Quote from: Elliot WilenI don't know if it will help, but if you have time, look at this thread from rpg.net, paying special attention to the arguments that Zoran Bekric gets into. (I've linked to the printer-friendly pages so that it's easy to search.)

Thanks Elliot, the link is helpful...not only with this thread but there is stuff in there, which has some relevence to other threads -Killer GM, Making it easy on the players and finally on the issue of morality which is perhaps the most interesting topic of all. I'll look through the thread when I have more time, and see what I can come up with on the subject of this thread.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: JimBobOz"Fudging" is not just overruling dice rolls, it's deciding whether the dice are even rolled.

"[SIZE=-1]Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

I couldn't have said all of that better myself.
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Quote from: JimBobOz"Fudging" is not just overruling dice rolls, it's deciding whether the dice are even rolled.

Well, the whole core of the issue is the word "deciding".  Fudging is about using a decision (fiat) instead of an impartial and (in theory) objective process (rules and dice).  And it tends to happen when a GM feels that their decision is superior to the results produced by the impartial and (in theory) objective process.  A prerequisite for this is that the GM have a preference in results, which is why the examples tend to revolve around undesirable outcomes.

To your argument that "No GM follows the rules to the letter, because the rules don't cover things like whether and how often to roll." the line between a good faith effort to objectively (as possible) assess the situation vs. a deliberate effort to determine the outcome.  If you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because they are landing on a relatively soft surface and halving the damage seems appropriate, that's making a judgement.  If you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because their character is badly wounded, too much damage will kill them, and you don't want to kill their character, that's making a fudgement.

Quote from: John MorrowWell, the whole core of the issue is the word "deciding".  Fudging is about using a decision (fiat) instead of an impartial and (in theory) objective process (rules and dice).  And it tends to happen when a GM feels that their decision is superior to the results produced by the impartial and (in theory) objective process.

Exactly.

Rules - a set of arbitrary decisions made before a game session.

Judgment and fudging - a set of arbitrary decisions made during a game session.

Since the rules don't cover everything, everyone judges and fudges to a greater or lesser degree.

Quote from: John MorrowTo your argument that "No GM follows the rules to the letter, because the rules don't cover things like whether and how often to roll." the line between a good faith effort to objectively (as possible) assess the situation vs. a deliberate effort to determine the outcome.

The point is that no-one is entirely objective. Everyone will assess the situation in the light of their goals, whether those goals are to follow the spirit of the rules where the letter doesn't cover it, to have fun, to produce an interesting "story", to have character success or failure, or whatever. No-one just interprets the rules; they interpret the rules in a way that leads to some particular goal. That's not objective, that's subjective.

Quote from: John MorrowIf you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because they are landing on a relatively soft surface and halving the damage seems appropriate, that's making a judgement.  If you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because their character is badly wounded, too much damage will kill them, and you don't want to kill their character, that's making a fudgement.

Certainly. But suppose the character falls when you didn't expect them to. You have not previously determined whether the surface is hard and inflcits full damage, or soft and inflicts half-damage. Now they've fallen, and you have to make a decision about whether the surface is hard or soft. It's completely arbitrary; either decision would be reasonable. If you decide, rather than just flipping a coin either way, that decision doesn't come from nowhere - you're basing it on something. Quite naturally, sympathy or antipathy will creep in. No-one's entirely impartial. Legal judges aren't and they've trained for years in it, so I don't see how amateurs like we GMs can manage it.

The Roolz are only perhaps 10% of any given session, if only because the rules cover such a small fraction of what happens in play. The classic example, for me, is when the PCs went into a temple as prisoners, escaped, discovered a secret inner cabal of evil high priests, smacked them over, won back all their gear and more treasure besides, and won the acclaim of the whole religious order. Then they went outside to camp in the woods and I rolled a random encounter and some wolf ripped off some PC's leg. Brilliant, eh? After the session one of the players, who normally GMed, took me aside and said, "Let them be heroes for a little bit; when they've defeated a big challenge, don't give them a pissy little challenge and let it hurt them, it's anti-climactic. Let them be heroes for a little bit."

Now, the rules did not tell me that; they simply said a random encounter should be rolled for each day. They didn't say what happened if it were only a part of the day, or if the PCs had already had non-random encounters earlier on. The GM was expected to... use their judgment! Amazing. Of course you guys would say, "oh obviously you were using the wrong system," like there's any system which has rules for tossing aside random encounters when the characters have just been heroic...

