Book your D20 2024 Cruise here before the end of Feburary! event.cruises/d20-cruise-a-ttrpg-vacation/#D20-Cruise-Ticket/?affiliates=eccbc87e4b5ce2fe28308fd9f2a7baf3 No I am not giving out the fudge recipe.
In a prewritten adventure, I ran an adult white dragon against 4 level 7 PCs, but I added a house rule. For each of its Legendary Resistances, it got 30 extra hit points, but it lost 30 each time it used an LR. The rule was untested, so I told everyone that if the fight went poorly, I would rewind to the beginning of the fight. One of my players wasn't happy to hear this, but I didn't walk it back. They won the fight. Well, kind of. The dragon was reduced to a fifth of its hit points and therefore was required by the adventure to flee. As part of its effort to flee, it killed that same player with its Wing Attack, and the cleric didn't have a spell slot to revivify with. You see, the house rule was meant to balance out the chance for Legendary Resistances to be ignored, but the dragons save modifiers were so good that the rule really just gave it 90 extra hit points. Combined with the garbage CR calculation that is the adult white dragon, the house rule made the fight too difficult. Since my house rule had caused the player death, I decided to rewind as promised. The player was furious now, as he was OK with his character dying. He made me promise to never rewind like that again or else he'd leave the campaign. I obliged. We ran the dragon without my house rule, so it was easier. Everyone died.
Respect to that other guy. Rewinding gamifies the story, the whole point of TTRPGs is that there are consequences, even for the DM. If you thought the battle was too difficult, then you could’ve made something up: they might’ve noticed the dragon had a collar on with a big, rusty name tag, and a successful history check reminds a player that this dragon belonged to a giant or humanoid gargantua that used to feed his dragon treasure. Allow the players to then go into the dragon’s mouth or cut open its belly, finding a bunch of gold, a cool amulet or weapon that provides a bonus, and conveniently a scroll of revivification for the fallen team member. This is just an example, always find an in-universe way to fix a mistake you might’ve made as a DM, usually in the form of a consolation prize. Do not break the rules of the game to get what you want, rather fit what you want into the game. Rewinding tells the players “if something ever goes too wrong, we fix it by rewinding” which robs the story of plausible consequence, but what I suggested tells them “something went too wrong this time and we need to be careful, but at least we got something out of it”.
@@infinitedm5396Because the enemies might chase. Assume 30 feet of movement on both sides. If the players dash away, the enemies will be able to catch up and make opportunity attacks.
Because players are the hero and heroes dont run away. I dont get ut because in fiction heroes run away all the time but players dont run because they are the heroes.
My guess is that players are simply not used to taking opportunities that actual ttRPGs provide when it comes to solving problems, since nowadays most of them come from computer RPGs. What helped me to liberate my mindset was reading crazy DnD stories about low level parties dropping boats on dragons or players slowly spreading rumors throughout campaign which led to a literal army of dwarves storming big bads hideout without either of them realizing anything (rumors about a giant gem hidden in an area big bad was hiding at), etc.
@@mnmnrt The system doesn't matter. There are amazing games of terrible systems and terrible games of good systems. Ideally, a good system will teach the GM and players how to contribute well to a good atmosphere, but 90% of the time that teaching doesn't happen in the system itself anyways! The community affects how people play TTRPG's way more than the actual rules
I ran an Ancient Greece game and introduced a mechanic called "Hubris." Characters could accumulate hubris any time they defied the gods, and i allowed them to reroll any d20 after they rolled if they took a "Hubris" point. I told the players I could spend their Hubris points to make them reroll (I almost never did), and that they might have other effects. The players loved it! They self managed their Hubris, took efforts to lower their hubris and then for a big set piece there was an effect where whenever they took damage from a certain effect took extra damage from their Hubris. I may use it in every campaign going forward.
I love deficient because subscribes to the same philosophy as I do. I don’t fudge dice and I don’t balance encounters. I also hand out inspiration a lot and at the beginning of the game I hand out a reroll of any dice that can be used once per the game. It allows me to not balance encounters and be satisfied. Perfect example happened a couple sessions ago. The group went to investigate a missing Owlbear from an Owlbear sanctuary. Someone tried to convince the owner to give them meat for the Owlbear. They failed the roll so they used the group’s reroll. An encounter later they were in combat and an Owlbear crit the wizard (who rerolled earlier) and instantly died. The encounter was considered deadly. But, instantly, the player said “I should have not wasted the MVP die on a persuasion check.” This placed his choice and consequence in his hand. He excepted the accepted the death and wrote an interesting new character that tied to the dead character. For the past couple sessions it is all we talked about in a good way.
Balance = Safety. You don't want your player feel safe if they fight a troll, you want them to be afraid or scared, maybe both. But the most important rule of no-balance is that you need to put information available. If the troll is only weak to acid, not fire, and is very greedy, with a preference for silver, then the players can make a trap and turn that deadly encounter into something more manageable, but deadly still.
I do the same. I come up with problems, which i have no solution for. I leave that to the players. I simply present the problem to them, sit back and enjoy the ride.
I tried your recipe for fudged dice, I then brought them to my dnd game and everyone loved them so much they passed out from a food coma. They were so good, they're not even breathing! 10/10 would recommend.
@@DeficientMasterlittle know fact. Cops love DnD! If you're ever short a player or need a rules clarification just call 911 and an officer will be over shortly.
I've never been apart of RUclipsrs journey from the beginning and I feel a tear coming to my eye to witness your first sponsor. I'm so proud of you. But in all seriousness, I've only DMd a few sessions and almost quit, longing to be a player again, till I found your channel. Your content makes DMing seem more entertaining than playing. I'll dye happy when Ginny Di notices you.
DMing for me is perhaps the best method to express all the creative things I enjoy doing. It's overwhelming at first! But when you start looking beyond what the mainstream games are telling you, there's way more material out there to make running these games both easier and more enjoyable.
As long as you aren't TPKing them every other session some player death is actually a good thing. (Don't kill them on purpose) You don't need a lot of them to die, to be honest even 1 death is enough to have the whole party on their toes constantly. They won't forget it lol. Now you don't need to keep killing a PC every few sessions but that one death gets them to treat your game as having teeth and that there are stakes. It makes surviving and accomplishing things more rewarding. In my current campaign I had a player making a series of bad decisions and he ended up dying. I could have saved him, but he actually likes his new character more and my players all understand not to be reckless. They almost never miss a session so I have to assume they are enjoying themselves lol.
@@DavidGrossNYC TPK within moderation, of course. But when it comes to me trying to Deus Ex Machina players for the eighth time when it's THEIR FAULT they're about to be unalived, then I need to let it go.
In Blade of the Iron Throne there's a system called "Drama Points". How EXACTLY they work isn't relavant, but the house rule version my group uses is similar to the system you mention at the end. Basically, they're a get out of jail free card: you spend it to get out of a bad situation or guarantee a good roll. The DM can award them for good role play, much like inspiration, but that's not the main way they're divvied out. You see, the DM can ALSO use Drama Points; they have an unlimited supply, after all. But they can only use them if they convince one of the players to buy one off of them. There's never been a more tense situation for me than when everything's going well and suddenly the DM says, "You want a Drama Point?" to each player in turn.
As someone who has younger siblings and now a kid, the first thing I made sure to not do in games was let them win all the time. It's infantilizing. And yes, surprisingly, it is better for you (and also healthier!) for you and your players to learn how to work through the bad feelings instead of ignoring or running from them. You'll be doing yourselves a favor in both your games and your life if you practice this skill, and a game is the perfect place to practice that.
Yes! I ain't your therapist, so I won't try to fix your personal struggles via the game, but this play pretend is the lowest form of risk to experience negative things & challenges. Yes, your feelings are real, but no, I won't cater to your every whim. It's the struggles that create the drama & story you crave, not the victories. If you're an adult and you can't stomach it, then your age really is just a number. Great thoughts, @TempestuousInquiry
I actually think that when a character dies to some random goblin, it helps sell the overall danger of the world at large. Adventuring is a dangerous profession.
Goblin Slayer. It has a point you know? Also that's why some systems include some kind of Fate Points system (or similar stuff) - rare and precious resource that's almost like an extra life, which helps to create characters that become maimed and keep suffering instead of simply dying. From my experience, players will rarely voluntarily agree to disfigure their precious characters even if that makes sense story-wise, so systems like that do help to make them see how dangerous those "adventures" can really be (Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st and 2d eds were good at that).
Overall I strongly agree, but there are scenarios where I think it makes sense not to let that happen. Though in those cases you should just... not have encounters like that.
@@m0nkEz Then it all depends on what is the point of the game, isn't it? Absolutely nothing wrong with playing as semi-invincible group of heroes but there are weirdos that find even universes like W40k fun to roleplay in. Anything goes, at least as long as every participant is aware if there will be harsh consequences for recklessness or the game will be nothing but fan service and wish fullfillment.
@@tfan2222 That's not objectively true. If some groups enjoy rolling for freakin' everything ("P: I knock on the door" -> nat 20 -> "DM: Your attempt at knocking completely obliterates the door") some may enjoy total random deaths (not everyone treats their characters closer to their heart than their own mothers). Best systems and mechanics are those that support playstyle and goal of your group.
As the player of a dm who frequently fudges dice and makes up immunities on the fly. if you are the kind of dm who fudges dice regularly, it’s very obvious when you are doing it. Your players are not stupid and it lessens their investment when it’s very clear the rolls are whatever you want them to be.
Just the title of the video made me realize that mechanics-wise, anything directly related to players should be visible (no rolls behind DM screen, stating difficulty before the roll, etc.). If I do need random rolls that aren't related to players (random encounters, weather, NPC disposition, names, etc.) I can simply generate a list of random numbers and honestly go through them one by one as needed - players don't hear a dice rolling and your improvization and generator usage may seem almost seamless.
@@NaoyaYami there are some rolls that should be hidden but that is usually for things like being pickpocketed where knowing a result will ruin the actual scene and even then you should have screenshots of the results so your players know their build choices mattered
the important word is "frequently." The GM should not fudge so often that it becomes obvious. The occasional fudge can actually improve the game experience.
@@TwilightxKnight13 I agree but I think there are also just better ways to adjust difficulty than trying to get one over on your players. If you need something to happen, either a.) just don't roll for it or b.) have something intervene (i.e instead of the boss magically making their save or failing an attack roll have an ally jump in front of them or have another npc save them)
@@azurewraith2585 My personal opinion on fudging is only use it if fudging the dice will lead to a result that will improve the experience for your players. Say for example: One of your players came up with an ingenious scheme to poison a bandit leader and said leader must make a constitution save against the poison. Sometimes beating the odds feels better than something just working, or worse, the odds beating you. The problem is if you do it more than once in a blue moon, and it's especially egregious to me if remove any stakes with it.
