Quote from: SpikeI've actually come to the opinion that the problem with a great number of RPG's is that they are determined to tell you when characters should die... leading to unavoidably fatal encounters when there is absolutely no reason for them to be fatal...

Of course, the games that I've seen that use 'non-lethal' damage mechanics seem unbarably silly... even, if I may co-opt a term... Swinish.

You've got to understand that I do agree on general principle.
There are a few genres where its not the case, ie. Superhero games, where its more likely that players be "knocked out" and end up back up a few "panels" later; or Amber, where its usually better for PCs to end up horribly fucked up then killed.

But in general your point is well taken; BUT... there is also the issue of play "flow".  When I spare a character from senseless death its usually not so much a question of trying to be "fair" as it is my convenience and the convenience of the gaming group.  If we have to stop everything because a kobold got really lucky somehow, and its early in the game, then we have issues, and it is sometimes more practical for the sake of the game to "fudge" it.

RPGPundit

Quote from: J ArcaneI concur wholeheartedly dude.  

I think the biggest core to what you say here too, is never punish the players, for the DM's mistake.

Hmm, well, sometimes the GM's mistake, if allowed to stand, WOULD punish the players.

Let's say I have a planned "big bad" opponent the players face at the climactic end point of the adventure, and when they face him, something unforseen by me as DM would end up making the combat very boring; it could be better at that point to Fudge things to make the climactic battle fulfilling to the players, rather than letting things stand and leaving everyone feeling unfulfilled.

Of course, there's a difference between that, and having a good opponent who gets downed either by an incredibly brilliant action by a player you simply did not account for, or where one player rolls a spectacularly lucky roll and manages to drop the opponent in one blow.  Those things are fun and cool to the players, and should of course stand.  What I'm talking about are situations where you fuck up as DM, and it would not be the player's own coolness that lets them succeed.

RPGpundit

Quote from: RPGPunditYou've got to understand that I do agree on general principle.
There are a few genres where its not the case, ie. Superhero games, where its more likely that players be "knocked out" and end up back up a few "panels" later; or Amber, where its usually better for PCs to end up horribly fucked up then killed.

But in general your point is well taken; BUT... there is also the issue of play "flow".  When I spare a character from senseless death its usually not so much a question of trying to be "fair" as it is my convenience and the convenience of the gaming group.  If we have to stop everything because a kobold got really lucky somehow, and its early in the game, then we have issues, and it is sometimes more practical for the sake of the game to "fudge" it.

RPGPundit

True. But if the game was designed so that a lucky kobold only incapacitated the character, removing him from the fight.... and consequentially forcing the surviving characters to have a dramatic race to save their critically injured comrade... wouldn't that be better than fudging the dice to maintain some sort of flow?  

Ideally, the Kobold should only actually kill the character if he takes the time to 'finish the job' or the character was doing some heroic 'last stand' to stave off the kobold horde... where we could assume that eventually he'd succumb to wounds or be 'coup de graced' eventually... though if it happened off screen there is always the possiblity he is buried under the mound of corpses and recovers enough to be found later by a sympathetic shepardess and nursed back to enough health...

Of course, if you are talking about the 'flow' of your prescripted Plot then you and I have nothing more to say to one another....:pundit:

Quote from: StuartIf you DO fudge a dice roll... don't be sneaky about it.  Tell the player:  "Well, that's a natural 20... so your character would be dead.  You lose one of your 9 lives and we'll say it's a miss, ok?"

The biggest problem with that is that later, said player might feel like you'll give him "another chance" (or another 8 chances) like you did before, or that other players would feel like they're entitled to being fudged for, because "you fudged for Jim that one time"; when that time with Jim was a time where it was really better in your opinion for all concerned that Jim be allowed to live, whereas the fucker who's trying lawyer his life now deserves what's coming to him.

It would cause unnecessary conflict between the GM and the players.  The screen exists for a reason.

