What do people think about fudging dice, is it OK to fudge dice?
If you do fudge dice, should you make it obvious to the players that it's something you will do? Or even everytime you do it?
I always thought minor fudging was common amongst GMs, not saving players for no good reason I just mean pushing things one way or the other when the players or enemies are struggling to roll good.
I've fudged in Dark Heresy and Only War when enemies were struggling to roll below a 70 to try and keep the encounter engaging.(Usually I just reroll an attack if the opponent has missed a lot of times)
I fudged in Pathfinder last week cause my player was about to get crit to total death at the beginning of an encounter, I just ignored the crit and he was knocked down and bleeding out instead. Normally I'd let him die, but that's his 3rd character in as many sessions not to much fault of his own.
Should I have just let him die? Let major enemies just whiff all their abilities and get rolled by the party? Is there a better solution?
Some games make fudging into a mechanic, 40k RPGs can have enemies with limited fate points to spend on fudging. Shadowrun enemies can sometimes have Edge for rerolls, and I think the FFG Star Wars RPGs give the GM a resource he can use to influence dice rolls against the players.
I've never been a fan of these implementations though, at least the way it seems in the FFG RPGs and is feels more oppositional. But maybe it'd be 'fairer' if I implemented one, let my players avoid some of their bad dice and let me avoid some of mine? It doesn't tackle when enemies roll far too good though.
Dice fudging is fine as long as you aren't doing it to the extent that people are questioning your rulings.
I never really fudge dice but I also don't use GM Screens and openly show the stats of monsters so that's just me.
I know that video.
I don't fudge dice - I have done it in the past, but I've come to the conclusion that it's better to not take away the tension of dice rolls like that. I do sometimes adjust an opponent's stats on the fly if I realize I've misjudged something when coming up with those stats, and sometimes I have creature's with sort of reserve abilities that they may or may not actually have, depending on how the encounter goes.
>reserve abilities that they may or may not actually have
This is my most prefered method of curating encounter difficulty on the fly, although it takes a bit more effort to setup.
I roll dice in front of players and give them Hero points like from M&M so it's in their hands, and I teach them running is an option in session 1. ( think like how Dark Souls teaches you that at the start of a game ) If the dice go bad they need to know its an option, and an option they've used before. I run harder games but it's taught like that and very rarely people die of carelessness.
I don't fudge and i let players know DCs before rolling, everything that can be rolled in front of them I do so they can make informed decisions. I keep notes on players stats for secret rolls like IDing monsters.
I've got a good grasp on how much damage things can do, even though it's a challenging game. I have to, they see most of the combat rolls, i can't get away with fudging it.
I like offering the ability to run, but I've started discouraging it unless absolutely necessary when playing D&D adjacent systems to avoid players just resting back resources and minor damage constantly.
It worked very well in dark heresy though.
>the fact that I've coomed to this video decades later...
Tell me about diceless games, how do those even work?
I don't fudge the dice. I go the exact opposite way. ALL my rolls are in the open and lately I have a player roll for me. I love it. Players feel as if everything is on the up and up.
As it is, there's too many other ways I can manipulate encounters so I don't need to fudge the dice.
I constantly fudge dice to make players think that they are good at the game. The players are never in any danger, I just tell them that they are. Then I get "upset" when the players "beat" me or my encounters. Combat and challenges are just filler anyway for the story I want to tell and its not like they can know what I roll behind the screen. What's the harm?
>Combat and challenges are just filler anyway for the story I want to tell
You are a shitty GM.
Sometimes I even fudge the rooms the players enter. Like if the players enter a house that has a evil guy and I want the players to see the hostage room first so they really hate the guy when they go to his room to kill him I make it happen. "There are two rooms in front of you, which do you enter?" And no matter the choice its the hostage room, I do this so the players feel like they have agency and the storytelling feels more natural to the players.
