I run a No-Fudge game, always have, and like Kyle, play it to the max as if my NPCs were my PCs.  Every single time, with two exceptions, here's how it plays out...
1. New guy plays like he's Arnold Schwarzenegger
2. New guy gets smeared across the wall.
3. New guy has a reaction ranging from "Can I talk to you after the game?" to full-on screaming and chair-flipping (my table is too heavy to flip unless The Rock or Vin Diesel play).
4. Optional: New guy leaves the campaign.
5. New Guy (coming back if he left) says that the campaigns we run (there's another long-term player who also GMs) are the most challenging they've faced and they realize that means the most fun.

When success is guaranteed or too easily won, success is meaningless.

Fudging dice is a symptom of another problem:  The rules are wrong for the game you are trying to run, or you are having an off day, or you just made a mistake, or you weren't prepared as you'd like to be, or you simply don't have the ability (yet) to anticipate outcomes as well as you like.  For many GMs, all of those problems can be better handled some other way.  For a new GM or one bad at probability or a few other cases, maybe not.  But even in that case, fudging dice should be the last resort.

Fudging dice is a little like a spare tire.  Your intent and hope is to never use it.  You'll take pro-active steps to avoid it.  If for some reason you are forced into using it, you'll stop as soon as possible.    The main difference of course is that a GM, being in control of the world and reality, can ensure that flats don't happen, and thus never need it.  Some GMs never reach that stage, and I guess they need a spare tire (or more likely, it's more convenient to have the spare than to do what is necessary to not need it).  Still needs to be used sparingly (hah), and very much only as a last resort.

The habit of fudging is far worse than any individual die fudge.  I'm zero fudge now.  I wouldn't complain if a new GM fudged once or twice (though I might talk to them later about ways to avoid it).  I'd walk out of an otherwise great game immediately if I noticed the GM had picked up the habit.

On those rare occasions when I mess up enough that a much younger me would have tried to fudge my way out of the problem and none of the alternate techniques look promising, now I just tell the players:  "I messed up.  Here's the minimal reality shift we'll do to make it right.  Everyone happy with that?  OK, off we go."

I'm not a fan of fudging rolls. But let's not pretend it's something new that's being introduced by people who want to change the hobby. GMs have been funding rolls since forever. I'm sure if you look you'll find letters and editorials about it in Dragon magazines from the 80s.

Issue 99, July 1985  by David F Godwin's "history of a game that failed"... his very first tip is 'Feel free to fudge'

Me personally? No. No fudge for you.  Live by the dice. Die by the dice. That's why its a dice game.  Its why we use dice.

I have mixed reactions on the subject. On one hand nothing is more annoying than fialing a save and die the first half hour from a pit trap. On the other if your going to stupidly rush into every situation I don't fudge the dice. That being said if no fudging is allowed and my character dies expect to get the same character with a different name. If your one of those DMs that insists on a background and does not fudge dice I'm not writing a new one from scratch every time a character dies.

Farewell brave Rogdor... Brother Trogdor shall avenge you.  Pray we do not anger elder brother Strogdor or even worse sister Strogdora... Lo I see the line of my fathers before me back to the beggining... They call to me and they bid me join them in the halls of valhalla.

You know with all those family members you'd be much more effective if you all fought together as a group... Come to think of it as long as I've known you I've never seen two of you together at the same time...

We uh... We don't really get along.... <.<

In that case I see why every day in valhalla is feasting and fighting all day.  Like a tense Irish Thanksgiving each day... Forever!

I believe your irish catholic people's word for it is 'heaven'

I am the GM, that is an abbreviation for Game Master. That means that while the dice control the randomness of events, my judgement guides how those events unfold and the dice rolls are interpreted. This was not taught to me, but it has been what my experience has shown to be the best working style for my GMing.

Case in point: While just starting a d20 Traveller game, in the first session, when the Players jumped out of system, the die roll would have resulted in the ship being destroyed and the PCs killed. The game would have been a non-starter in the first session. So common sense dictated that while something detrimental happened, it did not kill all the PCs or destroy the ship. I had them misjump into another subsector and have to travel back to their original subsector to continue on with the original adventure.

Being a GM involves judgement calls and having a campaign end before it even has a chance to begin sucks ass for everybody.

Quote from: jeff37923;1057043I am the GM, that is an abbreviation for Game Master. That means that while the dice control the randomness of events, my judgement guides how those events unfold and the dice rolls are interpreted. This was not taught to me, but it has been what my experience has shown to be the best working style for my GMing.

Case in point: While just starting a d20 Traveller game, in the first session, when the Players jumped out of system, the die roll would have resulted in the ship being destroyed and the PCs killed. The game would have been a non-starter in the first session. So common sense dictated that while something detrimental happened, it did not kill all the PCs or destroy the ship. I had them misjump into another subsector and have to travel back to their original subsector to continue on with the original adventure.