That's why I say that fudging isn't just about over-ruling dice rolls, but deciding whether to roll in the first place - for example, whether to roll a pissy little random encounter after a huge non-random one has been defeated.

Quote from: John MorrowTo your argument that "No GM follows the rules to the letter, because the rules don't cover things like whether and how often to roll." the line between a good faith effort to objectively (as possible) assess the situation vs. a deliberate effort to determine the outcome.  If you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because they are landing on a relatively soft surface and halving the damage seems appropriate, that's making a judgement.  If you decide that the player should take only half-damage from a fall because their character is badly wounded, too much damage will kill them, and you don't want to kill their character, that's making a fudgement.

While I can see the distinction, I think that in reality GMs assess both at the same time. It's not a cut-and-dry polarized thing and is always a combination of both the "judgement" and the "fudgement". To use your example, the GM decides that the surface the character lands on is relatively soft because the character is badly wounded and a harder fall would kill them.

Quote from: David R....and finally on the issue of morality which is perhaps the most interesting topic of all.

I had never really thought of "fudging" itself in a morality sense. For me I guess that comes down to whether or not you are forthright about it or not. Letting the players know and they are fine with it? *shrug* The people at the table might be short changing themselves but it is a self imposed choice; so my thinking in a strictly morale sense is 'whatever'. Pretty much the same way I feel with "storyteller" prescripting, which is it's kissing cousin (and sometimes a much, much closer relation).

But not letting players, or GM the other way around for that matter, know about it and all of it? Operating under some sort of pretence? Well that's just being a turd of a person....and in the end bad things become of that, at the table and away.

EDIT: I think this ties back in with your Linchpin thread very directly. You were very up front with all the players. Laid out some options for deviating from the rules in the specific instance of it. Everyone is on the same page. No browbeating/armtwisting [I assume] to get an artifical consensus. Went with the option that has a relatively limited longterm impact (character still died that session). Result: rockfest (with the small cavet of some intensely curious players, with the expectation that that'll sort itself out ). Dubious morality? None that I can see.  Now some folks that are hypersensitive to not having things Done Right and Proper might still have issues with those broken rules. That it just bugs them at their very core. But, well, that just isn't me....*shrug*

Quote from: JimBobOz...they interpret the rules in a way that leads to some particular goal.

Are you talking about rules lawyering? (and yes, IMO GMs do this too)  Because there is using rules that have a commonly shared interpretation but that are built to provide options. Which is something different. Really, with a well thought out and implemented set of rules you can have amazing games (and resultant stories) following the letter and spirit of the rules.

Sorry to hear if that hasn't been in your experience.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI don't know if it will help, but if you have time, look at this thread from rpg.net, paying special attention to the arguments that Zoran Bekric gets into. (I've linked to the printer-friendly pages so that it's easy to search.)

That thread illustrates both the best and worst of RPGnet and also reminds me of why I don't miss something.  Zoran Bekric's arguments were well worth slogging through all the garbage to read.

Quote from: JimBobOzExactly.

Rules - a set of arbitrary decisions made before a game session.

Judgment and fudging - a set of arbitrary decisions made during a game session.

Since the rules don't cover everything, everyone judges and fudges to a greater or lesser degree.

Correct.  I fully agree.  I'm drawing a distinction between judgment and fudging.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe point is that no-one is entirely objective. Everyone will assess the situation in the light of their goals, whether those goals are to follow the spirit of the rules where the letter doesn't cover it, to have fun, to produce an interesting "story", to have character success or failure, or whatever. No-one just interprets the rules; they interpret the rules in a way that leads to some particular goal. That's not objective, that's subjective.

Again, correct.  I am drawing a distinction between making judgments that are process-oriented and judgments that are result-oriented.  If the judgment is indifferent to the outcome, it can be very different than a judgment made to produce a particular outcome.  

This distinction is hardly unique to role-playing.  It comes up in sporting referees, hiring employees, judging legal cases, and so on.  While none of those processes are perfectly objective, there is a distinction between trying to be objective and making judgments with an agenda for a particular result.

Quote from: JimBobOzCertainly. But suppose the character falls when you didn't expect them to. You have not previously determined whether the surface is hard and inflcits full damage, or soft and inflicts half-damage. Now they've fallen, and you have to make a decision about whether the surface is hard or soft. It's completely arbitrary; either decision would be reasonable. If you decide, rather than just flipping a coin either way, that decision doesn't come from nowhere - you're basing it on something.

