RE: [HOE] Killed... my.... entire... posse...

["Jeff Yates" <jyates@primaryfunction.com>]

Everyone in our group who runs a game has and does fudge rolls -- in the
interest of making the session more fun.  Is the posse getting beat up
real bad, due to no fault of their own?  Then the GM will usually ease
up.  Are they getting a cake walk?  Then fudge on the side of the NPCs.
This has not been abused to make the GM feel like he's getting to win --
if the posse made a good plan, role-played the good decisions, and
managed to defeat a powerful foe, so be it.  If they do the same things
but the dice just hate them, it's ok to cut them some slack.  I know for
a fact that dice hate me.  As GM and player.  I've had GM fudge for me,
because I'll go bust three or four times in a row.  Not my fault, I had
a decent plan of action, but dice hate me.  And when I GM, if the big
bad monster that I've been building the tension for for weeks goes bust
on a cognition check, a quickness check, and when it finally gets an
action, a black magic check, I start fudging.  The Bad Guy(TM) loses
it's scariness if it falls all over itself and then implodes!  On the
flip side, I've aimed Bolts O' Doom at PCs and rolled ~50 points of
damage.  That's a little harsh, so I'll tone it down to 3 wounds.  Some
PCs need to come out of the fight scarred, not pasted.

That said, if they do something stupid, I'll paste them!  Our group has
a catch phrase "I throw caution to the wind!".  If you say that and then
announce an action, it's understood that you're expecting to get hurt,
possibly horribly.  If you see a tin horn in the middle of the Badlands,
all alone, and you say "Charge!", then expect to get turned into a chew
toy by the Huckster/Werewolf/Tin Horn (really happened in game -- the
rest of the posse fought him to a draw, and hunted him down across two
states after, tho the charging Ranger died right then and there).

Not my most eloquent post, but I think I've expressed my opinion?  Eh,
it works for our games...

Jeff Y.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-hoe@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-hoe@gamerz.net] On 
> Behalf Of Stephan Elsner
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 10:21 AM
> To: hoe@gamerz.net
> Subject: Re: [HOE] Killed... my.... entire... posse...
> 
> 
> Hi there!
> Im not of your opinion. The marshal should adjust the 
> difficulty of his adventures to the abilities of the posse, 
> but while in game he should not fudge any die rolls. I 
> personally never fudge a die roll. And in my current posse 
> there has no one been killed to this day. But my players also 
> insist on me not to fudge ANY die roll. And I agree with 
> them, because they won't fear a black hat any longer if they 
> could be sure that they´ll never be killed by one, only 
> because its a "minor" character in the game. And to be 
> frightened and feel in danger all the time is one main factor 
> of HoE and makes up a lot of the fun. So fudging is no option 
> for me, for the sake of fun, and for the fact that my posse 
> will still fear a walking dead lurking in a dark corridor as 
> long as we play this game.
> 
> The world of HoE IS deadly and the players should feel that. 
> If they play careful (and my players are an extremely cunning 
> bunch), they´ll not be killed by a simple scavvy. But a 
> simple scavvy CAN kill you anytime with a simple wooden club.
> 
> thats what I think about it,
> Marshal S.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Dusarat@aol.com>
> To: <hoe@gamerz.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 3:51 PM
> Subject: [HOE] Killed... my.... entire... posse...
> 
> 
> > If you killed your entire posse in the first adventure for 
> first time
> players....
> >
> >
> > I'll be blunt, it shows that you weren't forgiving enough 
> to fudge die
> rolls in the name of FUN.  I do hope in subsequent games 
> you're more willing to fudge things in PC's favor (at least 
> in the beginning) so everyone has more fun.
> >
> > Don't blame the lethality of the game, an RPG is only as 
> lethal as the
> Gamesmaster makes it.  Dice don't kill Players, GM's kill players.
> >
> > When the Black hat rolls a 24 to hit the Templar, gets a head shot, 
> > and
> Rolls 44 damage, you thank god you have a screen and you say 
> "Three wounds to the head and the blood in your eyes blinds you...."
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> 
> 
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