Are you fudging rolls? You might have EF-trouble

[Christoffer Lernö]

In my attempt to study how the "Effect First" GMing technique works I post this about how fudging die rolls might be an indicator of running EF in a system which doesn't support it well.

For the first explanation on EF (Effect First) look here. For a barebone system that might make EF easier than usual look in this thread

How is fudging rolls = system working against EF GMing?

EF is about creating the desired effect first. In terms of opposition maybe I want the players to have a medium challenge defeating the badguys. Or maybe the lock should be a low challenge to the them. Or the chasm should be impossible to jump.

However, setting this difficulty level can be very hard in many if not all games, at least until plenty of experience of the system "in play" is acquired. That frequently leads to under- and overestimations of the player's odds.

In an attempt to salvage the desired effect the GM often relies on fudging rolls - especially in combat.

For example, let's say you wanted some monsters the characters would definately defeat, but it would take a little involvement. However suddenly you find the monsters close to killing characters left and right. How can you save the situation and the story? Fudge the rolls.

Whenever "on the spot estimates" (for encounters, rules and other things) fail you have to try to salvage the story. The most straightforward way (but not always possible) is fudging die rolls.

On the other hand, a game facilitating Effect First would not need die fudging. There wouldn't be a challenge or a rule the GM could come up with that didn't do what the GM expected. The GM would be able to decide on a challenge level and it would behave exactly as expected.

As an (not so good, but illustrating the point) example, look at The Evil's skill resolution system.

The GM sets a difficulty for the Challenge Roll:

Sure success - Never rolled, succeeds
Could Fail... - 75% chance of success
50-50 - 50% chance (not surprisingly)
Probably Fails - 25% chance of success
A real longshot - 5% chance of success
No chance - 0% never rolled, fails

There is no question about what the chances of success are, and the GM don't get any result he/she isn't preparing for anyway. In addition the GM in The Evil is given the power to interpret the quality of any outcome, it's not in what the player rolls.

[However these rules can still only be said to not infere with EF rather than to be really facilitating it, and the mechanics of the game is of a type which is only applicable for horror]

[Jack Spencer Jr]

I could extrapolate this concept further to include what we genreally call incoherency.

Take, for example, a group the someone who should know better had been just complaining about. This group seems to think that they want a highly detailed crunchy system, all in the name of "realism" or whatever mantra or term you can get them to rally around that an RPG "should" be. And maybe it's just the GM, but most of the players follow suit fairly easily enough. But, with a system like that, especially if it's a homemade one, there are all kinds of issues, especially in the area of combat lethality. I mean in a realistic system, waving sharpened steel around is going to get someone killed eventually. SO the GM has to fudge dice to keep from killing off the entire party first thing.

It seems to be a conflict in this instance between EF and Desired Means. As in they wish to have the Effect, by by the Means they believe they want.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Take, for example, a group the someone who should know better had been just complaining about.

Ok you lost me there Jack.

It seems to be a conflict in this instance between EF and Desired Means. As in they wish to have the Effect, by by the Means they believe they want.

Ermmm eh hmmm... what instance? Oh, you're thinking about wanting a "medium challenge" and getting something lethal?

No, it's not about that.

What I'm talking about is unpredictability of the system. Maybe the whole "threat thing" got you thinking in the wrong direction.

First up, since we're discussing EF I assume a sim play. Otherwise this whole thing gets kinda meaningless since pure EF play assumes some things that are only guaranteed to be present in sim.

Let's say you would like to achive effect X. The effect might be to scare the players or make them suspicious of an NPC, or feel threatened or feel that they are the protagonists of the story whatever.

If the GM wants to achieve that by introducing an in-game entity, like an NPC, the GM usually translates the desired characteristics of said NPC into game mechanical values.

However, if this translation isn't totally accurate, then when the characters and this NPC interact using the game mechanics, the result might be one contrary to GM expectations. To cover up the inaccurate translation, the GM then is forced to fudge rolls or accept that the intended effect is lost.

Depending on system, GM mastery of rules and GM, the translation will vary in accuracy but as long as we're playing with rules that don't facilitate EF this will be a problem.

My point was simply: EF is not an uncommon method of GMing, and it's not uncommon to have problems with it either. A very common symptom of problems is in fudging die rolls, there are other symptoms as well. In any case these arise because the system isn't adapted to running EF. But then again people are saying that maybe it's not possible to facilitate EF at all.

The fact that there hasn't been much written about it is partly why I bring it up. Unfortunately there might not be much interest in the subject, after all directorial mechanics and such does not have this problem.

However, for me and possibly a few more who think that the EF style of GMing is the absolutely best way to run a sim game, it would be great to have a game that actually takes this approach as it's main mode of play.

[Andrew Martin]

Let's say you would like to achive effect X. The effect might be to scare the players or make them suspicious of an NPC, or feel threatened or feel that they are the protagonists of the story whatever.

If the GM wants to achieve that by introducing an in-game entity, like an NPC, the GM usually translates the desired characteristics of said NPC into game mechanical values.

However, if this translation isn't totally accurate, then when the characters and this NPC interact using the game mechanics, the result might be one contrary to GM expectations. To cover up the inaccurate translation, the GM then is forced to fudge rolls or accept that the intended effect is lost.

Description based systems avoid this problem entirely, as they avoid having game mechanics separate from character description. Instead, the character's description is directly used as game mechanics.

[Mike Holmes]

Huh? All were saying here is that if the GM knows what the odds are then all results are good for the story being told? That's ridiculous. You're saying that most times GMs have to fudge die rolls because they are unaware of the odds? I disagree completely. Fudging occurs because the GM wants one thing to happen, and the dice say otherwise. Period. For example, in the "Could Fail" category of Evil, it may seem deprotagonizing for the character to fail such an easy seeming task. So the GM fudges it. Not because he made a mistake and misjudged the odds. But becasue the roll came up against the odds.

EF would not for me be any more facilitated by a system that's easy to calculate odds than one that was not. Makes no difference to this EF GM at all.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

I maintain the point Mike. If the "dice doesn't agree with the GM's vision" then the amount of power given to the dice by the system or in the GM translation of the entity is to big.

I agree that some games with very open ended rolls can manifest the fudging problem regardless of the accuracy of the effect -> cause translation, but I feel this too is a system weakness.

What the GM is inputing (in EF style play) is an effect. Usually a random range of outcomes is acceptable. However, the range has to be limited.

Let's say there is a fight. The possible acceptable outcomes from the GM's point of view is "characters not hurt", "characters slightly hurt" and "characters moderately hurt"

If the system is such that no matter how carefully you calculate things there is always a good chance of "characters slaughtered" happened, then  this is a EF problem because the mechanic itself prevents effect -> cause translations as the effect is too spread out by the default randomness in the system.

The "could fail" of The Evil is actually as much as a 25% chance of failure. As far as I am concerned a roll should only be used if both the successful and the unsuccessful roll can contribute to the story.
Observe too that The Evil contains a second failsafe: The GM decides the quality of any success (and the amount of failure in any failure) so he/she can easily defuse any problematic situations if a roll was erroneously demanded.
Still, the GM has 100% control over the difficulty rolls in The Evil. If the GM asks for a roll but secretly doesn't wish the character to fail, the GM shouldn't have asked for the roll to begin with. It's as simple as that. Nothing is the system demands that the GM should force the players to roll tests.