This is the biggest red pill for DM/GMs
If you have to change something for the game to be more interesting and better, do it. Change stats on the fly, fudge rolls and lie if you need to. And never, ever reveal your hand. What happens behind the screen stays there.
b***h move, what happened, happened. Never change anything, no rolls, no stat blocks, nothing.
If they wipe, they wipe. I have plenty of empty character sheets for them.
>but muh c-
Don't care homosexual, you don't want to die be smart about it.
Sounds more like a blue pill mindset.
I don't fudge the dice because I actually want to see what kind of impact the characters will have on my world. I already know what my world and story are like without the players' influence, because I'm the one that made it.
That anon is right though. Making a new thread to fracture/reset/regress the conversation about something that already has a thread IS a shitpost that is done daily on /tg/
I don't fudge and see no reason to. It defeats the purpose of having rules in the first place.
If enemies aren't working have them change tactics. If they can't change tactics, your game blows.
An anon needs a sauce
Search gamestop backroom blowjob.
My DM actively fudges dice to the point where we just assume its' happening, even if we have no "reason" to assume it is.
It sucks dude, this dude has been my DM and friend for years but this combined with a few other issues, just grates on me now. It's a shame, I like the games, I like the dude. But I don't like the way the dude runs the games and yet I play.
Why would you choose to belive this? It's not like you can see the dice he rolls. If you are right it provides you no reward, but if you are wrong you are missing out on a good and enjoyable game because of paranoia.
95% of the time we can hear his dice roll, and if he crits or passes or whatever when that happens, I just assume it's legit. the issue is 5% of the time, he'll just say "that's a crit" or "they pass" in a manner far too quick for a dice roll and it's just a case of having to accept that happened, when we know he fudges dice rolls.
honestly it's "fine", it's just frustrating with a lot of his other game tendencies.
>has an issue with players being "too powerful" in 5e. Brother that horse has bolted.
>throw a dude off a cliff? oh well he gets two saves because .
>we play something not-5e, (stars without number) he drops a fricking cyberpunk character on us, a real adam smasher motherfricker.
>oh but every guns at a 30% markup from the book and enemies react to information "strangely" even when they had no real reason to react at all.
it's just frustrating. I feel like the dude bounces between crafting an experience for us to play through, storywise and then jumps into playing the game at whim, leaving us at the mercy of both styles of play.
>can't do X because that would just end the encounter and stop the game
>can't do Y because it's just a game and it's not what makes a good story, so no you can't just throw 4 det charges at the problem and call it.
and he does that endlessly frustrating
>if the players do it, I get to do it.
man c'mon
>if the players get to do it, I get to do it
Yes, that ensures the rules operate equally for PCs and NPCs. Why do you have an issue with that? Is it because he uses it as justification for fudging?
I play online so most rolls are always out in the open, I could hide my own but eh. Sometimes I'll reduce an enemy's defense a little if it's 'close enough'.
Didn't we just have this type of thread? Also nive picture OP, totally on topic.
It came up in another thread a week ago or so, but I wanted to see some more discussion on the topic.
Also since when did pics have to be relevant to posts, this some newbie rule I haven't been updated on?
It's actually still up
Hi! How is your first day on /tg/?
This may seem strange to you as someone who is new here but this is what is referred to as a "shitpost" and this specific type of shitpost is made at least once each day if not more. I would suggest lurking more so you are capable of fitting in here if you intend to stay.
I only made the thread cause someone told me using the gamestop pic would get it 404ed.
>Everyone I don't like is a newbie!
Way to out yourself
Kino video op
you guys know she's like 35 now right
Well yeah, this is a website for aging Millennials donchaknow.
I can often tell just by turns of phrases or painting styles I'm interacting with the same people I was in 2008.
Fudging is for homosexuals.
It's fine, I don't even roll dice when playing online. I just drop something on my desk and tell the DM a number in the ballpark of what I think the DC is.
I also told the group I rolled for my stats when in fact I didn't.
Either you're playing a wargame, in which case strategical dice-based combat is the point and dice should be played as they land.
