“Fudging dice rolls is bad” is now a truism in most online RPG discussion spaces. Along with familiar phrases “don’t railroad” and “talk to your players,” “don’t fudge” has been repeated exhaustively wherever RPG advice is shared. I wrote about this subject previously because I wanted to get my thoughts down on paper, but I don’t harbor any illusion that those posts were particularly novel. This is well-trodden ground.
But pro-fudge people don't give up easily. They look for other ways to bring the fudge back into the game. For example, moving the fudging action from the results on the dice to other parts of the game. I don’t believe this is any better than conventional dice fudging.
Before I proceed, I want to contextualize my criticism. I don’t write a lot of posts criticizing other writers’ views. The reason I’m doing so here is because Mike Shea’s (AKA Sly Flourish) GMing advice is generally sound, particularly for his putative audience of new and mid-level GMs who are still figuring out how to run games. I also think his signature “lazy DM” style has much to recommend it in a hobby larded with excessive, useless session prepping. I have his Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master book and would recommend it for a new 5E DM looking for prep tools. If Mike routinely gave out bad advice, I wouldn’t bother to comment on a post I disagreed with.
I further recommend you read Mike’s article in full before proceeding, so you can make your own evaluation of his argument before you read mine. While I have endeavored to convey his statements accurately, I welcome counterpoints in the comments about anything I missed, misread, or interpreted unfairly.
“Fudge monster hit points whenever it leads to a more fun game”
When and to what degree fudging would be “more fun” than the alternative is not as obvious as it sounds.
Gauging what is more or less “fun” while an RPG session is in motion sounds like it would be easy. But it’s not. It’s like trying to figure out what is wrong with your car while you are speeding down the highway.
Why? I contend that one of the most appealing characteristics of TTRPGs as a form of entertainment – contrasted with what board games and video games and sports and many other pastimes have to offer – is just how hard it is to predict what is going to happen. The incredibly wide range of unexpected (but organic and logical) outcomes from the fiction, which the players never would have seen coming, is a big part of the appeal to the hobby.
When the DM starts tinkering with the fiction to make it “more fun,” they are constricting that range of outcomes. I remember very clearly the first time I realized, as a player, that the DM was doing this. The DM in question (who did a great job overall) confronted our mid-level party with a beholder. The other characters fled, but my character fell behind. I prepared to make a last stand and hold back the beholder for as long as possible, to buy more time for the rest to escape. I obviously hadn’t planned for this outcome, and the idea that this character would suddenly die in this manner was interesting, and interesting in a way that I’ve really only encountered in TTRPGs.
But the DM fudged. To their credit, most or all of the fudging was diegetic – deus ex machina by NPC. I’m sure the DM was trying to make the game “more fun.” But for me personally, the cost of the intervention outweighed its supposed benefits.
“Fudge When it Ends a Battle That's Overstayed It's Welcome”
Most fights should end well before either side hits 0 HP.
It’s wild to watch people twist themselves into knots trying to “solve” a “problem” that was sufficiently addressed 40 years ago in Moldvay Basic. If the DM uses basic D&D morale, or an equivalent system, monsters will flee once the battle has overstayed its welcome.
Mike writes that “It doesn't make sense for [enemies] to just quit and walk away” after the enemy boss is dead or the main goal of the battle has been achieved… when this is exactly what would make the most sense. Excepting constructs or other “unthinking” monsters, most minions would certainly surrender or flee in that circumstance, and the battle would end in a logical and interesting way.
This is not arbitrary or immersion-breaking; quite the contrary. The idea that enemies break and run is a much more realistic depiction of fantastic (medieval or, more generally, pre-modern) combat than the video game slog to zero Mike appears to be envisioning. Most of the casualties in historical battles occurred after one side was routed and fled the battlefield. I’ve often run D&D 5E combat this way, and it works perfectly fine.
Based on other things he’s written, I don’t think Mike is opposed to non-lethal conclusions to combat in general. He may just consider that outside the scope of this particular article. But a diegetic solution like morale solves this problem so much more elegantly than rigging the fight behind the screen, and I'm left wondering why fudging “dials” is even a viable option by comparison. Combats that end when enemy morale breaks should be one of the most common resolutions to combat.
“When You're Beefing Up Bosses” and “When It Makes Sense for the Story”
Fixing monster HP totals should happen during prep, not while running the game.
These two are addressing the same idea – changing HP mid-combat to hotfix D&D 5E’s creaky design.
Hacking the game is hard enough during prep. Trying to do it while running a session is even more difficult. To return to my original analogy, this is like saying to a passenger in your car, “Sorry, I didn’t have time to go to the mechanic this week. I’m just going to lean out the window with this lug wrench and do some tightening!”
For emphasis: It is perfectly fine for the planning DM, during prep, to adjust the HP of monsters they’re considering using. The planning DM can alter the fiction in many ways during prep, and that’s fine until the PCs encounter the fiction in-game. The adjudicating DM has a different responsibility, and should be skeptical of their own instinct to patch the game while it is underway (on top of their many other responsibilities as master of ceremonies and referee).
This use of fudging also raises a further question: “why have hit points at all?” It may sound like I’m being glib, but it’s a serious question. In a Free Kriegsspiel Revolution game, the fight with the lich would simply continue until the game participants agreed it made sense for it to end. Everyone understands that there is no number for the PCs to push to zero, so there’s nothing to fudge.
There are other RPG systems that are otherwise designed to better facilitate the cinematic thrill of fighting the boss – with the dramatic moments arriving at just the right time, and the boss dying right at the climax of the fight. D&D 5E is not that game, and trying to force it into that box just chips away at the game’s verisimilitude and shared investment.
And yes, there is a cost. Players are not dumb. They will figure out what’s happening, and learn that the resolution of combat isn’t based on their skill, or an impartial and genuine engagement with the fiction, but rather the DM uncommunicated and ambiguous sense of fun, and their desire to perform emergency maintenance while going 70 miles per hour.
Next week: The Steelman Argument for Fudge
No comments:
Post a Comment