Do you fudge dice rolls?

Just gonna pop in and say that yes, you can play how you want and fudge all the rolls you like. But you better be willing to tell your players when you do.

You do tell your players right? I mean, what would you be afraid of?

That they might not like you fudging? That it would ruin your illusion? Cause I hate to break it to you, but they probably already know. And if they don't like it, that's a problem. If they do, just tell them and it won't be a problem.

Tldr: fudge all you want but don't be a pussy and try to hide it

I don't fudge dice, no. However, if I feel like players are beating a monster way too quickly or are having too much trouble, I might give them some additional hit points or "forget" about their regeneration.

Why are you being so aggressive about this though? Did someone who fudges rolls hurt you in the past or something?

tried it briefly as a GM

didn't really like doing it that much and went back to not fudging

Eh didn't mean to be overly aggressive, it just was always something that ticked me off as a player. As a GM switching to open rolling was the best choice I ever made. It helps to separate the "planning" mentality from the "playing" mentality; I'm here to roleplay these monsters, not make sure everything works out for the best. Cause I already build the encounter to be fair, so now I just have to play it to win.

You don't violate kayfabe dude.

Only when the roll is for literaly nothing.

>Hmm, yeah 17 is pertty good.
>Oh, it's not important guys

If you fudge in any other concept, you're a shit GM.
And if you throw the "durr hurr what if someone gets one-shotted" then you are even worse for putting things in the game that can one-shot players and need /just/ the right dicethrow.

Of course you don't. But everyone there is in on it; that's what they want. If someone in your group doesn't want that, then there's an issue. So just make sure everyone is OK with it first.

And get stabbed when they fudge rolls when playing for money.

I've DMed for a long time.. I've done it in the past but over time I just open roll. I think everyone appreciates it better, including myself. Knowing that the fates are in control and not just myself. It promotes a healthy mindset towarsd the game and keeps everyone on edge in tense situations. Its just more genuine and appealing to me and mine.

As a player, of course you're going to want to 'win' in most situations, but overall, I think, again, it promotes a healthier mindset and appreciation towards the game when you know that the DM is not implicitly going to help or hinder you one way or another so far as that central mechanic is involved.

Yeah, only if something horribly unfair would have gone down otherwise.

That's my little secret though; some fights I gotta run a little kayfabe behind the scenes if I realize the encounter is too strong or my players are holding the idiot ball.

This is one of the things I personally believe Gainax got wrong. If a system is such that rolling will give you results you think will ruin the game then change the system/mechanics rather than fudge.

As a player knowing fudging had occurred ruins things and as a GM I ask myself if I am tempted to "would they be ok with it if they knew". The answer is always no.

Being heroes does not matter nearly as much if your rolls did not matter. Dying does not either because it means the GM just decided it was your time to die.

Here is a big one. Most advocate for fudging for players, so save characters, but the same folk hate it when the villains get fudging even when the stated purpose is still "to make the game more fun". So in the end I say if the only thing keeping the game fun is my lying to my players (not a character in game lying, but me the GM) something has gone wrong.

Same here. Sometimes I roll dice to get a random result; and equally often I roll dice to create an illusion that I haven't already decided what happens.

Though since I don't actually let my players see the die rolls, "fudging" is a bit of a misnomer, rather I sometimes look at the result and sometimes I just roll the dice to create a die-rolling sound.

>This is one of the things I personally believe Gainax got wrong. If a system is such that rolling will give you results you think will ruin the game then change the system/mechanics rather than fudge.

Yeah, Gainax got that wrong. Stupid Hideaki Anno, thinks he's a good director. Overrated creep.

Seriously though, you're demanding for an unrealistically perfect system there buddy. Such a thing doesn't exist and cannot exist, because the act of playing an RPG is a complex social dance between the players and the DM and the illusions between them. It cannot be dumbed down to a mechanical level, if it could, CRPGs would have completely erased the need for human DMs by now.

Even as a DM I open roll. Very easy for anyone to see. Rarely do I need to make secret rolls.

I can fudge so many other things that I feel it's only fair I follow the dice along with my players.

Sure, I'll fudge dice rolls to cover up my own mistakes as GM. Normally because I've put in an obstacle that the players can't overcome.

For example, I need a random encounter on the road to break up the journey and so I pull a level- and environment-appropriate monster from the book. Turns out I didn't read it closely enough and without prior knowledge of this monster's weakness, the PCs are at a severe disadvantage. It's my fault and there's no reason the players should suffer because of it. So I'll start having "really bad rolls" or cut the monster's stats or something to patch the fuckup I've made.

