Goodman Games

"Whoops, I meant to put something like a kobold in this room -- but I can see now that when I was making my notes for this dungeon entrance, I accidentally wrote down half this stat block from the Bolrog stats. And darn, we've just rolled initiative. It'll slow the game down to grab the book and look things up. I'll just adjust things on the fly."

If I could re-write history, I'd go back and emphasize the phrase "at the design stage' in my post. That is key to my whole point, and you're right, without it in mind, that last statement doesn't make as much sense. I suspect by the way my post is picked apart in your reply, that you weren't getting the gestalt of my statement.

I have sometimes made mistakes at the design stage. If that kobold/Bolrog thing was a mistake (in design), fudging some die rolls can be a correction (at the table). It is in no way unfair; it is a return to intent.

We are the producers, authors, proof-readers, editors, performers and audience of our hobby. I will use my editorial pen whenever I think it'll please the audience the more, or will move the story to a better place. I know a group of players in a tight spot but loving it when I see it. I also know a group of players in over their heads and feeling cheated when I see it. I know which group I'd rather have in front of me.

Further, I believe I have seen authors of some of the Dungeon Crawl Classics line admit on this forum that one detail or other of their work was out-of-whack, and go on to suggest what should be altered in their published work. Were I to run such an adventure without having seen the author's after-publication correction, but noticed something seemed wrong and made my own alteration either before running the game, or at the table if that's where I noticed it, again, that would not be unfair in the least; it would be a correction, a restoration to fairness.

And I'll invoke a little Gygax myself: "The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play." (DMG, Revised Edition, 1979, page 9). This comes in a discussion of rolling up a wandering monster as per the rules, but judging that result to perhaps be a detriment to the game, based on what is happening at that point in the campaign. These games don't run themselves; human input and judgment is vital.

I'm not advocating willy-nilly re-spinning of rules throughout a game. Last year, I came off a 3+ years GMing stint. I think I fudged rolls maybe five or six times during those campaigns. Perhaps not even that much.

The bottom line is, everyone playing should have the maximum fun possible. If, in aiming squarely at that goal, I override a die roll to increase the enjoyment of the game for the maximum possible number of participants, I am playing correctly. And playing fairly, too.

That's not a valid example of changing things on the fly - Typos aren't design choices.

To address most of the rest of your post, I will simply say that you seem to be claiming 100% accuracy at guessing whether or not your players will have fun with any particular outcome of a situation... and while that is sometimes obvious, there are those of us out here that want to see TPKs often enough that every time we survive through an adventure it feels like a true accomplishment - so you might misstep quite easily just by making an accidentally impossible encounter into an intentionally possible one.

In general, I feel that all the examples you make of times where you feel justified making on-the-fly adjustments are times where an adjustment should be made... but that adjustment can, and should, be made before any in-play interaction with the elements has begun. The monster stats are wrong - you change it before the players even know there is a combat coming up, not once you can see how the combat is actually playing out.

I agree with Gygax on that matter - so long as those distortions and disregardings are discussed with all players involved and decided upon as a group before play starts. In the case of those rare matters that can't be brought up and agreed upon before play, you halt the game the instant it comes up and publicly discuss the matter, take a quick vote and move on... because the guy behind the screen cannot be absolutely sure he knows what is best.

The bolded portion is absolutely true, and is the exact premise upon which I have based my entire running style - and runs directly counter to the first portion.

There are no. such. thing. as random monster encounters. Either the Judge wants that monster there and has intentionally placed it there, or there is no monster there at all... and that is how you perfectly handle the situation of "oh man, I rolled a flock of 6 Gorgons here but that would be too much for a wounded party to even remotely handle... I'd better ignore the dice"

Compared to the absolute zero times I have fudged rolls in the last 16 years, that seems very willy-nilly.

This is where my bottom line differs - everyone playing should have the maximum fun possible. I cannot possible be certain of the exact maximum amount of enjoyment anyone can have, nor can I be absolutely certain of what will cause them that level of enjoyment.

So I must simply write the best campaign I can muster and see how the players like it.

As for playing "correctly" - no need to get defensive. I am not saying you are doing something incorrect with your practices... just that I see mine as more efficient (subjectively, of course) to the point that I do not understand yours.

