Should he be allowed to do this at all? When?

In which circumstances do you think a GM should be allowed to modify, ignore, fudge the dice results he gets behind his screen?

Examples would be helpful for the conversation.

Under no circumstances should this happen, ever, in any way for any reason.

In before the basket weavers are unsurprisingly all in favor of cheating.

Quote from: Benoist;592478Should he be allowed to do this at all? When?

In which circumstances do you think a GM should be allowed to modify, ignore, fudge the dice results he gets behind his screen?

Examples would be helpful for the conversation.

I think this is really up to the GM and his group.

Those of us that cut our teeth on 90s rpgs I think are pretty averse now to being told to fudge for plot purposes. Personally I really prefer a let the dice fall where they may approach except when the results of the dice would create a highly unbelievable or inconsistent (in terms of setting) result. Another time is when the GM needs to go beyond the core rules because they don't address what is going on adequately (say someone is trying to do something invovled that the "grapple rules" just don't cover well enough).

That said, I do think this varies greatly from group to group. The key is for the GM to understand what his players expect here and for them to understand what the GMs approach is.

Where this shows most is combat. If the GM is fudging to protect my character or to protect his NPC, that tends to bother me. I do like the idea of being able to sink or swim without the GM feeling like he needs to step in (granted many of his other choices behind the screen---what encounters to throw, etc---can determine that as well, but once stuff is in play, I prefer to have the dice and stats do their work).

Quote from: Benoist;592478In which circumstances do you think a GM should be allowed to modify, ignore, fudge the dice results he gets behind his screen?

When I'm not a player in the campaign.

In my opinion, I should be allowed to fudge the rolls when I say so, because I'm the one running the game.  I'm providing you a service, and I have some authority over how that happens.  If you don't like it and we can't agree on a way to fix it, then we can play something else.  I'd afford you the same leinancy when you're running the game for me.

That being said, I would probably only say so to avoid character death or to avoid what I thought was a stupid thing to roll about.

Prime example of the latter was that story about the Diplomacy roll to get a ship from the King who didn't have one to give.

I'd be "Okay, roll - you fail.  Moving on..."

I'll waive that character death thing after the second or third pulled punch.  Typically that first roll is an overt warning for the other characters to intervene and pull their buddy out of the fire.  If they don't or can't do that, then I go ahead and kill the character.

Also I would have no problem with a player asking that I never fudge a roll in their favor, because they want 'hard mode' or whatever.  Just don't assume you're entitled to tell me how I manage the table.

Finally, I'm totally cool with the badwrongfun.  It's also okay that you don't want to ever play at my table, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Quote from: Benoist;592478Should he be allowed to do this at all? When?

In which circumstances do you think a GM should be allowed to modify, ignore, fudge the dice results he gets behind his screen?

Examples would be helpful for the conversation.

Basically never.

When it results in more fun to do so for everyone at the table. What quantifies 'fun' is circumstantial, personal and complex, so the GM has to make a genuine best guess and use each occurrence as a learning experience.

Quote from: Mr. GC;592486Under no circumstances should this happen, ever, in any way for any reason.

In before the basket weavers are unsurprisingly all in favor of cheating.

Actually Mr. GC, i think you will find a lot of posters here who hate fudging.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;592501Actually Mr. GC, i think you will find a lot of posters here who hate fudging.

That would honestly surprise me very much, given the sorts of characters they play. At least one response is as I'd expect.

Quote from: mcbobbo;592494In my opinion, I should be allowed to fudge the rolls when I say so, because I'm the one running the game.  I'm providing you a service, and I have some authority over how that happens.  If you don't like it and we can't agree on a way to fix it, then we can play something else.  I'd afford you the same leinancy when you're running the game for me.

I see it differently.  When I'm running a game, the players are the ones providing me a service insofar as they are allowing my game to even exist.  Without them, it's all just a bunch of unrealized ideas and aspirations swirling around in my head.

The players might think I'm the one providing a service, as they now have an outlet to unleash the potential of their characters.

See how this works?  Mutual respect for each others roles and the importance therein.

So how is this respect communicated?  By adhering to the rules of the game.  The players expect you to abide by the parameters in the ruleset and not arbitrarily determine the fate of their characters.

As a DM, I expect the players to have a general knowledge of the ruleset and to not bitch and moan when those rules call for the legitimate setbacks that inevitably befall their characters.

Claiming that I should be able to fudge rolls whenever because its MY game and I say so is a fuckheaded thing to do.

The closer a DM sticks to tried and tested btb rules the less he should doubt the die rolls.

The more inventive a DM is with his own mechanics and appeals to dice for off the cuff rulings the more he should doubt the absolute fairness of the die roll. But the intention should be to hone your mechanics so that results rely less on judgement and more on randomness. A creative DM is always coming up with new rules though.

Quote from: Benoist;592478In which circumstances do you think a GM should be allowed to modify, ignore, fudge the dice results he gets behind his screen?

I tend to draw a line between action resolution and procedural content generation: If I'm rolling up stuff to stock a hexcrawl with, I don't feel bound by the dice rolls. I'm using them to generate ideas and I'll toss out or tweak the ideas that don't work.

Action resolution during actual play, though? No fudging. There are far too many examples from my personal experience in which the traditional tenets of "fudge to make the game more fun" would have negated some of the most memorable and entertaining moments from my gaming.

Quote from: Internet Death;592507Claiming that I should be able to fudge rolls whenever because its MY game and I say so is a fuckheaded thing to do.

Quote from: mcbobbo;592494Finally, I'm totally cool with the badwrongfun.  It's also okay that you don't want to ever play at my table, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Sometimes I do fuckheaded things.  I could rail on and on about how I'm right, what the pros and cons are, and where the nuances of GM discretion and fiat really truly lie at each table.

But lets not kid ourselves about whether or not the minds here are already made up.

I never fudge dice rolls.

Not out of ego, or hardcoreness, or whatever. I find the randomness makes the story more interesting FOR ME and allows surprises to happen in adventures I have created.

Sometimes PCs die. I'm cool with that. But that's why I run RPGs with fast chargen and create back up characters for games with hefty chargen for those just in case situation.

The only times I am okay with a GM fudging dice rolls are...

1) We are doing a very short campaign, one shot or con game and if the dice roll is not fudged, it results in PC death in a RPG where creating characters is a lengthy process.

We were playing Dark Heresy at a con a couple years back and a player got himself whacked about 90 minutes into a 6 hour session. The GM did not bring additional characters and did not know what to do. The player figured he had to leave the table. In this case, the GM should have probably fudged the roll.

I just grabbed the character sheet, moved around the meaningless numbers and told him the change the name. It wasn't a perfect answer because it didn't make sense in the story why a new dude just popped up from behind the tree, but hey, we went with it...and we all died gloriously 4 hours later.


2) The GM has set up a certain railroad with defined story parameters and the players have all agreed that we want to ride the rails for this story.

I tend to stay away from such GMs, but in the past I played in an awesome campaign with a very talented storyteller and we didn't give a damn about fudging because the story he had to tell was far more interesting than most any other RPG campaign. I'd game with him again, but he is an extreme exception because of his talent.

Quote from: Mr. GC;592486Under no circumstances should this happen, ever, in any way for any reason.

In before the basket weavers are unsurprisingly all in favor of cheating.

You were told not to take this crap to other threads.

If you do it again, i will ban you personally for site disruption.