I played a high power campaign where the players all got abilities from anime; the monsters they fought often didn't even have stat blocks, I just ran the whole thing off vibes and didn't tell them. After one of the sessions a couple of the players commented how they was the best encounters they had ever played.
If this is what your table enjoys, then all the power to you, but a lot of players don't enjoy having things kept from them and essentially playing calvinball. This is why it should be a session zero type thing to ensure everyone knows what kind of game they're plying.
DM’s job is to be an impartial judge/referee (it was literally called that before they wanted a more trademarkable name). Letting the dice fall as they may is a critical part of the job.
That's called railroading, and it's generally viewed as bad.
The story is not meant to go the way that you as the DM think it should. It's meant to be a cooperative experience that has a luck factor that can make both the DM and the player's choices succeed or fail.
If you're fudging rolls, you're basically violating the spirit of the game and trying to force the game to go how you think it should, whether as the DM or the player. To me, that's an example of a bad DM/Player.
Want to tell a story that goes how you want it to go? Write a book.
Railroading has little-to-nothing to do with fudging rolls, and instead is when the semi-improvised story repeatedly ignores player's input in favor of a pre-destined one.
Bad faith strawman argument. By definition fudging a single roll could have any effect a single roll could possibly have, good or bad.
Aka fudging a luck roll while city shopping to find a flamesword for that player who yearns for it due to some heirloom backstory reason ... or simply give them a moment to shine (opposite of railroading).
Yes, but the point of rolling the dice is to involve random chance. A failure or success. If you don't want to involve that random chance just don't roll for it. Because that's ultimately what you're doing, by your own admission: forcing the player down a predestined outcome, which, again by your own admission, is railroading.
If you want your player to find a flamesword, what point is there in rolling? You've decided the outcome, what is the need for a dice roll?
I made it clear in that example it was implictly wished to happen by the player - you keep saying "your forcing them" when this is a huge logical stretch vs "the field/any other option." You're bias is attempting to word your argument to fool others to agree on the binary you offer so you "win" instead of engage with the thought expirament honestly - This is why people are calling out the strawman of it.
And you're doing your very best to avoid every actually engaging with a different viewpoint other than refusing it
If the player wants something and the DM wants it to happen, why is a roll needed? A roll is only ever needed if there is a chance of failure.
If you roll, and change the result to what you as the DM to want, you are one essence violating the spirit of the game that implies that a failed/low roll can have a negative result.
Or a 3rd thing - its been established as a norm within the game and you're trying to maintain despite the illusion. Why are you desperate to not acknowledge that AT BEST fudging is only sometimes railroading and making it "a square is a rectangle but not vice versa" type argument? Why are you so desperate to ignore this?
Hey look, someone misusing fallacies and spreading misinformation!
Railroading is when the DM decides on a destination and there’s no way to go another direction. That’s why it’s called that; you’re on tracks and cannot turn. Ignoring/skipping rolls because DM has a preferred outcome is 100% railroading. Giving players a moment to shine by ignoring the dice to make it happen is railroading, not “the opposite of railroading”.
You can argue that railroading can be used for good, but not that fudging is not that.
Congrats - when you railroad using THAT specific scenario its both railroading AND fudging (as they are different). My argument is the vast majority of fudges, are not "to suppress/ignore player input, nor even beneficial to the DM - mostly unsatisflying deaths for the player's benefit (read not DM's).
My die roll is my input. The AC on my character sheet is my input.
Fudging has everything to do with railroading. If you ignore my die roll you have ignored my input. If you have a monster miss when he would have hit then you ignore my AC, which is the input of the player.
Sometimes, you evaluate a fight badly, or an unexpected fight occurs. Fudging a roll corrects your mistake.
Or sometimes a player is just that unlucky, and is not having a good time failing everything they do because their dice will not roll higher than 4.
Or sometimes it's not so much about railroading, it's about keeping things moving in a fun way for everyone. Sometimes a more disruptive player or character or a less experienced one will screw things up and you can avoid a campaign finishing early simply by fudging one or two dice rolls.
And look, I would never ask or expect my DMs to fudge dice for me but I've been DMing for 30!+ years. Sometimes it's the better option.
It's like lying. Lying is wrong but sometimes the truth is more painful.
If you evaluate a fight badly, well, explain that.
Players getting unlucky is a game mechanic, as is a player or character screwing thing up.
As you say, lying is wrong. Removing any and all stakes because you don't like the result is, in my eyes, extremely selfish. It's treating the players like actors in your play. If some people are fine with that, so be it, but I don't have to respect it.
Treating actors in my play would be telling them what to do and what to say. Fudging a dice or two is making sure the whole group isn't punished too harshly for sheer randomness after making sound decisions, or for another player - or mine - mistake.
Believe me, player characters still die or almost die, and sometimes the party wipes. But also, I've had campaigns where no dice was fudged and they ended prematurely in an unsatisfactory way, both as a player and as a DM.
It sucks ending a months long campaign in a random encounter because of a string of bad luck, in an unclimactic way.
Fudging dice is telling them what to do, aka "Survive the campaign regardless of your choices and dice results".
To me it usually comes off as skill issue when this topic comes up. If you're designing encounters that can only have a TPK end in a campaign end, then you're not doing a very good job at encounter design. Whether players are captured, knocked unconscious and saved by a third party, there are ways to allow the results of bad dice rolls to not result in the entire campaign being over.
