Narrative Intervention Versus Fudging Dice

Previously: Think Before You Roll / Complex Systems

Consider this scenario. The players are in a fight, and thanks to mistakes during encounter planning, unlucky rolls, or some other reason, the battle is going south for the players. The DM, anticipating an undesirable outcome, decides to fudge.

But instead of changing any die rolls… they announce at the top of initiative that a stampeding herd of cattle thunders onto the battlefield, scattering some combatants, separating others, knocking still others prone. Or their opponents in the fight begin a tactical retreat, possibly with fallen characters hauled off as prisoners. Or a third faction appears on the scene, attacking the characters’ enemies based on an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” sort of reasoning.

Awfully convenient. And clearly not a planned part of a designed encounter, or randomly produced as part of emergent gameplay. The DM is altering the scenario to avoid an undesired result; they are fudging. But this narrative intervention is more honest than fudging dice rolls. It safeguards a promise inherent in any game that uses dice; when the dice are rolled, they adjudicate the action, not DM fiat.

It’s also important to distinguish this kind of “narrative fudge” from a deus ex machina. The ideal intervention should be a lateral change to the characters’ situations, a postponement of conflict, or an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” move. Environmental hazards, neutral beasts and monsters, and factions opposed to the characters’ antagonists (but not necessarily friends of the characters) all serve this purpose well.

Rather than doing the players a favor, the DM is offering a deal. Powered by the Apocalypse systems often have such choices built into the rules, where players are invited to pick a setback or harm from a list when they fail. But it’s implicitly an option in any game, where every choice the players make involves some kind of tradeoff, expenditure of resources, or risk of failure and complication.

Next: Fail States and the Two DMs Inside You