I mentioned it. I apologize for implying a comparison by accident.
As for the 'saying nothing' bit, I was told I couldn't do that with fudging because I was like a politician. When I pointed out I did not lie when I said 'he missed'.
Which is still an attempt to directly compare a competitive game where your goal is to win at the expense of others to a cooperative game where your goal is to win in conjunction with others.
And saying someone missed when they hit is more like saying you have a winning hand after turning it over and showing that you do not.
1) Give it a rest. It was just a humorous off-hand comment by TOZ.
2) You can't win at PF/D%D (tournaments aside). The point of the game is to have fun with your friends while playing out your heroic fantasies and telling a great story. Certainly, the group and the player can succeed in accomplishing their goals, but that's very different from "winning".
3) If you bluffed snd they folded to an inferior hand, you certainly did win. Of course, revealing your bluff to someone is generally bad form and bad poker, as it can be seen as gloating, and gives the whole table clues on how to play against you in future hands. But that's poker, not PF/D&D.
Which is still an attempt to directly compare a competitive game where your goal is to win at the expense of others to a cooperative game where your goal is to win in conjunction with others.
And saying someone missed when they hit is more like saying you have a winning hand after turning it over and showing that you do not.
I'm sorry. I've already stated that I should have said people who think lying is bad instead of fudging is bad. What more do you want?
And we've already stated that fudging is a personal preference. For someone lambasting me for doing it, why are you continuing the comparisons?
Because I thought someone else was also still saying stuff like that.
To Brian: D&D does have victory conditions. Accomplishing character goals is a big one. Overcoming opponents is another. The exact conditions will vary depending on the campaign and the individual but it is certainly possible to win. It just doesn't come at the expense of anyone but some NPCs losing. As such it is possible that everyone wins at the same time, including the DM.
It's also possible to lose in the same manner. Trying to save your sister, only to be too slow? That's a loss.
And I said 'they said they had a winning hand'. I didn't say the hand actually did win, because of folding or anything else.
Conversely winning at a competitive game does mean someone else loses.
Just different definitions of "winning", I guess. I see what you're describing more as being successful and achieving goals, rather than "winning". To me, "winning" implies a competitive situation in which someone wins and someone loses. NPCs aren't playing, so they can't "lose".
And, in poker, I subscribe to the Kenny Rogers philosophy: "Cause ev'ry hand's a winner, and ev'ry hand's a loser". It's all in how the hand plays out. The winning hand belongs to whoever rakes in the chips, not whoever got dealt the best cards. But enough of the poker digression, unless you want to get together and play some time. As I said, I do have a couple of future college tuition bills to finance. :)
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I'm sorry. I've already stated that I should have said people who think lying is bad instead of fudging is bad. What more do you want?
And we've already stated that fudging is a personal preference. For someone lambasting me for doing it, why are you continuing the comparisons?
There is a point at which you must recognize when another person involved in the discussion is not actually having a conversation with you, but is simply trying to "win" the discussion by tying the other side into meaningless rhetorical knots.
In my experience, 'fudging' has often gone hand in hand with bad DMing. I can see that this need not always be the case, but that has been my experience.
In my opinion, 'fudging' is a warning sign that bad DMing may be afoot. It's not conclusive to me - it's not the end of the world - but I see it as a problem. This is down to my own experiences, of course. These are some of the problems I see with 'fudging':
(1) The DM who 'fudges', and is caught, loses the players' trust. Trust is doubly vital for the DM because, both as storyteller and as referee, (s)he needs to be believed to have authority. If one bad 'fudge' can wreck both those roles, is it worth doing?
All this talk of poker suggests that DMs who regularly 'fudge' are really good at it. The dice are hidden, the face is inscrutible, the fu is strong. That hasn't been my experience. The DMs I've seen 'fudging' never do it with anything remotely approaching inscrutibility. It's in the nature of the practice that they 'fudge' on the fly. They do it badly and haphazardly, without proper thought, when they feel things are getting out of their own control. If there is a fluff description needed to explain the 'fudge', it is often poorly thought-out and unconvincing, because too quickly cobbled together. Consequently, it is in the nature of DM 'fudging' that it tends to be rather clumsily done, and that the players therefore catch onto it and make of it what they will...which usually won't be anything good.
For example, our group will never forget The Curious Incident of the Horse Poison in the Nighttime. Briefly: new Fighter spends all starting funds on warhorse and barding, takes mounted feats; party meets goblins; goblins shoot horse. Horse rolls very high on unexpectedly poisoned arrow. Horse fails the save. It dies instantly. Fighter: 'Dies? Really? Against goblins with poison? What kind of poison was that?' DM: 'Horse Poison.' Party: 'Oh, right. Horse Poison....yeah. Can we buy some of that?'
