Great summary of Prussian Kriegsspiel's connection to D&D. One thing I might add: when you correctly talk about how die rolls impart to players a sense of fairness, they also give the referee a way to decide events impartially when they can't trust themselves, even. Back when referees were adjudicating between competing parties (and in early D&D, they still were, sometimes) rather than "playing the world" against a collaborating party, referees needed a way not to show favor, even unconsciously, to one competing party over another. "Impartial" is even built in to the German word they used for "referee." It's no coincidence that dice got attached to wargames at the same historical moment that referees gained the power to decide events in those games without the supervision of players: dice play an important part in hedging against the risk of unintended bias. This principle had a lot of interesting interactions with early RPG play, and is perhaps the root cause for tensions RPG designers are still trying to resolve today.
It didn't take me long as a dm to start fudging rolls. My players had battle where they killed the big bad before they could do anything, and die to random they nearly died due to too many random encounters in a day. Fudging really does help to add drama
A fun thing to do. When they enter a room, roll a die. Make sure they can hear the roll. Make a noise about the roll. Then never mention it again. They'll be so paranoid.
When traveling, I ask for their perception modifiers and roll some perception checks to see if they notice birds or a fox or something innocent like that. I do this to throw off metagaming. One of my players checked 3 more times when all he saw with his roll (which he didn't know was over 20) was a nest of birds.
@@ManJackThe for rolls where the character wouldn't know how well they did (perception, insight, and anything to know something) I roll for them and narrate the result.
@@EdsonR13 that boi Tony is INTELLIGENT enough to build artificial intelligence but not WISE enough to know not to drink 7 martinis and then fly around Manhattan
Actually played a game like this long ago in high-school, with our own ultra simplistic homebrew system. Even walking in the intended direction was sometimes left to the dice. It stands as some of our favorite tabletop moments in a decade of play, nothing has ever spiraled so ridiculously out of control in any other game.
Matt, this is getting very annoying. In your video's you sometimes make a statement that I disagree with. And then you explain yourself. And then I realise you're right.
As a DM that's one of the few things I hate about having to play with my friends through the internet. When I throw a die it's just on the screen hidden from everyone and they can't hear the die rolling about and try to read what my reaction to it is and then watch them squirm as they can't tell whether it was a good or a bad roll lol
I like the rule that you only fudge rolls to fix your own mistakes. Because that's always the biggest contention for players, they feel like the DM is taking away their agency by curating the rolls. But you as the DM could make literally anything happen, at any time a meteor could come down and split the planet in half at precisely the same second that the Sun went supernova. The fact that you are giving them a fight against some kobolds means you are already heavily curating the experience. In the grand scheme of things the players have very little agency, so it seems cruel to take even that away from them to force your conclusion. So if they are in a bad situation due to their own actions, let the dice fall as they may. But if they are in a bad situation because you simply misjudged the difficulty, then fudging the dice is an acceptable extension of the world building you were doing anyways.
That's my main takeaway from this and a good way to put the philosophy I already had to words. I never fake a critical in either direction, miss or hit, and I'll never make an attack hit that missed. Upping bonuses throughout the fight, loosely keeping track of wounds on my baddies, introducing environmental factors if I feel it isn't narratively satisfying for them to kill someone yet, that I'll do. But when it comes to die rolls, I only fudge down or in the players favor when I know the result would be incredibly unsatisfying for the majority of the table.
There are ways to make it so combat is not only depended on the rolls of the dices. Playing on a grid is a good way to do this. 4th also to keep the game from becoming a roll play game.
Depends on your game, I gave my players 6 plot hooks in the first session to choose from and 3 other points of interest. They had all the agency in the world.
Unprepared ToDie I would not call making sure events happen as fudging the dice roll. If I need something to happen then it the roll for how good the action happen.
That's not how agency works. Agency is their ability to make decisions of what their character's will do. Taking away their agency is something like "you fail your wisdom save, you are mind controlled, you see red and those you once considered friends have been betraying you this whole time, roll to attack your former friend, Goldmoon the cleric." not "the bbeg saves against your fireball, because he was waiting for it, and knows you are a firebug who loves the fireball spell" Things in the game happening because they make sense or don't make sense like making a kobold not crit three times against a level 9 barbarian is not removing agency. I think that word is used too much.
I fudge dice rolls but have a two rules 1) the players can not know 2) Only if it is not the players fault (I will still give players outs of most situations but they have to work them out or invent one I like)
It's probably either nothing or MSG. What better way to drive interest in a product than to say you have a secret ingredient, only to be a cheapskate and not have anything special after all. Totally in character for Mr. Krabs. MSG also makes everything taste better so there's that too.
