Re: [DL] Fudging

[Greg Vose <kitsune@xmission.com>]

And there was no risk in that adventure at all.  But that's not a fudging
issue. There wasn't any dice fudging involved in you formulating a strategy
and catching the master villain with his pants down and that GM has my
respect for being able to scratch his head and say "well, damn, them's
pretty smart folks."

I'm not going to fudge the dice when the characters get to the end of the
story just so that they don't survive because they found a way in that I
hadn't thought of and cut out 80% of my evil deathtraps, critters, etc.
That's vindictive, adversarial, and wrong as a GM.  You always reward
clever thinking and great roleplaying. That's why we play.  

All I know is that my players for the past 21 years have never stepped away
from my game and said to me "you railroaded us through." and I have used
dice fudging at appropriate moments during all those years.

I'm not God's gift to GMs but I can honestly say that the only people who
have ever been displeased with me in that capacity have been rules rapists,
munchkins, min-maxers, and power gamers of the worst order. And those
people are, of course, better served playing EverQuest or some other MUD
where die rolls and the interaction of mathematical modifiers are all that
matter as opposed to the intelligence and sneakiness that you and your
fellow party members exhibited in taking out that master villain.

Best,

Greg

At 06:48 PM 3/15/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>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
>
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