As a GM, I normally roll dice for things like that because it's more objective (I've already mentioned that I roll dice a lot as a GM).  But I digress...

That decision can come from what the GM knows about how the dungeon was built, who built it, what other pits in the area were like, etc.  It can be based on a good faith assessment of the odds or even a gut feeling of what's there.  Maybe the GM, upon determining that there was a pit there, had an image of a pit pop into their head and they use that.

Quote from: JimBobOzQuite naturally, sympathy or antipathy will creep in. No-one's entirely impartial. Legal judges aren't and they've trained for years in it, so I don't see how amateurs like we GMs can manage it.

There is a difference between a legal judge who tries to be impartial and fair and a legal judge that's willing to fold, spindle, and mutilate the law to produce an outcome they want.  Perfect objectivity is not necessary in order to value a good faith effort to be objective, nor does the good faith effort to be objective behave like, and produce results like, a deliberate effort to play favorites.  The way an amateur GM can manage it, to a fairly good degree, is to not worry about results and focus on process.  Of course an even better way is to simply roll dice.  That's what I do.

See, that's the same problem that I had with the diceless role-playing advocates years ago on rec.games.frp.advocacy.  "How do you decide if the bottom of the pit is hard or soft?" I'd ask.  "You just decide!" they'd respond.  After a great deal of probing, it became clear that how they often "just decide" is that they have a preference for one outcome over another.  The reason why I have so much trouble with "just decide" is that I often don't have a preference for one outcome over the other.  And I'm quite happy to use dice to determine, for example, if the bottom of a pit is hard or soft, even if that decisions will determine whether a PC lives or dies, unless we've agreed upon some level of script immunity for the game or the number of deaths are getting "excessive" (where "excessive" means that the players are becoming detached from their characters).

Quote from: JimBobOzThe Roolz are only perhaps 10% of any given session, if only because the rules cover such a small fraction of what happens in play. The classic example, for me, is when the PCs went into a temple as prisoners, escaped, discovered a secret inner cabal of evil high priests, smacked them over, won back all their gear and more treasure besides, and won the acclaim of the whole religious order. Then they went outside to camp in the woods and I rolled a random encounter and some wolf ripped off some PC's leg. Brilliant, eh? After the session one of the players, who normally GMed, took me aside and said, "Let them be heroes for a little bit; when they've defeated a big challenge, don't give them a pissy little challenge and let it hurt them, it's anti-climactic. Let them be heroes for a little bit."

First, it can depend on what your players want.  Some players would enjoy the wolf encounter because they're not expecting a story and such events remind them that they aren't part of one.  

Second, and this is an area not well served by many theory discussions, there is a difference between the GM judgment used to set up a situation to produce a certain range of possible outcomes and applying GM judgment to make a particular outcome happen.  

You could roll on the table and use whatever encounter comes up and play it out by the rules.  You could choose not to roll on the table at all.  Or you could choose to roll on the table and then fudge to let the PCs win rather than letting one get maimed.  Three different ways of handling it.

Quote from: JimBobOzNow, the rules did not tell me that; they simply said a random encounter should be rolled for each day. They didn't say what happened if it were only a part of the day, or if the PCs had already had non-random encounters earlier on. The GM was expected to... use their judgment! Amazing. Of course you guys would say, "oh obviously you were using the wrong system," like there's any system which has rules for tossing aside random encounters when the characters have just been heroic...

You are assuming that all players want you to toss aside random encounters when the characters have just been heroic.  Of the two permanent character deaths in my D&D game, both were produced by random encounters and both players, when we discussed if they wanted to bring their characters back (in one case, the other PCs even gathered substantial funds and had a Raise Dead cast), the players declined.  The character that I had who died from his addiction (and the malfeasance of another PC and an NPC) died with several goals unfinished.  The GM gave me the option of the character not dying and I also declined.  I enjoyed playing the character but it was his time to go.  It reminded everyone that the stakes were very real and changed the tone of the game.  I don't think we would have gotten a game that was as deep as that one was if that hadn't happened and I hadn't created a new character.

The problem with the GM in my group who would never kill PCs (and I'm sure he felt he was doing us all a favor) is that we'd never get that sort of experience.  No tragedy.  No sorrow.  

Quote from: JimBobOzThat's why I say that fudging isn't just about over-ruling dice rolls, but deciding whether to roll in the first place - for example, whether to roll a pissy little random encounter after a huge non-random one has been defeated.