(my emphasis)


Let's talk about 'can'.

My entire point has been that on occasion I have made mistakes in preparing an adventure, and not noticed those mistakes until I am at the table, running the scene. And to correct those mistakes, instead of stopping the game to re-calculate numbers or look anything up, I've improvised, and some of that improvisational correction has been to fudge a die roll. Roll die; look up perception check; realize ability is wrong; go with gut; say "they don't seem to hear you sneaking past".

I can notice such mistakes beforehand--given time. Having less time to play (and prep for play) than I did, say, 20 years ago, shouldn't eliminate me from playing. It's genuinely awesome if you have enough time to catch all such mistakes yourself for your own games. If I do notice something out of place before a game, I'd certainly make the correction before the game, as should be. But once in a while I've had a moment where I find things off the rails of the intended design during the encounter.

You're saying that a typo is not a valid example, but it is the essence of what I have been addressing all along. Am feel like me do's putting words with words correktlee, but not shur... Anybody else want to chime in? Have I lost the ability to form coherent sentences? Kahblarg zer phenbimum lagalaga toh-kohlee? I suspected as much... *calls for nurse*

And: "Rather than spoil such an otherwise enjoyable time, omit the wandering monsters indicated by the die." (ibid) What?!? Gary, how could you??? Roll a die, and then not follow through with it? ...Oh, the horror.

Noble--and I may call you Noble, mayn't I?--I think I'm seeing that, for yourself, if you didn't find a mistake in what you'd prepared to run until the encounter was happening, you'd just carry on with the mistake. Am I getting that right? I'd like to know, because it sounds like if I'm driving down a road, and miss a turn-off, you'd rather I keep going down the wrong road, and not take a bypass that gets me back where I should have been to begin with.

To reiterate, I'm not talking about swinging the outcome of an encounter based on how I think it may or may not be going because I've changed my mind midstream. You say you want to understand where I'm coming from, why I'd ever fudge a die roll; I'd fudge a die roll to correct a mistake without creating the slightest hesitation in the flow of a game, keeping a scene moving and the excitement level going.

Can we unblow this out of proportion now? My typing monkey is demanding overtime....

caveman, et. al., sorry for derailing your thread...

GnomeBoy, I am pretty firmly in the "no fudging die rolls" camp myself, and I don't see where correcting a mistake requires fudging a die roll. For example, if I wrote "This secret door can be found with a DC 37 check" I don't need to roll the dice to know that I made a mistake. I would have no problem with changing that to the 17 I intended before rolling the dice (because, as Noble said, correction is not fudging, any more than it would be fudging to recognize that the Trivial Pursuit card should say "The Moors" rather than "The Moops").

If you rolled before noticing that the DC was wrong, and then adjudicated the result against the intended DC, I would view that also as a simple correction, and not actually fudging the die roll.

But if you noticed that the check was DC 37, decided to let it stand while rolling, and then either fudged the roll up to make the check, or fudged the DC after the fact to make sure the check succeeded, I would not like that. Similarly, if you decided getting run over by a carriage caused 5d6 damage, but then toned it down because you happened to roll 30 points, I would not like that.

The difference may be subtle, but it is a real difference to me, and it has a real effect on whether or not I would enjoy the game.


RC

Wow, really, thank you, Raven -- it hadn't occurred to me that we could be using the word 'fudge' slightly differently. I'm basically talking about situations where you roll, realize that somehow a peasant has made a DC 40 listen check, or the like, and re-jiggered things. You're either ignoring the result or re-calculating on the fly or whatever. Which is something I've called 'fudging' the roll for many years. "Had to fudge that result, because something is wonky." I didn't realize that some folks would use the term for over-riding the dice arbitrarily, because I don't see much reason to do it arbitrarily anyway.

Again, thanks.

You're welcome.

But there is a difference (to me) between "Okay, I rolled a 17, and this peasant has a....a +23 to listen! WTF?!? That was supposed to be +3! Okay, total of 17+3 = 20! Jeez, I need to proofread better!" and "Okay, I rolled a 17, and the peasant has +23 to listen, so that's a result of 40. Hrm. I don't think that result is right, so I'm going to pare it down to a 20."