Never. Not as a player and as a DM I roll everything in the open. If I can't live with the diceroll, why am I even rolling at all? Chance and the outliers that come with it are one of the reasons why are you dice exist in the first place.

When I play 40k and my opponent isn't looking, I'll lie about a die roll or two in favor of whoever's losing.

MAN, THAT IS ONE FUCKING COMFY IMAGE.

A goblin can one shot most martial lvl 1 character with a max crit. Woops, better not put any goblins in my level 1 encounters.

This. If I'm worried that the monster might kill players I don't roll for it to begin with, but narrate it snarling or otherwise threatening them (like it has driven the PCs up in a tree or smth), but not actually attacking. Fudging is unnecessary if you just use your judgement instead to begin with.

I never fudge die rolls, hard to do it when I do them all in the open haha.

I think it lends a good sense of lethality to the game (pendragon)

On the other hand I give each player one fudge roll per session I think it helps them take more risks knowing they have one precious re-roll.

Rolling dice is like flipping a coin. In the process of doing so you figure out what you actually wanted to do all along.

Fudging rolls can definitely improve a game, depending on a DMs style. Sure there is an illusion you are throwing over your players. But this whole game is based off illusions.

There's no right or wrong way to play D&D. If you think there is then you are pretentious as fuck.

If your games or your characters are so vapid that their sustenance begins and ends only with dice rolls... then I'm sorry for you and every group you've been a part of.

They can't be not OK with it if they don't know about it.

What?

You are fudging right there. You are fudging the integrity of the NPC.

Its a utilitarian situation. If I tell my player in going to save his character by subtracting 1 damage off the roll he will get upset. But if his character gets killed he will need more upset.

Considering this is just a game, do I really wanna stroke my peen, notch another player killed in my belt, and smug at how good at DnD I am? Or do I just want my players to have fun, with characters they are emotionally invested in, and a game that makes their week a bit better?

i fudge numbers frequently.

randomization is good but sometimes it ends up feeling unfun. if one player has been hit every single round for ten rounds i will give them a break so that they don't lose their character over some trivial luck shit.

if a player does something smart i give them a bonus, which isn't really fudging so much as it is creating rules on the fly.

i also really enjoy rolling dice at random times to keep my players guessing.

Yeah, only as a GM, and only when things are going too good or too bad for me. A boss encounter where he misses every hit isn't very exciting I think, so I try to break it up.

NPC can have a change of heart. It's not fudging by definition since I'm not rolling.

As a DM of... 3-4 years only, I fudge all the time.

Why?

It's important for the players to feel that there is randomness. If they thought I was in control of everything all the time, their actions wouldn't matter because they would only succeed or fail if I already planned for them to. Dice rolls are basically rewarding the players for how they built their characters.

It's just as important to maintain a proper engagement curve. If you've ever studied movies for instance almost all movies have the same narrative structure. Introduction of characters, things go well, introduce the major source of conflict, protag is succeeding before a major fall, followed by a redemption and climax. This narrative structure is used over and over because it WORKS. Obviously you can do variants but if you don't the basics of achieving an engaging narrative, you can't hope to modify it.

Basically, I fudge rolls for my players to have a good time. If you're right in the beginning of an arc (where players are supposed to be succeeding) and they lose by taking 4 critical hits in a row, that's bad. If they're in "The Fall" where bad stuff is supposed to be happening and they are just blowing it away... you fudge to add tension.

But the illusion of randomness is important because without it they don't feel like their choices matter.

Basically, if you're a good DM. You fudge so that the players have a good time. You don't save them from dying or let them succeed at whatever they want (or even force them to fail things you thought they would) but if randomness is going to fuck up the engagement of the campaign... Yeah you fudge

The problem is that D&D was originally conceived as a very difficult game, where both character creation and character death was fast. Later editions of D&D tried to remove the high lethality but didn't bother to change many of the rules that made it like that.
People should probably play something other than D&D if they want heroic characters who rarely die.

>Do you fudge dice rolls?
Constantly.

>In what context would you decide to fudge the numbers a bit?
Any. For the entertainment of the group. I like the suggestion dice brings me/us, though they're only suggestions.

Entertainment do not have to mean sucess, just as "meta" don't have to mean to be abused to gain an advantage. Everything is for the mutual entertainment of the group, no mater if you're a player or a GM, everyone is there to be entertained and if you can't trust each and every one to be there to entertain and have an entertaining time together then what's the point?

>don't be a pussy and try to hide it
I'm also going to ask them to read the entire adventure befor we play it as well, anything else would only make me a pussy, right?

