[ZeConster]

"Really bad luck will kill you unless you burn Edge or the GM provides you with a plausible escape route" does not mean "high chance of death", either. If all you have to plan for is the average case, the game isn't challenging.

That's the whole point. You can't plan for bad rolls, and if bad rolls are the only reason a good plan fails then things need to be adjusted.

Sure you can - it's called "planning properly". Plus even if your players don't, you can always try to offer them a way out that doesn't involve cheating. Having to fudge the die results is a sign of a bad GM.

[All4BigGuns]

"Really bad luck will kill you unless you burn Edge or the GM provides you with a plausible escape route" does not mean "high chance of death", either. If all you have to plan for is the average case, the game isn't challenging.

That's the whole point. You can't plan for bad rolls, and if bad rolls are the only reason a good plan fails then things need to be adjusted.

Sure you can - it's called "planning properly". Plus even if your players don't, you can always try to offer them a way out that doesn't involve cheating. Having to fudge the die results is a sign of a bad GM.

I'm not going to screw my players over when they had a good plan to start with just because one of my rolls came up as a "god roll" or one of theirs was crap-tastic. The PCs are the heroes, and as such they should be special and things should tend to work out in the end for them. A good game is like a good action movie--the characters come out maybe a little bit bloodied but they're alive and have won the day.

[Shamie]

Not really. Fudging like that is a rather slippery slope. Do it once and get away with it and it just gets easier to get yourself to do it over and over again.

I have seen players that will walk out on a game the moment a screen hits the table because of bad experiences with GMs fudging.

im talking about fudging a little not about using heroin o_O

And by that same logic whenever i consider playing in a table and they tell me they dont use screens (meaning that what the dices say happens, happens) i walk away. Some people go for the "i throw the funny shape dice and you tell me what happens" approach to gaming.

But just because you fudge some stuff doesn't mean fudge creep (that sounds like a really strange dessert...) is gonna happen.  Those bad experiences are with extreme cases.

it sound like this creepy guy who lives on alleys and approach people saying "Hey little man, may i fudge your dices?"

Sure you can - it's called "planning properly". Plus even if your players don't, you can always try to offer them a way out that doesn't involve cheating. Having to fudge the die results is a sign of a bad GM.

all aboard the hubris train cho cho.

Seriously though, this you wrote

You should never, ever fudge the dice, regardless of which way you want to fudge them. The risk of a bad die roll is part of the game, and if you start coddling the players, the game becomes less fun (unless you have a group of players that just wants to kick ass all the time and never have to worry about dying, in which case I'd say they should maybe play something else). Plus there's plenty of ways to get the players out of a bad situation without taking away the challenge part - all you have to do is attach strings to whatever escape route you provide them with.

is a very valid point of view. I dont share it and i avoid those kind of games. But i have meet DMs with group who follow it and they have as much fun as i do with mine. But in the end is a point of view


With fudging IMO the 3 things one has to know is that:

1) It work both ways. If one fudge for the enemies one also should fudge for the players.

2) There is a limit for players. If a player rolls the D&D equivalent of double 20s. One should never fudge it. The player won that super success and he should feel awesome while killing whatever he kills. If the enemies should survive for some reason he should do that but be severely affected by what happened there.

3) Subtlely is the key. With the example of the spirit. If a force 7 beast spirit appears and starts wrecking havok on the corporate security. If i just fudge it like "1 security guard shoot and does 8 damage to the spirit" yeah the players are gonna feel cheated. However if there is 15 enemies and every security guard it kills he get 3 damage even though he shouldnt it gets more challenging for the player. Or in my example of less but thougher enemies, beast spirit enters and probably kill one of the 7 enemies and the second one starts combating that one. So that leaves 5 enemies vs 5 runners.

[SoulGambit]

Mrah. Rewrote this post a few times. Trying to get my thoughts just right.

The issue with fudging dicerolls and hiding behind a screen is that every time you do that, it puts a barrier of trust between the GM and the Players. It is the GM's job to put on a show for the players. Choice and randomness, or at least the illusion of choice and randomness, is important to that show. Hiding your dice behind a screen and fudging rolls is like a magician asking the audience to turn their back during a trick. Sure, it's not "wrong" exactly, but the trick is much less impressive (thanks to Jess for that analogy, in case you are reading :p).

There are a whole host of tools you have at your disposal. You can retroactively change stats of your enemies. You can decide the DC after you roll. You can function off of "degrees of success" rather than binary pass/fail. You can stagger your encounter. You can foreshadow your encounter(s) to place choice on the PCs. Fudging the actual dice should be the absolutely last thing you should ever do.

Perhaps for the very last encounter of an adventure. Others should be rather easy so that the PCs aren't too drained before getting to that point.

To use a D&D reference, if the wizard and/or cleric only have their lowest level spells left when reaching the final encounter of the adventure and the fighter is down to less than half health, the initial encounters were probably too much.

Counter-intuitively, that is incorrect. Or rather, it isn't always correct. It depends on the story you are trying to tell. Also, since you probably aren't making the BBEG before the PCs are about to face them, you can adjust the BBEG's stats to match where your players are at right now, to feed into that story.

[Michael Chandra]

Back to micromanaging issues: There's a reason I got a sheet of paper with rolls pre-rolled by a computer program. All I had to do every time was check the number, check the table, then I'd know if it was a hit and if it was a glitch. Makes managing a lot of goons much easier.