One says, "I need to edit an error; this is not what I intended" and the other says, "I need to edit the result." I am fine with fixing errors. I am not fine with fixing results. If you want a specific result, simply don't require a die roll. It's okay to say that a result occurs no matter what the die roll, to imply chance where there is no chance involved, because sometimes the PCs shouldn't automatically realize that certain things are not happening by chance.

For example, if Lord Evilbob sent his minions after the PCs, the dice could be rolled to make it appear as though it were a random encounter. Likewise, anyone searching the chest might find the Jewel of Upbooboo, but that doesn't mean that the GM shouldn't roll a die -- both to imply that there might be other things to be found, and to imply that the Jewel might not be found. If that makes sense to you?

I am fine with planning an outcome, but not with accepting a random roll only if it so happens to come up in accordance with your planned outcome.

Yes, thank you very much Raven_Crowking. Gnomeboy and I were apparently talking past each other and neither realized it.

@Gnomeboy - yeah, what you call "fudging" I call proof-reading. What Gary called "fudging," (actually arbitrarily ignoring the rules or dice rolls as you see fit) is what I call "fudging" and refuse to do regardless of whether I feel I could do so to somehow increase the group's enjoyment - because plain and simple, either I know well enough to write an enjoyable adventure regardless of how dice land, or I don't... and If I don't, no amount of fudging (as defined by Gary Gygax) is going to fix.

Gary invented rules that are harmful to use in more cases than not (random encounters + wandering monsters) and then gave us all the advise "use those rules... but also ignore them whenever they are harmful." I always looked at that and said "or, Mr. Gygax sir, I could just excise them entirely from my table rules and have the same result, minus arbitrary refusal to follow the rules I've established for myself."

Note, however, that the only true test of whether or not you're "doing it right" is whether or not you have players. So long as you can drum up a single player who wants to be at your table (and no laws are being broken ), you are free to run your game in whatever way you like.

Wait--what? Um, what rulebook is that in? I must've missed it. #doingitwrong


And I'm not predetermining results (and don't care to), but I do predetermine what any given opponent is capable of doing. Yet, sometimes the result makes obvious a mistake or oversight that's been made beforehand. Players can't suddenly decide their characters can all fly at the speed of sound. My goons can't suddenly hear things on the moon if they are meant to be mere mortal men, even if my notes or a published adventure seems to say they can. Ever stat'ed up fish people, only to find you didn't give them a swim movement rate? I have, and not noticed until it mattered at the table. So I'll fudge it. Evidently, I use the term more broadly than Gary did -- I'll start calling it "proof-reading at the table" instead.

That's my disclaimer in case two folks get together and do something they should not, 'cause "Raven Crowking said it was okay".



But, really, what you are describing isn't the fudging I personally dislike. And, even if you were doing the fudging I personally dislike, it doesn't matter one whit if (1) that's the way you want to run your game, and (2) you can find even one like-minded player. I am very a strong proponent of running the game you like, the way you like. First off, it is likely to result in the best game you can run. Second off, who am I to demand you run your game in a way that is pleasing to me?

So, even if you were doing X or Y that I absolutely hate, how I feel about it really doesn't matter...unless you were to want me to game at your table. No one on the InterWebs can tell you what you should, or should not, be doing....or, at least, no one's advice should trump your game preferences.

Good gaming!

RC

You could also say that, when a player crits with a 20 on his spell check, the player has the choice to roll a d20 as an exploding crit die, or not. However, on that second roll, a 1 on the 1d20 exploding die also means spell failure and corruption/misfire. This would mean that 1 out of 20 crits end up being bad - not only does the spell fail when it seemed like the best possible result, but also the PC suffers a drawback. Not a big mitigator with the additional 5% chance of bad stuff happening, but it might be enough to prompt your wizard player to decide to roll the exploding die only when he feels like it is properly dramatic, settling with a "normal" crit the rest of the time.

The Burning Wheel has a great philosophy about this stuff: no rerolls and the results always stand. The game calls this the Let It Ride rule, and I'm a firm believer in using it.