At this point, the trust between party and DM is wrecked - all because of one appalling 'fudge'. Would it have made it better if the DM had told us, prior to the adventure, that this kind of 'fudging' might happen? Er, no. What would have been better would have been for the DM to have discussed mounted combat pre-adventure, if he didn't want it, and/or to have tinkered with the adventure so that the warhorse wasn't a worry to him. Which brings me to my second bugbear:
(2) 'Fudging' is often used when DMs encounter a problem they should have spotted ahead of time. In other words, it occurs when the DM hasn't done the necessary prep. Is that a sign of poor DMing? Yes, I believe it can be. Is it a successful solution to bad prep? In my experience, only rarely.
The solution to being surprised mid-combat by the strength or weakeness of a PC or monster is to think about the combat ahead of time. To do the prep. 'Fudging' is a cheap, slipshod shortcut to proper preparation. And that's not all it is, in my Bad Books:
(3) 'Fudging' is often done by DMs who are overcontrolling a game narrative, in my experience. The DM who 'fudges' is often trying to fix a narrative that ain't broke. It may not be proceeding as the DM expects, it may not be turning out as the DM hoped, but it is turning out as *something*. When the bad DM 'fudges', (s)he is often trying to nudge the narrative back into an expected, hoped-for rut, when the most interesting and memorable adventure may lie beyond those ruts, in the totally unexpected, frequently ludicrous, comical or tragic scenarios that a random dice-based game can throw up if you will only allow it its randomness.
I've served my time as a bad DM, in the past, in the general sense of being overcontrolling. I loved my stories too much. I couldn't wait to see what the players made of them - my stories. If the players started to veer away from my stories, I'd be both disappointed at their loss and alarmed at my own lack of control.
I think the better alternative to 'fudging' here is to go with the dice. If randomness derails you, ask the group for a time out, if necessary, and go into a corner. If you're confident enough to do it, go ahead and improvise an extensive alternate narrative thread (encounters and all). After the session, work it all out at home and write it up. That's how I see the better solution. 'Fudging'? No. As usual, that's the cheap and insufficient temporary solution.
Just my tuppence.
All this talk has led me to wonder how many GMs are fudging and their players have absolutely no idea it is happening?
The other question would be how often suspicious players think their GM is fudging, but he/she really isn't, and their suspicions just come from incomplete knowledge about what is going on in the encounter?
I suspect both are happening more often than people realize, or would admit.
The first leads to the second. They'll figure it out eventually. Perhaps not today, perhaps not even this game. But they will learn that no, Monks are not awesome and no, you cannot walk right through epic level encounters with one one way or the other. The longer it takes for them to learn, the more damage will be done by it.
Once players get to where they don't think they can trust their current DM, they will suspect that DM nonstop. If it gets really bad they will even distrust other DMs unless, and perhaps even if the DM outright says there will be no fudging and then follows through with open rolls.
Well, there's one opinion, and I find it valid as such. I'm sure this describes accurately quite a few groups. I strongly suspect there are also groups out there, though, whose DM has fudged for years, or always fudges, and they don't know. Of course, they probably don't know because they are having fun and they don't care if he's fudging or not. I further suspect this is more common in groups of older gamers with roots in earlier editions in which the DM was constantly making stuff up and winging it because he had to. Or groups that strongly emphasize the story-telling and role-playing, rather than the mechanics.
Your second para saddens me, as I don't see how a game can survive with that level of distrust between the player(s) and the DM. If it really gets to that level I recommend players either volunteer to DM themselves, or talk it out over a few beers with the DM, or find another group.
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I have to wonder if the people declaring fudging to be lying to your players consider poker an immoral game.You're comparing a game where you're supposed to be competing and faking out everyone at the table to a game where you are cooperating and working together with an impartial referee? If you really do think that they are the same, it would explain a lot.Actually, no, I made no comparison to D&D. I'm wondering how someone who thinks lying is always bad views poker, a game in which you have to make your opponents think you have cards you do not. Which is lying.
Sorry for the poor wording, I had just gotten out of bed. Hadn't woken up yet.
Thanks to Brian for understanding.
No, but when I only have a pair, and I raise the bet trying to trick people into folding, isn't that lying?
Depends.. do you have an ace up your sleeve to 'fudge' with?
Nope. The difference is, you're not actually changing your hand unless you actually do have that ace up your sleeve (fudging a roll is "changing the hand" so to speak). All the other player has to do is call your bet, and the objective results are what they are. And you forget, bluffing works both ways. Sometimes you don't bet (or bet minimally) when trying to conceal a "lock" hand so as to make the opponent believe he is driving the action. That is the nature of the game and is 100% accepted.
It's up to your opponent to know enough about you, to be able to pick up on your "tells" and to understand probability enough to determine whether or not you're bluffing. Also, nothing is forcing your opponent to fold except his expectation that his crappy hand won't beat whatever you're holding. You could also just be foolhardy or trying to buy the pot, neither of which are "bluffing" per se.
