Re: [DL] Fudging

[Greg Vose <kitsune@xmission.com>]

Randomness is fine.  As a matter of fact, it can help drive the story.
However relying on that randomness to the point that you cannot make any
decisions or changes is stupid and shows an incompetence or inexperience at
GMing plain and simple.

Catastrophic results from a random roll are fine also so long as they don't
take the complete party out on the way to do their laundry.  Frankly that
whole scene should never even have been there.  It's like asking for a
climbing roll for a character to walk up a flight of stairs. Idiotic.

Now I would have absolutely no problem with it had the party been in their
ship being chased by three Star Destroyers and the navigator had to make an
astrogation roll while dealing with his hot coffee that had just landed in
his lap because of a violent maneuver that the pilot, Ming Single had just
performed.  Then if he misses the roll, fine, plop him down in the middle
of an asteroid field and make the pilot make his rolls or they all go
splat.  But we are talking about embarking on the adventure from a
non-hostile location where the navigator can take a little time and make
certain the calculations are correct.  It is simply routine.

Greg

At 12:36 PM 3/15/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>
>--- Greg Vose <kitsune@xmission.com> wrote:
>> The exact same thing holds true here.  The GM screwed up.  It is all
>> about
>> suspense. It is all about the "good death."  It is all about the story. 
>> It
>> is not in the slightest bit about the die rolls.  It means that you have
>> to
>> be a good Marshall/DM/GM (this applies to all RPGs) rather than a
>> mediocre
>> one.  And the mediocre GM is always the one who relies on those die
>> rolls.
>
>I don't know if I would go quite that far in characterizing GM's as good
>or bad in this way, as it's a matter of style.
>
>Here's the question to ask yourself: If the GM shouldn't have let you die
>when these rolls came up, why were you rolling all those other times when
>you succeeded? You say it's all about the story, but if you aren't willing
>to permit randomness and an occasional detrimental result, perhaps even a
>catastrophic result, why roll dice at all? 
>
>But many of the games I play are from Pinnacle, and so have a mechanic for
>getting out of those situations (Fate Chips and bennies). If you fail at
>something, chances are it's going to burn chips and you'll end up weaker
>in the big fight, but you'll at least get there.
>
>Although I agree that there was no need to end the campaign there. I can
>think of many, many ways to get the players (if not the characters) back
>to the climax of the campaign. I'd agree that the GM failed in that
>respect.
>
>My 2 coins.
>
>Jason
>
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