I’ve seen many videos about this topic published over many years, but it’s been a big focus lately - probably because it’s polarizing and gets clicks, but I have to say that DnD is a million different kinds of games - Colby from d4 isn’t playing the same kind of DnD as Prof. DM - there are kinds of DnD where DM fiat is more welcome than other - i think the polarization comes from attempting to apply different game philosophies with incompatible versions of the game
In my opinion, it's an issue entirely separated from the type of game people enjoy, and stems from game masters thinking they want control, and feeling more comfortable when they can steer and orchestrate the random happenings. It's entirely natural to be tempted by this, but spoiler: getting what we want isn't always what is good for us. Some of my best moments at the table have come from what I was most tempted to fudge away. Every time I thought it would spoil the game but braved it out, it ended up being the highlight of the session. Ask any players if they want the DM to fudge rolls and they will overwhelmingly say no, as it cheapens the experience. (If the answer to that question is yes, why is anyone rolling dice? If you all want the DM to just choose what happens, do that, play make believe, and move on.) Loose control, let random happenings lead to the unexpected, trust your players and the process. As tempting as it is to cheat, the game will be more dramatic when you let it play out unexpectedly.
There’s a false assumption that DMs exclusively fudge to support a preorchestrated narrative - that’s a strawman - I point you to Seth Skorkowsky’s videos on the topic and how his players actually asked him to return to rolling behind a screen - it comes back to different kinds of games - you want to waste time knocking off the last 3 HP of 5 different minions? Be my guest - that’s a different kind of game than I have time to play
@@TwinSteel Why do you think rolling behind a screen prevents the DM managing the pacing of a game? This is the actual straw man argument!! In my games, if the battle has run it's course, if the players have clearly won, and attention around the table is starting to fade - we end the battle there. No lies, no pretending, no moving goal posts. "Your foes are weakened and broken, you easily fell the final combatants without difficulty. Please describe your final moments of battle and what your character does next in the aftermath." I don't have to fudge dice, I just follow the same principle as every other aspect of the game. We play out the things that are fun, and we narrate the things that aren't.
@@ercle88 You don't know what a strawman is, and you're just another guy on the internet who thinks they know the RIGHT way to play games and how everyone else is just having fun wrong. How charming.
@@ZeroKitsune A strawman argument is an imaginary or weak argument put forward for the sole purpose of being easily disputed. Twinsteel accused me of making one, but used one themselves. Saying games that don't use fudging are boring because they must waste a long time knocking the last few HP off minions is an imaginary argument. A strawman. You don't have to fudge dice to call the end of a battle when it is clearly won. However, saying fudging is used to support the DMs preorchestrated narrative is indisputable. The dice are used to randomly determine the outcome of events that are uncertain. The DM has an idea of how they think the story to go. When fudging, a DM forces the outcome of the game in their desired direction. They shun random outcomes and instead impose their will, believing it to be preferable. It isn't a strawman argument - it's a major use case. In my experience, people use fudging to cover aspects of DM'ing that are better handled with other tools from the tool box. For example, instead of fudging dice to kill the last minions, just use pacing and declare the battle won. To run a game is a skill. Infact, a whole skill set. Fudging is an easy solution, but a blunt tool. Using it prevents the need to learn more balanced and nuanced tools, that improve us as DMs. Who is the better DM, the one who fudges to make their games more fun, or the one who doesn't need to fudge to make their games more fun? This video is about how to improve our games to have more fun at our tables. Deriding anyone who engages in discussions about how to learn and improve within a hobby it truly pointless. Instead of engaging in the topic and trying to improve your games, you are insulting the character of people who express a different opinion to yours. How charming does that make you?
@@MarcioLiaoHow do you suppose your players would feel if they found out? Knowing that doing this thing would make them feel that way, why would you still do it?
@@burgernthemomrailerrules of fudging - exhaust all other possibilities - only fudge to fix YOUR mistakes that can’t be fixed any other way - never fudge against the party - never fudge to save someone who SHOULD have died through nobody fault but the fate of the dice.
@@davidburns9766 I don't fudge dice, there is only one situation where I would consider it though. I run tough encounters, if I happen to unintentionally go WAY overboard somehow (I haven't yet, I put a lot of work into making sure the encounter isn't overwhelmingly deadly) I would maybe do it because it was MY mistake. But if something is tough and they get a devastating nat 20 that's going to happen, that one was up to the dice. I don't want my players to pay for me prepping poorly or something, but if they willingly go after an ancient dragon at level 1 that's not my fault lol.
You should not be killing your "players" as it is generally illegal in most places. OTOH, you should occasionally allow a "character" to die so the players know it is possible.
You are officially my new favorite channnel - I’ve wanted to start creating content for a while and your style has me feeling inspired - the post-it green screen is a stroke of brilliance
The first time I stopped fudging dice wasn't intentional. Due to that session's set up, my players could see my rolls. The increase in tension and dramatic moments was immediate! Not just because I was no longer saving my players, but because the players knew without a doubt that there wasn't a safety net. I've never gone back to fudging.
I hate it when DMs say they fudge dice "for the story". That feels incredibly egotistical and railroady. Why should YOU dictate the story? Why can't death BE the story? Why should the story be exactly how YOU want it to be? This means that the players get no say in how the story goes, because you will be fudging your way into telling whatever story YOU want to tell instead of building a story together with your players.
Respectfully I think it's for the most part a bad habit and a beginner's mistake more than egoism. Saying yes and accepting how the dice fall can mean going outside their prep and that can be scary at first. What if my players can tell that I'm improvising? If it's something I've not prepared then it won't be good! We've heard it all before. Anyway that's my 2 cents, those people should go write a book.
@@lostwave1748 I've seen experienced DMs say this, for the most part. So I don't know how much what you said holds up. I think they BELIEVE they're doing a good thing, but they fail to see that actually, they're depriving the group from another story. Who knows if it would be better or worse, but they now have no way of knowing that, because they've imposed their own preferred narrative.
@@THEPELADOMASTER Yes. I've seen many DMs claim lots of success doing things their way (fudging and railroading and intricate predefined "plots"), but their measure of success is having two to eight people sit through their story time (some, if not all, might be friends and family so obligated), not having consistent results across multiple systems and player bases. It's fine, they can play however they want, but achieving the bare minimum isn't what we should be striving for as DMs/GMs/Referees/whatever.
I gotta say, I'm not trying to die, but there's definitely a part of me that's always eyeing the stack of backup characters I'm sitting on, just waiting to pick those up. So I certainly wouldn't be one to complain if a bad dice roll forced my hand, so to speak.
I actually have a hard time with improvising based on dice rolls, so I’ve been trying to force myself to interpret dice rolls and improvise more instead of fudging dice rolls. I still have progress to make for sure. One thing that helps is to think of potential directions a game could go if things go bad, medium, and well for the players. Then at least I’m only editing particulars instead of coming up with 100% on the fly.
All good valid points regarding the player agency. Choices should matter, and failing forward is part of the game and fun. In my games, I start each player with a point of Inspiration more because I often forget to hand them out, but the 1 heroes luck per session sounds like a better wrapper on it.
First scammers and now a sponsor in the same week?! This is meteoric growth. Well done. I soon as I started not balancing my stuff the game became way more fun and easy to GM. I use GM Scotty’s luck dice for player “fudging.” It allows me to go hard in the paint with bad guys.
Hehe, I've developped a DMing style where I balance exactly one encounter per narrative arc: the first one. That's the only encounter I force onto my players - I use it for exposition, plot hooks, etc... Then, I make sure the players are given some space to breathe, so they can discuss how they want to approach the problem I've just introduced to them. After that first exposition encounter, I don't force *any* encounter on my players... And I also don't really bother balancing the encounters, either. Like, I'll pick monsters that I think will be fun to fight if the players end up fighting them, but at that point, my players have been given an out. If they get in trouble, it means they chose to. Which means I'm happy to let the dice decide their fate, because they had every opportunity to approach that situation in a different way, or bypass it altogether.
I love that you don't "balance" encounters. My rationale is "the monsters don't know what level you are, and you can always run away." The most heroic things I've seen in my DCC campaign involved a bunch of level two characters pulling it off against what is essentially a Purple Worm and "MaThMAticaLLY" a TPK. It was one of the shining moments of our campaign.
Love it. My balance comes down to what's naturally/logically here within the fiction. Oh, you walked into Red Dragon Cave at level 1? Lemme just swap it out for some Kobolds instead. Don't wanna ruin your fun or anything! 🤡
@@DeficientMaster This feels just wrong. At least say the dragon is out looking for a snack. And the kobolds are actually official cult of said dragon and are allowed to use his treasures to defend his lair in his absence. Make the players develop a PTSD centered around kobolds. Make them always make sure the dragon is home before they enter his lair.
So this is kind of like the argument for "unleveled" video games where the region you are in determines the difficulty, rather than your character level? In Skyrim where the enemies level up with you, it doesn't really feel like you are getting any stronger, whereas in Minecraft (poor example, I know) getting stronger actually feels meaningful.
@@osbourn5772 You know, at least in Skyrim bandits kept using basic iron and leather gear (maybe with some steel stuff reserved for chiefs). Oblivion had whole bandit camps running around in Ebony and Glass equipment... I do think it's okay to scale some things to player/party's overall level a bit (maybe stuff like not starting a planned War of the Gods until PCs are at proper level - there is other stuff DM could lead with to help develop these characters). However, as DeficientMaster mentioned: as long as there are signs about what danger is there to come, it's on players to decide if they want to push forward. Being used to cRPGs' limited choices is one thing, but so is tunnel-visioning a PC class and not realizing that maybe a scholarly wizard that spent most of his life learning theory, may not do so well on actual adventures - even a wizard serving in the military might not do much better, since during expeditions there's whole other personnel to deal with stuff like provisions, logistics, shelter, and so on. So it's also on PCs (and DM an subtly help here) to choose if their PC darlings are prepared for an adventure ahead.
This Echoed a whole lot of my own sentiments. One of the reasons i always roll openly so that everyone knows that what happened wasn't becuase i forced it to happen but just how the dice landed. I also feel like a lot of times a GM fudges it's because they feel the players are reacting "Wrong" being reckless when they should be cautious, trying one thing when they "should" be doing another, which from my experiance mainly stems from a GM and player not communication the expectations back and forth correctly. Edit: Your suggestion of giving more control to the players is also imo the best way to approach such a situation, because more choices with more conequences are more Drama and Fun in my experience.
The advice at the end of this video is 100% spot on! My favorite TTRPG system is Mutants & Masterminds, and it does something not altogether different from the final suggestion in this video as basically its core mechanic and it works wonderfully. It's a game about superheroes, so they call them Hero Points. Each player starts with one. GM (preferably) rolls their dice all openly. Each time the GM wants to fudge d20 roll, the player on the other end of it gets another Hero Point. Each time the GM wants to invoke a narrative inconvenience against a player, that player gets a Hero Point. Etc. The Hero Points can do a number of things, but the most common use is re-rolling a d20 and adding a +10 to results below 11, which means they're often auto-successes, except on particularly dramatic challenges. There are other things baked into this particular system that make it more fun and dramatic, but you're 100% right: Giving the players the power to do the fudging, and giving them more power to do so the times you want to do it as the GM absolutely leads to a more dramatic storytelling experience. It keeps the story collaborative because, even when fudging happens, they retain agency, and that makes the story more engaging, rather than less.