Bringing up poker, which is completely object based on the cards, but subjective based on the nature of the way the game is played is the orange to a die roll's objective nature's apple. It is irrelevant if someone thinks bluffing is lying, because if the do, they are missing the point of the game anyway.
Whereas it is completely understandable for someone to object to fudging in D&D. People are allowed to have the opinion die rolls mean something, as the game does present an argument that the chips should be allowed to fall where they may.
Which would only prove they haven't figured it out yet. I have seen several people who took years to figure it out.
Story telling is fightin' words in the gaming community. Whenever someone refers to themselves as a story teller, what they are saying is that they want to tell you a story, so everyone shut up and listen. This is not a good message to send for obvious reasons, and the term should be avoided if at all possible.
I'm so glad you've got it all figured out. After 30+ years of gaming I guess you can count me in that group of people who are still trying to figure it all out. Maybe I will figure out before they cart me off to the rest home.
I learn new stuff all the time, particularly on these boards, where I am exposed to viewpoints from all over the map and forced to reevaluate my own assumptions and beliefs about gaming based on those viewpoints. Sometimes, I even change my opinion on something when I find an interesting and compelling point of view that differs from mine. My bet is that you never find anyone else's arguments compelling. Ah, the joys of an unexamined life, or at least an unexamined gaming life.
I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by story-telling. Nowhere did I say that what I mean is dictatorial railroading in which only the DM tells the story. What I am talking about is cooperative story-telling, in which the DM provides the setting and the background for the story, but the players determine a lot of how the story will unfold. It's only fighting words for those looking for an argument, or those who think they have it all figured out and that their way is the one and only true way to play.
You've already said, in another thread, that you consider PF/D&D to be a combat game. I will grant to you that the default game assumed by the rules has become more and more dominated by combat over the editions and years (unless you go back to the hoary days of Chainmail, the precursor to D&D that was essentially a medieval combat simulation game). However, in my opinion, PF/D&D is still a roleplaying game in which combat is an important part, but is hardly the only thing, and may not even be the most important thing, depending on your playstyle. I know, I know, those people haven't figured it out right and are doing it wrong. Guess I'm a slow learner.
Which would only prove they haven't figured it out yet.
It 'proves' no such thing.
has ruined several games for me
Ah, this explains your posts and position on the matter. Baggage.
[Aside: I have no horse in this race, but the differing opinions fascinate me.]
How is this not an example of them not figuring it out yet?
In the context of the above specific discussion:
1) There may be nothing to "figure out" for that particular group.2) "Yet"? There's no reason to believe they ever will figure anything out, whatever it might be.
Ouch.
No that is not the question. That is why I put the example of the player made force wall in there. The question is the same as it was before. In a situation where the players can't run away, through a mistake of theirs of the DM and the likely choices are fudge or TPK, what do you do?Wait. So they are in a situation that it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to escape from. How in the world is fudging going to help them? Didn't you say earlier,
And wouldn't that be exactly what you are suggesting to do here? Huh?If the DM fudges they might pull out a win. If the DM does not fudge only a miracle(string of very low rolls by the DM, or high rolls by the players) saves them. I have seen those miracles happen legitimately.
In my example they were not paralyzed. That was in reference to the centipede encounter from another poster's game . Stop trying to poke holes and answer the question.
In my experience, 'fudging' has often gone hand in hand with bad DMing. I can see that this need not always be the case, but that has been my experience.
In my opinion, 'fudging' is a warning sign that bad DMing may be afoot. It's not conclusive to me - it's not the end of the world - but I see it as a problem. This is down to my own experiences, of course. These are some of the problems I see with 'fudging':
(1) The DM who 'fudges', and is caught, loses the players' trust. Trust is doubly vital for the DM because, both as storyteller and as referee, (s)he needs to be believed to have authority. If one bad 'fudge' can wreck both those roles, is it worth doing?
All this talk of poker suggests that DMs who regularly 'fudge' are really good at it. The dice are hidden, the face is inscrutible, the fu is strong. That hasn't been my experience. The DMs I've seen 'fudging' never do it with anything remotely approaching inscrutibility. It's in the nature of the practice that they 'fudge' on the fly. They do it badly and haphazardly, without proper thought, when they feel things are getting out of their own control. If there is a fluff description needed to explain the 'fudge', it is often poorly thought-out and unconvincing, because too quickly cobbled together. Consequently, it is in the nature of DM 'fudging' that it tends to be rather clumsily done, and that the players therefore catch onto it and make of it what they will...which usually won't be anything good.
For example, our group will never forget The Curious Incident of the Horse Poison in the Nighttime. Briefly: new Fighter spends all starting funds on warhorse and barding, takes mounted feats; party meets goblins; goblins shoot horse. Horse rolls very high on unexpectedly poisoned arrow. Horse fails the save. It dies instantly. Fighter: 'Dies? Really? Against goblins with poison? What kind of poison was that?' DM: 'Horse Poison.' Party: 'Oh, right. Horse Poison....yeah. Can we buy some of that?'
