Go to Part 1

No.

Bad GM.

No cookie.

Okay, we’ve been talking about things GM’s shouldn’t do for awhile now. So let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Fudging.

The most common form of fudging, and that from which the technique takes its name, is changing the outcome of a die roll: You fudge the result. If the die roll is done in secret, then you can just ignore it. If it’s done in the open, then you can invert the result by tweaking the modifiers involved. More advanced fudging methods can include stuff like adding extra hit points to a monster’s total in order to keep them alive.

But, regardless of the specifics, fudging is when a mechanical resolution tells you one thing and the GM chooses to ignore the rules and declare a different outcome.

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR FUDGING

Okay, let’s talk about the reasons GMs do this. All of these, of course, ultimately boil down to the GM not liking something that the resolution mechanics are telling them. The question is why the GM is unhappy with it.

#1 – Railroading. This one is pretty straightforward: Railroading happens when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome. Enforcing failure (so that the PC can’t do what the player wants) is a really common way of railroading the game, and fudging is a really easy way to enforce failure.

See The Railroading Manifesto for a lengthy discussion of this topic and all the reasons why railroading is terrible and you should never do it.

#2 – To prevent a player character’s death. Or, in some cases, GMs will only fudge if it’s to prevent a total party kill — the death of ALL player characters. TPKs tend to kill campaigns (at least those not built around open tables), and lots of people would prefer to fudge the outcome of a fight (particularly if they feel that it’s just due to “bad luck” or whatever).

See The TPK Gamble for a specific discussion of this.

#3 – To make the story “better.” The most infamous version of this is, “But they can’t kill the Big Bad Guy now! He’s supposed to survive to Act III!”

I say infamous for good reason here: Players hate this shit with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns. And you basically can’t throw a stone in RPG circles without hitting someone who has a story about the time their GM pissed them off by doing it. Check out The Principles of RPG Villainy for a better alternative.

#4 – To correct a mistake you’ve made. Maybe you’ve been screwing up a mechanic for the whole fight and it’s made things much harder for the PCs than it should have been. Or you accidentally doubled the number of guards when the fight started. Or, going even further back, maybe you just screwed up the encounter design and something that should have been easy for the PCs is actually incredibly difficult. So you fudge something to bring it back in line with what it was supposed to be or should have been.

This is actually pretty understandable, and I discuss the difference between openly retconning a mistake and silently retconning a mistake in Whoops, Forgot the Wolf. But you can easily find yourself slipping from “fixing a screw-up” to “enforcing a preconceived outcome” here and end up back in railroading. So use caution.

DON’T FUDGE

In the end, all fudging is the GM overriding a mechanical outcome and creating a different outcome which they believe to be preferable (for whatever reason).

Over the thirty years I’ve been doing this, however, I’ve learned that many of the most memorable experiences at the table are the result of the dice taking you places that you never could have anticipated going. Fudging kills those experiences.

But what if the mechanical outcome really is terrible and would make both you and your players miserable?

If you and/or your players truly can’t live with the outcome of a dice roll, then you made a mistake by rolling the dice in the first place. You need to focus on fixing that problem.

This applies beyond individual dice rolls, too. If you don’t want the PCs to die, for example, why are you framing scenes in which death is what’s at stake? (This is a rhetorical question: GMs do this because D&D teaches them to (a) frame lots of combat scenes and (b) make the default stakes of any combat scene death.)

The Art of Pacing talks about the scene’s agenda being the question which the scene is designed to answer. (For example, “Can Donna convince Danny to go into rehab?”) If the question is, “Will the PCs die?” and the answer is always, “Absolutely not.” then the scene is drained of meaning and becomes a boring exercise.

This is why, when the players figure out that the GM is fudging (and they will), it deflates tension and robs them of a legitimate sense of accomplishment. What was once meaningful is suddenly revealed to be meaningless. And this is the biggest problem with fudging: It may fix an immediate problem, but it will inflict permanent damage on everything.

In a very real sense, fudging is a betrayal of trust. And once you, as the GM, lose the players’ trust, it becomes virtually impossible to regain it. Fudging ends up tainting everything you do: It removes the real magic of an RPG campaign and turns it into a cheap magic trick. Once the players spot the trick (and, again, they will), the magic vanishes entirely and you’re left with a hollow experience.

Regaining their trust and making them believe in the magic again is really difficult.

TRIAGE AT THE TABLE

Here’s my controversial rule of thumb:

The more you fudge, the shittier you are as a GM – either because you are fudging or because you need to.

If you’re not just fudging to be an asshole and screw over your players, then you’re ultimately fudging in order to fix something that has gone wrong:

• You adjudicated the resolution poorly.
• You designed the scenario badly.
• You screwed something up and need to correct it.
• You’re using a set of rules which creates results you and/or your players aren’t happy with.

