DMs, GMs, STs: Do you fudge rolls?

[dontpanda]

I've fudged them in the players' benefit once or twice, playing tabletop. What I have done more often, though, is offered bonuses if the desired action is especially creative or imaginative. Heck, I've even added a couple of points for vividly descriptive.

Slash the abomination across the back? No bonus
Slash the abomination across the back while in the air, having launched yourself from the roof of a car, which should cause the abomination in question to stumble into the path of an oncoming train? Oh, you can have a few points for that.

I try to reward imagination instead of merely punishing difficulty. But I let everyone know how I'm modifying the roll, if for no other reason than to encourage repeat behaviour.

[Pyrephox]

@Arkandel said:

If I don't want to adhere to a roll's result I won't ask for it.

This is something I've had to get better at, and part of that has meant /calling for fewer rolls/. I've had to remind myself that I should not be calling for a roll for the expert investigator to pick up the basic clues at the crime scene that will give them a few ideas of where to go next. That's their /job/, and it should not necessarily be trusted to the whims of dice. Now, if they're a rank amateur, or they've snuck in and are trying to get the same information while avoiding people who want to kill them, that's enough tension and stakes that a roll is warranted.

[faraday]

@Misadventure said:

**There are many forms of fudging the roll: ...

I like that a lot. When I have open rolls, I try to do some of that stuff. Failing a perception check doesn't mean you don't notice the wild boar charging at you, but maybe you don't notice it first, or don't notice it until it's almost on top of you or whatever. Use roll results creatively. Tossing them out completely makes people wonder why there's a stat system at all.

The FS3 combat code comes with built-in published "cheat" commands, so it's no big secret that I do that a lot. But I run cooperative PvE games not PvP, so it's not like any one player is getting an unfair advantage over another. I use it to tune combat to try and improve the story and help folks have more fun.

That's not to say PCs always win, but battle scenes aren't much fun if you're getting completely steamrolled, or if you wipe out all the badguys in one volley. Also sometimes folks will come to me and say: "I'd like to do a scene where my char gets seriously hurt..." and I see no reason not to oblige them.

[Arkandel]

@Pyrephox I think a good way to look at rolls as a Storyteller is to consider them hooks tying the players to your story.

Everyone wants to be useful in a plot; to come in and have an impact. Some players are proactive enough to do so no matter their stats but not everyone is, so giving them an entry point into the story ("roll wits+composure please") so you can hand-feed them some information perhaps unique to them achieves at least that much - they are now relevant.

Rolls are also an opportunity to highlight character aspects which are not often useful to them. A combat PC is never going to be out of fashion but how often does a locksmith, med student or car mechanic get to do their thing? Perhaps less often, so give them that nice fat exceptional success to go with the rest of the scene. I've specifically add elements to the story before to let the spotlight be shared.

Especially in systems like GMC where failure is actually rewarded it's even neater.

[Sunny]

I will absolutely fudge rolls in tabletop when I'm running a game. Never ever ever ever ever online. There, I have the benefit of being able to judge peoples' reactions and when it would and would not be appropriate. Online, I have none of the cues and trust is a hell of a problem from square one.

[Arkandel]

@Sunny What happens behind the DM screen stays behind the DM screen.

[Sunny]

@Arkandel Mmhmm.

---

I will say that online I do fudge the dice pools themselves sometimes, or massage modifiers or the like, based on the challenge I was looking to present to the PCs and what actually ends up happening. I won't fudge rolls, so I am very active in making sure the rolls themselves are of an appropriate level for the group. I generally have all the encounters written out beforehand, and it'll include one sort of test subject early on. Based on how that goes, I might redo the rest of it. I'll also modify numbers of enemies up or down if I'm doing them in waves (I usually do) on the fly. So I do on-the-fly adjust difficulty, just not with the dice.

[Thisnameistaken]

I don't generally fudge rolls on online games. Why bother asking for a roll in the first place? And once you start doing it, it devalues every other roll because the player knows that if it's horrible, you'll just fudge it. What I /will/ do is work the story around the failure. Oh, you completely failed picking that lock, whoops. Maybe it's time to walk around the building and oh, look, an open window. That way the player is still inconvenienced (they now have to find that open window instead of just going through the door) but they can still attain their ultimate goals.