RPGPundit

Quote from: James McMurray(I think) He means you've removed the "game" portion of RPG by opting to tell a story and are no longer playing an RPG, but a Story-game.

And he'd be wrong.

When children play games, they favour games where everyone has a chance to win. If the individual skill levels of the kids playing mean that some kid would always lose, they bowl easy against them, etc, so that it returns to even odds. As we grow up, this odds-evening is formalised in "leagues" and "weight classes," or "challenge ratings." The aim is always to have an interesting game, and people generally feel that an interesting game is one where what happens next is uncertain.

To keep the outcome uncertain, we use leagues, weight classes, challenge ratings, dice, and GM fudging.

If the outcome is uncertain, people remember the game better, it makes an impression on them. If one of the random results was stupid, then the game is memorable, but in an annoying way. For example, if during a soccer game the goalie blocks the ball, and it bounces off one of his own side's players and into the net for an own goal, that was an unexpected outcome, but people feel it's stupid and annoying.

In a soccer game, we put up with the occasional stupid and annoying random result, because usually the random results are interesting, and not stupid and annoying. We take the good with the bad. Sometimes, people do the same with rpgs. Yes, the critical fumble charts in GURPS mean that if the player gets a bad enough dice roll, they can end up having their character chop their own arm off in a fight. That's annoying and stupid. But there's also the possibility of critical successes, so players take the good with the bad.

But we don't have to take the good with the bad. Soccer is played professionally and seriously, and played for its own sake. If your roleplaying is professional and entirely serious, and played for its own sake, you will tend to say that "let the dice fall where they may, and the rule stands." If your roleplaying is more social than serious, then you'll be more inclined to fudge things so that there are never any annoying and stupid results. You'll disallow that own goal.

As an aside, "fudging" does not mean the PCs always succeed. It's a balance thing. It means that everything which happens is interesting and fun. We don't play games to be miserable and annoyed.

It just depends on why you're there. It's nothing to do with its being a "story-game", whatever the fuck that is. It's to do with why you're there - is it game first, people second, or are you a Cheetoist who puts the people first?

Quote from: JimBobOzIn over twenty years of gaming, I don't think I've ever GMed a game session where I followed all the rules to the letter.

I usually just roll the dice, and pretend to look up tables while just deciding what would be the most interesting and fun right now. Sometimes, "most interesting and fun" happens to be "what the dice rolls tell me." I use the rules and the dice and charts as inspiration, not as dictation. The rules shape and influence my game; they do not determine my game. I'm in charge, not a few hundred pages of cheeto-stained badly-edited mumbling.

Agreed wholeheartedly.  
The rules are there for the GM, not the GM for the rules.

RPGpundit

Quote from: SpikeTrue. But if the game was designed so that a lucky kobold only incapacitated the character, removing him from the fight.... and consequentially forcing the surviving characters to have a dramatic race to save their critically injured comrade... wouldn't that be better than fudging the dice to maintain some sort of flow?  

Ideally, the Kobold should only actually kill the character if he takes the time to 'finish the job' or the character was doing some heroic 'last stand' to stave off the kobold horde... where we could assume that eventually he'd succumb to wounds or be 'coup de graced' eventually... though if it happened off screen there is always the possiblity he is buried under the mound of corpses and recovers enough to be found later by a sympathetic shepardess and nursed back to enough health...

Of course, if you are talking about the 'flow' of your prescripted Plot then you and I have nothing more to say to one another....:pundit:

I think again, that it depends a lot on what game you're playing.  I mean, hell, in some games (WFRP, OD&D) characters are MEANT to die in droves from meaningless deaths, and they can and should happen at any given time.
In other games, this is not so practical.  If a game is well designed, it will allow the right level of "tolerance" so that random death will occur more or less as frequently or infrequently as the genre desires, but there's always rare times when a GM might feel he should fudge, and the GM's authority always comes first, above everything.