And so forth.

This is not to say that you should never fudge. Mistakes happen and we don’t need to live with those mistakes in the pursuit of some unrealistic ideal. But every time you do fudge, you should view that as a failure and try to figure out how you can fix the underlying problem instead of just continuing to suck in perpetuity:

• Don’t roll the dice if you can’t live with the outcome. (And, ideally, learn how to still create meaningful stakes instead of just skipping the resolution entirely.)
• Figure out how to design robust scenarios that don’t break while you’re running them.
• Create house rules to permanently fix mechanics that are creating undesired results. Or, if the system is completely out of line with what you and your players want, swap to a different system.

And so forth.

Next time you find yourself in a position during the game where you feel it’s necessary to fudge, I want you to do a couple of things.

First, ask yourself: Is it truly necessary to fudge in this moment? Is it necessary to reject the improvisation prompt of the mechanical resolution’s outcome, or can you find a way to work with that outcome to create something interesting and enjoyable? At the stage in the resolution process where you’re narrating outcome, you usually still have a lot of power as the GM. An easy example of this is failing forward: Instead of the PC failing in what they wanted to do, they succeed with a negative twist or consequence.

But also, to a certain extent, just take a moment to second guess yourself: The outcome which you initially think cannot possibly happen, often can happen. It’s just not what you expected or would have done of your own volition. Try to push back that initial moment of rejection and really, truly think about what the outcome would be and whether there’s interesting and cool stuff that lies beyond that outcome.

Second, ask yourself: Can I just be open and honest with my players in this moment? Instead of secretly fudging the outcome, could you just explain to the players that, for example, you screwed up the encounter and things need to be retconned a bit?

And maybe you can’t! There are circumstances where you’re better off plastering over the cracks of your mistake with a cheap magic trick instead of damaging the players’ immediate immersion and engagement with the game world. It’s not ideal, but sometimes that’s the best you can do for right now. You’ll just have to learn from your mistakes and do better next time.

CODA

If you’re still a proponent of fudging, let me ask you a final question: Would you be okay with your players fudging their die rolls and stats and hit point totals?

If not, why not?

If you truly believe that fudging is necessary in order for you to preserve the enjoyment of the entire table, why do you feel you know better than the other people at the table what they would enjoy?

Think about it.

The Fudging Corollary: Not All Dice Rolls Are Mechanics

Go to Part 10: Idea Rolls

SESSION 20F: THE GHOST APPEARS

April 27th, 2008
The 9th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Heading back out into the hallway they went to the last door on the second level. This was another iron door and it led into one of the small towers that flanked the front gate. A ladder bolted to the wall led up to the next level of the tower.

Tee and Tor climbed up the ladder. Tor headed through another iron door, this one leading to the gatehouse immediately above the entrance to the house: They could see where a large stone block had been levered out of the floor and pushed to one side, revealing the murder hole the ratlings had attacked them through.  A narrow wooden table off to one side held the decrepit remains of four crossbows and three quivers of rotten quarrels, all covered with cobwebs and dust. An iron pot filled to the brim with rusty caltrops was shoved into a far corner. There was a matching door directly opposite.

Tor proceeded cautiously into the gatehouse. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps, however, before the door suddenly slammed shut behind him. Tee jumped for it and easily got it open again. She turned and called over her shoulder, “Get up here! Something’s happening!”

The trapdoor slammed shut.

“Tee?” Elestra called. “What’s happening?”

Tee whirled back towards Tor… just in time to see the ghost materialize between them.

The spirit wore the robes of an Imperial priest, but its face was contorted with fury. “Leave this place! The curse will claim your souls!”

Tee hesitated for a moment and then leapt for the trap door, yanking it open. “Agnarr! The ghost is right here!”

Tor, meanwhile, had drawn his sword and – with a single quick swing – sliced it through the ghost’s ethereal form. Although the blade crackled and its electrical arcs flashed as it passed through the ghost, the apparition appeared unphased.

Agnarr began clambering up the tower ladder. Dominic, thinking quickly, ran back around the hall to a window looking out over the courtyard. Through this he was able to look up through one of the inner arrow slits of the gatehouse and see the ghost moving menacingly towards Tor.

Dominic raised his holy symbol and called out a prayer to Athor. But whether it was the distance, the thick stone walls, or the sheer tenacity of the spirit the prayer had no effect. Frowning, Dominic ran back around towards the ladder.

Tor swung his sword again… again to little effect. But at the blow the ghost’s face was transformed into a black maw of rage “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”

Every object in the gatehouse began to shake violently, and then handfuls of the sharp, rusty caltrops came flying out of their cauldron – pelting Tor viciously.