At this point, the trust between party and DM is...
This post by Porpentine was a revitalizing read. I've E-mailed it to all my roleplaying friends as "food for thought."
Story telling is fightin' words in the gaming community. Whenever someone refers to themselves as a story teller, what they are saying is that they want to tell you a story, so everyone shut up and listen. This is not a good message to send for obvious reasons, and the term should be avoided if at all possible.
I laughed when I read this, because I've ALWAYS introduced tabletop roleplaying to new players as "a story told by a storyteller, in which each of the players plays a character of their choosing/creation, playing out their roles in the story as they see fit."
Because I added 200 hp to a crag linnorm this last week because my PCs were enjoying their fight against the dragon, I am a bad and terrible liar.
Interesting thread.
I find it remarklable that so many DMs roll behind the screen as a default.
I wouldn't do that as a DM. The reason I wouldn't do it as a DM is that I wouldn't want it done to me as a player. I invest plenty of time in my PC characters. That doesn't mean I want to be treated with kid gloves; quite the opposite. I want to be the hero, tragic or comedic or happily-ever-after-ish...or even the hero's sidekick, that would do. In any case, I don't want my fate fudged one way or the other. Show me the rolls.
As a group we're completely at home with this - open rolling - and I guess I thought it was pretty normal these days. Was I wrong? My hunch is that the whole DM-as-God/author is distasteful to many people...and I do think rolling behind the screen feeds in to this power balance; fuels DM-as-God, if anything. These days the author is dead and the DM is a navigator, not a god. Which is fine by us. To the point, in fact, where I'd certainly look suspiciously at any game where the DM is rolling behind some Magic Faraway kind of of Screen.
I DM/play about 50/50, love em both, and never fudge. Sorry to sound LG about it, but I don't think there's any excuse*. If you're fudging, you're (a) playing God where God isn't needed (b) making up for bad encounter writing (your own, or someone else's) or (c) bowdlerising the variety of drama a great campaign can offer - comedic, tragic, grand heroic. ie: you may not think the boss going down in a round is a 'good' ending, but the players might. Let em have it.
* edit: unless you're just starting out DMing...and perhaps then it's no excuse either. It's just a bad habit to form.
If you say there is no excuse you have not been paying attention to the post. Now if you skipped a couple of post you can disregard the first sentence. I don't like fudging myself, but I won't say it is wrong. Some people don't like the difficulty on hardcore mode. I like hardcore mode, but I know not everyone games like that so I take all my players into account when I determine how hard to run a game.
Example: Every once in a while if a player forgets to cast defensively I ask them are they sure. If they get the hint, good for them, but if they don't then oh well. Now one of the other DM's in my group doesn't care if you die, and you get no warnings unless you are a noob, and even then by the 2nd game you get whatever is coming to you.
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D&D does have victory conditions. Accomplishing character goals is a big one. Overcoming opponents is another. The exact conditions will vary depending on the campaign and the individual but it is certainly possible to win. It just doesn't come at the expense of anyone but some NPCs losing. As such it is possible that everyone wins at the same time, including the DM.
(didn't get a chance to respond to this earlier - but this needed to be put down)
No, it doesn't. At least not as you are presenting them Roy.
There is no set "I win at D&D" unless you think in the most simplistic terms. And it's this mindset just breeds gaming failure on massive levels.
Kill 10 Balors, the DM can send a 100 more plus a few demon princes -all legit all, non-fudging. Does the DM have a limit on how many he can send - no, he doesn't. Nothing in the rules say so. There is not CR or HD cap forced upon the DM at any time.
The player "win by force" or "overcoming opponents" is an illusion created and sustained by the DM. Do the bad guys stop because they cleared out the last room in a dungeon, or not retaliate or launch sorties to wipe out the party because they are resting, weak, etc? They shouldn't, but wouldn't that be a "Dick DM" thing to do if they did? An overly realistic response by the enemy who doesn't care about your 15-minute workday rest period? Again, all illusion.
The point isn't to hit level 20 or get X, the point is to have fun on the way there. This is the problem with the 3.5/MtG crop of gamers created by Wotc - they retain one legacy aspect of the game in their core books about no one player winning at D&D, yet their power inflation/creep and superior classes, Prcs, feat bloat was just the same as their CCG. Arms race for suckers. Sell the tools and the tools will by them.
So with this mindset fun is superseded by powers and options. If that is an individual player or groups choice - cool, but that isn't the original intent of the game. That isn't the "only way to play" - in fact the only thing you are playing is into the company's hands. You need them, the loopholes and you need the bloat. They need your money. While maintaining the illusion of dominance (see above) and victory over imagined foes.
A failure at sustainable gaming, gaming design and philosophy if there ever was one.
