Comment by papalonian@lemmy.world on Fudging rolls is the path to the dark side...

I’m a first time DM and I struggle with this a lot haha. There are times where I feel a roll is appropriate, so I do it, and whatever is supposed to happen fails, then I realize… “what the hell is supposed to happen if that doesn’t work?” so it just kinda happens anyways… IDK if my players have caught on…

You could just skip the roll, because if failure is unacceptable then it isn’t appropriate.

That’s where my problem comes from. I’m not experienced enough to know immediately where failure is acceptable or not; rather, I don’t always have backup plans or ideas for when things that should be able to fail, fail. So I roll, and it fails, and it should fail, but I’ve got no idea what happens when it does. So it doesn’t fail.

I think I’m getting better at improv-ing events and making backup plans. It’s still difficult for me to find the balance between the story I want to tell/ have prepared vs the story that my players wind up creating, but checking in with my party here and there tells me everyone’s having fun and only rarely does anyone feel gipped or abused by dice rolls.

Prior to rolling, think about what will happen if the roll fails or succeeds. If you are worried about failure at all, that is a good sign that failing is probably not an option. Basically, if you are able to make the decision to fudge it when it happens you had the same time frame to decide notnto risk that need to fudge in the first place.

Over time with more experience you will find ways to make failure a bump in the road to fun tims.

if you don’t even roll, then you’re robbing your players from the feeling of a near miss

also taken to its extreme, your players will probably just work out that they aren’t going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn’t

and yeah, at that point you can punish them, but you’ve been responsible for them getting to that state in the first place, so you’re essentially punishing them for your own mistakes

RPGs depend on mutual respect. If you think your players will metagame you and you need to punish them then it stops being a collaborative roleplaying game.

okay then, for you the game ends here:

your players will probably just work out that they aren’t going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn’t

you can’t just not metagame

if you know a choice will result in a certain outcome, you can no longer make that decision neutrally

in fact, you literally can’t take a risk when you know what the outcome of a choice is, because there’s no risk to take

not even bothering to roll is barely a step removed from just telling your players “i’m not going to make the enemy roll to hit you because then you might die and you haven’t found your long lost brother yet”, and if you can’t see that that’s a garbage scenario for roleplaying i don’t know what to tell you

This is another thing I fear, that causes me to do probably unnecessary rolls. I want the story/ gameplay to have at least some semblance of believability, so I don’t want everyone risking their life on a curiosity because they know I won’t kill them, but I also don’t want to “punish” players every time they take a step off the walking path.

I’ll admit it right here: sometimes I roll the dice just to give the illusion of risk, when in reality I’m buying time to make up the results of what someone just did.

I occasionally roll dice as theatre myself. In my last session, I had a troupe of traveling performers that I rolled for on each act to see if they did well or not, with each roll hidden from the players, and I would then describe the outcome to them. Most of the rolls were real, but some performers I had already decided would fail from the beginning, because they were plants for the enemy faction and had a plan going on in the background that depended on their failure at the act. But of course I still had to roll to not set off any alarms. Going to be fun when my players later piece together “oh, that hypnotist didn’t actually fail, they just used mass suggestion to make everybody believe they did so they don’t come under scrutiny.” If a player catches on - one actually did pretty quick - then great, let them have the victory, but in general it’s one of the ways I like to create expectations so I can subvert them or use them to sneak things by. The enemy faction is very guerilla-oriented, so it fits their MO pretty well.

On a more general scale, when it comes to hidden rolls, if I really need something to succeed, I’ll make the roll not a matter of whether they succeed, but who succeeds. Keeps the story moving if I realize too late that that roll shouldn’t have happened because a failure brings the game to a halt.

You can roll some dice but it doesn’t need to be a skill check (or whatever the naming is in your system of choice). When I don’t know what should happen, I may roll a die. If it’s high then it should be something good and if low, maybe it will give me inspiration to think about some new lurking danger. But I may discard the result and go with the gut feeling. Whatever, it was an “oracle roll” as I like to call it. Not tied to anyone’s statistics.

I like to use a deck of cards as well. In Savage Worlds, it is used to determine a random encounter. Clubs indicate an enemy, hearts a friebd, diamonds some good omen and spades obstacles. I like to draw a card so it inspires me on what should happen next (of course as long as it makes sense with the world)

There are more better ways to make a player fear for their character other than death.

Like killing a beloved NPC, making the situation much worse, taking away their valuables, making their god angry, being hunted by assassins, making them wanted across the kingdom.

Death isn’t the only punishment a GM/DM has at their disposal.

sometimes allowing an outcome that should mechanically via the rules of the game and logically via the rules of common sense has more downsides than upsides

it doesn’t have to refer to exclusively player death

Thanks for spelling it out like this. I think I’ve been too focused on “doing something” and keeping the game going, that I don’t stop to think before doing some things. Ie rolling before I know what will happen with a failure. I’ll try to take more quick pauses to think things through, and worry about smoothness of play later.

It might be a little bumpy at first, but should speed up with a bit of practice and the practice of thinking about failure will happen more often!. Plus the more you think about it the better you will get at coming uo with ideas for failure and that will let you being back the random rolls!

I learned in my first adventure that what I’ve prepared to happen might just be stupid and unrealistic, so I’m never too attached to it. If the dice say it doesn’t happen, they know better than me, so I just toss it. If I lie about the dice to make it happen anyway, I’m making a worse experience for everyone.

If a failure means a path is unavailable, see if you can open up a different path. If there are no other paths, just let them have this one for free.

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