The Grand Illusion

[jdagna]

This is split from http://indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6779" (How good are you at mental arithmetic?)

Most of the time I fudge stuff anyway, or ignore the dice to get the result that comes out best. The only really good reason for the dice at all is that it lets me do bad stuff to the players without it being my fault.

This what I call the Grand Illusion in RPGs and Jack has perfectly mentioned both features of it.  If there were ever a good argument for going diceless, it's the frequency of this kind of attitude.  Why use dice at all if they're just a smokescreen to begin with?

Part 1: Fudging.
I've done my share of fudging in games, particularly where a system calls for a very lucky or unlucky roll that would be disastrous.  However, some GMs make a career out of fudging, doing it several times even in an average game session.

I'm always tempted to wonder why GMs like that bother to roll if they're not going to respect the role the dice have in the system?  Obviously, I'm showing my Fortune leanings in using the term respect, but I'm not just arguing for Fortune-based systems.  If you, as a GM, want a certain die roll to come out a certain way, why roll at all?  If you're going to use what's essentially a Drama or Karma system, why dress it up as Fortune?

On the other end of the fudging issue comes system design (or system choice for consumers). For example, the critical failure/success model seems to cause a lot of fudging as GMs (and players) often fudge results to avoid catastrophe (be it a lucky critical strike from an NPC or a de-protagonizing roll that makes characters look incompetent).  Some systems seem intentionally designed to increase the potential for widely-varying results.

Ironically, Jack's proposal, with two subtracted dice that can each explode, increases that potential for variation to infinity.  I don't know how his system would interpret the results but unless it caps the maximum effectiveness in some way, it's going to inevitably produce a few unpredictable results that will almost demand fudging.  Nobody wants their 10th-level fighter killed in one hit by a lucky kobold.

Part 2: Dissolution of Responsibility
Dice are also often used by the GM to try and absolve himself of bad things that happen to players.  I think this is nothing short than self-deception.

Sometimes dice really do cause unexpected bad things (as I just discussed), but isn't it also true that most GMs will fudge the results if they really didn't like them?  Thus, the dice can't be blamed.

It goes even further than that.  The GM almost always calls for dice rolls.  He almost always intitiates conflict and danger.  I had a D&D GM once who blamed the dice when a randomly-placed Death Trap killed my character on a failed saving throw.  Was it really the fault of the dice?  The GM chose to put that trap there, and if he places enough traps, statistics guarantees that I'll get killed by one of them eventually.  In reality, the dice were only fault for that particular trap killing me, but the GM's scenario design had ensured that my character would eventually suffer that fate.

Really, what he did was no more or less fair than a GM who sends a ancient red dragon after a first-level party.  Or the GM who simply drops a meteor on their heads.  

Now, in certain modes of either Gamist or Simulationist play, I can see support for this player-killing behavior in a potentially functional manner.  It's curious that in both cases, the group's assumptions fairly place the blame at the GM's feet, not the dice.  In certain Gamist modes, it is assumed that the GM will try to kill characters, and in some Simulationist modes, the "realism" (as defined by the setting) of trap placement (or whatever) demands that the GM use those elements in order to stay consistent.

Conclusion:
Frankly, I don't have any firm conclusion to this issue, just a lot of little ideas.  I think the ultimate answer probably depends a lot on GNS mode and social contract issues, so there may not be a single answer except to go diceless.  As a fan of Fortune, I don't see any reason to go that far.  Dice (or other Fortune systems) really aren't the problem.  A GM could easiliy fudge in a Karma system if he wanted to.

In fact, it seems to me that the "Grand Illusion" is a result of gamers who would really prefer Karma or Drama systems to begin with, but feel like they have to roll dice "because that's how it's done" or because they haven't found games/groups using other mechanics.  Is that a fair assessment?