Playing a game which is unfun (boring, bad DM, bad players, bad rules, very bad rules, etc) till you reach X level or get X powerz for the sake of doing so is not "winning", unless you are a sucker for punishment. That or your focus is so much on "winning" that you will repeat the same mistakes, and have all the same complaints over and over while playing the same game with your set goals/victory conditions.
You can have all the combos and game features but if the game isn't fun then you didn't win; it's just an onanistic exercise with a lot of chest pounding.
That's why Low-magic games can work, or more realistic (OH NOES) games can work - if all parties at the table are having fun then they won. Even if it's just a one-shot and everyone knows that they are probably going to die, did they have fun? Yes, then they won.
Everything else is a farcical race to see what the biggest rule exploit you can find while you combo up your classes and spells to that mythic level of 20. How much you can get out of what you put in, be it class levels/Prcs combos or purchased product. How much you can redline the rules and common sense (where the rules supersede common sense) If that's your definition of fun, great – but it isn't the one true definition of fun, gaming or D&D.
This is primarily a 3.0/3.5 creation, the winning combo – a transfer from their top selling CCG to RPG philosophy and we see who and what has been spawned from it.
So instead of modules we got rule books - more rules than adventures and the one definition of "fun" or "this is the way to play". It didn't work for the system, and by looking at the number of boards dedicated to homebrew rules and modifications, it doesn't look like it worked for many of the players either.
Because I added 200 hp to a crag linnorm this last week because my PCs were enjoying their fight against the dragon, I am a bad and terrible liar.
*tongue in cheek*
At their normal hit dice, a crag linnorm can have anywhere between 120 hit points and 286 hit points.
A typical crag linnorm only has 202 hit points.
Had you given it 84 hit points or less, you would have been okay as that is still in the realm of possibility. However, since you gave it an impossible number of hit points, you are indeed a terrible, TERRIBLE person--indeed, a liar and a cheat.
*seriously though*
If I as a player caught you doing that (which isn't hard as most players can do basic math pretty readily) than I would be searching the corpse expecting to find a belt of constitution or something. At the very least I would expect some extra XP for having fought a "unique" linnorm that was clearly tougher.
Also, kudos to you for allowing your players to have an extended good time!
Or it could just have a REALLY high Con score naturally. :)
Some templates and maybe a level in Fighter can jack up that Con really high as well.
Because I added 200 hp to a crag linnorm this last week because my PCs were enjoying their fight against the dragon, I am a bad and terrible liar.
Hell, Jason Bulmahn himself was somewhat (in)famous in some circles for doing exactly that kind of thing back in the Living Greyhawk days. He was more concerned that the players felt challenged and had a good time than the encounter be run exactly as written, even if he was the one who had written it.
Did that make him a bad DM? Most of his players didn't seem to think so.
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Because I added 200 hp to a crag linnorm this last week because my PCs were enjoying their fight against the dragon, I am a bad and terrible liar.
*tongue in cheek*
At their normal hit dice, a crag linnorm can have anywhere between 120 hit points and 286 hit points.
A typical crag linnorm only has 202 hit points.
Had you given it 84 hit points or less, you would have been okay as that is still in the realm of possibility. However, since you gave it an impossible number of hit points, you are indeed a terrible, TERRIBLE person--indeed, a liar and a cheat.
*seriously though*
If I as a player caught you doing that (which isn't hard as most players can do basic math pretty readily) than I would be searching the corpse expecting to find a belt of constitution or something.
What's worse is when you're low level and a monster ends up with 200 more hit points. I've caught one GM doing almost exactly that in a 3.5 game. Somehow (when we were level 3 mind you) we managed to fight a giant crocodile half dragon with 200 hp. For the life of me we couldn't figure out how it got that many, and after one character in the party was killed off I decided to confront the GM.
If there was a feat, a magic ability, something that he'd house ruled into the game then I would like to have access to it as well since it is clearly so friggin powerful that it takes a creature from around 50 hp to around 200 hp at 7 hit dice.
So, he wouldn't share his secret and I accused him of fudging. He started crying and went to his room. Not exactly a glamorous way to end a campaign, but everyone at the table knew it was b~@@~!$+. Besides him being a real dick the rest of the time such as picking up his dice from the table when he went to read the numbers on them and lying about the number, more feats and skill points than a character of his level should have, calling other players names at the table, that was one of the final straws. We don't game with him anymore at all, nor would we ever again. So, in essence: Just don't be a dick about it.
Ice Titan adding 200 hp doesn't sound so bad to me at that level, and his players seemed to have a lot of fun. This is a good, common-sense reason to do such a thing.
My former GM turned the fight into a aggravating, unfun, and ultimately player-confrontational piece of garbage. YMMV.
To Ravingdork: ta.