You haven't played much RPGs have you?

That's the basics to all roleplaying, make sure everyone is on the same page and playing the same game. The group is the game. Everything else are just sources of inspiration.

I don't fudge, but I do roll meaningless rolls all the time so that my players don't get used to the idea that "dice roll=stuff happening soon" and also to give the illusion of randomness to stuff thats not really random.

That's not my (decades of) experience.

Then again we never were much for the D&D style almost-roleplaying.

The game is the group, that's the secret, the rest is just inspiration and suggestion, illusions to entertain.

Protip: Fudging all the time means you're a bad GM because you can't design encounters worth a crap.

Depends on your players I'd say. If it's people that have a lot of experience with dnd and want a challenge then no, I'd go 100% by the book, but if it's newcomers and casuals that just want an epic adventure then of course. My personal go to is acts of divine intervention. A god does something to save the day, or help arrives just in time etc. Nothing makes people happier and more pumped than hearing a horn sound in the distance and a cavalry charge ride in to save the day

>an RPG is a complex social dance between the players and the DM and the illusions between them

This. Entertainment and mutual trust in each other that everyone is there to entertain.

glad to know i'm not the only one who does this

>I can fudge so many other things..
Which is why I fudge or even completely ignore to even roll or look at the results of a roll. It's just another thing in the make belive I as a GM have control over. Random is fun when it offers inspiration, it's shit when it don't.

I don't even understand what point you are trying to make. My point was: if you are going to fudge rolls make sure your players are ok with it. If they don't want that type of game, don't run that kind of game without telling them.

Inspiration. If you don't need it you don't roll. If you need it (find it entertaining) you roll. Might change from one moment to the next to change again in the very next, or it won't. It's all just for the inspiration to entertain, it ha sto entertain though or you (as a player and a GM) have failed.

Well WH40K and WHFB was intended as the other side of the D&D coin, the miniature war game with the RPG-flair, instead of D&Ds proto-rpg with a miniature war game flair.

I think it's interesting that there's a heavy mindset by GMs to throw threats back at their players when their players act a certain way. If they take PAM and certain combats get too easy, they might run into some enemies with the same ability. I know it's basically apples and oranges but some people think GMs fudging dice is okay, while it's one of the worst things you can do as a player. Not much of an observation but I figured I'd throw it out there.

What? How's your reading comprehension? In the situation he stated he directly says that he makes a character do something he would not normally do do to them being too "powerful". That's not change of heart. That's fudging the situation.

If a rabid starving tiger meets a lone PC is it going to have a change of heart and decide he's not THAT hungry? Or is he going to eat them? Anything but the later is fudging.

I find it infinitely more entertaining, both as a GM and as a player, when I know that a diceroll actually stands and is not up to the whims of the GM. The entire gameworld is at the GM's mercy, but the dice are the great equalizer.

I'm a DM i'll sometimes fudge my dicerolls if my players are attempting to do something really badass.

>Player: I'm on the griffins back?
>Me:yes
>Player: I want to pin its wings back and make plummet it into the ground
>Me:That..will be a grapple check
>Player: Does a 17 do it?
>Me: (Rolled a 19) Yup sure does, you grasp both its wings back causing the two of you to drop suddenly
>Player: (grins with joy) AWESOME

Way I see it, its a game so it's worth it if it makes the game more fun for everyone.

If you design encounters solely on CRs and not the integrity of the story, then you are also shit.

Agreed.

I never fudge a roll, but fuck will I alter dc on the fly

>If a rabid starving tiger meets a lone PC is it going to have a change of heart and decide he's not THAT hungry? Or is he going to eat them? Anything but the later is fudging.

Maybe it spots a more appetizing prey. Maybe the fey are fucking around again. Or maybe you just shouldn't have narrated it as being rapid and starving to begin with, and it just decides that the PC isn't worth the trouble once the PC manages to hurt it. Realistically, most things shouldn't be too willing to fight to the death anyway.

Everything is up to the whims of the GM. It wouldn't be a RPG if it was not. You'd be playing a board or miniature war game. The dice are just another illusions (suggestion).

The game part is more important than the story part. If you disagree, stop GMing and go write a fucking book.

>design encounters
Found the shit GM

GMing done well. Players ends up being entertained, you end up being entertained as players trie smore amazing things and starts getting creative and gets rewarded with great moments thanks to it.

