DMs, do you fudge dice rolls? Why or why not?

DMs, do you fudge dice rolls? Why or why not?

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angrydm.com/2010/07/winning-dd/
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Yes, and if you don't, you're a shitty DM.

>letting characters die to anything other than HUGE lapses in judgement or boss fights and similarly dramatic moments.

This. The dice are an element of enjoyable randomization, but the 'enjoyable' part is key, not the randomization.

>running a game of D&D where 90% of the time there's no sense of danger because you know you won't die unless you do something absolutely idiotic
Do you have a button you push to set off an alarm and wake everyone up when the boss fight gets there, or what?

If you aren't able to create a sense of threat and danger without killing NPC's, you're a fucking awful GM.

Yes. If it means a wonky roll will seriously fuck up the adventure or campaign, absolutely fudge the roll.

Any good DM fudges. And always for drama/excitement. It is better to leave a party member at the cusp of death rather than knock them out of the game. But you also have control over making things more damgerous than they are when appropriate to the level of energy for that moment.

*PC's/NPC's

>without killing NPCs/PCs
I didn't say that. I said that players have to know you're not holding their hand and walking them through the dungeon safely, and that they COULD die.

There's a huge spectrum between "don't worry, I won't let you die" and "AHAHA BETTER HAVE BACKUPS BECAUSE I AM INTENTIONALLY FUCKING YOU OVER."

I used to but since I transitioned from 3.5 to 5e I have stopped. It used to be necessary to make combats threatening but with bounded accuracy it isn't needed anymore.

I build my encounters to a balanced budget and roll openly for enemies. Some may prefer fudging to create interesting combat but I think that the raw uncertainty of the dice adds to the tension and feeling of danger. Combat SHOULD be uncertain and chaotic, if it gets fudged to the point of blandness then it loses its thrill.

Also I find that rolling dice openly draws players in and they tend to crowd around waiting to see just how bad that big hit was. It's the anticipation of seeing how the dice come up that really glues them to the table.

I do fudge some rolls, mainly monster initiative rolls so that they are spread out nicely along the distribution. That makes it more likely that there will be a natural back and forth between sides in a scene.

I fudge some rolls, but not often.

angrydm.com/2010/07/winning-dd/

Here's a wall of text written by some guy that addresses this question and the underlying issue that creates it.

Basically boils down to are you a pussy or are you a GM

All DMing is fudging.

Absolutely!
As a DM I really enjoy seeing what my players come up with , but if all of your clever positioning and tactics come to naught because that orc just rolled 3 20s in a row, I'm going to act as if it rolled a 15, because it's no fun for anyone if you die for no reason other than sheer bad luck. I won't tell you I fudged the roll, because that would also be unfun, but int the end, roleplaying games are just that, games, the point of which is to have fun, and I see it as my job as DM to make sure everyone is having the maximum amount of fun possible.

No, but I have a friendly lich to resurrect the party as sentient undead in case of TPK.
>Heya, going to take on this vampire?
>This asshole was my lieuntenant and betrayed me, and I can't withdraw forces from other places
>Fuck him up, guys. I'll give you flesh back after you hand me his heart

Yes. But making good strategic calls and then getting crit by a kobold and dying ain't a good time for your player.

Unless they're into that sort of thing.

Fudged rolls for suspense aren't inherently punishments or lane bumpers.

This. I only occasionally fudge rolls, but it's usually against my players, like an enemy resisting a spell or something that would otherwise end the battle quickly. They don't usually have trouble surviving, and I'm a big fan of degrees of success -- where even if they fail a skill check or something, I keep the game moving forward instead of forcing them to repeat it in order to progress.

This one gets it.

If the outcome of a roll of the dice could seriously damage your game, then why even bother rolling at all?

Hell no. All rolls are out in the open, the players roll all the dice. Only the shittiest, laziest, most retarded DMs fudge dice, which is of course why its so popular on Veeky Forums.

Whether you tell your players or not, they will know. And when they know, all suspense is lost. Fudging is, by nature, arbitrary. A good DM is not a dictator, but a fair judge. He plays the opponents of the players: he sets the rules, but once set, he plays fairly and plays to win.

The real question is this, my anons;

Do you fudge rolls as a player?