Or you're not, in which case you should be playing a different system where you don't need to fudge the rolls.
I know that video
not only does every player need to roll in the open, they need to be checked for liquid core dice or other moron shit too. i know an autist who uses a rigged dice tower. for dm's its largely situational as always. depends far too much on varying factors in your games for me to say, just don't make it obvious or do it all the fricking time.
I'm playing Shadowrun, I can't fudge 15 D6 rolls as a GM
>I'm playing Shadowrun, I can't fudge 15 D6 rolls as a GM
You can roll behind your screen, and just say they got more or less hits than they really did anon...
If I HAD a screen, that's probably something i should get. Plus I don't use those tiny d6's you can get in like a small container. Every d6 is Standard size or larger so all my dice rolls require two hands.
What do you think dice fudging is anon?
It's not slight of hand.
It's just, rolling in private and telling players a result different to what really happened.
It doesn't have the same thrill to roll in private. There's no excitement or rush, maybe that's why I play Craps too much and currently working through recovery for a gambling addiction.
Checked.
If you're open rolling fudging isn't generally an option, although depending on your table you could still just openly ignore dice results.
I don't think I'd like the precedent something like that would set though.
What Gabe did to this poor girl, I'll never forget
I will occasionally fudge the dice, but only in the player's favour. Most commonly it takes the form of making a skill check for an npc (like an Awareness check to see if they notice a PC's stealth attempt) and just declaring that the NPC failed even if I rolled a success. Sometimes a PC will hit a generic goon and leave him with 1 or 2 hp, and I'll fudge him down to 0 hp so he's out of the fight one hit sooner than he would have been.
Typically I do this for pacing reasons. If we've already spent a lot of game time on something and the action is starting to drag I'll just tip the scales slightly in the PCs favour so they can wrap things up and move on.
I feel that it's pretty dickish to fudge against the PCs - players find it fun when they get a lucky break that lets them kill off the villain in a single hit or come out of a deadly situation completely unscathed, and if you always fudge these situations to 'increase the drama' then you're robbing them of that fun.
Also, a reality check to anyone who thinks his players don't know that he fudges the dice: they know, and if you keep doing it they eventually will stop trusting you.
>fudging NPC hp
Yeah I've done that if the fight's dragging out too long or it's just mop up. They've already defeated the encounter, no need to waste more time.
Fudging monster hp isn't a problem I don't think. And if you roll/set each individual creature, even of the same type, at different hp, no one will catch on.
i'm a lazy frick so i don't bother fudging and instead give the players fate points or something resembling fate points and leave it on them to decide how important success on a given roll is
I don't think dice should ever be fudged. I also don't think the game should ever hinge on a single die roll unless it's the result of major stupid decisions by the players. So I do fudge occasionally, but I try to only do it when I've fricked the game up being a bad DM, and only to benefit the players. If I fricked up in a way that makes the game too easy, oh well. They probably won't see it that way anyway, they just think they're badass.
I do think fudging for the players is also bad though, it's the kind of thing you can do 99 times without any issues and then the hundredth time you get the game killer.
>i know you fudged the dice to save bill so why are you letting me die?
You should never have the player characters die, you should have them lose something else instead, give them stakes that matter in the story, not where they lose a charcter they have spent dozens of hours on. Characters dying is just toxic to the table because players will start to see the gm as their opponent and start things like metagaming to ensure their character lives.
>you should never have the PCs die
Adventuring's a dangerous business. No threat to life, no tension. And the players will also realize that.
Good players will not metagame to save their characters, but they will learn from mistakes and be careful next time.
>Good players will not save their characters
Being good usually doesn't mean you play to lose.
And if you aren't allowed to metagame, you just have to optimize for what amount of metagaming the table allows, for example by using bludgeoning weapons on the skeleton even though your character is not smart enough to know this.
I said "good players will not METAGAME to save their characters", not that they won't save their characters. Conveniently leaving out part of my statement in order to misrepresent what I said doesn't make you correct.