I'm far more indifferent to that than you are.  Whether I'd roll or not would depend on my assessment of the environment, not what the PCs just defeated.  I've never had a problem with it.  Instead, what I've seen problems with are (A) GMs not letting PCs die when they logically should, (B) railroading, and (C) GMs not letting the players win against NPCs for genre, story, or more nefarious reasons.  What all of those problems have in common is the GM deciding what happens instead of letting the rules and dice do it.

One last bit of anecdotal evidence.  The game where the character died from the addiction and several other games my group has run used Fudge.  Our house rules were that you would get 1 Fudge Point per session and could use up to 2 Fudge Points in a ~12-hour session.  For the most part, no player ever used all of their Fudge points or had a problem with the limit.  People just didn't feel that they needed to use them.

To summarize, in my group we've had PCs die and, when given the option to bring them back, have declined, even when the characters were killed by random encounters.  We have GMs (not just me) who leave decisions such as "What's at the bottom of a pit?" to a random rolls and normally roll most of their dice (including for things like "What's at the bottom of the pit?") in the open (my D&D game was an exception because the players demanded I use a screen as part of the authentic D&D feel).  And when we give people Fudge points, they rarely use them.  Does this sound like a group pining for more fudging of the sort you are talking about?

ADDED:  And that's not even going into the players who have told the GM who won't kill PCs to do so, to the point of having their characters do suicidal things to try to force the GM to kill their PC.

Quote from: WilWhile I can see the distinction, I think that in reality GMs assess both at the same time. It's not a cut-and-dry polarized thing and is always a combination of both the "judgement" and the "fudgement". To use your example, the GM decides that the surface the character lands on is relatively soft because the character is badly wounded and a harder fall would kill them.

I think you are rejecting the possibility that a GM might want to decide whether the surface the character lands on is hard or soft without taking that character's health into account.  In fact, that's why I think most of the GMs in my group, if asked whether the bottom of the pit is unusual, would not only roll a die but would probably do so in the open after telling the players what both ends of the roll mean.

ADDED: In fact, it's my inability to ignore the linkage between the character's survival and the answer that I find such questions very difficult to answer without dice.  I normally don't want to make the decision based on the survival or death of the character.

Don't assume that everyone has the same agenda that you do.

Quote from: JimBobOzNo-one just interprets the rules; they interpret the rules in a way that leads to some particular goal. That's not objective, that's subjective.

Like John Morrow said -- legal Judges and Juries have to interpret rules without trying to lead to some particular goal.  In virtually every game outside RPGs, people are able to follow the rules of the game with little difficulty. If all Umpires are calling strikes based on the subjective results they want, Baseball really wouldn't work.  Your claim that no-one just interprets the rules just isn't true.

Quote from: JimBobOzThe classic example, for me, is when the PCs went into a temple as prisoners, escaped, discovered a secret inner cabal of evil high priests, smacked them over, won back all their gear and more treasure besides, and won the acclaim of the whole religious order. Then they went outside to camp in the woods and I rolled a random encounter and some wolf ripped off some PC's leg. Brilliant, eh?

I think the classic solution was that the wolf didn't have to attack the PCs.  Not all encounters need to result in combat, and objectively speaking it would be very uncommon for a lone wolf to attack a group of people.  The other half of the solution was knowing when the game was done for the night.  Some RPGs can be played for years so knowing when to break so that you go out on a high note is important.  It's a showmanship thing.

Quote from: BlakkieBut not letting players, or GM the other way around for that matter, know about it and all of it? Operating under some sort of pretence? Well that's just being a turd of a person....and in the end bad things become of that, at the table and away.

This is it, really.  As long as everyone at the table is into it -- do whatever you like.  Fudge, don't fudge... it's up to you.  What's not cool is being deceptive about it.  If other people at the table believe you're following the rules and being objective, when in fact you're not even trying to be objective... that's more like cheating.  If someone straight-up asks you if you're doing it, and you deny it -- there's no two ways about it.  It's dishonest.

Quote from: droogI swore off fudging dice about ten years ago, but I can remember the reasons I gave myself for doing it:

1. To go easy on a player who was having a bad run, or was having other problems in life. Later, to save favoured characters.

2. To stretch out an encounter in order to make it more 'satisfying' or 'challenging' or 'dramatic'.

3. To produce a desired outcome; ie when a clue just had to be found.

4. To adjust an outcome to fit my notion of 'realism'.


I think that covers it. I quit because it ultimately seemed futile, distorted the game in the long term, and put too much of a burden on myself. Also, I realised that it pissed me off when other GMs did it, and I like to be consistent.