LOSING IS FUN
But usually I'm quite lucky, especially when rollin' stats

>Whether you tell your players or not, they will know.
Unless your players are literally psychic or you have the shittiest poker face ever, that's a load of bull.

Alternatively, not all groups are the same and people have different preferences and playstyles.

depends on the tone of the game

D&D, yes. Only War, no.

Where the fuck did he say he did either of those things?

>He plays the opponents of the players: he sets the rules, but once set, he plays fairly and plays to win.

Nope. I view GMing as a collaborative position, not an oppositional ones. In context of the story being told, the characters I'm playing might be the players adversaries, but in the context of the game my goal is exactly the same as the players- To create an enjoyable experience.

Having a fun fight against tough opponents can be fun, but getting screwed over by random chance in a way which is completely inappropriate to the scene sucks. Why let RNG actively detract from the game? It's like every other rule. Use it if it helps, otherwise ignore it.

This. The job of a DM is to play the enemies smart, make the encounters difficult and rewarding, and then lose in creative and fun ways.

Generally speaking, I only fudge dice if they're going to result in something boring.

I'm not going to fudge rolls to save a BBEG from death when I was planning on him escaping (I'll just change my plans), but I'll fudge them so that he doesn't die in the first damn turn (unless the players really deserve it for their planning).

On the flip side I give the same benefit to my party members: If an attack is going to kill the party in the first turn (either due to my bad planning or REALLY nasty rolls), then I'll fudge them so the fight doesn't end instantly.

>BECAUSE I AM INTENTIONALLY FUCKING YOU OVER

I personally don't, though I see no reason to antagonize anyone who does.

My problem is that I've GM'ed for so long that I can tell when a GM is doing it, since for the most part it's pretty easy to tell when it is going on. Once I know, any sense of danger vanishes, and start to lose interest.

They will know by the simple fact that they never die to a critical hit, even though their enemies do. Unless your players are literally retarded, you cannot fudge for long.

The "story" is something that grows on its own. No story you can write will have as much impact on your players as the story that develops through the players reacting to the unexpected. A truly challenging experience is more enjoyable than a false one where the PCs are immune to time and chance.

I never understand this sentiment.

If your only sense of danger comes from pure RNG, it seems like your GM is really doing it wrong.

see

So, I'm and I was talking about attitudes you have, not things you explicitly say to the players.

There are attitudes that fall between holding players' hands so they don't die and intentionally fucking them over.

The RNG is an essential part of whatever else the GM is doing. The only way to have a sense of danger apart from the RNG is if the GM arbitrarily causes PC harm at his whim, which is obviously worse.

And yet there are people in this thread who say you're a shitty DM if you DON'T fudge rolls and you aren't going all pic related on them.

Even with different preferences, no dish is improved by adding shit as an ingredient.

Now I really want fudge.

Fuck you guys I'm trying to lose weight to become a qt trap.

I guess to me it's because I enjoy the game aspect of role playing games as much as the other parts. The dice are comes as part of the package, and once they start getting ignored the magic is lost. If this means I lose a character every now and then so be it. I like my guys, but I'll move on when I have to.

I dislike fudging because it - ultimately - invalidates player choice. My character no longer did well because I played smart or chose wisely, but because you the GM let me.

I see rpgs as games of skill, and fudging turns that into game of follow the GM's story. Let the dice fall wherever they may.

>anyone who doesn't play with my unorthodox preferences is a shit GM
You must be popular.

You will never be qt, user, because even if you lose your massive gut you will still have your flabby chin and giant nose.

They're just as wrong

Surgery.

And yet you reacted to only one side, thus displaying your bias. Your claim to neutrality is a lie.

Can't fix your hoarse baritone or general ugliness, and you can't afford it.

doesn't this work the opposite way too?

Your character didn't do well because you played smart or chose wisely, it's because the dice just fell on the right face.

Ultimately, I think RNG in a game is kind of outdated. I can't think of any way to remove RNG without removing core mechanics though.

On a side note, anyone know of any TTRPGs with little to no RNG; and whose core mechanics do not rely on dice?

...but why roll for the orc in the first place then? I mean, if the opposition if allowed only a certain degree of success then you could just choose when the orc gets in its three hits or whatever, instead of going through the motions of rolling dice and discarding the results that aren't appropriate.