You know it's funny because literally in the dmg, that's what the optional rule of plot points is for. At the beginning of the campaign, i gave each of my players a plot point once per session. They used them to do some dumb things and to do some smart things but once we reached like level 3 limited them to one per session as a group because the game became (in my opinion) rather silly. With 4 plot points a session and with the resources to not die every encounter my players just kind of used them to attack random npcs or have npcs save them from their poor planning. But now im happy with 1 per session since i run my games as very hard and as an actual game with 6-8 medium encounters and whatnot.
I used to run very linear games and fudged dice to prevent or create dramatic cinematic…then I started playing with mid to high level characters. Now that they have so many abilities and power I stopped trying to make things balanced and fair. Now I just throw some shit on the board and say “go” and if it’s easy then great, they feel strong. If it’s hard then great, they feel challenged. If they wind up TPKing then oh well that’s their fault, they should’ve ran away. I always make it a point to remind newer and lower level parties that they can do this
Worse than fudging die rolls, i think, is fudging *encounters.* I recently finished playing in a campaign where the GM would routinely give up any semblance of tactics, even going against an enemy's stated goal, to avoid letting the party lose or risking a PC dropping. Talk about a let down.
Looking forward to that encounter balance video. Not sure you can truly "not balance at all", you still gotta make sure the thing drops in the range from Trivial to Hopeless without going into 99% TPK right? Gotta somehow decide how much damage the goblin does, in some logical way that you feel confident will hit the desired difficulty you'd like to present; that is balance to me.
There's a D&D module called *Temple of the Frog* where the PC's can enter a room full of 100's of giant killer frogs. It presents unique challenges to the PC's because the encounter isn't at all balanced from a combat perspective, but the encounter is 100% solvable, you just have to get creative and think outside the box. So in a way you could say the encounter is still balanced (as it's possible to overcome/solve) but it's not at all balanced from a combat POV. I think this is generally the kind of idea he means. Presenting every encounter as some bespoke precalculated thing the PC's are expected to be able to take in a fight is frankly quite dull for a lot of people, and creatively limiting. Having some serious stakes in the world and monsters dispersed in a naturalistic way gives players more agency, and makes the world feel far more believable. Imagine how boring the Hobbit would have been if Bilbo could just walk up to Smaug and smack him to death!
@@benjaminmckay6983 Oh yeah totally. I think that you have balanced something as long as there is a way to do it. The type of challenge that cannot be overcome by sheer perseverance is what I'd call a "gimmick", like some boss fights in action videogames. Better suited to be faced as a skill challenge imo. But aside from that, when it comes to building an actual face up fight, no matter how interesting and creative the terrain/objectives are, you still need to decide if that goblin deals 1d6 or 1d10 damage and how many there are, using some kind of logical criteria, based on how hard you want the encounter to be. The party can still kick down two hobgoblins into the oblivion chasm, or lock them on bad terrain, or use the mcGuffin at the center of the map, but you can't be sure they actually will, those are big swingy toys; you still have to crunch some numbers to make the challenge PROBABLY *insert desired difficulty level*. I agree that square box fights are just boring.
The kind of play you'd consider a gimmick and would like to be a skill challenge is the kind of play a lot of people *don't want to abstract into dice rolling at all* because D&D to them is about overcoming challenges, not seeing how well their character can roll checks. You truly don't have to crunch any numbers to design encounters, D&D was played and designed this way for 25+ years. It comes down to a few things: A) You still have a general fairness of play. I.e., as a GM you shouldn't present the players a hook that leads them to Tiamet at 1st level, generally you want to keep adventure locations keyed to a range of levels suitable for the characters. The monsters themselves would just have stats based on whatever system's monster book uses, no need to redesign a goblin. B) Encounters *are not* designed as implicit combat. Monsters, NPC's, etc. all have motivations and some level of intelligence and self-preservation, it's rarely in their best interest to attack on sight, or keep fighting once half their numbers have been killed. C) Players can run. Not everything that can be wacked with a stick should be wacked with a stick. If your players understand this they'll start to come up with clever solutions to overcoming challenges in ways the GM may not have even imagined (and that's part of the beauty of the game). In the original 1974 D&D you could by the rules roll an encounter running into 300 bandits. The mere idea of this happening is crazy if you approach every encounter as if it's tailored to be fought by the PC's.
@@benjaminmckay6983 And I'm not against points A to C. What I'm talking about are those situations where one side has mad horrors that wont retreat or bargain and the party feels forced to give it their all because of whatever narrative is going on, retreat is worse than death. In this scenario, you gotta know what you are putting on the board, why it is the way it is and a rough estimation of how good/bad this could go, big swings aside. After that, it's free reign to creativity, this "hard" challenge might become "easy" because of a clever trick a player pulled off with the environment, the McGuffin, the enemies weakness. Again, I'm talking exclusively about to the death combat here; ofc negotiations and intelligent skirmishes wont be balanced. Heck you build a fight with orcs that is supposed to be deadly, than your party is the one who gets lucky to wipe a bunch of orcs in the initial rounds; I would surrender as the orcs, cause winning would mean carnage on both sides probably at this point, and we don't want that. I understand that it is interesting to pitch the party against pretty much a wall in terms of odds, forcing them to either negotiate (to a loss) or run! Done a few times, made sure to point it out at a point cause some people don't get it and think this is a videogame. In my exp, CR just doesn't work most of the time. It really only takes into account a couple of basic stats for DPS and Toughness but doesn't care about action economy and such. I find making custom stat-blocks with advanced encounter building tools way more precise in creating a challenge of the desired difficulty. I don't get the point on skill challenges; these are challenges to overcome, not just a series of whatever checks. The type of action you decide to take in the particular situation should be weighted in effectiveness and danger; if successful, fill a number of boxes in the track (typically 1 to 3). You can't just call whatever and hope the dice help you, it will take you ages to fill that track and you'll suffer too many consequences. It's the same as having bad tactical play on the grid.
@@Diamondarrel To be honest a lot of the things we don't see eye to eye on is just from a fundamental difference in game design. Things like a 'to the death combat' isn't something I would ever have the players deal with. Is there enemies who fight to the death? totally, mindless undead come to mind. But nothing about the overall situation they'd be in would force combat because it's inherently risky and I think players should be the ones to determine what types of risks they want to engage with. Re skill challenges. I don't like them for the same reason I don't like perception checks. It's taking control away from the player and shifts it towards your character build and RNG. Sure the decisions you make could give you some situational bonus but ultimately the decider is dice and your inherent modifiers. A great plan should bypass rolls, so I'd rather interrogate the fiction with the GM and sort things out logically. That doesn't mean I think rolls are unnecessary, just that the implicit requirement of a roll naturally stifles creativity (what's the point of devising a foolproof plan if you're still going to leave the decision up to RNG).
I look forward to every time you upload. Your videos make me laugh so much and are always a total pleasure to watch. As I am vision impaired I don’t actually see the content but the care you take with your comedic timing with audio gives me the ability to visualise so well. Thank you for your quality of content and incredible sense of humour. You are at the top of my list. You have saved me hours of agony with your advice and I have learned a different way to think about my dming and playing.
I have told a DM once that I wanted my character to die, and they still saved me with blatantly obvious fiats and fudging of rolls... In fact, I went as far as to say this Tiefling had a terminal illness due to his fiendish blood that would still kill him if I managed to survive the whole adventure. Well, first, I approached the DM and asked if this was okay. He seemed all for it. 6 or so sessions in he gives my character a magic necklace that cures my character AND makes him permanently immune to disease. So it isn't always just trying to spare your characters for the player's sake.
The “player fudging” solution you gave reminds me of the Bennie system from Savage Worlds. It’s really effective in that game, and could work for DnD too. Players almost always use up their tokens in the first few counters, ensuring the boss fight is actually stressful… and it’s the player’s doing rather than the DM’s. Great video as always my dood👍
I love these videos! I've been playing D&D for around a year and took up DMing just before Christmas. These videos are really fun, entertaining and useful... Keep up the great work 😎
So happy for you! Congrats on your first sponsor. Also a great video, I have stopped fudging dice recently and it has made a noticeable difference for my players.
Sportsball! Yeah, I used to play that! That's my takeaway. 🤔 Seriously, I've been binging these videos since yesterday and I dig the comedic presentation of ideas I subscribe to (also subbed to the channel ofc) and I find the advice helpful in clarifying things in a practical way. Thanks!
In regards to your last point about giving the players a way to fudge dice: I suggest what I call the cup of doom/chance. It’s a skull chalice filled with about 10 D6’s. The players are free to grab as many as they want and add the result to any roll they make. The catch is, when the dice run out, some sort of complication relevant to the situation arises.
I’m looking forward to that balancing video, I’m about to DM my first campaign and it was something I was worried about. But with some advice, I’ve intentionally made an encounter or two that they can’t win, but have another way to complete an objective then run!
Just finished binging your channel after it showed up in my recommended. Looking forward to more short form and easily digestible DM advice! It's almost like... You format and present your videos the same way you would your tabletop campaigns?!
I would only fudge to save my game from going down in flames entirely. Wiser to scale future encounters up or down than to fudge. If there was a TPK event and I wanted the game to continue, I'd consider saving one character who can keep some continuity going. Love your unique style, Deficient one! What I'd love to see is a video about how to incorporate horror elements into the game. Trying to make jaded, middle aged players truly scared is quite the challenge!
I reward my players with inspiration dice for especially cool or funny things their characters come up with, even if it doesn't necessarily work out in game (a recent example was someone shooting down the chandelier to do damage, but not succeeding in actually hitting anyone bc the chandelier was unfortunately placed) I give out different dice, usually a d6, d12 or d20 depending on coolness levels - and the players can definitely argue for a better dice. It also helps getting my shy and/or new players a bit more out their shell, and I don't feel too bad when a monster crits against them again
I concur with all of the ideas here. I'm a play it as it lies DM, and the players know that stupid games win stupid prizes. It won't stop them from doing crazy stuff, but sometimes the effort of fixing the problems they made for themselves becomes part of the fun. I love your style of content creation! It's the subtle details of Post-its in unexpected places (like that reminder to subscribe) that make it so much fun to watch. Love it!
Well.... this is brilliant! As a newer DM I greatly appreciate the advice. I never get the warm fuzzies when I've fudged rolls in the past. Providing inspiration so the players can fudge their own rolls is an awesome way to put it.
First of all, thank you for the visualization of dice brownies. I didn't know I needed that in my life, but apparently I needed that. Second, thank you for the argument against fudging. I often struggle to articulate why I think it's a crime against player agency. And honestly, if the dice gods want PC skulls, they'll find a way.
