Fail States and the Two DMs Inside You

Previously: Narrative Intervention Versus Fudging the Dice

Fail States Beyond Death

It’s common online DMing advice to create scenarios where the conditions of success and failure in an encounter go beyond “two sides try to reduce each other to 0 HP.” DMs will dutifully drop an occasional “defend the tower” or “capture the flag” mission into their standard combat scenarios, but they’ll be occasional exceptions to race-to-zero slugfests.

But I rarely see this tool suggested as a solution to fudging. Fundamentally changing the stakes of an encounter – and particularly the results of a fail state – is the easiest way to prevent fudging. If an antagonist is fighting purely to subdue or capture PCs, there’s no need to fudge to prevent a TPK, because one isn’t on the table – even if the encounter goes much worse for the PCs than the DM anticipates. 

Asking this question goes beyond just balancing encounters or session planning. It also forces the DM to interrogate the goals and strategies of factions and antagonists. “What does the monster consider a ‘win’ in this situation? What does it really want?” Answering that question establishes stakes that can preemptively avoid the desire to fudge.

There Are Two DMs Inside You

Suppose that you are a playtester for an upcoming published module in your favorite tabletop system. You GM sessions of the adventure, and then debrief with the designer after each session. You consistently find that the encounters in the draft adventure are much too difficult, and you have to fudge the dice (or otherwise intervene) to avoid a TPK that would prematurely end the session.

Surely this would feature prominently in your feedback to the designer. So why don’t fudging DMs look in the mirror and provide this feedback to the “other DM” inside of them? Why does the adjudicator DM not provide feedback to the game designer DM?

Almost all self-made, homebrew content is essentially in an untested, alpha state when it hits the table. It’s understandable that sometimes it will need to be patched in real time. It's the strongest defense of fudging.

This is an advantage to published adventures, which (ostensibly...) have been tested enough that fudge-inducing circumstances shouldn't come up often. It's also an argument for a very old-school style of play, where a DM would run various groups through their own personal dungeon many times. That iterative style of play would serve as a form of playtesting in practice, if not intent.

But I think DMs should continue to deploy self-made, homebrew content in their games. If they feel compelled to fudge, I will not condemn them. But I will ask them -- after the session ends -- to reflect and analyze what happened. What specifically went wrong? Where did the planning fail? What can be done next time to prevent the "need" to fudge?

If you must fudge, I won’t judge you. But I will judge your failure to interrogate that experience after the session ends – the failure to hold a conversation between the two DMs inside of you.

Next: Saying the Quiet Part Loud