The party's future was at stake. The Paladin had the Chain Devil's chain around his throat, and the end of this epic arena battle (and the party's lives) was only a couple hit points away. The Devil raised his weapon for the killing blow ... and I rolled a 14. That's a hit, the Paladin dies, the game is over for these characters. I deftly turned the die to a 1 as I lifted the DM screen to prove that FATE had saved his life. The Paladin took advantage of this opportunity and struck ... with a natural 20. The chain devil's head rolled off of his shoulders, wide eyed in shock. The room ERUPTED. It was f*$%ing heroic. And there's no way I'd ever let them know. I didn't CHEAT, I gave him one last chance to be a hero, and it was incredible. THAT is not cheating; that's being a good DM. Side note: my brother, which whom I've been playing since I was 11, was sitting beside me and saw me flip the d20. To his credit, he never said a word.
@@Dragonspassage I disagree with you. He didn't rob them of anything, he gave them an experience that they enjoyed immensely (from what the post states). It is different than your method, perhaps, but still a success in the drama nonetheless. For the record though, "being a good DM" is dictated by the players at the table. Not by the DM writing the post, nor his online critics 😜
One funny moment, I can say, was not fudged - the party was after a "white dragon", that ednded being an "albino" red (lych) using ice spells... at the great battle, one warrior charged screaming, only to roll a nat 1 vs the fire breath, and durn to coal and ash.. that warrior was supposedly, the last to act, when the wizard (player was distracted by the whole scene and forgot his initiative) found was still to act.. two silly spells and a disintegrate.. dracolych is desintegrated in an epic "nooo" revenge act, rolling a nat 1 too... latter the warrior was ressurrected and they got a villain out of a simple dungeon boss - they never found the phylactery that was lilely inside the lava at the heart of the icy volcano... ...needless to say, I do fudge rolls if drama calls... no need to kill a pc on a random roll of a futile random minor battle.. often I "save" the roll for a dramatic moment... and I am certain, that one moment vs the dracolych, would have been one if luck had not trully rolled it so.. it was fun, players still talk about it after a full decade... so, kudos for the your great moment with the paladin...
I like to a little of both extremes, sometimes a fudged die is needed - sometimes I let a boss do a devastating attack to the party by rolling a special die on the table for them all to see. They think I'm CRAZY - and I like that.
I've only fudged one roll in hundreds of hours of GMing. A group of brand new players between 12&14 years old were playing Lost Mine of Phandelver. The first fight. Two goblin archers had surprise and both rolled 20's. It would have killed the PC. The goblins wound up just taking most of the hit points.
just started playing lost mine of phandelver with 3 friends, the fight against 4 redbrands ended up with me rolling 4 critical hits in a row (and a 20 and 21 on initiative), this downed 2 players out of the 3, I ended up fudging the rest of my dice rolls on turn 1 to make sure I didn't get a tpk on turn 1 of the fight before the pcs even got to react
@@AndyR_927 I am looking to run this campaign for my kids - it will be their first experience of D&D. I am certainly going to fudge rolls to make sure that it is fun for them. When they get older and more experienced in the game they might face character deaths but not the first time out.
There’s a solid argument that the first goomba of Super Mario Bros. 1-1 is the most successful killer in the history of video games. The LMoP initial goblin encounter, by now, is probably that goomba for tabletop games.
What is so great about this (And I know this is obvious and it's the purpose of the video but I applaud it anyway because it is brilliant) is that just like at 10:49 when Matthew rolls for the purpose of the "for instance," because we as viewers don't know what the roll is, and he says "Like that" we maybe assume that it is a certain roll. Maybe it was a 1 and that was the reason he smiled and the same goes for a 20, but what if that roll was a 6 or a 15? It doesn't matter. Matthew is the story teller in this instance and he gets to decide the outcome for HIS story -in this case- the video we are watching. I personally LOVE the idea of fudging rolls for the purpose of story-telling. At the very end you say that you had a camera taping the rolls.... I don't care if that's true or not, I don't want to know what those rolls were because I like DM's fudging rolls for a purpose and in this case the purpose was this video and the example. Matthew, you are brilliant. :D
I used to fudge dice rolls a lot, and my players hated me for it. I was a bad judge of what the most dramatic option was, and ended up railroading my players to do things they didn't want. For me, (and this is only my experience, so not applicable to everyone) rolling openly and being honest with my players forced me to be a better DM. I learned to let the players succeed and fail even if I wasn't prepared for it. I may eventually fudge rolls again, but for now I'll avoid it because it wasn't good for me.
@@lucas56sdd In other words they had a perspective on the discussion? Yeah. And it's appreciated; fudging die rolls definitely has its dangers, which is something to keep in mind, even if you still choose to employ the technique.