More importantly, is there any good way to address these issues in game design, by making Fortune systems that lessen the need to fudge dice rolls or stops the dissolution of responsibility?  I certainly don't think abandoning fortune systems is the answer.  For every dysfunctional use of a fortune system, you can easily find a functional one.[/url]

[Wormwood]

Justin,

I've heard many people argue about why GMs fudge rolls, much of it centers on the suggestion that if the GM was going to fudge the roll, then why roll at all. But it's clear to me that the reason for rolling is not just the appearance of fortune. Using fortune resolution allows the outcome to be indeterminate, so often the GM will avoid considering the outcomes in any deep way, at least until one of them appears. This is a form of mental savings, GMs don't need to worry about rolls that haven't happened. In a karma or a drama system, the GM needs to decide if it is best for the action to succeed or fail, this requires comparing two avenues, sometimes when there's fairly little difference between them. By using fortune that can be adjusted, the GM can easily worry only about "wrong" results.

To put it bluntly, while the GM did override the roll, did the GM know what the outcome would be before hand? If not, then it is clearly not a drama or karma situation.

On your other concerns about displacing responsibility, I'm sure that this phenomena happens, but it seems to me to be a dysfunctional sort of position. It's a larger element to saying "it's just the rules of the game, not me." I hear people using this sort of justification all the time, "My character hates wizards, that's all, nothing personal." or "I'm sorry your character died, but we're stressing the theme of the brutality of war." In this sort of respect it's not always easy to separate the good reasons from the bad ones. Often the problem comes when dysfunctional social elements enter into the game, and then get retroactively justified as something that is not dysfunctional. Sure it's more obvious with a fortune mechanic, but that doesn't mean that's the only place it appears.

Well, I hope that's food for thought,

   -Mendel S.

[talysman]

I think one reason why there's a debate about "why use dice at all if the GM is going to fudge?" (or similar debates about other Fortune methods combined with fudging) is: Fortune methods can be used in different ways.

the most common reason for Fortune methods in rpg texts is to arbitrate fairly between two opponents, usually the GM and a player. however, just because this method is so common doesn't mean all games -- even all indvidiually-modified versions of one specific game -- are using Fortune for arbitration.

other times, Fortune is used to generate details.  some examples go as far back as original D&D or Arduin Grimoire in the form of  random tables; even GURPS, where the dice in theory represent physics, has some dice techniques that generate details rather than success/failure. and even combat rolls can sometimes be interpretted as injecting surprises and details into some combats. a GM might ignore criticals and "cheat downwards" on damage rolls in order to reduce the deadliness of an encounter, while still accepting some rolls as valid.

some people are going to object to "fudging" as cheating, while the accused GMs will merely be offended, since in their minds they aren't doing anything worse than throwing out illogical results on a potion miscibility table roll.

[Jack Aidley]

Justin, firstly a clarifications of my position. The only time I ever fudge a dice roll is to stop a PC dying - in four years of GMing long campaigns I have NEVER killed a PC. What I meant was that I generally either don't roll, or loosely interpret the roll (for example, I might get all the players to roll 'spot' and the highest roll sees it, rather than assigning a difficulty factor and making them roll against it), in fact I rarely properly assign a difficulty factor instead adopting a more 'interpretive' position.

Secondly in my system, the dice can only 'explode' once, so it can't go to infinity and it is not normally possible to deal damage in a fight in a single lucky roll. The proverbial Kobold would need a string of lucky rolls to beat the proverbial 10th-level fighter.

You're probably right though, fudging is clearly an example of sytem mismatch, I think I've just got too used to running games in a system that doesn't match what I want. The funny thing is until I came here, it never occured to me that you could write a system that matches the way I play.

I don't think it's self-deception though. If the PCs are in position in which they could reasonably succeed, but they don't through their own mistakes, or through bad rolls then that is not my fault. If on the other hand I drop a red dragon on them, then it's my fault, the same as in your death trap example.

So why roll at all if you're going to fudge it anyway? Because whether I fudge it or not, the dice still represent a good/bad result. I might fudge the damage to be non-fatal, but I wouldn't swap it for the PC criting the monster.

Edit er, realised I have in fact killed some PCs. I did once commit total party wipeout, they tried to take on a whole city, starting at the inside....

[Jeffrey Miller]

Thanks for the post, Justin - this is an interesting topic!

One aspect of your discussion that seems clear to me is that you seem to be approaching this from a perspective that is applying GNS motivations to the GM, specificalyl a Gamist approach where the GM is competing against the players.  Its difficult for me to understand that mindset, as its not my mode of play, but I'll give it a try.

