Quote from: Elliot WilenWhat the #%^* is wrong with a meaningless death?

Nothing. Where meaningless death is a possibility, the ultimate "stake" is fun itself. That makes for exciting gaming.

Quote from: SpikeIt occurs to me that Fudging...and particularly complaints about fudging, comes down to an issue of Trust.

Counterintuitively it seems to me that if you don't like fudging its probably because you have trust issues... at least vis a vis your GM.

Sadly, this was much better thought out an hour ago... then I went to lunch and it's all stale and crumbly now.

Maybe it's that. Whatever. In every case, I hate fudging, when I'm playing a character and when I'm running a game. In my book, fudging is cheating, because it's arbitrary, unfair, and only the GM can decide about it. On the other hand, I love hero/drama/whatever points, they've got all the advantages of fudging without the cheating. The players, instead of the GM, should decide when they need the "push" fudging would give them.

If this makes me a part of the anti-GM brigade, so be it.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen"Do-overs" are fine. What I'd worry about if I were in Jim's shoes is, will the players start to feel disoriented because they want to take on challenges fair & square, but in the back of their minds they're not sure if what they're really up against is Jim's judgment of their intentions and the pacing of the adventure.

Hence why I can't stand fudging.

QuoteOne time's no big deal (except it does impose a burden on Jim, having to carry a secret). If the players want a challenge, though, then continued fudging is eventually going to cause problems. (If they don't want a challenge, it might not.)

We like challenges.

QuoteNevertheless I think it'd be more productive for Jim to look at how he got painted into a corner--what contributed to the need to fudge.

Which I did.

QuoteHow much choice did the players really have about going into this fight at this time? How much knowledge did they have about the risks?

There's almost always a choice for them in everything they do. The alternative might not be something pleasant, but it's there. In this case the alternative was to continue to let a demon amass political power and use it to spread pain and suffering. The fight wasn't an ambush, so there was a definite choice to be made.

QuoteWhat the #%^* is wrong with a meaningless death? I can only speculate here, but--does Exalted have mechanically complex chargen? Does it encourage or require a lot of player-created background?

Meaningless death sucks. It's unfun. YMMV.

In Exalted, the players play Solars (or sometimes Lunars). Creation is approximately 10,000 miles across and there's only 450 of these guys at any one time. A constant influx and death toll for the party can destroy continuity much faster than it would in a game like D&D where there are thousands of adventurers running around adventuring.

Fudging is the divine right of any GM.

A wise GM will always do so sparingly, but not feel guilt at doing so.

Just be sure that when you do Fudge, you only do so to save the PCs., not to save your own interests as a GM.  The latter will end up being noticed, and people will (rightfully) accuse you of sucking.

RPGPundit

Quote from: ClaudiusIf this makes me a part of the anti-GM brigade, so be it.

I didn't say it made you part of an 'anti-GM brigade', I said it meant you had potential Trust Issues with your GM's.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. Hell, you could be coming from a completely different RPG culture than the one I came up through. I've had GM's that used GMPC's to run roughshod over the party, I've had GM's more or less chose certain players to use as 'examples' to keep the rest of the table in line, I've had GM's play favorites.

When you play with GM's like that, Fudging is the absolute LEAST of your worries.  My first ever D&D game had a pack of hellhounds as the first ever encounter for our first level characters!   For all I know the only reason we survived was the  GM fudged the encounter.  

My point was: If you are playing the game like the rules are hard coded and perfectly understood by everyone, and perfectly followed by everyone, then sure, maybe fudging might seem disruptive. But most GM's in my expirence play a bit looser with the books than that, and Fudging doesn't seem so out of place.  I trust my GM's, and my players trust me, to Fudge only when necessary, and only to keep the fun in the game.  


Hell, my mostly tired Runequest AP thread has times when I literally tossed out rules to keep people at the table from rioting. Openly. A lot has to do with the personalities involved, but if I played the hardnosed, by the book, I wouldn't have any players!

Quote from: James McMurrayMeaningless death sucks. It's unfun. YMMV.

In Exalted, the players play Solars (or sometimes Lunars). Creation is approximately 10,000 miles across and there's only 450 of these guys at any one time. A constant influx and death toll for the party can destroy continuity much faster than it would in a game like D&D where there are thousands of adventurers running around adventuring.

Right, so, let me see if I'm hearing you. (With my thoughts on what can be done to minimize the need to fudge again.)

* Lack of familiarity with the system, on your part as the GM. You can fix that.

* Players biting off more than they could chew. Three subcomponents: (1) moral urgency (2) possible lack of information on the details of the challenge [in D&D, this would be like when the party faces a monster they've never seen before and whose HD/powers are surprisingly high compared to its appearance] (3) lack of familiarity with the system.

(1) can be scaled down or up. (2) not clear. (3) Your players will fix that as time goes by.

* A need for death to be rare & meaningful. You can't really change this as long as you're using Exalted as-is. There might be houserules though that can help.

Death doesn't have to be the end of the Exalted Game. After all the 'Afterlife' thing is very real in Exalted. I could imagine a game session focused on retrieving the dead character's soul, slapping it into a new body and convincing the right God to give up the damn shard once more! Hell, a TPK is even easier: They all 'wake up' in the land of the dead and start whopping ass and taking names down there.  Fudge the setting a bit and make 'em all 'natural Deathnights', there to stop (one assumes) the Deathlords and their minions for the good of Creation!