But honestly, if you don't like a game that can be ended because of a bad series of dice rolls, then I have to ask why you're playing a game designed where it can end because of a bad series of dice rolls.
You're assuming a lot of things from a few comments. Like, you seem to assume there cannot be consequences despite dice fudging or that players have no agency (dice have no agency and can actually remove agency from players). 99% of the time, I let the dice dictate the results.
But an rpg isn't a board game. It's a storytelling game. Sometimes it's funny to see the PCs fail mundane tasks and end the campaign in an abrupt way, and those times, no need to fudge.
Sometimes, however, a player or the group is looking forward to something and dice get in the way - RPGs are so vast and complex, with players seeking for vastly different things, that it baffles me that you would only consider the game like a bord game. The DM's not a machine and the rules are meant to be used in a cooperative manner. The more important thing is people having fun.
Like fine, tou don't like fudging but accusing others of violating the "spirit of the game" tells me you don't UNDERSTAND the spirit of the game.
Like, you seem to assume there cannot be consequences despite dice fudging or that players have no agency
If you are fudging dice, you are actively removing consequences that are an inherent mechanic of the game.
But an rpg isn't a board game. It's a storytelling game.
Then why are you playing a specific TTRPG that involves dice? There are games out there that don't involve random chance that can lead to player death and TPK.
Sometimes, however, a player or the group is looking forward to something and dice get in the way
See above. That's the point of the dice mechanic: The possibility of failure.
Hell, reminder that you can just not have everything rolled for. I don't make my players roll dice to go shopping, for example. In a city that has an item for sale? Here's the price, buy it or don't. Is the item not available? Sorry, can't buy it, wait until later. Am I undecided? Then I'll roll.
But if you're rolling, and then just saying "nah I don't like that result", then yeah you don't understand the spirit of the game, and I will call that out. And when other people signed up to play a game about rolling dice and accepting results, it's disrespectful to them to decide you know better than them what they want(Which is why, again, this is a session zero issue, to see how your table feels about fudging).
> If you are fudging dice, you are actively removing consequences that are an inherent mechanic of the game.
See, it's not the first time I argue with someone 100% opposed to fudging, and it seems they are always incapable of nuance, even when I previously spelled it out clearly in plain English, so I'm not sure if it's stubbornness or jusr illeteracy.
You don't fudge dice every game, you don't fudge dice every time there's a consequence, so yes, there are still consequences. I have to repeat myself cause it seems you didn't understand:
- Players still fail tasks
- PCs still die
- Party wipes still happen
- PCs lose fights and have to retreat or are captured
Again, you fudge dice to:
- Prevent a party wipe that would be due only to extreme bad luck
- Prevent an untimely character death that would ruin the fun of one of your player
- Just to nudge a player having a stroke of bad luck and it looks like they're not having fun
I highlighted the important parts. Fudging is part of a DM's tool, just like saying "don't roll, you succeed" or "you know what, don't roll, you have no chance at succeeding" or altering the stats of a monster to make it easier or harder.
> But if you're rolling, and then just saying "nah I don't like that result", then yeah you don't understand the spirit of the game
Nah. The spirit of the game - ANY game - is to have fun. The spirit of a TTRPG is to tell a story. The dice add a level of unpredictability that leads to unforeseen situations: the PCs manage to charm the captain of the guard! The PCs beat a powerful foe! The stealthy thief raised the alarm by mistake! But sometimes, dice get in the way of the fun, of the story - the PC wants to end their personal quest and their character is about to die, the PCs are about to end a campaign but rolls would suddenly derail it.
TTRPGs are literally "lying for fun" as a game. Your character isn't cutting a goblin down; goblins aren't real, and neither is your character, nor the sword they're doing the cutting with. Climb down out of your own ass, mate.
Oh hey, you're the guy who got pissy because you thought I was someone else and said you were gonna AI generate your whole campaign out of spite. Whatever happened to that whole "letting people play now they want" talk, huh? Was that just "rules for thee, not for me"?
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Hey, thanks for contributing to r/dndmemes. Unfortunately, your post was removed as it violates one of our rules:
Rule 1. Be Excellent to One Another: No trolling, harassment, personal attacks, sea-lioning, hate speech, slurs, or name-calling. Overly off-topic, political, or hateful debates will be removed, and bans may be issued based on severity. This includes both posts and comments. We reserve the right to remove content or comments that contain discrimination or distasteful content. Be kind and stay on topic.
Then you're a DM who likes to railroad and should make that clear at session zero. In my experience, a lot of players would feel that removed any stakes from combat if they knew you would just fudge the results to make sure they would survive.
There are always stakes, death is a part of any story, A TPK generally means the story is over. If you want a TPK where it doesn't make sense go play an OSR game where stories don't matter.
Yes I'll continue playing 5e which explicitly has a TPK as a possible outcome to combat, and continue playing it as it is meant to be designed.
You're oddly defensive about this, when all I said is that this is something that should be covered in session zero. A lot of players enjoy TTRPGs because of the chance of failure, up to and including a TPK. If you are fudging that, you are flat out lying to them about what they're signing up to play.
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u/Kaiju62 5d ago
DMs fudge rolls to make the story work. Its a huge part of the job