To a certain extent, there was also the problem Settembrini characterises as 'moral corruption'. I would come away from a session feeling slightly sick and disgusted with myself.

There are ways around all these problems that do not involve altering die results. Using a different system, encouraging less personal investment in individual characters, eschewing preplanned scenarios and so on. For several years I ran two games in parallel: one in which any chr could bite the dust at any time (Pendragon), and one in which chr death was more or less impossible (Villains & Vigilantes).

Both of these, ultimately, felt more rewarding to me as a GM, and it didn't seem to turn anybody off my games. So now it's dice in the open, all the time.

This is almost exactly how it works for me, personal history and all.  The actual games vary, but the rest of it is spot on.

JimBob, please stop telling us what we must do and so on, it sounds like you're posting on the Forge when you do that.  It is never helpful in a discussion to have someone saying "hey, you think you do x, but really you do y" which is kind of what you're saying here in part.

It's sophistry by the way to put judging and fudging in one line, and then pretend there is no difference.  It's trying to assert a definition, so that then by using that the point is already accepted without realising.

Judging is when in play something arises, and the rules agreed on for play leave discretion as to how that thing is handled in the hands of one or more participants.

Fudging is when the rules agreed on have been applied and result in an outcome that the GM is unhappy with, and so the GM in contravention of those rules changes that outcome.

Simple as that.  Now, the rules agreed on may include an element of rules modification within them, an accepted means by which one or more participants may modify outcomes.  Drama dice in Buffy for example.

Equally, the rules may be silent on many points, in which case judgements will need to be applied.

It becomes fudging when the agreed rules produce an outcome that one participant, the GM, then decides to alter as they are unhappy with that outcome.  Personally I prefer to avoid that, others find it useful.  

But all this semantic bullshit where JimBob pretends he doesn't know what fudging is, it's a rhetorical device.  JB knows perfectly well what we're talking about and it ill serves the arguments to pretend otherwise.

Oh, some games explicitly blur the lines by saying as a rule that the GM may change any result, at that point arguably there is no fudging.  Most games don't do that though.

By agreed rules I mean not only the rules as written, but the rules as written and as agreed by the group (explicitly or implicitly) to apply.  If you can't tell what rules the group implicitly agrees to apply, you need to work on your social skills.

Quote from: blakkieThat's the nice thing about games with the "stakes" process, they teach you to think about the conciquences before you roll or even pick up the dice.

But...what if your games aren't exercises in critical life-skills and analytical thinking but rather, umn, diversions?

Am I living wrong?

Quote from: BalbinusJimBob, please stop telling us what we must do and so on, it sounds like you're posting on the Forge when you do that. It is never helpful in a discussion to have someone saying "hey, you think you do x, but really you do y" which is kind of what you're saying here in part.

Bollocks. I'm not telling you that you should or shouldn't fudge. I'm just saying that fudging and judging are not as clear-cut and distinct as you're making out.

A judge in a court is presiding over a case with a prosecution and defence, or plaintiff and defendant; it's adversarial, and competitive in the most basic sense of the word. An umpire of a football game is umpiring an entirely competitive game. Roleplaying is a social creative game.

Each of the people leading these things has a different aim. An umpire has the aim to ensure that the rules are followed; few things can actually happen on the field which are outside the rules, the rules cover everything. A judge in a trial again wishes to ensure the rules are followed, and if something comes up which hasn't come up in the rules before, will set the case aside so that this new matter can be decided, and if they fail to do so, when the case is over some higher court of appeal may hear on that matter. Again, the aim is to have the rules cover everything, and following the rules is an end in itself.

In a roleplaying game, it's a rare GM who has the goal of following the rules strictly for their own sake, for no other aim at all, and who when some matter comes up not covered by the rules, adjourns the game to consult on the matter. That's because roleplaying, whatever the Forgers say about "Gamism", is rarely purely competitive in aim. Most GMs use the rules as a tool, not to decide who "wins", but for crafting an interesting and entertaining game.

And that's why you get this fuzziness between "judging" and "fudging." If there were no greyness, then you wouldn't get the situation that the GM has to judge some situation, and a player accuses them of making the judgment to favour or harm some PC.

Saying what is "fudging" and what is "judging" is very difficult to do in general terms. As I said earlier, it's like trying to make hard and fast rules about what is "sex", and what isn't. Sure, some things are definitely sex, and some things are definitely not, but there's a whole swag of other things which are or aren't sexual depending on context. Much the same goes for fudging and judging.