Only critical fails, I don't claim to have rolled well enough to pass anything, but my gm has a real annoying habit of going way over the top with natural 1s. Stuff like getting knocked out for hours trying to do something basic or taking long lasting or even permanent maluses.
It wouldn't be quite so bad if he balanced it out with critical successes giving the same degree of bonus, but it's just minor stuff like finishing off an enemy or getting a slightly better dealing.
tldr, a critical fails can kill a character but a critical success only provides a minor benift

Not understanding that 3 consecutive crit fails can't sink a PC against even an easy encounter.

>I think I found the shit GM, thanks.

The story part is more important than the game part. If you disagree, stop GMing and go play a video game.

Which is why, you'll notice, I did not say that all fudging is bad. But if you need to fudge all the time to prevent things like that happening? That means you're a terrible GM using fudging as a crutch.

>comparing gambling to ttrpgs
>"I cannot differentiate between reality and role play."

Ya know what, that's fair.

A better way to state my position would be to say: "You should be willing to fudge at ANY time", for the sake of the party's enjoyment.

Most encounters shouldn't be life and death without possibility for retreat. However if a player is on a simple mission to shake down some NPCs that owe the quest giver money, multiple crit fails shouldn't result in them getting killed off when they were making "correct" choice.

Choose to antagonize an entire bar and start a mob again you? Totally different story. That's on you bud. But I don't let my PCs get killed off during a demonstration of archery skill because the enemy HAPPENED to put 3 consecutive arrows through my player's eye socket.

As someone who uses a 2d6 system, which mostly involves players rolling for success, I can't do shit like that.

Grapple flying lemon is a hard challenge, so you gotta roll 9+ on 2d6 to beat it. bad odds, but better than real live.

Expansion on this: I think ally you guys who have constant problems with crit success and fails are u dumb.

You should not have critical success and failure with every roll.

Some attempts, like tricking a wary npc, are critical success just to achieve what you're trying at all. You roll the dice because success will add to your legend.

Other tasks need a crit fail just to not work. example: tying a knot. Only in combat under stress should you even roll this, and even then you need to roll a 1 in order to fail at it.

Player wants to do somehtnhg retarded? Well, roll high! You should be happy that your natural 20 lets it happen at all, even with penalties.

Player doing something easy? Natural 1 sure ain't gonna hurt, it just mains you screwed up a little and take longer. That won't matter unless you were doing something which needed to get done NOW

I only do so when one of my players does, like, six misses in a row, even though his stats are saying that he should be able to hit something around 90% of the time.

So not really fudging per see, but more like overtly saying "This is ridiculous, fuck those dices. I'm granting you that hit".

Beyond that, I never cheat with the NPC's. That bandit just died because of an incredibly bad roll ? Great, this means I'll have a good time describing the ironic demise of that poor soul, who accidentaly fell onto his own knife while attacking the PC's.

If the players are getting absolutely butt blasted because they're rolling cold, I fudge the dice against them to match sometimes, especially if it's low stakes and them failing would just be lame and meaningless.

I've done it but I try not to as a rule.

I figure that if I must have a given result, it's inappropriate to roll. Just admit you're switching over to cutscene mode.

If you want to play a game of Big Damn Heroes where their crazy plans always come off without a hitch, then just assume those crazy plans always succeed.

My approach is that it is interesting when things go wrong unexpectedly--the whole point of a RNG is to introduce unpredictable results. So if a kobold scores a critical hit with a crossbow and sends the party of bad asses fleeing to regroup... that could be cool.

I'm fucking terrible at math (I can do it, but I'm rusty and it takes a while without a calculator), so I sometimes approximate. I always go for the lower end of damage when I'm approximating, though. My friends all know, and it's never really been an issue.

I fudge dice in favour of the players when I GM a bunch, or I have them roll the dice (in the case of games like Dungeon World, where the players roll the damage inflicted on them by monsters). Or I roll in the open.

Not normally. I'll do it on rare occasion, but a player usually has to earn that with exceptionally bad luck, but it's more like I'd just give them a reroll to use however they want. Generally I think if you are willing to fudge a roll as a GM you should consider why you were even rolling it in the first place. When I'm a player and I think rolls are being regularly fudged I just feel like I'm being tricked into thinking I have any sway on the outcome of the game
Does that even exist as anything other than an unpopular variant rule in 3.5?

Never, and its led to me playing some completely gimped characters, and/or losing fights in the most pathetic of ways.

Sometimes, mostly when rolling hit dice.
Monster attacks and such get what they get, if you die, oh well.
But if a lich gets like 12 health or if a chest contains 10 measly coins, I will of course fudge .

GMing is as much a game of misdirection as it is a game of presentation. If the players know exactly what the result of the die is then it ruins the mystery of the game and leads to a poorer game as a result.

