change the table/rule up front is a good solution.

Rolling on the table and THEN realizing it can generate undesirable results so you change the table/rule is a decent solution and often pragmatic.

The key is recognize the rule doesn't work as written for you and your group and change the rule vs. leaving the table as is, and changing the outcome when it doesn't work and leaving it as is when it does work.

I'm glad 1977 Classic Traveller doesn't have the "ship blows up" misjump, but it still has a significant chance of sending the ship into oblivion (or so far off the map that I now need to generate a new setting of play, 36 parsecs is 3-4 sub-sectors away, possibly even into a different sector). I chose to modify the where do you go mechanism.

Fortunately my first actual misjump of the campaign was almost totally benign.

Frank

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1057340If freedom means anything, it means the freedom to fuck up. There is no true player freedom without the possibility of a TPK - or the possibility of a TNPCK. Poor Saruman.

I don't run railroad campaigns. Hundreds of PCs have died in games I run, and I've had many TPCs. But I still occasionally use my discretion to fudge.

As usual when it comes to RPG forums, people are taking didactic positions without any room for deviation or nuance.

Quote from: Azraele;1057593No, changing rules conditionally, to suit your idea of what "should" happen, whenever you want to, without the knowledge and consent of the players, is the same as fudging rolls.

Well, ultimately you consent by continuing to play at the same table, but I totally agree with you on the "without the knowledge" bit.