I think it may be from the mindset that either the GM is going to save you meaning there is no sense of danger or the GM is on the other side and that losing is almost certain leaving you accepting it as fate. I personally see the danger in things that 'can' go wrong rather than whats just gonna happen since thats basically just the GM saying "no, this happens" and can feel like whatever you do ain't gonna stop it from happening because thats the way the story is going apparently. Not saying its that way for everyone, just my point of view

Since OP and most other people here are saying DM rather than GM, and nothing else here seems to be contradicting the idea, I'm assuming we're talking about D&D rather than some other system(s).

D&D is a game of skill that you can win or lose. The DM's job is to present you with challenges and context so that you can feel the excitement of the adventure and the risk and reward. If you fudge the dice, you are cheating your players out of actually playing the game as they understand it.

If you think you AREN'T cheating the players, then from now on, you should tell them whenever you fudge the dice. Just say "hey, the boss failed his saving throw but I'm going to pretend he succeeded because I want this fight to last longer." Or "I rolled a one on the damage for that trap, but that's not exciting enough so you take five."

If you think they wouldn't like that, then perhaps you should reconsider whether what you're doing is fair to them.

If you have players dying to one bad roll all the time, you should be reducing the impact of RNG by adjusting the difficulties of things and damage. Make the game more to your liking such that the randomness adds to rather than detracting from the experience.

I repeat, D&D IS A GAME OF SKILL THAT YOU CAN WIN OR LOSE.

I once had a DM that got me the fuck in line and asking for a good rail roading in his haunted house manor, by simply implying a fog ghoul really well.

I fudge when I feel things are going too easily or too difficultly for the players, relative to how I intended the scenario.

Good plans going off without a hitch does not count as too easy unless it's happening consistently, in which case I'm more likely to throw in something unaccounted for rather than fudge rolls.

Players struggling does not count as too hard unless their level of enjoyment is visibly suffering for it.

>Your character didn't do well because you played smart or chose wisely, it's because the dice just fell on the right face.
Of course, but as in any game of risk/reward management playing smart lets you succeed more over the time than just hoping for a good roll.

Also, check out the Amber diceless rpg. Never played it myself, but there's no randomizer there.

No. I'm completely fair to all players. What you roll is what you get.

Death isn't that big of a deal in a campaign when there are resurrection spells, and temples that will offer said services to you should the party lack any clerics. Failing that, you could always rework some of the rules so players automatically respawn in some manner, likely with penalties. You could always say the party incidentally possesses a resurrection amulet that regenerates them in a temple, or they possess some other artifact that might teleport them to a safe location at the exact moment they would otherwise be slain by an enemy. If these items require players to forfeit experience, then the concept isn't entirely a gamebreaker.

You mean... a fog ghoul that could have killed your character?!

1) Traps do not have to sound like girls, they are guys, just cute.
2) I totally can afford it.

I think the original philosophy behind tabletop games was meant to be similar to roguelikes. Characters died all the time. Your highest-level character was basically your high-score in the game. If you failed, you would simply roll a new character and go at it again, this time with a better knowledge of the types of challenges the game might throw at you.

But as RPGs became more mainstream, there was more emphasis on actually roleplaying your character instead of treating them as a pawn in a wargame. Players tend to view their characters as virtual avatars of themselves, so permanent character death feels like a slap in the face. Unfortunately, the basic foundation of RPG rules hasn't really kept up with the social aspects of the game, so GMs find themselves ignoring rolls and extending characters much more mercy to keep the game going for everybody.

In my last session, I rolled a 16 or higher on every attack and saving throw from my NPCs. It was absurd. In the last encounter of the night, after half the party was on the ground between life and death, I started fudging every other roll.

In general I roll d20s extraordinarily well as a DM. All my bad rolling happens as a player.

I never do it. Bad GMs use it as a storytelling crutch.

I think it's probably a spectrum between the two. I mean, I like when characters develop personalities, but develop them through play, not six pages of backstory. I like danger to be ever-present and if you're in a dungeon, you'd better be on your toes at ALL times. I don't fudge rolls at all, but resurrection is of course possible at higher levels.

I do not fudge anything, because Losing is Fun™!