Wraith: to me, 'fudging' falls down on several counts, but the counts tend to have one thing more or less in common: they take decisions and possibilities away from the players and dice, and pile them all up in the DM's grasp. The decisions of the players may be to their betterment or detriment - as in the case of not casting defensively - and the possibilities generated by the dice ditto; but that's where the real energy in the game lies, isn't it? In the way the dice fall and the way the players' choices fall out?
My players remember what I say occasionally. Mostly what they remember is what they do. Them doing things is where it's at. 'Fudging' has a marked tendency to detract from Them Doing and shift the limelight to Me Telling. The shift can be obvious or subtle, but it's generally there in some shape or form; even if the control you're taking back seems to be entirely under the hood of the game, it's still control you're grasping at.
If the players don't want hardcore mode, that's simple: run a non-hardcore adventure. Prepare it in advance. Mentally run it all through against the nascent party. That's surely the natural and best way to run a game for players who don't want hardcore. 'Fudging' a hardcore raw-meat-blue adventure down to a well done/medium rare/average kind of game...that's going to be horrendous DM-work on the night, will involve endless 'fudging' - some of which will inevitably be awkward and probably obvious - and may still end in disaster. The moral of your hardcore game example is prepare, don't 'fudge', isn't it?
I think trust cuts both ways in the game: the players want and need to trust the DM. The DM also needs to trust the players and the game. Let it play itself out. That can be quite hard, I think. The temptation can be to manhandle game, dice rolls and players along certain tracks, and it can all be done with the best of intentions (you'll enjoy it more this way, I promise!), but
a good, memorable game can go loads of ways, and often it's best and most memorable when it doesn't turn out the way anyone - least of the the DM - expected.
One more thing, as an aside: I don't equate 'fudging' with cheating. However, I think the term is slightly euphemistic, which is why I keep putting it in bunny-ears. It's white lying, really - lying for the benefit of others - at best. At worst, as with the Horse Poison...well, here's the thing: the DM who invented Horse Poison was also a player who habitually cheated. It was a habit with him. It didn't improve his play as a player, and it certainly didn't improve the pleasure we took from his DMing.
Well said, Auxmaulous.
I remember figuring that stuff out when I was first introduced to AD&D. My earliest memories are DM'img my brothers character who bought the Hammer of Thunderbolts, Girdle of Storm Giant strength, and Gauntlets of Ogre Power, then went out 1 shoting giants. I also remember making up a 1st level chevalier and killing a black dragon using lance and warhorse.
Realized then that not everything in the game was created equal, and that exploiting broken rules was a hollow way to "win".
Stop trying to poke holes and answer the question.
Dude, I already answered the question. I'll restate it for you since you evidently missed it.
If you as the DM have painted yourself into a corner AND are only willing/capable of entertaining either fudging or TPK and ...
(a) you are a DM that has no problem fudging OR if you have a party full of Blackleafs, then you should probably fudge in that case
or
(b) you don't think fudging is necessary AND you have a group of mature players that can deal with a TPK, then you shouldn't bother fudging and just let things play out.
Story telling is fightin' words in the gaming community.
My name is a killing word.
I mean a fighting word.
=D
It doesn't matter what you meant. It matters what you said. Story teller is a bad word in gaming circles. I did not say that is what you meant. I actually assumed you did not mean that and meant to say something less inflammatory. Which is why I worded it in such a way so as to suggest you use a more neutral term.
What are these "gaming circles" of which you speak, who think "story-telling" is a bad word (maybe I should spell it s@#$y-t@#$%^g), and PF/D&D is a combat game and a combat game only? I'll have to visit them some time, as I haven't encountered them in the last three decades. Ah, you mean your gaming circle. That's a bit different, then. I'd still be happy to visit, as I'm a friendly guy and open to just about anything gaming-wise.
Sorry about the sarcasm. Sometimes I see a target I just can't resist, and some of your statements just had a big ol' bullseye on 'em. Bad of me, I know. What can I say, I'm weak.
Let's step away from the good fudge bad fudge thing for a moment.
Doesn't that sort of thing kind of defeat the entire point of organized play? I mean there's a thread around here where someone complained about tough but fair tactics (Sleep + CdG at low levels) and instead of being told to deal with it they were told by several people in a position of authority that the DM should not make encounters more difficult by assigning them better tactics. And making them use what they have more intelligently is less of a change than giving them more stuff is.
That's OP. OP should probably be run as written, it is true. Becaused that's its purpose. Homebrews, on the other hand, is not the same. In Homebrews, the "win conditon" (if there is even such a thing in an RPG) is when the players are having fun, not when the characters do stuff like slaying monsters or gatering treasure.
You have to remember, Mistah Green, that not every gaming group is the same. If I were to play in a game where the GM thought it was just a combat game, I'd be bored to death and leave. Clearly though, that's yor cup of tea.