As far as PKing because of a roll... I have yet to run a plot where a character could die due to the results of a single roll.

Edit to avoid double-posting. Another thing I will do is, when I ask for a roll that I know will be difficult, I'll give players a choice of roll. Trying to figure out a enigmatic map? Roll Int + either Investigation or Occult (or whatever skills fit the situation best). That way, the player can choose their highest dice pool to roll.

[skew]

@Thisnameistaken Where I have often fudged is when it comes to a contested roll. Again, WoD system. I roll my pool, you roll yours, you have to beat mine or else suffer from "x". So, I'll often just give players what my roll is, based on about what I ought the power level of said monster should be.

Ex: I use a power on you, you must roll to resist, or dodge, or whatever, and I set the target at 3. My target was made up by me, then. I think it tends to work, and it's certainly overt and obvious.

[bored]

As a rule, I don't do it in my tabletop because it's simply not the style of my group (and we're people who've been playing together for a decade+ at this point). We have a fairly adversarial GM norm, the players like number crunching (we mostly play D&D) etc. The only time I'd really consider it is if for whatever reason the dice got so far off statistical expectations that it was destroying a game, although even then I prefer some other type of solution (ie, I'd rather have an ally NPC show up, give the players some tactical option to pursue as the map changes, etc).

This isn't to say I have a big problem if other people do as part of their style. I do have a feeling that if you need a situation to have an outcome, you simply shouldn't be rolling, though, because it's disingenuous to go about the process like that. You also have to be careful about how you distribute your fudging, since it can end up effectively as a form of favoritism.

On a MU, the player-competitive dimension can exacerbate the above. Players may be competing socially for who does the best in certain contests, adventures, benefits they can gain, etc. It's well and good to say everyone should be more cooperative, but the reality is that often that's simply not how it is, so fudging can end up giving someone a leg up unless you're very even with how you do it ('everyone gets one', etc).

This has come up on a game I'm currently playing, in fact, as a certain GM sometimes (but not predictably) will fudge down damage on a player to save them horrible fates (death, permanent injury, etc). The problem is that it's a fairly high-lethality game and other players have suffered these bad results, so there's an argument that fudging in favor of anyone is a disservice to those who've taken their bad dice and lived with the consequences at other instances.

[Pyrephox]

@Arkandel said:

@Pyrephox I think a good way to look at rolls as a Storyteller is to consider them hooks tying the players to your story.

Everyone wants to be useful in a plot; to come in and have an impact. Some players are proactive enough to do so no matter their stats but not everyone is, so giving them an entry point into the story ("roll wits+composure please") so you can hand-feed them some information perhaps unique to them achieves at least that much - they are now relevant.

Rolls are also an opportunity to highlight character aspects which are not often useful to them. A combat PC is never going to be out of fashion but how often does a locksmith, med student or car mechanic get to do their thing? Perhaps less often, so give them that nice fat exceptional success to go with the rest of the scene. I've specifically add elements to the story before to let the spotlight be shared.

Especially in systems like GMC where failure is actually rewarded it's even neater.

Yes, absolutely. Of course, the flipside of that is the frustration that can come of just having a run of bad luck, and your character not being able to do things that they really /should/ be competent at because the dice just hate you one night. A certain amount of failure can be fun (especially with a GM that lets failure add complications, rather than just shut down an action), but if it starts to feel like you can never succeed at a roll just because your dice have forgotten that high numbers exist, that stops being fun.

It's a balance.

[Misadventure]

One problem with unstated GMing methods like this is that the situation can change and the players won't be aware. Effectively the physics of the universe shift, and they are unaware.

An example would be the superhero game I GM'd. It was fairly gritty in some ways, but I made sure that all PCs were tough enough to survive without constant coddling. When the action was moved to a super powered warzone, I tried to communicate the danger they were entering. It was a place where meta-augmented mentally unstable volatile super soldiers were used against one another and normals. It was a nightmare of ambushes, traps, and people trying to kill supers.

Despite every effort to do so, the players weren't ready for how lethal it was, because they didn't realize that I as a GM chose on set of behaviors for the US super beings, and another for these monster-soldiers, and that came across in terms of how go for the kill they were.