I don't think that sentiment of "why use a fortune system if you're going to fudge rolls" is an appropriate all or nothing situation to set up.  It seems to me that GMs fudge when the system breaks down in terms of representing or reflecting their designs and goals for the game.  In an otherwise perfectly Gamist game session, where such a system of competition is warranted, a stray roll that slaughters the PCs may or may not be appropriate per the social contract (if we can stretch the social contract to cover the groups tacit agreement as to the boundries of Fun, per "what is a game")

If such a roll is thus innappropriate, the system is at fault for not being wholly squared against the needs of the players.  The GM, by fudging, isnt in the example (to my mind) breaking and part of the social contract, but instead patching a "broken" system on the fly.

Now, if you take the case of a GM fudging rolls to protect their pet NPC, well, that's possibly a violation of the SC, depending upon the goup at question, but again, its a matter of the system not having a mechanical way to support the GMs desire to indulge their favorite NPC. :)

-jeffrey-

[W. Don]

I'll have to admit that somehow, the idea that dice fudging might be indication of DFK preference doesn't seem to resonate much with me. Would dice fudging not be more an example of in-game "drift" oriented according to a narrativist mode? That is, a GM may often fudge the dice to keep certain elements of the story in place (such as a key character or NPC). By doing so, he is making an essentially narrativist type of decision and "drifting" the application of the rules accordingly.

This is of course assuming that the GM isn't working from a GM versus PCs standpoint or something similar -- in which case the fudging might really indicate some sort of Social Contract breakdown.

[C. Edwards]

The vast majority of 'fudging' probably occurs in game systems where a 'failed' roll results in a big fat whiff, basically deprotagonizing the PC. The GM, seeing a fairly meaningless and non 'dramatic' event about to occur that could seriously hinder the progress of continued play (such as character death) says "screw that" and 'fudges' the result enough to keep the play session alive.

It's likely that certain systems just promote 'fudging', particularly when paired with participants who are trying to drift that system. I'm thinking specifically about games that have many 'hard' Points of Contact in an attempt to lend some verisimilitude to the imaginary space without much room for 'story based' concerns. In an attempt to produce a 'dramatic' story that is meaningful to the players it's often necessary to 'fudge' the fairly unforgiving results of fortune in a Sim game.

So basically, it's just a vicious circle.

-Chris

[jdagna]

Thanks for the responses guys!

I guess this isn't really as big an issue to most people as it is to me.  I'm a big fan of fortune systems which gives me some loyalty to the concept of keeping the rolls "pure" to some degree.  In my own gaming, I always stop before a roll and ask myself "Is one of the potential outcomes not acceptable to me?"  If I answer yes, then I usually don't require a roll.  

I know this shocked one of my players.  He wanted his character, a skilled technician in installing security systems to install a fairly simply system.  I simply responded "OK, you did it" without asking him to roll.  Why?  Well, for one, it didn't seem needed.  For another, if he messed up, he had time to keep rolling until he got it right, so I figured I'd skip all that and keep the story moving, since I already knew the final outcome.

Anyway, some specific thoughts:
Jack:
I didn't mean to pick on you or your system  - you just happened to put two statements next to each that perfectly encapsulate my whole issue with fudging and dilluting the GM's responsibility.

I can see where you're going with moderating the results, especially in terms of making a bad roll a little less bad, but not good either.  Perhaps there is a system design issue here that I've forgotten about.  Most of the rolls in my own system (and my other favorites) leave the GM lots of room to interpret what "failure" means so that all I'm rolling for is to see whether results are favorable or not; the extent is explicitly left to me.

It makes me think that a well-designed system can eliminate (or reduce) the amount of fudging necessary.  What does everyone think about that proposition?  Any ideas on how it might be done?

Wormwood:
That's a good point (that Fortune allows the GM to consider only a subset of outcomes by letting the roll eliminate some).  I guess this is especially the case in systems that generate a range of outcomes (such as through multiple successes) instead of those with simpler pass/fail conditions.

The issue of displacing responsibility has happened a lot to me and I've heard plenty of horror stories about it.  And, yes, I agree that it's dysfunctional in almost all cases. (the ones I mentioned as being functional correctly point the "blame" in the right direction).  I just don't see the issue coming up in non-Fortune systems.  The players seem to pick up on the behavior and either demand change or pack up and leave.  That's only anecdotal evidence, but I haven't seen many examples where people tolerated a dysfunctional case where a GM abused a drama system to smack the players around.