RPGPundit

Quote from: JimBobOzIt just depends on why you're there. It's nothing to do with its being a "story-game", whatever the fuck that is. It's to do with why you're there - is it game first, people second, or are you a Cheetoist who puts the people first?

I don't know how to respond to that line of thought...

So a situation where one person exerts personal dominance over others who came together to play a game is the "social" way? (I could relate a bit more if everyone is able to fuck around, erm, I mean "create a consensual narrative")

Quote from: SpikeTo combat this, I want a game that makes death meaningful, rather than random, and yet is still brutally hard when it needs to be. I want it all, and I want it now!

  You want a meaningful life go join the peace corps you mystic hump!  Character death has to be meaningless... they spend their lives chasing gold and XP it's only right that they should bleed out from a shiv wound in the back alley behnd a tavern in a two-bit dwarven mining town.

Quote from: SosthenesSo a situation where one person exerts personal dominance over others who came together to play a game is the "social" way? (I could relate a bit more if everyone is able to fuck around, erm, I mean "create a consensual narrative")

I'm not sure how you go from my saying, "people first, everything else second," to someone "exert[ing] personal dominance." Nor am I sure exactly who you think is exerting this personal dominance. The GM?

It depends what you mean by "dominance." The GM, all jokes about wearing Viking Hats aside, is not there to "dominate" anyone. There are two basic kinds of authority - malignant, and benevolent. Malignant authority is authority where a person is exerting control for its own sake, and/or for their own jollies. Benevolent authority is where a person is exerting control for the sake of others, for the sake of generally agreed-upon goals. In general, the person with malignant authority takes the power onto themselves without anyone asking them to; while the person with benevolent authority has been granted those powers by others, freely, and for the common good.

In a roleplaying game, the GM is granted authority so that they can control the game so that everyone has an interesting, fun and fulfilling time. Some groups believe that will best be achieved by following the rules to the letter, other groups believe some fudging will be needed. In either case, the group has granted authority to the GM for that.

"Authority" is often thought of as naturally malignant. But of course that's not so. The teacher has authority in the classroom, the parent at home, the surgeon during surgery. In society, we grant authority to these people because by virtue of their knowledge, high relative to those they're using their knowledge on, they can do good. In a roleplaying game group, in general no-one's a specialist, no-one has greater knowledge than anyone else about how to roleplay. But the GM has the adventure module, and (should, we hope) knows the rules better than anyone else; so their knowledge is greater. Their knowledge of the NPCs, of the overall direction of the game, is also greater than that of the players because they're disinterested. Like a judge at a trial, they stand apart from the process, watching over it, and guiding it to a proper and respectable conclusion.

It's benevolent authority.

A good example of this in practice may be found in the thread Tiwesdæg Clíewen - creating. I asked the players what sort of game they wanted, and they told me - granting me the authority to create it. Then with their characters they put in plot hooks, empty spaces I could fill in. When I expressed surprise at how harsh their characters' backgrounds were, saying I'd never inflict that on a player, they said, "go for it, use this stuff, we give you a license to fuck with our characters, just make it interesting."

The players say what they want from a game, and the GM uses their authority to give it to them - using dice and rules when they help that, and setting aside dice and rules when they hinder it.

Creator god. Okay.
Judge. Definitely.
Omnipotent dicator. Nope.

All the examples you've cited base their authority on some kind of rules. The doctor definitely has to stick to medicine and law, so does the teacher. I don't want to drag the "social contract" stuff out of the gutter, but there is some kind of agreement during a game. If one person is able to change the rules wherever and whenever he likes, then the why have rules that specific at all? At that point I'd be running a diceless game or something similar. The way you put it, the level of outside influence on your choices is pretty minimal. Why bother?

There are mitigating situations, of course. If the benefits outweigh the costs, overriding rules might be worth it. But practised too often just devolves the game. If the rules counter your shared experience that often, choose different ones.