Agnarr leapt out of the trapdoor and drew his sword, bounding towards the door leading to the gatehouse. “FOR THE GLORY!”

The spirit whirled: “LEAVE THIS PLACE.”

Agnarr grunted and swung his flaming sword. It ripped through the ghost, and Agnarr could feel it catching and tearing.

The ghost moaned in pain and rushed away from Agnarr… passing straight into Tor’s body.

Tor jerked spasmodically, and then a clearly alien intellect took possession of his limbs and spoke through his lips: “Leave this place or your friend will die.”

Agnarr paused. “I’ll only give you once chance: Get out of his body.”

“LEAVE THIS PLACE!”

Agnarr attacked. The spirit clumsily raised Tor’s sword and parried the attack. Agnarr moved to attack again, but the ruined crossbows were swept off their table and hurled at Agnarr by invisible hands.

Agnarr stumbled under the assault, and barely got his sword back into a defensive position as “Tor” attacked him. Agnarr parried several more attacks, trying to figure out some way of getting rid of the ghost without harming Tor. But there didn’t seem to be any way around it.

“I’m sorry, Tor! Dominic will heal you later!” Agnarr got ready to swing away with all his strength, which would surely sweep aside the ghost’s clumsy defense—

When Dominic, having ascended the ladder behind him, raised his holy symbol and with a shouted prayer focused his faith upon Tor’s body. The ghost was blasted back, forcibly ripped from Tor’s soul, and then faded into wispy nothingness…

“Is it gone?” Tee asked.

Dominic gasped. “I think so.” (more…)

One of the things for which Numenera (and the Cypher system as a whole) is rightfully lauded is how easy it is for the GM to prep material for the game. The cornerstone for this is creating stats for NPCs: You can literally just say, “He’s level 3.” And that’s it. You’re done. By assigning that single number, you know everything you need to know in order to run the NPC.

(In this, Numenera is actually quite similar to older editions of D&D, where assigning a Hit Die to a monster was basically 95% of what you needed to do. But Numenera streamlines the process even further.)

This is nice for pre-game prep, but where it really empowers the GM is during play: If the PCs go somewhere unexpected, it’s trivial to keep up with them. If you have a cool idea for a creature, you don’t need to table it until you have time to stat it up. The creative act of adding a character to the game world is closely wedded to the act of realizing that idea mechanically.

Experienced GMs will, as they get comfortable with a system, figure out how to improvise stat blocks no matter how complicated they are: They’ll know the key stats they need to decide up front, and they’ll learn the various options well enough that they can sort of lay them in on-the-fly. For example, when I’m running D&D 3rd Edition I’ll jot down the skill point total for an improvised NPC and basically “spend” them when it feels appropriate for the NPC to have a particular skill. You can do something similar with spellcasters and their spell lists. What you can see here is that Numenera basically gives even brand new GMs the same ability that experienced GMs need to spend time mastering in more complicated systems.

So why would anyone choose a more complicated system? Why wouldn’t every game go with a simple “pick one number and you’re done” approach?

Because complexity can be leveraged to make the game cooler. It’s basically the same reason that every board game isn’t “roll 2d6 and race each other around a board with blank space.” Simulationists appreciate being able to make more detailed or consistent mechanical models. Gamists appreciate the variety of tactical challenges varied stat blocks can create. And so forth.

FRACTAL NPCs

Okay, so Numenera trades the advantages of complexity for the advantages of simplicity.

Well… not quite. Because this is where Numenera does something very clever, in a way that is often overlooked as people focus on its really fantastic “easy prep” features: When you’re statting up an NPC, you don’t have to stop after saying, “Level 3.” You can keep adding layers of mechanical detail. You could give a Numenera NPC as much detail as a D&D 4th Edition stat block — replete with differentiated skills and a grab bag of special abilities — and the system lets you seamlessly do that. (And, importantly, provides just enough mechanical structure so that these additional details are mechanically relevant.)

The way this works is that “level 3” remains the baseline for the NPC, and everything else is an exception to that baseline.

You can get a good sense of the different ways you can push (or choose not to push) the system by looking at the creature stat blocks in the core rulebook or the Ninth World Bestiary. But you can actually push it even further than that: You see value in having an NPC with a different rating in thirty different skills? You can do that. And just because you do it with one NPC, it doesn’t mean you need to do it with the next NPC.

I’ve come to think of this as the Numenera stat block being “fractal” in nature: The closer you look at it, the more detail you can see. And what’s interesting is that it can also be selectively fractal; you can look for more detail in one aspect of an NPC, while allowing other aspects of the NPC to simply default to a broader and simpler structure.