Jeffrey:
I don't feel like I'm coming from a Gamist standpoint on this.  In fact, I feel mostly like I'm talking about Narrativist GMs who fudge rolls to enhance the story.  If they want to enhance the story, I'm all for it - but why bother rolling when they know only one outcome is appropriate to the story?  I guess it's a bit like why I get bored in the grand finale of many movies.  If I know the only thematically acceptable outcome has the hero winning, then the fight at the end is irrelevant.  There's no suspense.  

Likewise, if I'm a player and I know that the GM will tweak dice rolls to keep me alive and ensure a cool ending, I can yawn, roll the dice a little and go to sleep until he describes the cool ending.  I know that there's no risk (stifling any Gamist modes), that the outcome will be an accurate representation of the game world (stifling my more-dominant Sim modes).  Even in a Narrativist mode, I can see this being a problem.  I've heard more than one player say they wanted their character to die in a blaze of glory and some GM kept fudging rolls to keep him alive regardless.

Is there such a thing as positive de-protagonization?  Minimizing the player's importance by assuring him success no matter what?

Chris and WDFlores
I think I agree that fudging is often a result of drift in a system not designed for Narrativist play (probably more so than merely a DFK preference or conflict).  I still find myself often making the mistake of assuming that Narrativist systems use DK methods more often than F (simply because that represents the intial exposures I had).

Still, it seems to me that a GM drifting a non-Narrativist system is employing a Drama method to do it, since that's what fudging a roll appears to boil down to.  If he knows how he wants the story to progress why not be "honest" (and again I'm showing my innate Fortune preference in that word choice) and just not roll?

[M. J. Young]

It makes me think that a well-designed system can eliminate (or reduce) the amount of fudging necessary.  What does everyone think about that proposition?  Any ideas on how it might be done?

Yes. In Multiverser, we call it Relative Failure.

Just the other day, in our forum game, a player was having a really poor streak of dice luck with her psionic skills. She's new to psionic skills, and although she's learned quite a few she's not really very good at them, having about a 40% chance of success on most, less on learning new ones. She'd rolled a batch of high numbers with no successes--one of those strings of bad luck that players have at times in dice systems.

Then she said she wanted to try to use a particular skill to do X; X was something she'd never done before, and whether it was something you could do with that skill was really an open question. I rolled the dice (in the forum game, I do all the rolling). The roll was in the low fifties, a failure, but not a terrible one. Applying relative success, I told her that the skill itself worked, but she was unable to do with it what she hoped.

That kind of thing is used quite a bit in the game; failing a running skill check doesn't mean you didn't run, but only that you didn't run as fast as you normally could. You might still have run fast enough.

But I'd like to propose that dice are sometimes used in an entirely non-fortune way, and that fudging may be symptomatic of this.

At the risk of sounding like, and then I wrote, I did a piece quite a while back, http://www.gamingoutpost.com/content/index.cfm?action=article&articleid=565&login=">Game Ideas Unlimited: Invisible Coins (it's number nine in the weekly series at Gaming Outpost, and number two posts to the http://www.valdron.com/gameidea/">Valdron site later tonight, so you can calculate when it will become available free from that). In it I talk about the practice of flipping a non-existent coin, tossing nothing in the air, catching it, and slapping it on my wrist. I use to do that when I was asked a question to stall for a moment's thought; but E. R. Jones also did it, and he did it for a very different reason: while the imaginary coin was in the air, he started to feel like he wanted it to come down one way or the other; then when he knew which way he wanted the coin to land, he knew what he wanted.

He did the same thing with dice. He would throw dice, or have players throw them, and while the dice were being thrown his heart would tell him what outcome he wanted. Then he would always "interpret" the dice and the situation in such a way that the players had no clue that the roll itself meant nothing.

I don't think the roll should ever mean nothing; but I think a lot of people use dice as a foil to reflect their preferences. If they feel like the dice are wrong, that tells them what they actually do want instead. If they feel the dice are right, it confirms their intentions. If they have no feelings, it means that they don't really care about the outcome and whatever the dice say is fine.