For me it boils down to fairness. If the players have to stick to the rules, I'll do that too. I think I'm good enough to still move the game along, even confined by tables and polyhedral dice.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalYou want a meaningful life go join the peace corps you mystic hump!  Character death has to be meaningless... they spend their lives chasing gold and XP it's only right that they should bleed out from a shiv wound in the back alley behnd a tavern in a two-bit dwarven mining town.

And you don't see the meaning in that death? That life is cheap and a life spent grubing in the gutter for coin will result in a death in teh gutter for coin?

Meaning is a weighted term depending on who is speaking.

You know, I started a thread on the purple asking about character death and it got overrun by asshattery.  Maybe I should've posted it here instead.  

Quote from: SosthenesI don't want to drag the "social contract" stuff out of the gutter, but there is some kind of agreement during a game. If one person is able to change the rules wherever and whenever he likes, then the why have rules that specific at all?

There's change and then there's change. Suppose we have some roll-under system. If the warrior's player rolls 7 or under on 1d10, then the warrior will slay the dragon. If he fails, then the dragon will breathe on him and kill him, and the rest of the party will die. If the player rolls 8, and I say, "oh yes, I forgot that you have a bonus due to the sharpness of your sword," I'm changing the rules, but changing them in a minor way for a major result. If the player rolls 8, and I say, "not only do you slay the dragon, but the magic of your blow sends light cascading through the air, and the entire injured party magically recovers," I'm changing the rules in a major way for a major result.

So changing the rules and results is okay, but the changes should be sane, and plausible. You only fudge a result which could reasonably have happened anyway.

In a game with a GM, there are rules, and rulings. Rules are arbitrary decisions made before a game, by the game designer; rulings are arbitrary decisions made during a game, by the game master. In general, the rules will aim at some sort of balance between various factors which the game designer thinks are likely to come up in play; the rulings will aim at some sort of balance between various factors which the game master has seen come up in play. The various factors which are important, and which are thought likely to come up in play, will differ from person to person. What's important to Gary Gygax may or may not be important to my group. It cannot be doubted that the game master knows their own game group better than the game designer does.

Every GM makes rulings, because the rules never cover every situation. A "fudge" is simply a kind of ruling. In general, rulings will be made with the aim of making things seem reasonable and plausible. Fudges will be made for reasonableness and plausibility, but for other reasons, too - "flow", as RPGPundit said, "to make the game interesting and fun," as I would say, and so on.

GMs always make rulings. There's no difference in essence between a "fudge" and a "ruling". The difference is the aim of the thing.

Now, as to why to have rules at all if there are rulings - the rules are the road I usually follow, but sometimes I need to go off that road. Rules exist to give the game some degree of consistency and predicability. Players should have an idea of what their character can do. In general, the arbitrary decisions made before play - rules - are considered more fair and reasonable than arbitrary decisions made during play - rulings. This is because it's thought that rules won't contain any favouritism, and they'll be well-considered, rather than made up on the spot; whereas rulings may have favouritism - I make a ruling in favour of players or characters I like - and being done spontaneously, may not be well-thought-out.

The "favouritism" charge is not an issue, I think. Sensible people will only game with people they like, so everyone will be pretty much equal favourites. As to how well thought-out rulings are, I can only answer that you should not choose crazy and stupid people as your GM, and that in any case there's always the post-game chat to sort things out.

I already mentioned the example of the character in GURPS accidentally chopping his own arm off in battle. This was annoying and stupid, and so after the session we discussed it, and I ruled that actually the character didn't cut his own arm off, he stumbled backwards, broke and twisted it, and it had to be amputated later. This made no difference to the end result - missing arm - but it wasn't stupid and annoying, so the player was happy enough with the result. Disappointed that his character lost his arm, of course - but didn't feel it was stupid and annoying.

So there's an example of following the rules, but making a ruling to slightly alter the result to make people happy. We kept the original rule - the "attack yourself" entry remained on the chart. We kept that because we wanted combat to have the chance of fumbles with serious consequences. We wanted these consequences to be somewhat knowable, and predictable in their probability.

