Fudging removes the joy of surprises and working through failures, or is a band aid to poor planning if failure isn’t an option.
a band aid to poor planning
you think you can plan around your players’ actions?
I know that I can, based on experience. It is often an outline and can be revised, but having that as a starting point makes rolling with the unexpected easy enough.
Like having a route and planning on how to handle unexpected roadwork or changes in train schedules. It isn’t necessary to plan every detail or how it will pan out, just major things that need to be handled until the end of the session and there is time to hash out the details before the next.
Legit, I don’t fudge rolls because it’s not fun for me.
If a roll would fuck up the session/adventure/campaign, I just straight up tell the players I’m making a call and override the results. It doesn’t happen often, and it’s really only when rng just screws things, like when you get multiple nat 1s in a session, way out of line with what makes sense without some kind of gymnastics to explain things in game.
That’s exactly what fudging rolls is though… “I’m not fudging, I’m just changing the result of the dice when it isn’t fun”
Nah, fudging is slightly different.
Fudging is saying “the roll was 19” when it was actually 18, and 18 was a fail. That’s a form of lie.
Straight up saying that the roll is being ignored totally, or that the person should roll again isn’t fudging because it’s open and honest.
How to tell if someone likes writing more than improv:
How dare you cut a thread short, that could have gone on for pages and pages of bikeshedding, with your one truthful and incisive comment.
So that my players see me roll the dice. As long as they believe the illusion, the roll is real to them, and so their experience is meaningful and memorable; at the end of the day, that’s what matters most to me as a DM.
Roll in the open, fuck narrative first gameplay, it’s a game.