So not all dice systems are really strictly fortune systems. Sometimes they're drama systems with fortune support.

--M. J. Young

[Mike Holmes]

Fudging is used for all sorts of goals.

One can fudge to make things more protagonizing. One can fudge to make things more or less challenging (after one discovers that the encounter wasn't well balanced for example). One can Fudge because the system isn't producing realistic results.

There are a ton of reasons to fudge, and I don't think it's particularly associated with anything other than players trying to make an unsatisfying event more satisfying. Not that this always works, mind you, just that this is the goal.

That said, this does to me indicate a breakdown in the game somewhere. Often it's the rules system no supporting the mode of play wanted. As often it's the GM not using it well.

Can you work to create a game that results in less fudging? I'd say that's exactly the sort of thing that the Forge is trying to achieve with better design methods. And by showing via GNS and similar observations about play that there are different sorts of play to attempt to promote. That is, GNS Incoherency is one sort of way that causes this problem, and attention to fixing it can go a long way in stopping it.

Mike

[Ian Charvill]

Fudging is used for all sorts of goals.
One can fudge to make things more protagonizing. One can fudge to make things more or less challenging (after one discovers that the encounter wasn't well balanced for example). One can Fudge because the system isn't producing realistic results.

What's interesting to me here, is that I find fudging deprotagonizing, and - depending on circumstance - quite patronizing since it assumes I can't take the story (or game outcome) it implies.  Fudging is a minor techniqueof railroading and it's something I can't claim to enjoy.

On the other hand I love systems which enshrine 'fudging' elements - drama dice, action points or whatever.

Ian

[Mike Holmes]

What's interesting to me here, is that I find fudging deprotagonizing, and - depending on circumstance - quite patronizing since it assumes I can't take the story (or game outcome) it implies.  Fudging is a minor techniqueof railroading and it's something I can't claim to enjoy.

On the other hand I love systems which enshrine 'fudging' elements - drama dice, action points or whatever.

Like I said, Ian, these are the goals of Fudging. It's precisely because fudging is an uneven at best method for achieving these goals that I advocate designs where Fudging is never even seen as neccessary.

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

Like I said, Ian, these are the goals of Fudging. It's precisely because fudging is an uneven at best method for achieving these goals that I advocate designs where Fudging is never even seen as neccessary.

I agree that this is a noble goal, but ultimately I think a fruitless one. However well designed a game system is, it will never be able to anticipate every possible situation that might arrise in game play.

I find myself fudging in several different ways.

When I'm running games using a complex game system (perhaps as the result of a compromise descicssion betwen myself and the players) I often find myself fudging the system simply because I occasionaly find the requirement to look up precise rules odious in some situations (the situation isn't very important, I need ot maintain the pace to keep the game fun, etc). In these cases I'm fudging because I'm guesstimating what the rules should be, but I'm still applying what I feel are fair and realistic results based on the actual rolls and character's abilities.

Fudging the actual result, given that you know the game system is being used correctly, is a more difficult issue. I might do it because I feel I was unfair to the players by making the difficulty too hard, or giving them a too harsh modifier. I might also do it because I feel there are circumstances in play that should modify the outcome, but haven't been taken into account by the rules.

What I try not to do is just ignore the game system completely. If the players roll well, they should get good results. If they roll badly, they should suffer some consequences. In the vast majority of situations I simply interpret the results presented by the game system in what I feel is a fair and fun way without any fudging at all. However sometimes I feel that the game mechanics have not done the situation justice and may modify the outcome in some way.

What I do not do is ignore the dice and rule entirely by fiat. If the players roll a critical success, they should get commensurate benefits. If they fumble, they should suffer. I do not feel that this is de-protagonising, jut a process of human moderation of what can otherwise be crude game mechanical results.

As referee I hold a limited veto* over the game mechanics. I think that's right and propper.


Simon Hibbs

*Some game systems give this to the players in a limited form too too, such as Hero Points or Plot Points, I tend to like this feature in a game.

[Jack Spencer Jr]

However well designed a game system is, it will never be able to anticipate every possible situation that might arrise in game play.

I think it's less to do with being able to handle every situation as the system leads to particular situations that are likely in the spirit of the game.