[SoulGambit]

Oh yeah, that's an old trick, specifically for systems with buckets of dice, like Shadowrun is. Calculate their average number of successes. Roll a single die to represent their pool, and they gain Average-3+1d6 Hits.

[ZeConster]

"Really bad luck will kill you unless you burn Edge or the GM provides you with a plausible escape route" does not mean "high chance of death", either. If all you have to plan for is the average case, the game isn't challenging.

That's the whole point. You can't plan for bad rolls, and if bad rolls are the only reason a good plan fails then things need to be adjusted.

Sure you can - it's called "planning properly". Plus even if your players don't, you can always try to offer them a way out that doesn't involve cheating. Having to fudge the die results is a sign of a bad GM.

I'm not going to screw my players over when they had a good plan to start with just because one of my rolls came up as a "god roll" or one of theirs was crap-tastic. The PCs are the heroes, and as such they should be special and things should tend to work out in the end for them. A good game is like a good action movie--the characters come out maybe a little bit bloodied but they're alive and have won the day.

Except a situation like that has a high enough chance of occuring that someone should have prepared for it. It should take several awful-from-players and amazing-from-NPCs rolls to endanger the party.

Oh yeah, that's an old trick, specifically for systems with buckets of dice, like Shadowrun is. Calculate their average number of successes. Roll a single die to represent their pool, and they gain Average-3+1d6 Hits.

No, he actually made a java class spit out a whole bunch of numbers, printed it, and checks off the next number of hits for X dice when needed.

[Michael Chandra]

And any number marked with an exclamation mark is a glitch. Copy-paste, print, done.

[Crunch]

I have seen players that will walk out on a game the moment a screen hits the table because of bad experiences with GMs fudging.

Frankly I hope they don't let the door hit them in the ass. They can have good luck finding another GM.

[Michael Chandra]

I haven't used a screen much myself due to a lack of table space, but when I start rolling checks for NPCs, or hidden Perception checks, I'd rather be able to do those in secret. Not to mention the whole "wait, he rolls only X dice? Easy then."

[jamesfirecat]

For whatever it is worth (just providing another datapoint) I am fine with a "screen" but that is because due to time constraints my team and I tend to play over Skype so none of us can really see what the other rolls.

On the other hand Shadowrun is a system which tends to avoid "massively good rolls" since we're rolling a veritable pound of dice when something important happens.  Also no matter how bad an attack is most ussulay give two chances to just spend (as opposed to burn) edge, once for dodging and once for soaking.

It is at least better than D&D where I recal my frien spending three hours planning out a strategy then resolved the entire combat with only four rolls being made between one hero and the dragon he was fighting. (Everyone rolls initiative, hero wins.  Hero runs up to dragon ands slaps it with chilling touch attack.  Hero rolls and hits.  Hero rolls for damage, attack deals enough dex damage that dragon can no longer move.  Dragon defeated, GM calls mercy rule on dragon's minons who stand zero chance without their boss.)  The sad thing was that due to how dragons work in D&D if this plan had not worked killing it would have taken like three hours of fighting as it made one fly by after another, at least Shadowrun Dragons put you out of your misery quickly.

[All4BigGuns]

I have seen players that will walk out on a game the moment a screen hits the table because of bad experiences with GMs fudging.

Frankly I hope they don't let the door hit them in the ass. They can have good luck finding another GM.

The worst one isn't with the group right now, but mainly because he's in a slump of unemployment and needs to concentrate on finding work and a place to live rather than anything dealing with gaming--come to think of it, haven't heard from him in a while, wonder if he's still breathing...

[Crunch]

I have seen players that will walk out on a game the moment a screen hits the table because of bad experiences with GMs fudging.

Frankly I hope they don't let the door hit them in the ass. They can have good luck finding another GM.

The worst one isn't with the group right now, but mainly because he's in a slump of unemployment and needs to concentrate on finding work and a place to live rather than anything dealing with gaming--come to think of it, haven't heard from him in a while, wonder if he's still breathing...

Frankly, if the players don't trust the GM, or the GM doesn't trust the players then there's really no point in playing. Find another group.

As a GM if a player pulled that level of rudeness with me they'd never be welcome in my game again and good riddance.

[Shamie]

Frankly, if the players don't trust the GM, or the GM doesn't trust the players then there's really no point in playing. Find another group.

As a GM if a player pulled that level of rudeness with me they'd never be welcome in my game again and good riddance.

Of course one should discuss previously with the DM what kind of game is gonna be happening. One can always discuss it and said "look, is not the kind of game i enjoy thanks anyway but it would better if i pass"

Back to micromanaging issues: There's a reason I got a sheet of paper with rolls pre-rolled by a computer program. All I had to do every time was check the number, check the table, then I'd know if it was a hit and if it was a glitch. Makes managing a lot of goons much easier.

thats another valid method of handling micromanging NPCs. However whats the difference between that one and fudging the dices? Does the players have access to the rolls, meaning they can see if the next bad guy is gonna fail or succeed? or is all behind the screen? I ask because i never see that in play

[All4BigGuns]

thats another valid method of handling micromanging NPCs. However whats the difference between that one and fudging the dices? Does the players have access to the rolls, meaning they can see if the next bad guy is gonna fail or succeed? or is all behind the screen? I ask because i never see that in play

I'd imagine it's not rolling specific dice pools, but rather using the program to roll like 1000 dice and record the results, and then when an opponent needed to roll, drop a few dice to obfuscate and cross out a number of the results on the paper equal to the dice pool.

If it's done right, you'd never know if someone was doing it.