I was worried someone might take it this way. Fudging rolls means stating the result of a secret roll was different than it was in reality. What I’m talking about is using a die to inspire you what should happen in a situation where rolling is not applicable. Players decide to go to the sewers for some reason. What’s in there? I don’t know. Yet. There are no rules on what to roll when they go to the sewers now. I may ask them what they expect to find. I may draw a card. I may roll a die. I may consult the random encounters table. It’s not a “roll” in the gaming sense, it’s a way to get some inspiration on my next description. But it’s like with a coin toss, sometimes you know what should happen when you make the roll and before you even see the result.
Fudging rolls means stating the result of a secret roll was different than it was in reality
which is what you’re doing when you ignore it…? otherwise you wouldn’t be ignoring it
Because the result has no meaning, it’s not a roll in a gaming sense. It being 20 or 1 makes no difference, it’s just to spark something in the imagination.
it has the meaning you assigned to it before rolling it, whether or not you’re pulling that meaning from a specific table, and whether or not you reveal the system to the players
if you decide ahead of time that a low result is going to be a tough encounter, and a high result is going to be a pile of treasure, then it comes up low and you decide to ignore that and give them treasure instead based on your gut feeling, you’re fudging the roll
if you decide what’s going to happen next based on your pull from a tarot deck, and somehow get “death” four times in a row, anything less than a disaster scenario is fudging the roll
it’s the exact same instinct that leads to “hmm, maybe this piss shit little goblin shouldn’t decapitate the barbarian in one hit because it happened to roll well”