And like I said, then it just becomes a game about finding the edge cases which are allowed.
Strawmanning just deflates your own argument anon.
>always thought minor fudging was common amongst GMs, not saving players for no good reason I just mean pushing things one way or the other when the players or enemies are struggling to roll good.
I think mechanically the idea is fine, but in practice is just a way for a GM to express favoritism, even if they intend to or not. The GM might think they're being fair when in reality they're giving the squeaky wheel of the group disproportionately more Get Out Of Jail free cards than the other players. This is why I like Genesys' fate points: it keeps things even between the players and the game, and lets the players decide what they want to fudge. They also have to consider if it's worth fudging, because it hands the point over to the NPCs to fudge something themselves. It's also handy for resolving those "oh I forgot to pick up X back in town can I just SAY I've had it with me the whole time?" moments, because there's no deliberation in whether it's reasonable enough to be allowed. Either the players think it's worth using a fate point or they don't.
You just described metagaming.
Edge cases of gameplay where it is not clear if its metagming, is always clearly metagaming? No sane table ever questions every action you do, so there is some ambiguity there. And finding out how much you can get away with is the name of the game when you try to optimize to win.
It's still metagaming even if the other people at the table aren't aware of it.
Sure, and a tree falling in a forest where nobody hears it still makes a sound. But even if it is metagaming, isn't it what anyone would do at that situation?
Not anon's definition of a "good player"
Actually the whole thing was pointless since he stated that a good player would not metagame to save his character but would "learn from his mistakes" if his character is dead how does the new character learn from this? The given example already included metagaming!
Whereupon he proves the thesis of characrer death being a major leading cause for metagaming as in his example of a good player the characters learn from mistakes that the player made on a different characrer. How poetic.
>if his character is dead how does the new character learn from this?
By assigning different values to attributes and learning new skills and making sure they have particular items and protections on the new one.
I agree anon. We have adopted the benny rule from savage worlds for most systems we use and it works great at allowing everyone to kinda try to push the story a certain way without it being a mother may I type of thing. I've had no complaints about the system other tthan when players are acting against each other we decided to not allow them to use them.
Some systems are more lethal than others and you might need to emphasize to players that this isn't D&D and there aren't always going to be easy healing spells.
Sure some systems are as written more lethal and less roleplay oriented, but if the characters are expendable and thus players have no reason to become invested in them or their stories then you might as well go play a board game with player elimination. It's always better to have something the character and the player cares about being in risk than the ability to play at all.
It's not that the players are expendable but they need to realise that a bunch of tweaked out gangers on motorcycles with automatic weapons is just as deadly as the ex-special forces military commandos dropping onto your rooftop. Also grenades should be feared.
If you're in a situation where you feel you have to fudge the dice, you shouldn't have rolled the dice in the first place.
What about DoS? Maybe I find 95% of results fine, but 5% of results not in the circumstance?
You're kind of poisoning the conversation from the start by using the term 'fudging'. That makes it seem super negative. I think of it as dice 'funning', because I do it to make a more dramatic or interesting outcome happen. If you're careful and don't do it too often, this can add so much and create great, memorable moments.
In my experience, it's rarely necessary to lie about what the dice say ("fudging"); but sometimes it's good to mess with the NPC's stats for pacing or if you messed up the power scaling.
At best, it is bad practice - if you aren't willing to accept rolls outcome, don't roll at all, or add some mechanics to ignore the rolls. (Fate points or something.)
At worst, it is cheating and lying to your friends, and as such it is morally reprehensible.
No I don't. I think if someone feels like they need to fudge the dice to have fun they are probably playing the wrong game or need to houserule something. Maybe a game with less high stakes combat or less unpredictable dice swings would be better.
No, and it's very obvious when you play with someone who does. Completely removes any tension, and immediately destroys player engagement. Why bother putting in any effort when the GM makes it obvious he's already decided how the game will go?
Fudge makes the rat hungry
I'm gonna kill your rat next session.