*Lots of good stuff*
One thing I thought you implied but I don't think you said directly is one of the dangers of fudging, especially (as you so wisely pointed out it happens most often) on the fly, is that when you fudge/lie/change things up/whatever it is often harder to keep track of those changes.
One round you say that a 25 does not hit the creature, only to forget you fudged the AC, and say a 21 hits the next round. When called on it, you then have to fudge even more (special circumstances in play), and it starts to spiral out of control.
The advantage of "playing it how it lays" is you don't have to remember that you changed anything. If 25 doesn't hit, then it will never hit because that is how it was planned out.
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*Lots of good stuff*One thing I thought you implied but I don't think you said directly is one of the dangers of fudging, especially (as you so wisely pointed out it happens most often) on the fly, is that when you fudge/lie/change things up/whatever it is often harder to keep track of those changes.
One round you say that a 25 does not hit the creature, only to forget you fudged the AC, and say a 21 hits the next round. When called on it, you then have to fudge even more (special circumstances in play), and it starts to spiral out of control.
The advantage of "playing it how it lays" is you don't have to remember that you changed anything. If 25 doesn't hit, then it will never hit because that is how it was planned out.
Fudgers secret tool: a pencil.
Make sure to just change the number in the block so you don't forget. :P
You know what -- this just occurred to me, because I'm usually the DM. But from a player perspective, I find long fights to be incredibly boring. In other parts of the game, I have fun in exploring and role playing and problem solving. In combat, I have a lot of fun if it's totally uncertain whether I, or anyone else, will survive, and if it's quick and deadly, like the big gunfight scene in "Appaloosa"
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You know what -- this just occurred to me, because I'm usually the DM. But from a player perspective, I find long fights to be incredibly boring. In other parts of the game, I have fun in exploring and role playing and problem solving. In combat, I have a lot of fun if it's totally uncertain whether I, or anyone else, will survive, and if it's quick and deadly, like the big gunfight scene in "Appaloosa" ** spoiler omitted **. If the fights were long and dragged out, AND if I knew the DM was fudging to (a) make them even longer!, or (b) remove the element of risk that's their main saving grace -- or even worse, both -- I'd go totally out of my mind.
This is interesting to explore. Thinking about it:
I am playing in a long standing 4E game. We are 18th level. And fights are long and boring. Literally, combat will generally take us about 3-4 hours. It will last, in game, for about 20 rounds. Two sessions ago we had a game where we were slugging out the fight with at wills, round after round. They weren't damaging us. We were barely damaging them. At about 3 in the morning, after 3+ hours of at will power exchanges, with the need to drive 3 hours the next morning to San Antonio to meet my brother's fiancee, I turned to the DM and said "Are they going to bust out with something that will hurt us?" "No." "Are we going to beat them?" "Yes." "Can we quit now? I need you guys to go home, because I need to get some sleep." "Er....yeah, I guess so."
This was horrible.
I have enjoyed quick and deadly fights - but at high levels when everything is one or two rounds long, it gets a little...tiring? too. It gets a little something, anyway. I don't like 2 round "who has the best spells for this situation?" fights either. At least, not as a regular thing.
Adding a few thoughts from the clarification that vital strike can't be used with spring attack rule and analyzing the characters I have enjoyed playing most (my favorite is gish types, heavy on the fighter, using arcane only to modify their fighting ability or defend against other casters to allow them to fight), I think it comes down to: I want fights with a good variety of actions.
I like the idea of mobile fights, in general. I like to play mobile skirmishers. Immobile full attack trading fights rarely interest me very long. And I realize part of why the melee combat rules disappoint me with Pathfinder is that for every step the rules take toward making mobile and movement oriented combat worthwhile (Vital Strike), they take two steps back.
I would guess I like medium length fights, as a general rule of thumb. Occasional flurries of mad activity and occasional wars of attrition are fun for variety, but I like combats that last 4-10 rounds and involve terrain and movement and tactics.
I would guess I like medium length fights, as a general rule of thumb. Occasional flurries of mad activity and occasional wars of attrition are fun for variety, but I like combats that last 4-10 rounds and involve terrain and movement and tactics.
To follow up, then, if a DM fudged the results in one direction (to make a one-round fight last longer), or in the other direction (to make a long, drawn-out fight end sooner), you'd be in favor either way? (Movement and tactics aren't usually amenable to sheer dice fudging, so I'll leave those out for now.)
But if you insist, no one said the win conditions were things like slaying monsters or gathering treasure. I said win conditions were accomplishing character goals. If your character has an enemy in the form of Von Blooddrinker the Vampire, and you stake him and then hit him with a Sunburst to be sure you win. If your character's goal is to find a Holy Avenger, and they do, you win. Sure these are also killing monsters and gathering treasure, but the goal here is doing specific things that advance your character's story. A Barbarian who finds a Holy Avenger has a lot of portable wealth, and nothing more for example.
I'm not even going to touch your complete misrepresentation of my words.
