Re: [DL] Fudging

[Evil Robot Shane From Another Dimension <wishkah@redbrick.dcu.ie>]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 12:55:09PM -0500, Michael Sprague said:
> I remember back on one adventure where the DM (yes, D&D) decided that the
> party was going to be captured.  My character had an old map that the DM had
> forgotten about, and realized that we were headed into a trap.  He/I warned
> as many of the other players as I could ... and three of us actually escaped
> the trap.  We stayed on the lam for three days, with the DM using all sorts
> of lame ways to capture us ... and finaly, he did.  It still irks me though
> (years and years later :-) that some of us were clever enough to evade the
> initial trap ... and the DM insisted that we all had to be captured.

 The other week, actually, I had my all-time ever Worst Gaming Session Ever,
 Past or Future.  I was running a module called The Paxton Gambit for the
 Heavy Gear RPG - the module is heavily intrigue-politics-and-espionage
 oriented, and at this particular session the players had got a lead which
 would allow them to investigate a particular enemy intelligence network in
 their city.  They had bait for a trap and just needed to set it.

 Due to a combination of my own moronicness, slightly lacking familiarity with
 the parts of the module yet to come, and bad luck, a single sentence in the
 previous game session set this up for disaster.  Rather than telling the
 PCs to tail the person they were setting up, their boss implied they should
 capture her instead.

 Big mistake.  With typical misplaced player ingenuity, they set up a simple
 but effective web to catch her in.  I figured I could engineer her escape
 when it came to it, but when it came to the crunch, no matter how much
 backup I gave her or how much I (for the first, and probably last time ever -
 just remembering this makes me feel ill) fudged the dice rolls, there was
 no realistic way she was getting out.  The session finished on the brink of
 her being captured.

 Having slept on it, I could come up with four possible ways to continue.
1) Hope and pray the dice go in her favour next session and she makes it out
   against all odds.
2) Rewrite the module myself from that point on.
3) Explain the situation to the players so's they agree to make the rather
   unrealistic decision to instantly obey the urgent recall order they've
   just received (it's part of the module, but as far as they're concerned
   it's nothing that couldn't wait ten more seconds to be obeyed).
4) Rewind.

 So I talked it over with one of my players.  A problem shared turned out to
 indeed be a problem halved, and I was feeling far less sick at the thought
 of ever gaming again (it had been a bad session for other reasons too -
 tiredness and general misalignment of the planets amongst them) once the
 burden of responsibility was no longer mine alone.  The conclusions were as
 follows:
1) Ludicrously unlikely to happen, and relying on it is folly.
2) Doable, because basically it's just a collection of NPCs who have specified
   organisations, goals, relationships and reactions to the planned
   situations, so I could just change the reactions and situations based on
   what I know.  Nevertheless, it's a damn good module and would be less good
   for all concerned if we went down this road.
3) Cringingly contrived, acceptable last-ditch but avoid if possible.
4) Preferable, because it'll allow us to continue on with a fun game.

 The other players came to the same conclusion when I talked it over with
 them.

 So anyway, the players weren't ecstatic with the situation, but were able to
 look at it rationally and were forgiving enough to realise that everybody
 goes bust on their GMing roll sometimes.  :>)  So having been told that she
 had to escape, we rewound and they tailed her instead of hitting her in the
 head with sticks, and it went fine from there.

 I'm not sure what the moral of the story is.  But having the players know
 what's going to happen is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you're
 working toward a story together - they won't unintentionally wreck it.

 Actually if I were running that module again I might even do an anime-series
 style teaser for the next episode at the end of each section.

 (for the record, I'm not bitter about it, because it's just karmic repayment
 for my all-time ever Best Gaming Session Ever, Past or Future, which came
 early into my GMing career, with a game I'd written myself)

 Wishkah

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