Quote from: SettembriniI totally subscribe to that point: Get a handle on the System.

I believe that's what he's doing.  That still doesn't prevent the occasional gaffe during play, and an occasional gaffe shouldn't be responsible for ruining everyone's enjoyment of the game.

!i!

Quote from: SettembriniIf you need to cheat in a game to have fun, than you have serious issues.

You've never done a "do-over" or whatever when you're playing soccer?  Shit man, I used to be against fudging die rolls in RPGs, and then I realized how fuzzy the rules of baseball got when my friends and I were playing it.

Quote from: UmaSamaI like fudge.

Reminds me of when I worked at a coffee and fudge shop. Awful hours, but amazing products. Great, great fudge. ^_^

Role-playing games are a little bit art, and a little bit science. We get all kinds here, and I think different games actually have different fudge-levels (which is probably a minority opinion here) but I'd say that the real issue is what your gaming goal is.

Sometimes, as a DM, you make a miscalculation. You would have fixed it earlier, but it didn't become an obvious problem until now. It seems like if your fixing your own mistakes, then that's a good thing. Fixing your player's mistakes is kind of another.

Now, we can probably argue all day if it's the player's mistake, but you say you don't blame him at all and mostly assumed the mantle of responsibility. I think you made the right call as a DM. OTOH, it's not the end of the world in either direction.

Quote from: SettembriniIf your friends need to be lied to to have fun, If they want to play


INVULNERABLE POWER GODS


then you rather lie to them.

I suggest: get yourself some grown up people to game with.

As others said: It´s only a game!

If you need to cheat in a game to have fun, than you have serious issues.

*snicker*

Sett knows.

Gaming is serious buisness.

Dude, Sett. You're pretty much the picture of a pig, did you know that?

*mumbles something about gazing into the abyss*

Quote from: JimBobOzWell done, McMurray! You put actual human beings before several hundred pages of sloppily-written, badly-edited, saucily-illustrated book. Good job!

Well put, Jim Bob.

Quote from: joewolzYou've never done a "do-over" or whatever when you're playing soccer?  Shit man, I used to be against fudging die rolls in RPGs, and then I realized how fuzzy the rules of baseball got when my friends and I were playing it.

"Do-overs" are fine. What I'd worry about if I were in Jim's shoes is, will the players start to feel disoriented because they want to take on challenges fair & square, but in the back of their minds they're not sure if what they're really up against is Jim's judgment of their intentions and the pacing of the adventure.

One time's no big deal (except it does impose a burden on Jim, having to carry a secret). If the players want a challenge, though, then continued fudging is eventually going to cause problems. (If they don't want a challenge, it might not.)

Nevertheless I think it'd be more productive for Jim to look at how he got painted into a corner--what contributed to the need to fudge.

How much choice did the players really have about going into this fight at this time? How much knowledge did they have about the risks?

What the #%^* is wrong with a meaningless death? I can only speculate here, but--does Exalted have mechanically complex chargen? Does it encourage or require a lot of player-created background?

Elliot, am I Jim now, or is that post referring to JimBob?

Wait, I thought I was Jim...

Dammit Jim, I'm a Jim, not a miracle worker...

It occurs to me that Fudging...and particularly complaints about fudging, comes down to an issue of Trust.

Counterintuitively it seems to me that if you don't like fudging its probably because you have trust issues... at least vis a vis your GM.

Sadly, this was much better thought out an hour ago... then I went to lunch and it's all stale and crumbly now.

Quote from: James McMurrayElliot, am I Jim now, or is that post referring to JimBob?

Sorry, James. Too many of you guys around here.

That one was for you.

Quote from: Elliot WilenWhat the #%^* is wrong with a meaningless death? I can only speculate here, but--does Exalted have mechanically complex chargen? Does it encourage or require a lot of player-created background?

Exalted encourages player-background in the form of justifying beginning Background points, but doesn't demand it. Beginning creation is fairly crunchy, but no more then D&D is, really. (Skill selection, Charm selection pretty much equals Class/Skill selection, Feat selection.)

I don't know D&D past 1e.

Basically what I was getting at was: the harder it is to replace (or maybe resurrect) a dead character, the more likely it is that people will balk at meaningless death, or sulk afterwards.

Spike,

QuoteCounterintuitively it seems to me that if you don't like fudging its probably because you have trust issues... at least vis a vis your GM.

Maybe sometimes. For me, I think it's a matter of mismatched ideas of the GM's responsibility. I don't want an umpire to fudge balls & strikes; that's not because I don't trust the umpire, it's because I'm not looking for the sort of game that's produced by fudging.

In RPGs if I want that sort of game I think I'd look more to Heroquest or Everway. In a game with more rigidly-defined rules, I'm looking for something different.

But it's complicated. When it comes to big fights, if the scenarios are basically funneling the action toward big set-pieces, then in my opinion the GM has a responsibility to calibrate the challenge to the resources of the players and their general tastes in terms of level of challenge. Do you like your fights to be difficult enough that a PC dies every few sessions? Or do you want challenges that you know you can safely master, provided you think about them?

Really, if that's the sort of game you're playing, then the GM needs a few "do overs". When I was playing AD&D I did it pretty transparently: "It was just a dream, you weren't TPK'ed by wolves, it's the next morning." Again, these days I'd go for the hero point method. The GM can watch the hero points on the PCs' sheets and use that to gauge how careful he needs to be. Back off if the PCs are low, play it close to the line if they've got plenty. "The line" itself is set by the above questions regarding level of challenge.

On the other hand if the players have a lot of discretion about which challenges to face, then the GM doesn't have to worry about calibration nearly so much. As long as the players have this choice, and know or have a way of knowing what they might be up against, a lot of responsibility shifts to them, and the GM can just be an umpire who calls 'em as he sees 'em.

Quote from: SpikeIt occurs to me that Fudging...and particularly complaints about fudging, comes down to an issue of Trust.

Counterintuitively it seems to me that if you don't like fudging its probably because you have trust issues... at least vis a vis your GM.

Sadly, this was much better thought out an hour ago... then I went to lunch and it's all stale and crumbly now.

I concur with this conclusion wholeheartedly, having come to it independently after numerous discussions with the local GM Paranoia Brigade.