I like "Edge" in shadow run. Unreplenishable resource baked into your character that is similar to inspiration. You can burn Edge to invoke "hand of god" moments that break rules (in agreement to your DM naturally). Once you run out of it you are dead. Has the nice side effect, that you can at least do something epic with your last point instead of simply dropping dead.
Watching some of your videos has made me realize that I... like, *NEVER* do combat in games I DM... granted, I literally go out of my way to avoid it because, well, Combat can be slow if you don't make it faster and I like to encourage non-"I kill everyone" ways to solve conflict.
While my DM in my campaign that wrapped recently didn't fudge mid-session dice to my knowledge, character building was slightly different. I had to fight him to use a naturally-rolled ability score spread that had a negative modifier - one singular -1 - in it. Not the best feeling in the world.
Most of times i see people complaining about Fudge, is an over-exaggerated example. Yeah. In extreme cases, people who abuse it and use it badly, makes a bad experience for sure, like anything else they would abuse or use it badly.
When I explained to my father I was going to a ttrpg convention, my father asked me of I was a "judge" (in French in the text). That's how I approached my games since then because I thought : listening to all parties and coming to a decision that should be as fair and pleasing to everyone (including myself because I'm part of the game). So the referee analogy speaks to me on that level as well.
I started a game last month with new players who only want to play 5e. Not my cup of tea, but that's fine. I just told them up front that I don't balance encounters and I'll do my best to foreshadow danger. So far, they've run from every encounter... I think I spooked them.
Looks like someone bought the D&D Monster Token and Terrain set at Ollie's for a couple bucks ;3 Yeah, the concept of having 'other' players fudge dice is a fun way to flip the script. When in doubt lean towards the option that gives more player agency. Also to be honest I thought this was going to be a light hearted rant about systems that use 'fudge dice' (Those D6's with +'s and -'s on them) in games like Fate or those really super duper light TTRPGs.
I made it clear from session 0 that fudging dice is not something I do and death is a possibility. I have had 1 player die, he was bummed, to the point he was asking me to basically deux ex machina something into the game for him. He didn't die to a big bad, he died to a random encounter in a dungeon (to be fair it was a dangerous dungeon) and the dice were not in his favor that day. Funny part is he likes his new character even more than his old one. I'm glad you made this video and I will probably share it with my players lol.
Running my first game, i ran a travel scene where the big bad came down and fried the party with an electric breath weapon. When I looked up the damage I definitely had to fudge some dice to not permanently kill half the party 😂
hey, the more I follow you, the more I think you're part of the FKR movement. I don't think you're claiming it as your own, but I always find it interesting how you talk about game design, starting with D&D and going on from there!
I'm definitely swing that way, though I haven't officially planted a flag yet. I'm a huge fan of OSR game philosophy but I also don't have any nostalgia towards "The Good Ol' Days" as I came into the hobby via Pathfinder in my late teens. I take a little from every side of the game design spectrum and see what works and what doesn't. Modern games have made some great design changes/choices too! It's just also interesting to see people having problems with games like 5e and seeing that older editions fixed those problems before they were even problems.
Sometimes, we have modern problems that are created because we have a different approach to games today. Sometimes it's good to go back to basics, why use a character sheet? Why use skills? Etc
Something I have been toying with, not in dnd 5e though, is something like metacurrencies like inspiration but a little less… meta. A character can spend their defensive stats to reroll something. kind of like a final push/hail mary, but after it is used, the character becomes more vulnerable to things against them for the next while because of their lesser defenses. Feels less like a one time get out of jail free card, and more like a singular draining effort of will.
Was once in a session where the DMPC rolled nothing but nat 20s the whole session. ...Come to think of it, there was an odd odor about the room at the time.
As my group's forever DM, I can certainly second not worrying about balance for encounters. I mean, Hells, I thought running a group through Phandelver before Tyranny of Dragons would make the first few chapters of the latter a cakewalk. Far be it from me to warn the player who wanted to challenge a swarm of kobolds on his own and bit the dust as a result. That said, I daresay your videos, Deficient, will be getting sent to my players right after I watch each of them as they come out. Keep up the fantastic work. Or... deficient work? Whichever means a good thing for you, I guess.
Early on I got into the habit of fudging rolls. I stopped doing that recently and actually it’s ended up with a lot more climactic points to each fight that I never thought about before. I think it was especially important because in my campaign, fights are expected to be long and arduous, against large amounts of enemies with diverse skill sets all attacking the party with reinforcements and tactics of their own. If the party went headstrong, they’d surely die, so now that I no longer fudge dice and they know *FOR SURE* I will not save them if they do something risky and get punished for it, they started thinking more tactically than my enemies who position around cover and try to take advantage of openings. A lot of combats now bring the players down very low, I’m talking 10s to single digits across the entire group of 5 players, and it’s fun. I do think I like that idea for inspiration, I might try it as a one-time test in the next session and see how people feel about it. It should help the players who feel like “Wow, I’ve just been rolling bad all day and there is nothing I can do about it.”
There’s also the thing that when playing a game that contains various forms of powerful deities, magic, etc., death might not be the end of all - or some deity might chose to intervene, perhaps for a price! Perhaps Móðguðr won’t let the player pass Gjallarbrú over the river Gjöll, perhaps the Goddess of the dead, Hel need the player to bring her a certain object or do a certain task - or a Demon will bring the player back as an undead. There are various narrative plots that can be used if it for some reason is important that the character doesn’t die, at least at that point in the campaign! Of course it also depends on what types of players you’re dealing with and what kind of world and campaign it is….
Some thoughts... * Warn the players ahead of time that this is a dangerous world; they'd better have a backup character in case of "attrition" * Teach the players (by having a weak enemy do it) that you can sometimes run or yield in a combat, which latter comes with a default or ransom * Err on the side of too-weak enemies; they can call in reinforcements if they start losing too quickly. The PCs can't
I never fudge but I keep the DM screen. Then, when the players get hit below half hp or miss an important saving throw, I remove the dm screen and roll in the open for dramatic effect, maybe even switching the music into something more ominous
This is a reason I really love Savage Worlds. Every session the players get 3 reroll tokens they can use on anything except critical failures. It's a great system but I like your idea of passing out an inspiration to each player when playing 5e.
I used to fudge dice rolls, or at least the results, but then I ran a game where I rolled out in the open, which seemed to help break me out of it. Of course, it might have also been the fact that I was playing with people I didn't really like much at that time too.
That was great! Thank you for making this happen and may you get more sponsors to afford --*checks notes*-- dice fudge. If anyone has questions I will silently lurk here watching this video on a loop 👁
I had my first death among player characters I run for this last week, and the player was actually very excited that he got to role-play his heroic death, defending a church full of innocents. (we are using a method where players get to keep fighting even below zero hit points, instead of going unconscious; they can bleed out while still fighting, and bleed out faster the harder they fight back. Makes it very dramatic and heroic.) don’t get me wrong, characters have died in games I have run multiple times in the past, but never before has it been so highly unlikely that a character could be brought back. I had been fairly clear with my players leading up to this that I was stepping up the tension and challenge by adding enemies not present in the module, making the possibility of coming near to death more likely. So, when the barbarian chose to actively draw the attention of the werewolf, allowing the Fighter and Cleric to gain some breathing room, and he across his death threshold by to hit points, it felt like a natural consequence of his actions and the way things had played out. It was satisfying, I think for everyone. He was certainly pleased with it.
I will note that the player chose not to reveal how low he was on hit points, because he was visibly hidden from the other characters. So, even though I could have fudged the damage lower, or even just taken the lower, average damage, he chose not to reveal the information that could have caused that fudging.
I do like having players being able to choose if they keep on fighting after reaching 0 HP. To me, it's bad game design to make a rule where the player cannot play the game. I typically rule that if a player drops to 0 HP, they can choose to go down and potentially no longer seem a threat to the opposition, or choose to stay up fighting consciously through death saves but still being a target, a la Boromir with 3 arrows in his chest. It gives the player the choice to potentially save their character for their allies to rescue or to go down swinging like a hero.
My problem with fudging roles is because it very quickly infringes on player agency. This gets mentioned briefly, but I really think that this is the fundamental problem with fudging. If bad things happen I really like Matt Colville's video on failing forward.
Matt is a fudger I think? Unless I’m misremembering. And yes fudging infringes on player agency 100% and most people don’t tell their players because they know they’ll be disappointed
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No I am not giving out the fudge recipe.
I love fudge, but not fudge dice
In a prewritten adventure, I ran an adult white dragon against 4 level 7 PCs, but I added a house rule. For each of its Legendary Resistances, it got 30 extra hit points, but it lost 30 each time it used an LR.
The rule was untested, so I told everyone that if the fight went poorly, I would rewind to the beginning of the fight. One of my players wasn't happy to hear this, but I didn't walk it back.
They won the fight. Well, kind of. The dragon was reduced to a fifth of its hit points and therefore was required by the adventure to flee. As part of its effort to flee, it killed that same player with its Wing Attack, and the cleric didn't have a spell slot to revivify with.
You see, the house rule was meant to balance out the chance for Legendary Resistances to be ignored, but the dragons save modifiers were so good that the rule really just gave it 90 extra hit points. Combined with the garbage CR calculation that is the adult white dragon, the house rule made the fight too difficult.
Since my house rule had caused the player death, I decided to rewind as promised. The player was furious now, as he was OK with his character dying. He made me promise to never rewind like that again or else he'd leave the campaign. I obliged.
We ran the dragon without my house rule, so it was easier. Everyone died.
That last sentence ☠️☠️☠️
Thems the consequences and the actions.
Respect to that other guy. Rewinding gamifies the story, the whole point of TTRPGs is that there are consequences, even for the DM. If you thought the battle was too difficult, then you could’ve made something up: they might’ve noticed the dragon had a collar on with a big, rusty name tag, and a successful history check reminds a player that this dragon belonged to a giant or humanoid gargantua that used to feed his dragon treasure. Allow the players to then go into the dragon’s mouth or cut open its belly, finding a bunch of gold, a cool amulet or weapon that provides a bonus, and conveniently a scroll of revivification for the fallen team member.
This is just an example, always find an in-universe way to fix a mistake you might’ve made as a DM, usually in the form of a consolation prize. Do not break the rules of the game to get what you want, rather fit what you want into the game. Rewinding tells the players “if something ever goes too wrong, we fix it by rewinding” which robs the story of plausible consequence, but what I suggested tells them “something went too wrong this time and we need to be careful, but at least we got something out of it”.
A really good way to fix an encounter that’s too tough is for the players to run away.
Players are hard wired to *not* run. It's so hard to get them to choose that option
I want to know the psychology behind this. But it’s true, every time.
@@infinitedm5396Because the enemies might chase. Assume 30 feet of movement on both sides. If the players dash away, the enemies will be able to catch up and make opportunity attacks.
@@burgernthemomrailer Or-You can use the chase mechanic in Weird Frontiers (adapted from DCC).
Because players are the hero and heroes dont run away. I dont get ut because in fiction heroes run away all the time but players dont run because they are the heroes.
when ppl say "if you don't fudge it leads to problems" i'm at home screaming "HAVING PROBLEMS TO OVERCOME IS LITERALLY THE POINT OF ALL GAMES!!!!"
My guess is that players are simply not used to taking opportunities that actual ttRPGs provide when it comes to solving problems, since nowadays most of them come from computer RPGs.
What helped me to liberate my mindset was reading crazy DnD stories about low level parties dropping boats on dragons or players slowly spreading rumors throughout campaign which led to a literal army of dwarves storming big bads hideout without either of them realizing anything (rumors about a giant gem hidden in an area big bad was hiding at), etc.
There’s a not-insignificant chunk of the hobby that uses D&D less as a game, and more as a reason to have a captive audience for their OC fan fiction.
what really helps is not playing DnDogshit and using an actually good system instead.
@@mnmnrt The system doesn't matter. There are amazing games of terrible systems and terrible games of good systems. Ideally, a good system will teach the GM and players how to contribute well to a good atmosphere, but 90% of the time that teaching doesn't happen in the system itself anyways! The community affects how people play TTRPG's way more than the actual rules
@@99sonder The system matters. dnd is objectively bad.
So proud of our DM for already obtaining first sponsor. Don't worry Ginny Di, Deficient is on his way to you.
ginny d sucks so bad
I ran an Ancient Greece game and introduced a mechanic called "Hubris." Characters could accumulate hubris any time they defied the gods, and i allowed them to reroll any d20 after they rolled if they took a "Hubris" point. I told the players I could spend their Hubris points to make them reroll (I almost never did), and that they might have other effects. The players loved it! They self managed their Hubris, took efforts to lower their hubris and then for a big set piece there was an effect where whenever they took damage from a certain effect took extra damage from their Hubris. I may use it in every campaign going forward.
That sounds like a great idea and it fits the theme as well!
Stealing this
Might steal this you creative genius
You don't balance encounters ? Now that is a video I wanna watch !
Look up "BALANCED D&D ENCOUNTERS SUCK!" by DungeonCraft for one that's already up :D
I love deficient because subscribes to the same philosophy as I do. I don’t fudge dice and I don’t balance encounters. I also hand out inspiration a lot and at the beginning of the game I hand out a reroll of any dice that can be used once per the game. It allows me to not balance encounters and be satisfied.
Perfect example happened a couple sessions ago. The group went to investigate a missing Owlbear from an Owlbear sanctuary. Someone tried to convince the owner to give them meat for the Owlbear. They failed the roll so they used the group’s reroll. An encounter later they were in combat and an Owlbear crit the wizard (who rerolled earlier) and instantly died. The encounter was considered deadly. But, instantly, the player said “I should have not wasted the MVP die on a persuasion check.” This placed his choice and consequence in his hand. He excepted the accepted the death and wrote an interesting new character that tied to the dead character. For the past couple sessions it is all we talked about in a good way.
why would everything in the world just happen to be mildly challenging to a particular group of adventurers?
Balance = Safety. You don't want your player feel safe if they fight a troll, you want them to be afraid or scared, maybe both. But the most important rule of no-balance is that you need to put information available. If the troll is only weak to acid, not fire, and is very greedy, with a preference for silver, then the players can make a trap and turn that deadly encounter into something more manageable, but deadly still.
I do the same. I come up with problems, which i have no solution for. I leave that to the players. I simply present the problem to them, sit back and enjoy the ride.
I tried your recipe for fudged dice, I then brought them to my dnd game and everyone loved them so much they passed out from a food coma. They were so good, they're not even breathing! 10/10 would recommend.
What a great game! The police are on their way.
@@DeficientMasterlittle know fact. Cops love DnD! If you're ever short a player or need a rules clarification just call 911 and an officer will be over shortly.
I've never been apart of RUclipsrs journey from the beginning and I feel a tear coming to my eye to witness your first sponsor. I'm so proud of you. But in all seriousness, I've only DMd a few sessions and almost quit, longing to be a player again, till I found your channel. Your content makes DMing seem more entertaining than playing. I'll dye happy when Ginny Di notices you.
DMing for me is perhaps the best method to express all the creative things I enjoy doing. It's overwhelming at first! But when you start looking beyond what the mainstream games are telling you, there's way more material out there to make running these games both easier and more enjoyable.
As a DM who struggles to unalive players, allow TPKs or even fail minor rolls, I needed this.
As long as you aren't TPKing them every other session some player death is actually a good thing. (Don't kill them on purpose) You don't need a lot of them to die, to be honest even 1 death is enough to have the whole party on their toes constantly. They won't forget it lol. Now you don't need to keep killing a PC every few sessions but that one death gets them to treat your game as having teeth and that there are stakes. It makes surviving and accomplishing things more rewarding. In my current campaign I had a player making a series of bad decisions and he ended up dying. I could have saved him, but he actually likes his new character more and my players all understand not to be reckless. They almost never miss a session so I have to assume they are enjoying themselves lol.
Please don't un alive players.
Only PCs.
@@DavidGrossNYC TPK within moderation, of course. But when it comes to me trying to Deus Ex Machina players for the eighth time when it's THEIR FAULT they're about to be unalived, then I need to let it go.
@@turtlecheese8 oh if players are making obviously terrible choices kill away. They have to learn somehow lol
@@turtlecheese8Run Old School Esssentials, run oldschool. Let players die. trust me.
In Blade of the Iron Throne there's a system called "Drama Points". How EXACTLY they work isn't relavant, but the house rule version my group uses is similar to the system you mention at the end. Basically, they're a get out of jail free card: you spend it to get out of a bad situation or guarantee a good roll.
The DM can award them for good role play, much like inspiration, but that's not the main way they're divvied out. You see, the DM can ALSO use Drama Points; they have an unlimited supply, after all. But they can only use them if they convince one of the players to buy one off of them. There's never been a more tense situation for me than when everything's going well and suddenly the DM says, "You want a Drama Point?" to each player in turn.
As someone who has younger siblings and now a kid, the first thing I made sure to not do in games was let them win all the time. It's infantilizing.
And yes, surprisingly, it is better for you (and also healthier!) for you and your players to learn how to work through the bad feelings instead of ignoring or running from them. You'll be doing yourselves a favor in both your games and your life if you practice this skill, and a game is the perfect place to practice that.
Yes! I ain't your therapist, so I won't try to fix your personal struggles via the game, but this play pretend is the lowest form of risk to experience negative things & challenges. Yes, your feelings are real, but no, I won't cater to your every whim. It's the struggles that create the drama & story you crave, not the victories.
If you're an adult and you can't stomach it, then your age really is just a number.
Great thoughts, @TempestuousInquiry
I actually think that when a character dies to some random goblin, it helps sell the overall danger of the world at large. Adventuring is a dangerous profession.
Goblin Slayer. It has a point you know?
Also that's why some systems include some kind of Fate Points system (or similar stuff) - rare and precious resource that's almost like an extra life, which helps to create characters that become maimed and keep suffering instead of simply dying.
From my experience, players will rarely voluntarily agree to disfigure their precious characters even if that makes sense story-wise, so systems like that do help to make them see how dangerous those "adventures" can really be (Warhammer Fantasy RPG 1st and 2d eds were good at that).
Overall I strongly agree, but there are scenarios where I think it makes sense not to let that happen.
Though in those cases you should just... not have encounters like that.
@@m0nkEz Then it all depends on what is the point of the game, isn't it?
Absolutely nothing wrong with playing as semi-invincible group of heroes but there are weirdos that find even universes like W40k fun to roleplay in.
Anything goes, at least as long as every participant is aware if there will be harsh consequences for recklessness or the game will be nothing but fan service and wish fullfillment.
…this is why PF2E’s system is just better. It really is.
@@tfan2222 That's not objectively true.
If some groups enjoy rolling for freakin' everything ("P: I knock on the door" -> nat 20 -> "DM: Your attempt at knocking completely obliterates the door") some may enjoy total random deaths (not everyone treats their characters closer to their heart than their own mothers).
Best systems and mechanics are those that support playstyle and goal of your group.
>implying I fudge in favor of my players
lol
lmao
Kek if you will
Arcane Abeyance forces you to roll exactly 1 below the DC.
As the player of a dm who frequently fudges dice and makes up immunities on the fly. if you are the kind of dm who fudges dice regularly, it’s very obvious when you are doing it. Your players are not stupid and it lessens their investment when it’s very clear the rolls are whatever you want them to be.
Just the title of the video made me realize that mechanics-wise, anything directly related to players should be visible (no rolls behind DM screen, stating difficulty before the roll, etc.).
If I do need random rolls that aren't related to players (random encounters, weather, NPC disposition, names, etc.) I can simply generate a list of random numbers and honestly go through them one by one as needed - players don't hear a dice rolling and your improvization and generator usage may seem almost seamless.
@@NaoyaYami there are some rolls that should be hidden but that is usually for things like being pickpocketed where knowing a result will ruin the actual scene and even then you should have screenshots of the results so your players know their build choices mattered
the important word is "frequently." The GM should not fudge so often that it becomes obvious. The occasional fudge can actually improve the game experience.
@@TwilightxKnight13 I agree but I think there are also just better ways to adjust difficulty than trying to get one over on your players. If you need something to happen, either a.) just don't roll for it or b.) have something intervene (i.e instead of the boss magically making their save or failing an attack roll have an ally jump in front of them or have another npc save them)
@@azurewraith2585 My personal opinion on fudging is only use it if fudging the dice will lead to a result that will improve the experience for your players. Say for example: One of your players came up with an ingenious scheme to poison a bandit leader and said leader must make a constitution save against the poison. Sometimes beating the odds feels better than something just working, or worse, the odds beating you.
The problem is if you do it more than once in a blue moon, and it's especially egregious to me if remove any stakes with it.
I’ve seen many videos about this topic published over many years, but it’s been a big focus lately - probably because it’s polarizing and gets clicks, but I have to say that DnD is a million different kinds of games - Colby from d4 isn’t playing the same kind of DnD as Prof. DM - there are kinds of DnD where DM fiat is more welcome than other - i think the polarization comes from attempting to apply different game philosophies with incompatible versions of the game
In my opinion, it's an issue entirely separated from the type of game people enjoy, and stems from game masters thinking they want control, and feeling more comfortable when they can steer and orchestrate the random happenings.
It's entirely natural to be tempted by this, but spoiler: getting what we want isn't always what is good for us. Some of my best moments at the table have come from what I was most tempted to fudge away. Every time I thought it would spoil the game but braved it out, it ended up being the highlight of the session.
Ask any players if they want the DM to fudge rolls and they will overwhelmingly say no, as it cheapens the experience. (If the answer to that question is yes, why is anyone rolling dice? If you all want the DM to just choose what happens, do that, play make believe, and move on.)
Loose control, let random happenings lead to the unexpected, trust your players and the process. As tempting as it is to cheat, the game will be more dramatic when you let it play out unexpectedly.
There’s a false assumption that DMs exclusively fudge to support a preorchestrated narrative - that’s a strawman - I point you to Seth Skorkowsky’s videos on the topic and how his players actually asked him to return to rolling behind a screen - it comes back to different kinds of games - you want to waste time knocking off the last 3 HP of 5 different minions? Be my guest - that’s a different kind of game than I have time to play
@@TwinSteel Why do you think rolling behind a screen prevents the DM managing the pacing of a game? This is the actual straw man argument!!
In my games, if the battle has run it's course, if the players have clearly won, and attention around the table is starting to fade - we end the battle there. No lies, no pretending, no moving goal posts. "Your foes are weakened and broken, you easily fell the final combatants without difficulty. Please describe your final moments of battle and what your character does next in the aftermath."
I don't have to fudge dice, I just follow the same principle as every other aspect of the game. We play out the things that are fun, and we narrate the things that aren't.
@@ercle88 You don't know what a strawman is, and you're just another guy on the internet who thinks they know the RIGHT way to play games and how everyone else is just having fun wrong. How charming.
@@ZeroKitsune A strawman argument is an imaginary or weak argument put forward for the sole purpose of being easily disputed. Twinsteel accused me of making one, but used one themselves.
Saying games that don't use fudging are boring because they must waste a long time knocking the last few HP off minions is an imaginary argument. A strawman. You don't have to fudge dice to call the end of a battle when it is clearly won.
However, saying fudging is used to support the DMs preorchestrated narrative is indisputable. The dice are used to randomly determine the outcome of events that are uncertain. The DM has an idea of how they think the story to go. When fudging, a DM forces the outcome of the game in their desired direction. They shun random outcomes and instead impose their will, believing it to be preferable. It isn't a strawman argument - it's a major use case.
In my experience, people use fudging to cover aspects of DM'ing that are better handled with other tools from the tool box. For example, instead of fudging dice to kill the last minions, just use pacing and declare the battle won.
To run a game is a skill. Infact, a whole skill set. Fudging is an easy solution, but a blunt tool. Using it prevents the need to learn more balanced and nuanced tools, that improve us as DMs. Who is the better DM, the one who fudges to make their games more fun, or the one who doesn't need to fudge to make their games more fun? This video is about how to improve our games to have more fun at our tables. Deriding anyone who engages in discussions about how to learn and improve within a hobby it truly pointless. Instead of engaging in the topic and trying to improve your games, you are insulting the character of people who express a different opinion to yours. How charming does that make you?
Very goofy bit at the beginning. I usually end up fudging dice because I don't want to kill my players. Should probably stop that
Nah. Stop if you think you are overdoing it, not because someone told you so. Fudging is very useful and easy to do. It just not the answer for all.
@@MarcioLiaoHow do you suppose your players would feel if they found out? Knowing that doing this thing would make them feel that way, why would you still do it?
@@burgernthemomrailerrules of fudging
- exhaust all other possibilities
- only fudge to fix YOUR mistakes that can’t be fixed any other way
- never fudge against the party
- never fudge to save someone who SHOULD have died through nobody fault but the fate of the dice.
@@davidburns9766 I don't fudge dice, there is only one situation where I would consider it though. I run tough encounters, if I happen to unintentionally go WAY overboard somehow (I haven't yet, I put a lot of work into making sure the encounter isn't overwhelmingly deadly) I would maybe do it because it was MY mistake. But if something is tough and they get a devastating nat 20 that's going to happen, that one was up to the dice. I don't want my players to pay for me prepping poorly or something, but if they willingly go after an ancient dragon at level 1 that's not my fault lol.
You should not be killing your "players" as it is generally illegal in most places. OTOH, you should occasionally allow a "character" to die so the players know it is possible.
You are officially my new favorite channnel - I’ve wanted to start creating content for a while and your style has me feeling inspired - the post-it green screen is a stroke of brilliance
The first time I stopped fudging dice wasn't intentional. Due to that session's set up, my players could see my rolls. The increase in tension and dramatic moments was immediate! Not just because I was no longer saving my players, but because the players knew without a doubt that there wasn't a safety net. I've never gone back to fudging.
yeah baby rolling out in the open feels way too good
I hate it when DMs say they fudge dice "for the story". That feels incredibly egotistical and railroady. Why should YOU dictate the story? Why can't death BE the story? Why should the story be exactly how YOU want it to be? This means that the players get no say in how the story goes, because you will be fudging your way into telling whatever story YOU want to tell instead of building a story together with your players.
Respectfully I think it's for the most part a bad habit and a beginner's mistake more than egoism. Saying yes and accepting how the dice fall can mean going outside their prep and that can be scary at first. What if my players can tell that I'm improvising? If it's something I've not prepared then it won't be good! We've heard it all before. Anyway that's my 2 cents, those people should go write a book.
@@lostwave1748 I've seen experienced DMs say this, for the most part. So I don't know how much what you said holds up.
I think they BELIEVE they're doing a good thing, but they fail to see that actually, they're depriving the group from another story. Who knows if it would be better or worse, but they now have no way of knowing that, because they've imposed their own preferred narrative.
@@THEPELADOMASTER Yes. I've seen many DMs claim lots of success doing things their way (fudging and railroading and intricate predefined "plots"), but their measure of success is having two to eight people sit through their story time (some, if not all, might be friends and family so obligated), not having consistent results across multiple systems and player bases. It's fine, they can play however they want, but achieving the bare minimum isn't what we should be striving for as DMs/GMs/Referees/whatever.
I gotta say, I'm not trying to die, but there's definitely a part of me that's always eyeing the stack of backup characters I'm sitting on, just waiting to pick those up.
So I certainly wouldn't be one to complain if a bad dice roll forced my hand, so to speak.
I actually have a hard time with improvising based on dice rolls, so I’ve been trying to force myself to interpret dice rolls and improvise more instead of fudging dice rolls. I still have progress to make for sure. One thing that helps is to think of potential directions a game could go if things go bad, medium, and well for the players. Then at least I’m only editing particulars instead of coming up with 100% on the fly.
Aww cookies with fudged dices, just like my grandma used to make them... i'm happy her recipe is still around😭.
Congrats for your first sponsor man 🎉
All good valid points regarding the player agency. Choices should matter, and failing forward is part of the game and fun. In my games, I start each player with a point of Inspiration more because I often forget to hand them out, but the 1 heroes luck per session sounds like a better wrapper on it.
First scammers and now a sponsor in the same week?! This is meteoric growth. Well done. I soon as I started not balancing my stuff the game became way more fun and easy to GM. I use GM Scotty’s luck dice for player “fudging.” It allows me to go hard in the paint with bad guys.
Just putting this out there, but, meteors don't grow. You're right through, the channels really exploding. You love to see it.
I’m always happy when I see you post because I already know this video is going to be a banger!
Hehe, I've developped a DMing style where I balance exactly one encounter per narrative arc: the first one. That's the only encounter I force onto my players - I use it for exposition, plot hooks, etc... Then, I make sure the players are given some space to breathe, so they can discuss how they want to approach the problem I've just introduced to them.
After that first exposition encounter, I don't force *any* encounter on my players... And I also don't really bother balancing the encounters, either. Like, I'll pick monsters that I think will be fun to fight if the players end up fighting them, but at that point, my players have been given an out. If they get in trouble, it means they chose to. Which means I'm happy to let the dice decide their fate, because they had every opportunity to approach that situation in a different way, or bypass it altogether.
I love that you don't "balance" encounters. My rationale is "the monsters don't know what level you are, and you can always run away." The most heroic things I've seen in my DCC campaign involved a bunch of level two characters pulling it off against what is essentially a Purple Worm and "MaThMAticaLLY" a TPK. It was one of the shining moments of our campaign.
Love it. My balance comes down to what's naturally/logically here within the fiction.
Oh, you walked into Red Dragon Cave at level 1? Lemme just swap it out for some Kobolds instead. Don't wanna ruin your fun or anything! 🤡
@@DeficientMaster This feels just wrong. At least say the dragon is out looking for a snack.
And the kobolds are actually official cult of said dragon and are allowed to use his treasures to defend his lair in his absence. Make the players develop a PTSD centered around kobolds. Make them always make sure the dragon is home before they enter his lair.
@@NaoyaYami Oh you'll get all the warning signs that there's a red dragon in Red Dragon Cave. But I'm just the Referee here. I call 'em as I sees 'em.
So this is kind of like the argument for "unleveled" video games where the region you are in determines the difficulty, rather than your character level? In Skyrim where the enemies level up with you, it doesn't really feel like you are getting any stronger, whereas in Minecraft (poor example, I know) getting stronger actually feels meaningful.
@@osbourn5772 You know, at least in Skyrim bandits kept using basic iron and leather gear (maybe with some steel stuff reserved for chiefs). Oblivion had whole bandit camps running around in Ebony and Glass equipment...
I do think it's okay to scale some things to player/party's overall level a bit (maybe stuff like not starting a planned War of the Gods until PCs are at proper level - there is other stuff DM could lead with to help develop these characters).
However, as DeficientMaster mentioned: as long as there are signs about what danger is there to come, it's on players to decide if they want to push forward.
Being used to cRPGs' limited choices is one thing, but so is tunnel-visioning a PC class and not realizing that maybe a scholarly wizard that spent most of his life learning theory, may not do so well on actual adventures - even a wizard serving in the military might not do much better, since during expeditions there's whole other personnel to deal with stuff like provisions, logistics, shelter, and so on.
So it's also on PCs (and DM an subtly help here) to choose if their PC darlings are prepared for an adventure ahead.
your channel is easily the best RUclips D&D channel going!
Keep up the great work
This Echoed a whole lot of my own sentiments. One of the reasons i always roll openly so that everyone knows that what happened wasn't becuase i forced it to happen but just how the dice landed.
I also feel like a lot of times a GM fudges it's because they feel the players are reacting "Wrong" being reckless when they should be cautious, trying one thing when they "should" be doing another, which from my experiance mainly stems from a GM and player not communication the expectations back and forth correctly.
Edit: Your suggestion of giving more control to the players is also imo the best way to approach such a situation, because more choices with more conequences are more Drama and Fun in my experience.
The advice at the end of this video is 100% spot on!
My favorite TTRPG system is Mutants & Masterminds, and it does something not altogether different from the final suggestion in this video as basically its core mechanic and it works wonderfully. It's a game about superheroes, so they call them Hero Points. Each player starts with one. GM (preferably) rolls their dice all openly. Each time the GM wants to fudge d20 roll, the player on the other end of it gets another Hero Point. Each time the GM wants to invoke a narrative inconvenience against a player, that player gets a Hero Point. Etc. The Hero Points can do a number of things, but the most common use is re-rolling a d20 and adding a +10 to results below 11, which means they're often auto-successes, except on particularly dramatic challenges.
There are other things baked into this particular system that make it more fun and dramatic, but you're 100% right: Giving the players the power to do the fudging, and giving them more power to do so the times you want to do it as the GM absolutely leads to a more dramatic storytelling experience. It keeps the story collaborative because, even when fudging happens, they retain agency, and that makes the story more engaging, rather than less.
You know it's funny because literally in the dmg, that's what the optional rule of plot points is for. At the beginning of the campaign, i gave each of my players a plot point once per session. They used them to do some dumb things and to do some smart things but once we reached like level 3 limited them to one per session as a group because the game became (in my opinion) rather silly. With 4 plot points a session and with the resources to not die every encounter my players just kind of used them to attack random npcs or have npcs save them from their poor planning. But now im happy with 1 per session since i run my games as very hard and as an actual game with 6-8 medium encounters and whatnot.
I used to run very linear games and fudged dice to prevent or create dramatic cinematic…then I started playing with mid to high level characters. Now that they have so many abilities and power I stopped trying to make things balanced and fair. Now I just throw some shit on the board and say “go” and if it’s easy then great, they feel strong. If it’s hard then great, they feel challenged. If they wind up TPKing then oh well that’s their fault, they should’ve ran away. I always make it a point to remind newer and lower level parties that they can do this
I still feel dying to random goblins sucks. But then, there's 100 different ways of doing that without fudging dice.
Great, insightful video. Words I needed to hear before starting my own campaign for the first time in 3 years
Worse than fudging die rolls, i think, is fudging *encounters.* I recently finished playing in a campaign where the GM would routinely give up any semblance of tactics, even going against an enemy's stated goal, to avoid letting the party lose or risking a PC dropping. Talk about a let down.
Looking forward to that encounter balance video. Not sure you can truly "not balance at all", you still gotta make sure the thing drops in the range from Trivial to Hopeless without going into 99% TPK right? Gotta somehow decide how much damage the goblin does, in some logical way that you feel confident will hit the desired difficulty you'd like to present; that is balance to me.
There's a D&D module called *Temple of the Frog* where the PC's can enter a room full of 100's of giant killer frogs. It presents unique challenges to the PC's because the encounter isn't at all balanced from a combat perspective, but the encounter is 100% solvable, you just have to get creative and think outside the box. So in a way you could say the encounter is still balanced (as it's possible to overcome/solve) but it's not at all balanced from a combat POV.
I think this is generally the kind of idea he means. Presenting every encounter as some bespoke precalculated thing the PC's are expected to be able to take in a fight is frankly quite dull for a lot of people, and creatively limiting. Having some serious stakes in the world and monsters dispersed in a naturalistic way gives players more agency, and makes the world feel far more believable.
Imagine how boring the Hobbit would have been if Bilbo could just walk up to Smaug and smack him to death!
@@benjaminmckay6983 Oh yeah totally. I think that you have balanced something as long as there is a way to do it. The type of challenge that cannot be overcome by sheer perseverance is what I'd call a "gimmick", like some boss fights in action videogames. Better suited to be faced as a skill challenge imo.
But aside from that, when it comes to building an actual face up fight, no matter how interesting and creative the terrain/objectives are, you still need to decide if that goblin deals 1d6 or 1d10 damage and how many there are, using some kind of logical criteria, based on how hard you want the encounter to be.
The party can still kick down two hobgoblins into the oblivion chasm, or lock them on bad terrain, or use the mcGuffin at the center of the map, but you can't be sure they actually will, those are big swingy toys; you still have to crunch some numbers to make the challenge PROBABLY *insert desired difficulty level*.
I agree that square box fights are just boring.
The kind of play you'd consider a gimmick and would like to be a skill challenge is the kind of play a lot of people *don't want to abstract into dice rolling at all* because D&D to them is about overcoming challenges, not seeing how well their character can roll checks.
You truly don't have to crunch any numbers to design encounters, D&D was played and designed this way for 25+ years. It comes down to a few things:
A) You still have a general fairness of play. I.e., as a GM you shouldn't present the players a hook that leads them to Tiamet at 1st level, generally you want to keep adventure locations keyed to a range of levels suitable for the characters. The monsters themselves would just have stats based on whatever system's monster book uses, no need to redesign a goblin.
B) Encounters *are not* designed as implicit combat. Monsters, NPC's, etc. all have motivations and some level of intelligence and self-preservation, it's rarely in their best interest to attack on sight, or keep fighting once half their numbers have been killed.
C) Players can run. Not everything that can be wacked with a stick should be wacked with a stick. If your players understand this they'll start to come up with clever solutions to overcoming challenges in ways the GM may not have even imagined (and that's part of the beauty of the game).
In the original 1974 D&D you could by the rules roll an encounter running into 300 bandits. The mere idea of this happening is crazy if you approach every encounter as if it's tailored to be fought by the PC's.
@@benjaminmckay6983 And I'm not against points A to C. What I'm talking about are those situations where one side has mad horrors that wont retreat or bargain and the party feels forced to give it their all because of whatever narrative is going on, retreat is worse than death.
In this scenario, you gotta know what you are putting on the board, why it is the way it is and a rough estimation of how good/bad this could go, big swings aside. After that, it's free reign to creativity, this "hard" challenge might become "easy" because of a clever trick a player pulled off with the environment, the McGuffin, the enemies weakness.
Again, I'm talking exclusively about to the death combat here; ofc negotiations and intelligent skirmishes wont be balanced. Heck you build a fight with orcs that is supposed to be deadly, than your party is the one who gets lucky to wipe a bunch of orcs in the initial rounds; I would surrender as the orcs, cause winning would mean carnage on both sides probably at this point, and we don't want that.
I understand that it is interesting to pitch the party against pretty much a wall in terms of odds, forcing them to either negotiate (to a loss) or run! Done a few times, made sure to point it out at a point cause some people don't get it and think this is a videogame.
In my exp, CR just doesn't work most of the time. It really only takes into account a couple of basic stats for DPS and Toughness but doesn't care about action economy and such. I find making custom stat-blocks with advanced encounter building tools way more precise in creating a challenge of the desired difficulty.
I don't get the point on skill challenges; these are challenges to overcome, not just a series of whatever checks. The type of action you decide to take in the particular situation should be weighted in effectiveness and danger; if successful, fill a number of boxes in the track (typically 1 to 3). You can't just call whatever and hope the dice help you, it will take you ages to fill that track and you'll suffer too many consequences. It's the same as having bad tactical play on the grid.
@@Diamondarrel To be honest a lot of the things we don't see eye to eye on is just from a fundamental difference in game design. Things like a 'to the death combat' isn't something I would ever have the players deal with. Is there enemies who fight to the death? totally, mindless undead come to mind. But nothing about the overall situation they'd be in would force combat because it's inherently risky and I think players should be the ones to determine what types of risks they want to engage with.
Re skill challenges. I don't like them for the same reason I don't like perception checks. It's taking control away from the player and shifts it towards your character build and RNG. Sure the decisions you make could give you some situational bonus but ultimately the decider is dice and your inherent modifiers. A great plan should bypass rolls, so I'd rather interrogate the fiction with the GM and sort things out logically. That doesn't mean I think rolls are unnecessary, just that the implicit requirement of a roll naturally stifles creativity (what's the point of devising a foolproof plan if you're still going to leave the decision up to RNG).
I look forward to every time you upload. Your videos make me laugh so much and are always a total pleasure to watch. As I am vision impaired I don’t actually see the content but the care you take with your comedic timing with audio gives me the ability to visualise so well. Thank you for your quality of content and incredible sense of humour. You are at the top of my list. You have saved me hours of agony with your advice and I have learned a different way to think about my dming and playing.
The “you play however you want” with the squeaky hand might be my favorite thing on this planet
I have told a DM once that I wanted my character to die, and they still saved me with blatantly obvious fiats and fudging of rolls...
In fact, I went as far as to say this Tiefling had a terminal illness due to his fiendish blood that would still kill him if I managed to survive the whole adventure. Well, first, I approached the DM and asked if this was okay. He seemed all for it.
6 or so sessions in he gives my character a magic necklace that cures my character AND makes him permanently immune to disease. So it isn't always just trying to spare your characters for the player's sake.
The “player fudging” solution you gave reminds me of the Bennie system from Savage Worlds. It’s really effective in that game, and could work for DnD too.
Players almost always use up their tokens in the first few counters, ensuring the boss fight is actually stressful… and it’s the player’s doing rather than the DM’s.
Great video as always my dood👍
I love these videos! I've been playing D&D for around a year and took up DMing just before Christmas. These videos are really fun, entertaining and useful... Keep up the great work 😎
Costa Maya? Cozumel? Great locations, very good bars and shopping.
So happy for you! Congrats on your first sponsor. Also a great video, I have stopped fudging dice recently and it has made a noticeable difference for my players.
Sportsball! Yeah, I used to play that! That's my takeaway. 🤔
Seriously, I've been binging these videos since yesterday and I dig the comedic presentation of ideas I subscribe to (also subbed to the channel ofc) and I find the advice helpful in clarifying things in a practical way. Thanks!
In regards to your last point about giving the players a way to fudge dice: I suggest what I call the cup of doom/chance. It’s a skull chalice filled with about 10 D6’s. The players are free to grab as many as they want and add the result to any roll they make. The catch is, when the dice run out, some sort of complication relevant to the situation arises.
I’m looking forward to that balancing video, I’m about to DM my first campaign and it was something I was worried about. But with some advice, I’ve intentionally made an encounter or two that they can’t win, but have another way to complete an objective then run!
Just finished binging your channel after it showed up in my recommended. Looking forward to more short form and easily digestible DM advice! It's almost like... You format and present your videos the same way you would your tabletop campaigns?!
I like the use of referee as well. I started tabletop gaming with Cyberpunk 2020 and that book calls the GM the Referee :)
I would only fudge to save my game from going down in flames entirely. Wiser to scale future encounters up or down than to fudge. If there was a TPK event and I wanted the game to continue, I'd consider saving one character who can keep some continuity going.
Love your unique style, Deficient one! What I'd love to see is a video about how to incorporate horror elements into the game. Trying to make jaded, middle aged players truly scared is quite the challenge!
I reward my players with inspiration dice for especially cool or funny things their characters come up with, even if it doesn't necessarily work out in game (a recent example was someone shooting down the chandelier to do damage, but not succeeding in actually hitting anyone bc the chandelier was unfortunately placed) I give out different dice, usually a d6, d12 or d20 depending on coolness levels - and the players can definitely argue for a better dice.
It also helps getting my shy and/or new players a bit more out their shell, and I don't feel too bad when a monster crits against them again
Commenting to ask for a rundown on your custom OSE+Ars Magica+DGC+ICRPG+Homebrew system. I need it bad, man...
Congrats on your first sponsor, Mister DM!
EXCELLENT advice. :) This video should be required viewing for all DMs.
That D20 cruise sounds.... inspired. xD
Another fun way I've seen inspiration used is as a reward for making a clever joke during the game, or for adding really cool RP flavour to a moment
I concur with all of the ideas here. I'm a play it as it lies DM, and the players know that stupid games win stupid prizes. It won't stop them from doing crazy stuff, but sometimes the effort of fixing the problems they made for themselves becomes part of the fun. I love your style of content creation! It's the subtle details of Post-its in unexpected places (like that reminder to subscribe) that make it so much fun to watch. Love it!
Well.... this is brilliant! As a newer DM I greatly appreciate the advice. I never get the warm fuzzies when I've fudged rolls in the past. Providing inspiration so the players can fudge their own rolls is an awesome way to put it.
i love your style bro 🤣 honestly one of the best dnd chanels here
First of all, thank you for the visualization of dice brownies. I didn't know I needed that in my life, but apparently I needed that.
Second, thank you for the argument against fudging. I often struggle to articulate why I think it's a crime against player agency. And honestly, if the dice gods want PC skulls, they'll find a way.
I like "Edge" in shadow run. Unreplenishable resource baked into your character that is similar to inspiration.
You can burn Edge to invoke "hand of god" moments that break rules (in agreement to your DM naturally). Once you run out of it you are dead.
Has the nice side effect, that you can at least do something epic with your last point instead of simply dropping dead.
Watching some of your videos has made me realize that I... like, *NEVER* do combat in games I DM... granted, I literally go out of my way to avoid it because, well, Combat can be slow if you don't make it faster and I like to encourage non-"I kill everyone" ways to solve conflict.
Love the Lost Mines of Phandelver reference.
Thanks for making this video! Every time I see someone recommend fudging to new DMs, I want rage! Lol
I'm loving this channel, so far.
Congrats on the sponsor and yeah I won't say I never fudge dice but i try and do it less and less each time
Great, now I need to see that balance encounter vid lol. Nice channel, subscribed.
Well, now I know what I'm bringing for snacks to next week's sessions... Homemade fudge with mini dice in them.
Crunchy!
@@DeficientMaster I mean, I hope they don't eat the dice but hey, whatever's clever. 😊
Absolutely wildly specific sponsor
While my DM in my campaign that wrapped recently didn't fudge mid-session dice to my knowledge, character building was slightly different. I had to fight him to use a naturally-rolled ability score spread that had a negative modifier - one singular -1 - in it. Not the best feeling in the world.
I would absolutely LOVE to play in one of your games someday. You should consider it a patreon option when you inevitably make one.
Most of times i see people complaining about Fudge, is an over-exaggerated example. Yeah. In extreme cases, people who abuse it and use it badly, makes a bad experience for sure, like anything else they would abuse or use it badly.
This, 300%
When I explained to my father I was going to a ttrpg convention, my father asked me of I was a "judge" (in French in the text).
That's how I approached my games since then because I thought : listening to all parties and coming to a decision that should be as fair and pleasing to everyone (including myself because I'm part of the game). So the referee analogy speaks to me on that level as well.
I started a game last month with new players who only want to play 5e. Not my cup of tea, but that's fine. I just told them up front that I don't balance encounters and I'll do my best to foreshadow danger. So far, they've run from every encounter... I think I spooked them.
11 minutes and 15 seconds of absolute truth and wisdom
Looks like someone bought the D&D Monster Token and Terrain set at Ollie's for a couple bucks ;3
Yeah, the concept of having 'other' players fudge dice is a fun way to flip the script. When in doubt lean towards the option that gives more player agency.
Also to be honest I thought this was going to be a light hearted rant about systems that use 'fudge dice' (Those D6's with +'s and -'s on them) in games like Fate or those really super duper light TTRPGs.
I love this show so much
I made it clear from session 0 that fudging dice is not something I do and death is a possibility. I have had 1 player die, he was bummed, to the point he was asking me to basically deux ex machina something into the game for him. He didn't die to a big bad, he died to a random encounter in a dungeon (to be fair it was a dangerous dungeon) and the dice were not in his favor that day. Funny part is he likes his new character even more than his old one. I'm glad you made this video and I will probably share it with my players lol.
Running my first game, i ran a travel scene where the big bad came down and fried the party with an electric breath weapon. When I looked up the damage I definitely had to fudge some dice to not permanently kill half the party 😂
Congrats on your first sponsor!
my favorite mentality about fudging dice is: i wont actively try to kill you, but dont expect me to save you either
You are amazing man, thanks tô you i started to watch english videos without subtitles and practice my listenning and speaking, thanks a lot!
hey, the more I follow you, the more I think you're part of the FKR movement. I don't think you're claiming it as your own, but I always find it interesting how you talk about game design, starting with D&D and going on from there!
I'm definitely swing that way, though I haven't officially planted a flag yet.
I'm a huge fan of OSR game philosophy but I also don't have any nostalgia towards "The Good Ol' Days" as I came into the hobby via Pathfinder in my late teens.
I take a little from every side of the game design spectrum and see what works and what doesn't.
Modern games have made some great design changes/choices too! It's just also interesting to see people having problems with games like 5e and seeing that older editions fixed those problems before they were even problems.
Sometimes, we have modern problems that are created because we have a different approach to games today. Sometimes it's good to go back to basics, why use a character sheet? Why use skills? Etc
Something I have been toying with, not in dnd 5e though, is something like metacurrencies like inspiration but a little less… meta.
A character can spend their defensive stats to reroll something. kind of like a final push/hail mary, but after it is used, the character becomes more vulnerable to things against them for the next while because of their lesser defenses. Feels less like a one time get out of jail free card, and more like a singular draining effort of will.
I would love to see the video on encounter balancing (or apparently not from what you said in the video)
I am so surprised that this channel has so few subs, wow
Tons of doms though.
Was once in a session where the DMPC rolled nothing but nat 20s the whole session.
...Come to think of it, there was an odd odor about the room at the time.
As my group's forever DM, I can certainly second not worrying about balance for encounters. I mean, Hells, I thought running a group through Phandelver before Tyranny of Dragons would make the first few chapters of the latter a cakewalk. Far be it from me to warn the player who wanted to challenge a swarm of kobolds on his own and bit the dust as a result. That said, I daresay your videos, Deficient, will be getting sent to my players right after I watch each of them as they come out.
Keep up the fantastic work. Or... deficient work?
Whichever means a good thing for you, I guess.
Early on I got into the habit of fudging rolls. I stopped doing that recently and actually it’s ended up with a lot more climactic points to each fight that I never thought about before.
I think it was especially important because in my campaign, fights are expected to be long and arduous, against large amounts of enemies with diverse skill sets all attacking the party with reinforcements and tactics of their own. If the party went headstrong, they’d surely die, so now that I no longer fudge dice and they know *FOR SURE* I will not save them if they do something risky and get punished for it, they started thinking more tactically than my enemies who position around cover and try to take advantage of openings. A lot of combats now bring the players down very low, I’m talking 10s to single digits across the entire group of 5 players, and it’s fun.
I do think I like that idea for inspiration, I might try it as a one-time test in the next session and see how people feel about it. It should help the players who feel like “Wow, I’ve just been rolling bad all day and there is nothing I can do about it.”
There’s also the thing that when playing a game that contains various forms of powerful deities, magic, etc., death might not be the end of all - or some deity might chose to intervene, perhaps for a price!
Perhaps Móðguðr won’t let the player pass Gjallarbrú over the river Gjöll, perhaps the Goddess of the dead, Hel need the player to bring her a certain object or do a certain task - or a Demon will bring the player back as an undead.
There are various narrative plots that can be used if it for some reason is important that the character doesn’t die, at least at that point in the campaign!
Of course it also depends on what types of players you’re dealing with and what kind of world and campaign it is….
Some thoughts...
* Warn the players ahead of time that this is a dangerous world; they'd better have a backup character in case of "attrition"
* Teach the players (by having a weak enemy do it) that you can sometimes run or yield in a combat, which latter comes with a default or ransom
* Err on the side of too-weak enemies; they can call in reinforcements if they start losing too quickly. The PCs can't
I never fudge but I keep the DM screen. Then, when the players get hit below half hp or miss an important saving throw, I remove the dm screen and roll in the open for dramatic effect, maybe even switching the music into something more ominous
This is a reason I really love Savage Worlds. Every session the players get 3 reroll tokens they can use on anything except critical failures. It's a great system but I like your idea of passing out an inspiration to each player when playing 5e.
I used to fudge dice rolls, or at least the results, but then I ran a game where I rolled out in the open, which seemed to help break me out of it.
Of course, it might have also been the fact that I was playing with people I didn't really like much at that time too.
Let ‘em play, ref!
Wow, look at you go. Your first sponsor. I'm so proud. Ginny di will notice you one day
That was great! Thank you for making this happen and may you get more sponsors to afford --*checks notes*-- dice fudge.
If anyone has questions I will silently lurk here watching this video on a loop 👁
I had my first death among player characters I run for this last week, and the player was actually very excited that he got to role-play his heroic death, defending a church full of innocents. (we are using a method where players get to keep fighting even below zero hit points, instead of going unconscious; they can bleed out while still fighting, and bleed out faster the harder they fight back. Makes it very dramatic and heroic.) don’t get me wrong, characters have died in games I have run multiple times in the past, but never before has it been so highly unlikely that a character could be brought back. I had been fairly clear with my players leading up to this that I was stepping up the tension and challenge by adding enemies not present in the module, making the possibility of coming near to death more likely. So, when the barbarian chose to actively draw the attention of the werewolf, allowing the Fighter and Cleric to gain some breathing room, and he across his death threshold by to hit points, it felt like a natural consequence of his actions and the way things had played out. It was satisfying, I think for everyone. He was certainly pleased with it.
I will note that the player chose not to reveal how low he was on hit points, because he was visibly hidden from the other characters. So, even though I could have fudged the damage lower, or even just taken the lower, average damage, he chose not to reveal the information that could have caused that fudging.
I do like having players being able to choose if they keep on fighting after reaching 0 HP. To me, it's bad game design to make a rule where the player cannot play the game.
I typically rule that if a player drops to 0 HP, they can choose to go down and potentially no longer seem a threat to the opposition, or choose to stay up fighting consciously through death saves but still being a target, a la Boromir with 3 arrows in his chest.
It gives the player the choice to potentially save their character for their allies to rescue or to go down swinging like a hero.
My problem with fudging roles is because it very quickly infringes on player agency. This gets mentioned briefly, but I really think that this is the fundamental problem with fudging. If bad things happen I really like Matt Colville's video on failing forward.
Matt is a fudger I think? Unless I’m misremembering.
And yes fudging infringes on player agency 100% and most people don’t tell their players because they know they’ll be disappointed
@@Nastara Clarification, I think Matt's video on failing forward helps provide tools so that we don't have to fudge.
@@nathancheng6995 Yes it absolutely does.
D20 Cruise? Are you Effing kidding me right now?!
i f**** love this channel.
thats it, im not gonna elaborate any further haha