Being a GM involves judgement calls and having a campaign end before it even has a chance to begin sucks ass for everybody.

I call that patching flaws in the game.

It's better GMing to just change the rules if certain outcomes are not allowed.

Every hour of play, I roll a d6, and if it comes up "6" or "1", I punch a player in the face.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1057044I call that patching flaws in the game.

It's better GMing to just change the rules if certain outcomes are not allowed.

Yeah, I get this response every time I tell that story.

Thing is, the outcome is understandable and sensible according to the rules and the setting for Traveller, but the timing at that point in the game was shitty. After a few hours creating characters, to have on their first session, almost on their first action as a group, to have a TPK due to a bad dice roll is just a crappy way to run a game because it sucks the fun right out of it for the GM and the players.

Quote from: jeff37923;1057043I am the GM, that is an abbreviation for Game Master. That means that while the dice control the randomness of events, my judgement guides how those events unfold and the dice rolls are interpreted. This was not taught to me, but it has been what my experience has shown to be the best working style for my GMing.

Case in point: While just starting a d20 Traveller game, in the first session, when the Players jumped out of system, the die roll would have resulted in the ship being destroyed and the PCs killed. The game would have been a non-starter in the first session. So common sense dictated that while something detrimental happened, it did not kill all the PCs or destroy the ship. I had them misjump into another subsector and have to travel back to their original subsector to continue on with the original adventure.

Being a GM involves judgement calls and having a campaign end before it even has a chance to begin sucks ass for everybody.

I would have "handled" that situation as well. I think you've got a solid point there: brick walls aren't fun for anyone.

My tactic would have been to inform the character's player
1) That they knew it was suicide (if they did know or strongly suspect that)
2) That, OOC, it could end the game anticlimactically
If that didn't dissuade them, I'd have given the other players a chance to stop them or talk them out of it (again, this might not be possible depending on the exact circumstances)

That puts the onus of an anticlimax in the hands of the players, rather than necessitating a roll.

Now, it's not impossible that this circumstance you're describing is at right-angles to these proposed strategies (like, if it was one player taking a blind leap far away from anybody else in the control room, none of this applies). It sounds in that case like the circumstance was desperate enough that "the entire party is killed" was already on the table, though.

I'm comfortable with this more candid degree of behind-the-screen transparency; your tastes my reasonably vary. But if I have a "should" feeling about the game ("they should live now, or else the game won't be fun") I tend to treat that as a purely metagame concern; I feel it can permeate the membrane of the game's world in the same way a rule reference or die roll can.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1056984Yep. Perhaps a better mechanic would be failure as setback instead of bottleneck.

More simply, you could call it the "Avoid Bottlenecks" section of your rules... and to be fair, how much this is a problem depends a lot on the game you're running.

If a botched search check means the party missed the secret door leading to the Demon Cult's headquarters in an open-world sandbox then the GM says they found nothing of interest and the party probably says, "Oh well, I guess there's nothing more to find in this dungeon. Let's move on to the next hex and see what we find there."

But if you're running a more 'event' focused game (i.e. the game is about finding and stopping the Demon Cult) then the adventure should be designed so there's never even a need for the Search check to come up, or, include an event that makes a failed search check obvious so they know to keep trying different things until they figure it out (ex. they catch site of a Demon Cultist entering the cave as they arrive. When they reach the cave the cultist isn't there and there's no other obvious way out. No matter how badly the initial search check goes they'll keep searching until they find out how the Cultist disappeared).

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1057017Fudging dice is a symptom of another problem:  The rules are wrong for the game you are trying to run {snip}

This is probably the biggest trigger I've seen for dice fudging in my experience.

Most often its been the disconnect between trying to emulate "Big Damned Heroes" style characters using an edition of D&D other than 4E while the GM insists on starting everyone out at level 1 with straight 3d6 in order ability scores and rolled hit points at level 1 because that's what the rules say to do... instead of one or more of; start at level 4, roll 4d6 (drop lowest) and place in any order ability scores and you get max HP at level 1... any two or three of which which would put the characters at a point where one maxed out roll with an orc's greataxe probably won't result in instant death and no need to fudge the die rolls just to keep the party from being TPK'd in their first encounter.

There's nothing WRONG with starting at level 1 with 3d6 ability scores in order and rolled hit points in and of itself... but its not a starting point that lends itself to BDH-style PCs right out of the gate (if you're using a funnel you'll eventually get some BDH-style PCs, but only after a bunch of other PCs have been slaughtered around them, which doesn't exactly work for every campaign; ex. you want the game to be focused around an elite Order where the game begins with the PCs being inducted into its ranks... having two dozen dead inductees and four survivors on the initial mission really kills the "Elite" vibe of the Order).

Fudging seems to happen most often when the DM doesn't understand the expectations of the system when tailoring their campaign and then uses dice fudging to keep the PCs alive in situations where the rules expect a good percentage of the PCs to be killed off in a Darwinian funnel where only the strongest survive.