You may notice that this also neatly formalizes what the experienced GM described above is doing an informal fashion: Starting with a broad definition of what the character is capable of and then selectively adding detail (specific skills, specific powers, etc.) as desired and/or needed.

Agnarr beamed: “A dog!” He caught it deftly in his hand.

The dog continued struggling, trying ineffectually to claw and bite at Agnarr. It also continued its shrill barking: Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!

Tee grimaced. “Agnarr…”

Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!

“It’s a dog! Not a real dog… but a dog!”

Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!

Tee grabbed the dog from Agnarr’s hand and smashed it to smithereens on the floor. Agnarr’s face fell…. but at least the incessant yipping stopped.

Arguably the most powerful and memorable moments you will experience at a gaming table are those in which a PC faces a crucible of character: Where the outcome of a particular moment will not only change the direction of future events, but will in a very meaningful way rewrite who the character is on a fundamental level.

Often these moments will blindside you: You won’t even realize the significance of what’s happening until you’re abruptly in the moment and the dial has suddenly cranked up to 11.

And in some cases you may be sitting at the same table — or even running the game — and not realize that a character crucible is happening right next to you until long after the fact. This is because, during a roleplaying session, everyone has a unique and privileged view of the game: As a GM, I am gifted with near-omniscience and can see all that is happening from a vast perspective. But each player is given the exclusive ability to experience what’s happening inside the head of their character.

Take, for example, this yipping dog.

At this point in the campaign, it had become a running gag that Agnarr (a) wanting a dog and (b) could not find a goddamn dog. Speaking of the unique path of actual play, this running gag was not planned: It emerged organically because every time Agnarr would go looking for a stray dog in Ptolus he could completely flub his Animal Handling check. (Hence the quote at the end of Session 20A: “It’s like there are no damn dogs in this entire city!”)

That brings us to Pythoness House, where the PCs find a porcelain dog that was put there by Monte Cook:

Six of these statuettes remain intact. Due to the power of the spirits inhabiting this place, they leap off and attack 1 round after anyone enters the room. Each figurine is a Tiny animated object. Most are statuettes of people, although one is a dog and one is a winged angel. The angel figurine flies rather than walks.

The yipping was my idea, and it was probably crucial to this moment happening because it was really annoying and almost certainly prompted Tee to take the unilateral action of smashing the dog.

AGNARR’S TWO PATHS

At this point in his life, Agnarr was deeply discontented: He’d lost his village. He’d lost a chunk of his life (and, with it, seemingly any chance of recovering his village). He found the crowded, confusing streets of Ptolus disconcerting and frustrating.

When Seth took over the character of Agnarr, he saw the conflict the character was in and he responded by briefly sketching out two potential paths the character might follow as they leveled up: On one path, Agnarr would multiclass into the Tactical Soldier prestige class and specialize in feats and abilities that would make him a natural leader for the team; coordinating the actions of others and enhancing their achievements through his presence.  And on the other path, Agnarr would multiclass into Frenzied Berserker, consumed by his rage to the point where he would even become a hazard to his companions.

In the present moment, however, Agnarr wanted a dog. It was a fairly definitional desire that had been established by Dave, his original player, and Seth had continued that pursuit. What was a running joke to me and the rest of the table (including Seth as a player) was actually really serious for Agnarr as a character: All he wanted was an animal companion; a faithful hound that would remind him of the simple and natural life that had been taken from him. But the confusing, frustrating city denied him even this simple thing.

In this moment, with the yipping porcelain dog, Agnarr felt a legitimate emoment of simple joy: The city had finally given him one thing. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted, but it was still a kind of victory.

And then Tee smashed the dog.

Right in front of his face.

And none of his “friends” cared.

They laughed about it.

And that was it. The choice had been set. Agnarr was turned towards the path of rage and alienation. It wasn’t like a switch had been flipped — he didn’t suddenly Hulk out or anything — but he had been set into motion.

Later there would be another crucible. A moment that would turn Agnarr away from that path and towards another. (You might spot it in the campaign journal when it happens.)

Now, here’s the thing: I didn’t know about any of this. Nobody at the table did except for Seth. In fact, I think it was literally years later that Seth revealed this.

But that doesn’t make the moment any less important. Or special.

In fact, quite the opposite: In the best campaigns, the fact that everyone is experiencing a personal narrative from their unique perspective of their character is what makes the totality of the shared narrative woven together from those threads so incredibly powerful and unlike the experience of any other medium.

If you’d like another example of this sort of “private narrative” being experienced by a single player — one so powerful that it literally moves people to tears — check out Matt Colville’s beautiful summary of the climax of the first season of Critical Role: