What I see as fundamentally wrong is breaking social contract. So I differentiate between the way most fudge (as Crazy Jerome defines it) and the group of players, after something undesireable has happened (or something undesireable is immanent – I don’t think you absolutely have to wait for the last PC’s hit points to hit -10…), deciding: “Gee, that sucked, let’s say that was a bad dream, or re-play the encounter.”

Or perhaps another working distinction is whether something is an incremental attempt to keep the “story” going the direction the GM wants or whether it is a single change that directly addresses the problem.

Or another way to differentiate it, the typical fudge is the GM attempting to solve the problem at the game fiction level. Solving the problem at the metagame level is different.

The advantage of getting consensus at the metagame level is that it quickly becomes obvious if the players are not on the same page. And that problem can be directly addressed. When the GM, affraid that someone will be upset at a PC death, fudges the outcome, ending up denying the player the satisfaction of having gone down fighting, or the player satisfaction that the world is “fair.”

And bringing this back to the subject of this thread – I think the critical thing is that when a problem happens in the game (someone made a mistake, an encounter turned out badly, whatever), step out of the game fiction to the metagame level, and solve the problem between the players (which may entail discovering that the GM is the only one who perceived a problem). And that really goes for ANYTHING that could be a problem, from a string of bad luck, to the GM misapplying rules, to someone declaring that his PC rapes another, whatever. Also, if the GM models this behavior, then the players will also feel more open to raising issues they have.

Frank

I consider any change that bypasses the resolution mechanics after rolling to be fudge. Whether the players know or not, it’s still fudge in my book.

If the change is made before rolling, then I consider that bypassing the mechanics (or using alternate mechanics): “Hey, why play out the next five rounds of this combat, when it’s clear that the party will win handily? Let’s say everyone took three points of damage and save ourselves 20, 30 minutes.”

I think my definition of fudge may be slightly different from Crazy Jerome’s in that I require it to be something done to change the outcome of a resolution mechanic (usually random) without the explicit knowledge of the other players.

Now to refine that, my feeling now is that it is best to delay changing the outcome until something undesireable actually happens. In otherwords, don’t try and head off a TPK until everyone is actually dead, or at least more PCs are dead than some threshold (this assuming that single PC fatalities are ok, but a TPK somehow isn’t).

The reason fudge, as I’ve definied it, is bad, is that everytime you change outcomes, you are that much closer to the resolution system being irrelevant, which probably renders the player’s decisions irrelevant.

By changing outcomes with the agreement of everyone involved, the impact of rendering decisions irrelevant is reduced or eliminated.

Now deciding whether do have a do-over because someone made an actual error in applying the mechanics, or made a decision based on faulty understanding of the mechanics, is something separate from fudging. There, I think there is some balance between negative and positive impacts of rewinding. Obviously, if you roll damage, and then realize you rolled the wrong die, the impact is pretty low to re-roll the right die. If, at the end of the battle, you realize you should have had 5 more hit points and not gone unconscious on round 2 out of a 10 round battle, and there were no PC fatalities, well, I think most people would agree that rewinding is not worthwhile.

You also have to balance mistakes that are in the player’s favor vs. mistakes that aren’t.

And I guess my thought is that if you use a strict, “you took your hands off the piece” rule, you could accidentally encourage player cheating (hey, if I roll a bigger damage die, or “miscalculate my adds”, and the GM doesn’t notice when I call out the damage, then I’m golden).

Frank

No one ever died while absent from the table, which in retrospect I’m quite glad of. Even with a good, mature group (which this was), that would be a tough one.

That’s closer than the first one, but still a bit off the mark. In particular, that “never” doesn’t belong in there. It was more like this:

I once used fudging liberally to fix all kinds of mistakes, including some that would have been better off fixed some other way. I recognized that fudge was a poor tool for some of the things that I was trying to do. With no expectation that I would abandon fudge completely, I set out to learn some other tools. I did. Along the way, I discovered that GM fudge can be habit forming (can be, not must be) for GM and players alike–and should therefore be watched with narrowed, beady eyes for signs of dependence. (Some people, however, seem completely immune to the effect. I suspect that they are the ones totally mystified by suggestions to reduce or eliminate fudge, since they are suffering little to no ill effects from it.)

The reverse, however, was also true. Once I found a few things that lessoned my need for fudge, I found that it was even easier to eliminate the next little bit of fudge. And here’s the crucial point. Eventually I realized that I could truthfully say that:

“There is now no mistake that I make for which fudge is the optimal solution.”

What I hear you saying is:
“I’ve never made a mistake that I’ve needed to adjust on the fly. Ever.”

What I suspect you mean and I’m not reading right is:
“I’ve never made a mistake for which I NEEDED to fudge dice.”

I think you’re mistaking me for saying that GMs don’t exist that can’t handle problems without fudging dice. I’m SURE that there are problems out there that can be solved without fudging dice and I’m CERTAIN there are GMs out there who have never used die fudging as a fix for a problem. That doesn’t means that the problems don’t exist, just that you didn’t use that tool to fix it.

If you find, for example, on the first encounter of the night, the the scheduled baddies are a bit too tough, you don’t NEED to fudge dice. In fact, it’s probably NOT a good idea to fudge dice. You might instead opt to hurriedly reduce the numbers of opponents in each of the following rooms by a few. That’s a good solution (better than fudging dice all night in fact) that doesn’t involve fudging dice.

If I’m still misunderstanding you or putting words in your mouth, I don’t mean to. Feel free to correct me.

I DO agree that there are problems that can easily and gracefully be corrected with a variety of tools. And I agree that it’s possible for someone to become dependant on ONE tool to the exclusion of others, and that that’s NOT a good thing.

I also don’t feel like it’s a big deal if someone personlly chooses to not use die-fudging as a tool. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to rule it out completely as a tool. After all, it HAS good points (as well as bad) and it HAS problems for which it’s an ideal fix (and ones for which it’s an abominabul fix).

Well, meet your first. I’m not a perfect GM. Yet, somehow I manage to do what your common sense says is impossible. I’ll also tell you that I’ve talked to other GMs with similar accomplishments. Given that statement, there are, logically, three possibilities:

1. I’m mistaken or lying? I think for the sake of politness, we can assume not lying. So if you want to assume I’m mistaken about my game, we’ll have to discuss that.

2. I’m more perfect than I think? Not bloodly likely!

3. Your common sense solution is missing something. (This is my best guess for what is happening here.)

“Again, fudging die rolls isn’t the ONLY tool, nor is it perfect or appropriate in all circumstances, but it DOES have two things stongly in it’s favor that make it an excellent tool…”

“…No. But you don’t insist that craftsmen hammer nails in with wrenches.”

And in regards to the tool that it is, one really big thing against it: It does tend to get used as a pipe wrench, nail gun, power saw, level, wheelbarrow, etc., because it tends to become the tool of choice. Or in other words, it’s not an excellent tool at all. It’s a very general tool that can be used in a pinch when another, more specialized tool is not acceptable or accessible.

A craftsman would rather drive nails with a hammer and turn nuts with a wrench. In a pinch, you can drive nails pretty well with a wrench–especially if it saves you another trip up and down the ladder. What you should never try doing is turning nuts with a hammer.

You’ll note above and elsewhere that I’m not insisting that people not use it. At a given point in time, your toolbox is only so big. But from my perspective, the situation is that fudge proponents are often saying that the *only* way to drive a nail and turn a bolt is use a hammer. I do insist that the wrench exists. I do insist that it does a better job of turning bolts. I agree that a hammer is better for driving nails. I think that if a GM is so attached to his hammer that he denies testimony that the wrench will work, he might consider using the wrench a bit excessively in the way of practice. If that leads to driving a few nails with a wrench…well, it won’t be as messy as turning bolts with a hammer.

I’m for GM’s making informed judgements. If you use nothing but fudge when something else *could* work, then you aren’t making an informed judgement. If you deny the existence of the other tools, then you are spreading your uniformed judgement to other people.