I think a lot of games could benefit from a little discussion about game expectations when using the basic rules and how changing those rules might yield different expectations. For example, "If you run rules as written, you will likely go through several starting PCs before one survives long enough to reach higher levels... if you want to run a game with more survivable characters, start them at level 4 or higher" makes it clear that early levels will probably be a meat-grinder so if your goal is BDH-style PCs you should take the advice and start them at level 4+.

Quote from: jeff37923;1057049Yeah, I get this response every time I tell that story.

Thing is, the outcome is understandable and sensible according to the rules and the setting for Traveller, but the timing at that point in the game was shitty. After a few hours creating characters, to have on their first session, almost on their first action as a group, to have a TPK due to a bad dice roll is just a crappy way to run a game because it sucks the fun right out of it for the GM and the players.

I've modified the Classic Traveller misjump rules for my campaign. As is, they would make running a Type A Free Trader essentially impossible. In some modest number of jumps it would end up either off the map (ok, that's a 50-50 shot of instant death) or in a known unoccupied hex. So I set up rules that do allow a misjump into empty space, but it's a lot more unlikely.

I roll combat out in the open.

I let PCs roll everything that I possibly can that a DM would normally roll - their random encounter checks, monster surprise rolls, etc.  The only stuff I roll is secret door checks, thief rolls where the player can't be sure of result, etc.  I also tell the players what the success/fail threshold is before the roll.

The players know there is no fudging.  They can see almost everything.  It does impact the way they play.  Heal spells are cast well before they're on the last few HP.

Quote from: jeff37923;1057043I am the GM, that is an abbreviation for Game Master. That means that while the dice control the randomness of events, my judgement guides how those events unfold and the dice rolls are interpreted. This was not taught to me, but it has been what my experience has shown to be the best working style for my GMing.

Case in point: While just starting a d20 Traveller game, in the first session, when the Players jumped out of system, the die roll would have resulted in the ship being destroyed and the PCs killed. The game would have been a non-starter in the first session. So common sense dictated that while something detrimental happened, it did not kill all the PCs or destroy the ship. I had them misjump into another subsector and have to travel back to their original subsector to continue on with the original adventure.

Being a GM involves judgement calls and having a campaign end before it even has a chance to begin sucks ass for everybody.

Traveller was notorious for the possibility of death during character generation. I never played in a Traveller game where the GM didn't use the optional rule of ending chargen and you ran the PC as it had been developed to that point rather than dead and start chargen over.

Personally I see a big difference between altering the stakes of failure and negating the failure (fudging the role). Rather than death they may have ended up in the wrong location, their navigation may have failed so they are unsure of their position, they jump into an asteroid field and the ship takes serious damage etc. Any of these could ultimately lead to a TPK, but not in a single roll.

Personally I'm not a fan of save vs death so will rarely intentionally use a roll where that is a possible outcome.  

 

Quote from: Chris24601;1057055More simply, you could call it the "Avoid Bottlenecks" section of your rules... and to be fair, how much this is a problem depends a lot on the game you're running.

If a botched search check means the party missed the secret door leading to the Demon Cult's headquarters in an open-world sandbox then the GM says they found nothing of interest and the party probably says, "Oh well, I guess there's nothing more to find in this dungeon. Let's move on to the next hex and see what we find there."

But if you're running a more 'event' focused game (i.e. the game is about finding and stopping the Demon Cult) then the adventure should be designed so there's never even a need for the Search check to come up, or, include an event that makes a failed search check obvious so they know to keep trying different things until they figure it out (ex. they catch site of a Demon Cultist entering the cave as they arrive. When they reach the cave the cultist isn't there and there's no other obvious way out. No matter how badly the initial search check goes they'll keep searching until they find out how the Cultist disappeared).


This is probably the biggest trigger I've seen for dice fudging in my experience.

This is what I was getting at earlier. It is great that there are games encouraging "fail forward" so you don't leave a campaign high and dry over a stupid missed observation roll. I believe before this recent epiphany it was called good GM'ing...  

You simply don't include something that will completely derail the game without planning an out. So the PCs miss the secret door, there must be some other way to find the secret temple. Research in town leads back to the area, follow a cultist to the temple or have another option for completing the mission without visiting the temple. Maybe they never find the temple, but they are able to thwart the cults plans another way, kill their leader etc which ultimately leads to defeat of the cult (or does it? Maybe it revives and the PCs will have to deal with the restructured cult in the future).

I've been in far too many fun games that went in a completely different direction than planned due to a series of "bad" rolls to put much weight behind a game being ruined over a failed spot hidden roll.


If the game comes to a crashing halt because of a single failure, you are probably doing something wrong. I have never been involved with a TPK due to one roll, it was always due to a series of events. Some bad rolls, but more often poor decision making by the players. All the fudged rolls in the world won't help when the players do stupid things.