Or... you could just... y'know... fudge the dice a bit.

Quote from: SpikeI didn't say it made you part of an 'anti-GM brigade', I said it meant you had potential Trust Issues with your GM's.

Sorry, Spike, I wasn't referring to you, maybe the confussion arises from the fact that I cited you.

It's not that I have trust issues with my GMs, the fact is that I don't trust any GM blindly.

QuoteMaybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. Hell, you could be coming from a completely different RPG culture than the one I came up through. I've had GM's that used GMPC's to run roughshod over the party, I've had GM's more or less chose certain players to use as 'examples' to keep the rest of the table in line, I've had GM's play favorites.

When you play with GM's like that, Fudging is the absolute LEAST of your worries.

There are other possible problems with RPGs, I agree, but it doesn't make me think I should like fudging just because other things I like even less might happen.

QuoteMy first ever D&D game had a pack of hellhounds as the first ever encounter for our first level characters!   For all I know the only reason we survived was the  GM fudged the encounter.  

I wouldn't have had fun if my character had had his ass saved by fudging. It's lame. Simply, the GM mistook and put a tougher challenge than PCs could handle.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen* Players biting off more than they could chew. Three subcomponents: (1) moral urgency (2) possible lack of information on the details of the challenge [in D&D, this would be like when the party faces a monster they've never seen before and whose HD/powers are surprisingly high compared to its appearance] (3) lack of familiarity with the system.

Close. They had no idea what the demon's powers were, but never underestimated it. They knew about his minions and had faced them all before, seeing most of their tricks.

The real difference, and what totally surprised me but shouldn't have, was the player's choice of the roleplaying option over the tactical one. that's not to say that we don't roleplay, but when fights happen we're usually very tactical.

One of the things this campaign has done, partially from the constant stunting and partially by making death something that isn't a constant threat for the PCs, is that it's freed the gamist players up to take a more role focused view. When every session isn't a round-by-round crawl through Catacombs of Death a few 5' squares at a time they step back and take the longer view. This same thing happened when my last D&D campaign hit epic levels, but's it's been several years since then and I got myself back into the tactical frame of mind.

Had I been thinking clearly this wouldn't have surprised me. But I figured what would be the most tactically sound option and blindly rolled into it expecting that would happen. I'll hopefully know better next time.

Sounds like you have a pretty good handle on things; it will be interesting to hear how things develop. I'm especially curious how the "meaningless/meaningful death" issue works out. Who decides when it's meaningful? If it's not meaningful enough, who decides to overrule the dice?

I mean given that you'd prefer not to fudge anymore, are you going to have to depend on foreseeing the PCs' roleplaying?

That first paragraph is pretty much my entire trepidation over the issue crammed into two questions, and the succint expression of why we don't fudge.

If (more likely when) it happens again I'll hopefuly be able to think of a way to make it meaningful.

From what you've described, wouldn't it have been meaningful this time? I mean, Bambara decides to sacrifice combat efficiency for the sake of the women & children. Bambara's mate dies because of this. Meaningful? But maybe not the kind of meaningful the group wants?

As you say this is bound to happen again. I guess one way to make it more meaningful will be how you frame the scenes and options.

This has been a very useful thread for me to think about how I want to run games. Now, I think I'd rather back off a bit on "character investment" and then not worry too much about my responsibility to make things meaningful--that's up to the players. In this light, backing off on character investment is more a tactic to prevent player-player hard feelings if one PC directly or indirectly harms another.

While it could have been made to be meaningful, it would also have been one player suffering because of the choices of another.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum with character investment. Coming off of a long stint of dungeon crawl D&D campaigns and mission based Shadowrun games we've been sorely lacking in the non-mechanical character development aspect of RPGs. This isn't solely the fault of those games, but does tend to be the style we adopt in them. This campaign, for various reasons, has given us more character development in 7 or 8 sessions then we saw in all three attempts at World's Largest Dungeon, various Dungeon mag adventures, and "Hired then screwed by the Johnson" printed Shadowrun missions put together. And I for one am enjoying the hell out of a refreshing change.

I'm loathe to jeapordize that because I failed to contemplate that the Compassion 4* ascetic priest whose virtue flaw is Compassionate Martyrdom* might decide to take the place of some hapless women and children. Had it been the ascetic on the chopping block I'd have finished him off in a heartbeat.

* if you don't know White Wolf's dots system, that's really high
** this flaw can force him to take the place of innocents who are suffering, although he was nowhere near the point where it would force him and instead he roleplayed it without being cajoled by the rules

Also, in hindsight I can think of several ways I could have handled it better, but quite frankly I panicked.

If you knew our group the absurdity of the situation might be clearer. I'm typically the deadliest GM we have, and have a reputation for killing off characters left and right. I've killed a single PC multiple times in one night, sometimes when the player isn't even there. In the aforementioned epic game one player arrived late (having brought food for everyone) just in time to be handed his dead PC's character sheet.

Yeah, this isn't a trial. About the "one player suffering because of the choices of another" though, you see where I'm going with the idea of reducing investment, right? (Esp. now that I've started the O death thread.)