Re: [DL] Fudging

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

At 07:28 PM 3/15/2003 -0500, you wrote:
 >I don't mind a heroic death. I mind a year and a half's worth of character
 >development ending pointlessly by hitting a big rock.

Shoulda gotten a better pilot.  :-)

Okay, okay okay.  I mostly agree with you.  This would be akin to requiring 
the posse make ridin' rolls for every day that they are travellin'.  At 
some point somebody will going go bust. . .  and die in the hands of this 
GM it sounds like.
This is where a D20 mechanic I like is useful - the taking 10 or the taking 
20 option.  As a mechanic it avoids the randomness of daily tasks, like the 
cobbler who can only make shoes 6 out of 10 days. . .

But you have to respect the let the dice fall attitude as well.  In terms 
of long-term trust and excitement it adds to the campaign.
For example, in one DnD game I was in, the party eventually got to the evil 
castle and had to figure out how to enter.  We chose to scale/fly one of 
the three towers and sneak in from the top, assuming that all the defenses 
would be aimed towards preventing the ground attack.  We just happened to 
pick the master bedroom where the arch-villian, a half-vampire mage/fighter 
(don't ask), was sleeping.  It was daytime that we did this, you see.
The resulting combat was short and brutal as the villian was caught without 
his armor, his spells, his guards, and was weakened by the daylight.  And 
we found the evidence of evil-doing in that room as well.
Did we turn what was going to be a 4-5 session dungeon crawl into a 1 
nighter?  Yup.  Could the GM have easily said that instead we came in by a 
"different" tower then the master one?  Yup.
But - do we now respect that GM far more for giving us the fruits of our 
labors?  Yup.  Do we now trust that the GM is not a railroader and that we 
have free will in his games?  Yup.  And I can't speak for the others but I 
assume that, since he's willing to assume the way the "dice fall" when they 
go against him, is he going to enforce them same dice when they go against 
the players?
Oh hell yes.  And I tend to be a bit more careful when it's his turn to run 
then I am with the other GM's in the group.
AND let me tell you, when we earn a victory in one of his sessions it means 
just a little more than when we complete an adventure under one of the 
dice-fudgers.

Without real risk, you can't be a hero.


-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com

Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.
                 -P.J. O'Rourke