[Roz]

@Pyrephox said:

@Arkandel said:

@Pyrephox I think a good way to look at rolls as a Storyteller is to consider them hooks tying the players to your story.

Everyone wants to be useful in a plot; to come in and have an impact. Some players are proactive enough to do so no matter their stats but not everyone is, so giving them an entry point into the story ("roll wits+composure please") so you can hand-feed them some information perhaps unique to them achieves at least that much - they are now relevant.

Rolls are also an opportunity to highlight character aspects which are not often useful to them. A combat PC is never going to be out of fashion but how often does a locksmith, med student or car mechanic get to do their thing? Perhaps less often, so give them that nice fat exceptional success to go with the rest of the scene. I've specifically add elements to the story before to let the spotlight be shared.

Especially in systems like GMC where failure is actually rewarded it's even neater.

Yes, absolutely. Of course, the flipside of that is the frustration that can come of just having a run of bad luck, and your character not being able to do things that they really /should/ be competent at because the dice just hate you one night. A certain amount of failure can be fun (especially with a GM that lets failure add complications, rather than just shut down an action), but if it starts to feel like you can never succeed at a roll just because your dice have forgotten that high numbers exist, that stops being fun.

It's a balance.

As @saosmash noted, I played a crack shot sniper type on our old Mass Effect game -- like doing trick shots while upside-down while drunk -- but I tended to have terrible luck with dice. I'm a player who is happy to to put my character through the wringer with failure, but you're right that it's totally frustrating to repeatedly not be able to shoot baddies when that's like the main combat focus of your character.

[Lithium]

I've done it in TT, when my dice were on fire and I kept rolling nat 20's, well, I didn't feel like total PK'ing the party that night and so some crit hits became misses. I think there requires some trust in the group with the DM/ST/GM in order to create a good story.

On a MU* though, I fudge /nothing/. All rolls are out in the open because I cannot allow any sort of favoritism to be present. I can't pull my punches in one situation and not the next because it's not the same environment and you never know when you're going to get the same collection of individuals again, even if it's for a continuation plot/session.

On a MU* I believe it should be by the rules, whatever those rules are.

I even put in code so that people can set their own verification code for dice rolls so that people can't spoof rolls as the verification would be wrong and people would know without having to be set nospoof.

The reason I feel that way is because it is the /only/ way to be fair to everyone, as impartial as possible. If the rules say something, then that's what it /is/. Period. Otherwise you cannot guarantee anything remotely resembling fairness to every player.

[skew]

@Lithium said:

I even put in code so that people can set their own verification code for dice rolls so that people can't spoof rolls as the verification would be wrong and people would know without having to be set nospoof.

Woah... is that a thing? That seems totally insane to me. I know staff-side, we've insisted people roll to jobs, as opposed to just copy-pasting their roll from the log, but spoofing dice rolls during a scene? Yikes.

[saosmash]

We've frequently had a coded diceword to verify rolls. I've never seen someone actually try to spoof a dice roll, though.

[Thenomain]

@ThatOneDude said:

Picture below for @Thenomain because blah blah bloo blee blah

You know what I think is cool, it's that you care, that I got under your skin this much.

XOXOXO

--

Sorry, everyone else. Well, kind of sorry. I'm of two minds of the core question. One is that if you don't want to fail then don't roll.

The second is that you're all there to enjoy the game as you see it so if that means fudging rolls then so be it, though it's so very easy for the GM to fudge the result that should are few occasions where the GM has to fudge the roll.

It is harder to spin the rolls of the players, since they're usually engaging in a rules system that they're rolling for and the expectations are, and should be, clear before they pick up the dice. Before then is the time to apply changes up to and including "don't bother rolling".

And if not? Then as a GM, you have to take the lumps. Mind you, it's a game for you as much as everyone else and if you're not having fun then you approach the table with the problems and try to find solutions together.

[faraday]

@Lithium said:

I've done it in TT, when my dice were on fire and I kept rolling nat 20's, well, I didn't feel like total PK'ing the party that night and so some crit hits became misses. I think there requires some trust in the group with the DM/ST/GM in order to create a good story.