I went a little too far on another board and said that fudge was a crutch. As you can imagine, that led to a bit of a flamewar. Fudge is not a crutch. It is, however, something that GM’s sometimes use for a crutch. If you insist that something is required for all (non-perfect people), when other people say it’s optional–it *might* be a crutch for you. It’s just possible that generalizing from your own experience has led you astray about the nature of the wider reality.

Common sense suggests that this is true and emperical evidence in every campaign I’ve ever run or participated in has supported that. I suppose it’s in theory possible that out there is a GM so perfect in their design and execution that nothing ever needs to be adjusted on the fly, but I’ve never met them.

It is true, that this does NOT logically imply neccesity of any singluar specific tool, but rather is an arguement for NOT REMOVING any tool that may be helpful from the GM’s arsonal of available actions/modifications they may make use of to adjust the parameters of the game to where it was intended during design.

Again, fudging die rolls isn’t the ONLY tool, nor is it perfect or appropriate in all circumstances, but it DOES have two things stongly in it’s favor that make it an excellent tool.
1) It’s subtle
2) It can effect anything that has been left to chance.
Does that make it necesary? No. But you don’t insist that craftsmen hammer nails in with wrenches. Give the GM the right tool for the right job.

By saying “I don’t trust you with this tool” you’re essentially saying “I don’t trust your judgement of when to propperly apply this tool” and that points to deeper issues than whether or not fudging dice is acceptable.

Upon what are you basing this analysis upon, Anecdotes? What does prep-heavy have to do with it? Since when is “zero margin of error” and saying that a GM must have a very specific tool to deal with said errors, logically related?

If one group of people say that something isn’t possible, and another group says it is based on their own experience–then it’s incumbent on the naysayers to explain their analysis. (Or I guess you could say that the second group is incapable of giving an accurate report of what actually happens in their own games.) Those of us in the second group are not perfect, masterful GMs. Yet we somehow manage to do something that the first group insists is impossible. I’m to the point where I’d really like some evidence from the first group, instead of assertions.

1) It’s not the unique province of the DM.
2) It’s silly to assume the ability to alter the dice or DCs on a whim give the DM any more power than the ability to add more monsters, more traps, blue bolts of lighting from the heavens, or whathaveyou.
3) Given the unlimited nature of the power of the GM, entering a game under someone is a tacit acceptance of their soverenty. If you didn’t accept that, you wouldn’t play.

Granted, the ability to fudge dice gives the DM a more immediate and subtle power than most others, but it’s still relatively minor compared to the ability to “Oops! a great old dragon just wandered around the corner because it heard the sound of you critting my big bad guy!”.

Also, to say that fudging is solely the realm of the DM is nieve. I can’t tell you the number of stories that have been related to me over the years of players fudging. We just call it cheating when they do it. In addition, as someone who plays with people who are far from good at simple math, there are also several times a session where players unintentionally “fudge” and then next round they say “oops! I just realized I added that last action wrong. Wanna go back?” The only solice being that they fudge randomly and in random favor.

And of course, unless your social contract says otherwise, your DM is in charge of seeing to it that the adventures your characters undertake are fair and fun for all. It’s foolish to assume that any but the most masterful (or prep-heavy) DMs have zero margin of error during adventure design. I know that I make mistakes fairly regularly. Asking them to be responsible for the fairness and fun of the game but denying them tools to sdjust on the fly is hardly fair to them.

That said, the game policy has always been “no retroactive gaming”, no re-do’s, unless…

A) Something was overlooked (a life saving ability or magic item for example) but caught almost immediately.

or B) A huge failure of logic is discovered, but again almost immediately.

In general, once something has happened and we are on to the next round or action, whatever it was is History now. Like it or not. Sort of like taking your hand off the chess piece. Once you let go, that’s your move, for good or ill.

Spectacularly stupid deaths or injuries? Well those are what makes the game humourous! Laugh ‘em off and roll up a new character! (Or hope your comrades chip in for a raise!)