One of my best game was one where all I did was roll dice and either nod in agreement, act surprised, or look entirely blind-sided by the result. Sometimes I would even roll dice just because I wanted the players to pay attention or to see them squirm and give me ideas of what I was going to do to them.

If true transparency was a sought after GMing trait, every GM ITT and beyond would play out in the open with the stats for every monster they throw at them there for all the world to see, right down to the abilities, the AC, and its HP total.

The dice are only there for plausible deniability, nothing more and nothing less.

So basically, fudge?

Because that's literally what you're doing right now. If we have a starving creature and it sees a creature that it perceives as being weaker than it, it's going to attack with the intention of killing.

If you're starving, you're not going to pass up an appetizing burger just because a restaurant might be a few miles down the road, you're going to attack the burger and wolf it down as quickly as possible.

And realism has nothing to do with a game that's already a work of oratory fiction, if there's meat, the tiger will eat, and anything to the contrary is just you fudging its actions in the PC's favor.

Found the shit GM fellas, no need to stay, we found him.

That's still fudging.

If the story was better with the roll fudged.

Could someone thread this?

No it isn't. Fudging is changing the result of the roll after you roll something that you don't like for whatever reason.

is about rolling for things that don't require rolls just to keep appearances.

You can't do that unless you're a luchadore.

You're still rolling a meaningless roll just for the sake of maintaining appearances and assigning an arbitrary result just to maintain a credible level of threat in the campaign.

Which is fudging.

No, fudging is changing the roll AFTER you roll it to get a better result.

If you don't roll at all, it isn't fudging, it's just designing a campaign a certain way.

I could roll to see if the king has 1000 gold in his treasury and if the roll says no and I change it, then I fudged the roll. But if I decide from the start that the king has 1000 gold in his treasury, then there's no fudging involved.

Whether you decide on the result before or after you roll is irrelevant, it's still fudging.

Notice how in both of your examples, you're still choosing how much gold the king will have in his treasury regardless of the roll.

So to you, all writing and preparing you do for the campaign is fudging?

Fudging is changing and manipulating the numbers (or facts) to suit your needs.

Let me expand on my example.

Suppose the players demand payment from the king for services performed, which is something I had not anticipated, they demand 1000 gold.

If I didn't decide before hand how much gold the king has, I might roll for it, and if it turns out that its less than 1000, then I have to fudge the roll to pay the players.

If, on the other hand, before the session even started I decided that the king has more than 1000 gold in his treasury, I can pay the players without having to fudge anything, because I already decided beforehand. I might still roll to make a show of it, but I'm not changing any numbers anywhere.

The other possibility is that I decided before the start of the session that the king has 500 gold in his treasury, and if I still play the players, then I still fudged, but not the dice roll.

And finally, if I just roll the dice to make the sound, unrelated to anything, just to misdirect the players, then I am also not fudging.

>The dice are only there for plausible deniability, nothing more and nothing less
No, the dice are there as a medium used to determine probabilistic results, that was their intended purpose, no amount of mental gymnastics will change that. When you choose to change the purpose of the dice and nullify their original use, you change the nature of what you're all participating in. Your "best game," wasn't a game at all. It was you telling the story you wanted to tell, not even a cooperative story telling at that, and lying to your players. Their rolls didn't matter in the slightest, because what you wanted to happen was going to happen, regardless of what they did/ attempted to do. The only redeeming factor is that you calling it your "best game" implies they got their gratification at the end.

True transparency is sought after, but that doesn't mean stupidly exposing everything about the story or the encounter as you claim it is. It's honesty and integrity to the system from the DM, it's not abusing rules, and it's letting the dice fall how they may. It allows the players to have gratification from knowing that it was really them, and nothing else, that let them overcome difficulty, through role-playing and determination alone. Secrecy is needed to prevent involuntary meta-gaming, that's it.

You can do what you want, but when you fudge dice, or even ignore them outright, don't pretend you're RPing, because you aren't. And if you can't tell your players what you're doing without them losing all their gratification and enjoyment, then you're likely not doing a good thing.

>Your "best game," wasn't a game at all.
>You can do what you want, but when you fudge dice, or even ignore them outright, don't pretend you're RPing, because you aren't.
Whatever you say man. As long as everyone had fun, I really don't see what the problem is or why you're getting so upset.

If you roll a die but alter the result, or you forgo a roll to decide on a predetermined value, it's fudging, plain and simple.

Doesn't matter if it's before or after, doesn't matter if it was planned or improvised, doesn't matter if decided to roll or just took the base value.

If you choose a numerical value w/o consulting the dice, it's fudging, plain and simple.