Ummm...huh? If my character meets his personal goals, but I'm bored when he does it, I lose. Saying the goals don't have to be killing monsters or gaining treasure (which were still your only examples,) makes no difference. It doesn't matter what my character's goal is. If I'm bored by limited/non-existant roleplaying, repetitive combats, etc, I lose and I'll quit because of it.
As for alleged "misrepresentation," the only thing I ever said you said was that your example referred to organized play. You did say that. Everything else was my opinion. If you misunderstood me, I'm sorry.
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I would guess I like medium length fights, as a general rule of thumb. Occasional flurries of mad activity and occasional wars of attrition are fun for variety, but I like combats that last 4-10 rounds and involve terrain and movement and tactics.To follow up, then, if a DM fudged the results in one direction (to make a one-round fight last longer), or in the other direction (to make a long, drawn-out fight end sooner), you'd be in favor either way? (Movement and tactics aren't usually amenable to sheer dice fudging, so I'll leave those out for now.)
Er, I guess what I'm saying is that the lengthening or shortening of the battle has little effect on whether I agree with a single fudging incident. :)
In my case, fudging is extremely rare. It's something I do when:
I screw up. I made a fight too hard on accident. I've seen some say that fudging is a tool for a lazy DM. In some ways, this is true. I run APs because I don't have time to come up with my own campaign. APs save me a lot of time and effort; they give me a framework to run a fun game, and yet I can make changes as I see fit "behind the curtain" if I have the time and inclination. When I make changes, for whatever reason, I sometimes screw up. Fights may be harder or easier, but if the fight is harder because I screwed up, and I didn't give the player fair warning that this fight they started will be against something nasty they should prepare for...I'm going to fudge to keep the player characters from dying because I screwed up.
The dice are ridiculously cruel to a PC. I actually can't think of a time I have done this, but I could see fudging something if a large number of bad dice rolls expose a character to certain death. The fudging will probably take the form of some humiliating or temporarily crippling but ultimately not fatal thing happening. Or maybe their luck is so hilariously bad that somethign good for the rest of the party comes of it, and they can help the unfortunate pc in question. One case a DM I was with used this to good effect: A critical roll that had a very good chance of success was botched with a natural one. The DM, laughing, had the bluff fail so horribly the little white lie pissed the guard in question off to the point the PC was immediately informed he was under arrest. He began to resist, which allowed the rest of the team to sneak past unnoticed in the ensuing melee - which was our final goal in the first place. So first we committed our corporate espionage...then we had to break our friend out of prison. Everyone enjoyed themselves in that particular session, and our reputation for being...less than inconspicuous gave us an interesting reputation in later sessions. Roleplaying opportunities abounded.
I will tend to fudge a bit more for a new player that I'm trying to get hooked to the game, also - I personally get very attached to my PCs when I play, and I would not enjoy a game where I lost a character I invested a lot of effort in due to the face I was learning a system. I allow a couple of take backs, I take time to explain the repurcussions of problems, and I will fudge a bit when I don't give them a clear view of repurcussions and they take a foolish action. This is a temporary state, and fudging is still very rare in this case.
Usually my fudging is changing monster hit points within their min and max limits, or choosing a less than optimal option for an intelligent enemy for a round of actions. I can't think of a single dice roll I've actually changed, though I suppose I might have done so without recalling it.
Oh, for goodness' sake!
Those who like to optimize and like to have all the options and like to know the game inside and out don't like fudging, as it messes with their carefully crafted rules-bot characters. The odds don't work any more coz one of them is holding one more option than they are. SCARY!
At the other end, the players who want a 'story hour' type experience, but easy on the rules don't really care about the 5% differences in odds, of the tactical benefits of this or that feat, as they work it out without full acknowledgement of what the exact rules say they can do. SCARY!
And there are the silent majority who are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
And that's about it.
I say, sir, I am hardly silent! :)
And there are the silent majority who are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.
I meant 'silent' in a figurative sense only, of course.
And you are quick!
And I'm off to bed, so I'll take a look at this again tomorrow.
:-)
In my case, fudging is extremely rare. It's something I do when I screw up. I made a fight too hard on accident. I've seen some say that fudging is a tool for a lazy DM. In some ways, this is true.
You know, I'd view that as legit. For a DM to come out and admit they made a mistake is rare -- even a DM who's perpetually pressed for prep time (both are true in my case!). As a player, then, I'd say, "yeah, having a life sucks!" or maybe "work is the curse of the gaming class!" and go with it.
So, based on that post, I guess my anti-fudging bias as a player would totally change if the DM said, "sorry, I totally flubbed this encounter setup, I'm gonna go ahead and alter it a bit" (totally understandable), as opposed to one who said, "I like long fights, so all saves automatically succeed until the 27th round of combat" (unbelievably annoying). I still probably wouldn't trust one who tried too hard to keep it a secret, though.