The rules are there not to be followed to the letter, but to be a guideline, a road to follow. If I drive down the road, the clear and easy path is down that road. But sometimes, if there's a big tree fallen in the road, or a person I'll run down, it may be better for me to pull off the road and drive along the side. Sometimes I may just randomly drift slight off-road, and barely notice it. If I'm desperate enough to get somewhere without a road to it, I may drive straight off and over there. If I take that route enough times, I may just want another road built there. That's how GMing is. The rules are the road I usually follow, but sometimes I need to go off that road.  That I sometimes need to go off the road does not mean that roads are not useful. Roads lay out the path we'll usually take. But if it turns out that this particular road doesn't go where we want to go, then we'll take another road, or make our own. We may just do an illegal u-turn to get somewhere else instead.

Quote from: SosthenesThe way you put it, the level of outside influence on your choices is pretty minimal. Why bother?

I did not say the rules and dice had "minimal" influence on my games. I said that I'd probably never run a session where I followed all the rules and all the dice at once. Just because I say, "I don't wear all black," does not mean, "I wear all white."

We have the rules because the rules are the road we usually take, but sometimes we need to go slightly or even completely off the road to get where we want to go. The rules are an indicator to the group of the general direction we'll be taking. But no-one, at the beginning of their journey, can predict every twist and turn, every pothole, every fallen tree or kid running across that road. So it's impossible to have a road that will always take us exactly where we want to go, while never going off that road.

The road influences the journey you take. The rules shape the game you play. We choose rules which we think will give us the kind of game we want. But the entire journey is not predictable, so sometimes we'll have to change some stuff.

To say, as TonyLB does, that if you have to change the rules then you chose the wrong rules, or the rules are somehow faulty, is simply wrong. If I buy a pre-made pair of pants, they often won't fit perfectly, being somewhat too small or large. So I'll get them too large, then wear a belt. Today I have to do my belt tight, tomorrow after a big dinner I have to let the belt out a bit. When I stand I might have to settle the waistband lower. After squatting I might have to hitch them up a bit. Oh no! These are the wrong pants! These pants have been badly-designed! Well, no - no pants are a perfect fit, some small adjustments have to be made, even as I move about in them. If you find that no amount of adjustment makes them fit, then yes, they're the wrong pants. I bought some 32 shorts when I should have got 34 longs, woops. But if I've got my 34 longs, and sometimes have to pull that belt in or out, or hitch them up or settle them down - well, that's okay.

Quote from: SosthenesFor me it boils down to fairness. If the players have to stick to the rules, I'll do that too.

I'm not too worried about the players sticking to the rules. Players, like GMs, are human, and occasionally make mistakes when adding and subtracting. The occasional fudge from them is not larger than the honest mistakes they make. It's just part of the friction of the machine of the game. They can cheat a little bit, I don't care. If they only ever cheat or fudge to make themselves succeed, then their characters always succeed, and things are boring. If I find that a player is regularly boring, then I stop playing with them. If their cheating is entertaining for me and everyone else, then I continue playing with them. It's not a professional football game, it's just a roleplaying game. Its purpose is social, not competitive.

Incidentally, Sosthenes, you may be interested to know that I quoted you and an earlier post of mine on a different forum, to start a talk about Gamemastering and authority.

I honestly go back and forth on this one.  But while I was skimming JimBob's post, and my eyes started to glaze over, one thing jumped into my leaking-out-of-my-ears brain.

Just for an analogy (and I'm not sure how much it holds), it seems to me that fudging would be like an umpire in a baseball game deciding that he's going to call this pitch a ball instead of a strike because he wants the game to be more meaningful.  He's sure that the other team will win, but he wants to give the underdog a chance.

There's not a baseball player or fan alive who would tolerate such a thing. Why do we?

I'm not saying we should or shouldn't, it's just interesting to me that we even consider it.