But why is that so different in a MUSH environment? Don't you want your MU players to have the same opportunities for fun and a good story as your tabletop ones in that scenario?

Sure you can say you wouldn't have exactly that same mix of people together, but so what? As long as your mission is always "help players tell a good story" and you apply that mission fairly to everyone (and not, say, just to your buddies), isn't that fair enough?

[Lithium]

@faraday said:

@Lithium said:

I've done it in TT, when my dice were on fire and I kept rolling nat 20's, well, I didn't feel like total PK'ing the party that night and so some crit hits became misses. I think there requires some trust in the group with the DM/ST/GM in order to create a good story.

But why is that so different in a MUSH environment? Don't you want your MU players to have the same opportunities for fun and a good story as your tabletop ones in that scenario?

Sure you can say you wouldn't have exactly that same mix of people together, but so what? As long as your mission is always "help players tell a good story" and you apply that mission fairly to everyone (and not, say, just to your buddies), isn't that fair enough?

Because as soon as you play favorites one way, it will bite you on the ass eventually once drama hits. Around a gaming table drama is less an issue, people will just say: Shut up Diana, or Bob, or whatever and the game will move on. In a MU* it's a whole different environment. How many times have we seen systems that work great in table-top not work so well in a MU* environment? It's the same type of thing, it's a different environment so we need some different practices.

Here is my worry, and why I will not fudge in a MU*.

I am running a scene, the BSD are kicking the Gaian's asses through no fault of their own. I fudge dice rolls, and the Gaians win, yay everyone celebrates. No harm done, or so it seems

Then a few weeks later I am running another scene, and someone is outright /stupid/ and I decide that their stupidity needs to be rewarded with an appropriate response. The dice say their stupidity gets them punished, so I don't fudge the dice and the person gets hurt, possibly killed, maimed, renown loss, whatever.

Person of questionable intelligence hears about (or partook) in the scene where I fudged the dice for someone else. Instantly cries of favoritism abound, much drama ensues, and it's just a mess that is completely and utterly avoidable.

If the dice say a group is losing, well, maybe they should be smart enough to know when to cut their losses and retreat. Sometimes a loss even makes for good story, much better than the PC's always win no matter what.

The context and environment are completely different in tabletop than in a MU. The sample size is smaller (in general) and staff have a /duty/ to be fair to everyone equally. Which means the code/dice tell the story, once it comes to dice.

[Tat]

@Pyrephox said:

@Arkandel said:

If I don't want to adhere to a roll's result I won't ask for it.

This is something I've had to get better at, and part of that has meant /calling for fewer rolls/. I've had to remind myself that I should not be calling for a roll for the expert investigator to pick up the basic clues at the crime scene that will give them a few ideas of where to go next. That's their /job/, and it should not necessarily be trusted to the whims of dice. Now, if they're a rank amateur, or they've snuck in and are trying to get the same information while avoiding people who want to kill them, that's enough tension and stakes that a roll is warranted.

This is how I like to do things. My current game is the first time I've been a GM with dice (as opposed to lots and lots of GMing without dice), and I find that for many, many things, I'd rather just assume success.

I use dice in combat (where I find them super helpful), but generally I don't make people roll their investigation or their mutant power unless there is a real reason they ought to be somewhat likely to fuck things up. Part of this is because I want players to be awesome. Part of it is that these days, neither I nor most of my players have the time to reroute around a botched roll (just watch me try to GM for my Brit and my West Coasters in the same weeknight scene, man), and I want things to keep moving.

And with that in mind, I sometimes fudge rolls to the betterment of players, or by accomplishing a thing in a different way. Using the investigation example, when a player with one or two dots in that failed a roll, I said that he had to have involved one of our high-statted players in the investigation beforehand to get the information he's using now (confirmed OOC, of course). This had the benefit of not slowing down the scene and looping more characters into the action, even if off camera.

I agree with the general consensus that transparency helps a lot in these situations. I've unKO'd players who have barely gotten to play, or even enemies who went down so fast that people were disappointed, but never without asking first.

One thing I do appreciate about dice is how much more creative they sometimes force me to be. What exactly do I do with that amazing success? How can I make this even more awesome than just 'successful'. Or even worse than just 'failure'?