The PCs are not so important to the game that they need to be sheltered, as some GMs in this thread seem to believe. Surprise death creates opportunities: new characters, new direction for the story. You are not your character, your character can die and you can keep playing.

Why did you post an indian loli?

why didnt you just let them run away or die being idiots, it would have been an important lesson in player skill

No.
Because I'm not into freeform, and if I want to write a short story, I write a short story.

If I want to play a game that's more about storytelling than player skill, I'll play Misspent Youth or some other game where dice rolling determines the direction the narrative turns rather than whether players lose a resource without which their character dies.

D&D is a game of skill.

Random image from image folder.

>all those fudge apologists
>in D&D of all things
Jesus fuck, I'll never look at another game finder thread.

Why do you have 3d indian lolis?

I like the dress.

It's surreal how much this place has changed.

I'm in two games I found via Veeky Forums (same group, different DM) and none of us are pro-fudging.

Just make it clear in your post on the Game Finder thread that you don't appreciate dishonest DMs.
I only occasionally visited Veeky Forums back in the day. How has it changed (in terms of this thread's topic)?

...

this post should have been /thread

yes kinda.

Purely in terms of thread topic, which has come up pretty often, of course, Veeky Forums used to be extremely opposed to fudging dice rolls. Extremely.
At least they said they were, but now it's making me suspect more people fudge than admitted it, and now they've switched to openly defending fudging.
It's been so many years that there's no way to know if it's that, or if they left and other people have moved in. Possibly both.

To answer thread topic, I do not fudge.
If a minion survives miraculously from the PC onslaught, he is celebrated & named by the table, and usually escapes with his life.
If a PC dies from lots of shit rolls, so what? He will be remembered, make a new character, tell a new story. It doesn't end anything, it just changes direction a little.

i feel mostly this pertains to combat example

pathfinder i had a fighter 24ac and dms rolling openly to hit me with three creatures with an attack bonus of 5 its theoretically easy for me to dodge tank since they have a 1/10 shot of hitting

the first creature misses the next two both crit me the mage goes down next turn to a charge the rogue says fuck this shit im out and flees and 2/3rds of the party is dead because the dm rolled way to good

maybe a fudge would of been more practical than close to a tpk

You are not a happy individual are you?...

Maybe the party should have run away sooner, strategized better, or just sucked it up.

I will do whatever it takes to make the game more fun for everyone. I will fudge, I will lie, I will change stuff on the fly, I will spring traps that where never there, etc.

see
D&D is a game of skill and you're not letting your players' skill carry them to victory or defeat, so they'll never actually get better at the game.

To hell with my player.

So you're just as shitty DM, then. You should have led with that.

I don't fudge rolls because it will always become obvious. But I do sometimes "fudge" monster stats on the fly. I'm not very experienced and a few Shadows at level 2 proved way too easy, so I doubled their hp a bit into the encounter. So instead of nullifying a crit to not kill someone, I see the encounter is getting out of hand and someone might die/they have to run but can't, so I change the stats of the enemies.

In general though, I don't like fudging on the principle that if you make them roll for something, both results are acceptable/interesting. My character has died from my GM because he was pretty new and wanted to design a harder enemy since we had fucked up everything so far at appropriate CRs, and it feels shitty, but it was my fault just as much as well as the dice.

Once had fantastic dice rolls not only keep a low level hobgoblin alive, but downed two party members before escaping (actually using a cheetah's sprint scroll a party member had taken out but fallen before he could use it and dropped). It was pretty cool, he became a reoccurring villain.

Whatever fuckboi.

That just sounds very tiring, having to do all the work by yourself. Why not let the dice carry the story wherever they may?

See how a little lie created some drama? It works wonders.

I never fudge since I never force my players into an encounter. If they got into a fight, 90% of the time they fight against intelligent creatures that can be talked, tricked, and reasoned with.
If I wanted to create a murderhobo campaign I would probably fudge dice but I view roleplaying games as something you can actually roleplay and therefore you can solve a lot of things without even touching the dice.

My DM has only fudged the dice once.

It was our paladin's first game and he got one-shot thanks to our mage critically failing an attack and accidentally sending a spear of ice through his throat, meaning he would've normally gotten put to something like -20hp.

Everyone at the table just kind of looked at each other.

>How about Nick just goes down to -1?
>Yeah, that works.