@@TnTyson81 In retrospect I agree. This might be my darkest moment :( At least I brought 6 people down with me. @lucas56sdd 10 months later I laughed at your joke, and I apologise \o/
I roll openly, I had negative experiences with players thinking I was fudging dice rolls in their favour, though I've never fudged, so i started rolling openly and it's added some great drama to the game. Sort of like watching a circus show without a safety net. I've never had a TPK, I am also fairly liberal with combat information though, I feel like it makes sense for characters to figure things out in combat, and a lot of the party enemies will flee at certain HP percentages effectively lowering their CR. I think there are other tools for guiding the narrative away from DM mistakes than fudging individual dice rolls, but I definitely understand why some tables use it as a tool, it's just not for me.
I openly tell people before we start playing that I will fudge the dice if the rolls cause the game to becoming boring. I also normally build a relationship with people before hand who trust me to do what ever I can to make their game enjoyable and know that I am going to try and kill them, but I will do so fairly. That is just me though.
"The job of the DM is to curate the game experience." YES! This is something I've always believed. I don't always fudge dice rolls, but when I do, it's to make the game experience better for the players.
I know everyone has their own way. I fudge absolutely 0 die rolls, and have never tpk'd. I don't use a dm screen, rolling every die roll in front of my players. They have come close to a tpk a ton, but I trust them enough to make smart choices. The most powerful moment of last session was when I rolled a 20 on an attack roll against one of the pc's childhood friends. My blood went ice cold when it happened, but that feeling that everyone felt is what made that moment memorable. I think that being open with the rolls makes everything feel "real" for my players.
Couldn't have said it better myself. One thing Matt talked about which I found really interesting was the idea of being unhappy when easy encounters wipe a party. I'd argue maybe controversially that having an encounter where the battle has a foregone conclusion is a bit of a waste of time. I'd compare it to a filler episode of a television show, I just can't personally get behind it. I skew my games more lethal though (in theory, like you OP I've yet to get a TPK and haven't killed a PC in years). I think there should always be a chance for a hero to have a tragic ending. If a hero never retires and keeps adventuring eventually they're going to die in my opinion. If an adventurer could do anything else and be happy, they should. Thats just my two cents though. I think encounters where the PCs are going to win as a foregone conclusion are boring to play as a player, and boring to run as a GM. Then again Matt has talked extensively about a similar philosophy where he'll put his players in situations where he has no clue how they'll escape.
A combat where winning is a foregone conclusion can be useful for other reasons than challenge though. If your PCs have been escaping one impossible situation after another, it only stands to reason they'd eventually fight opponents that were woefully unprepared to go up against these legendary warriors that have a bunch of adventuring experience under their belts. A curb stomp in the players' favor can show off how far they've come if against an old foe they've outgrown or somebody that's more bark than bite. Or maybe it's some mooks that are only there to slow them down while another objective is getting away from them, like a bad guy running away or a timed puzzle? Or, on the note of disposable enemies, there to distract you from the mines buried in the ground as a one time surprise. Hard to check for traps and fight at the same time (even if it's technically bad sport, and you should find story factors for why it was a one off occurrence if you don't want combats to bog down mine sweeping checks afterward). Maybe your big bad or their right hand man is only a strategist with no combat ability of their own but refuses to back down? Then it can be about subduing them without killing them, or a little bit of catharsis or twist when suddenly they drop dead from the first round of combat. Maybe the combat was too easy you find a gaping wound in the bad guy hidden under their armor after the fact that the party didn't inflict? Where could that have come from...? ...But, on the other hand, ultimately combat can take up a lot of session time, so it's entirely understandable not wanting to "waste" it on an encounter with low stakes. Although, if the party is in a situation where they by necessity have to go through a lot of battle without a lot of rollplay opportunity to break it up, should definitely throw in an easier one just for the sake of a breather. Or, on the flip side, introduce an easy encounter every now and then to lure the party in to expending some resources while still pressing on afterward. That actually leads into another thing, the ways of playing very wildly. If a group or DM feels like it's unrealistic for an adventuring day to consist of less than 10 encounters for instance, it's just not reasonable for all 10 of those encounters to use up most of the party's resources by themselves.
You are right about letting them feel the power they've earned. We all know critical role(?) Well, my favorite moments are not when everyone is on the verge of dying. They are when the players have gained the upper hand on npc:s underestimate them. The latest example of this isn't technicly even in combat: s2ep37 where Nott creates paranoia using illusions.
I find there is a much easier way to introduce the party to the idea that they have grown in power. 1. Introduce a monster early on such as an Orc to fight the players - it'll be a struggle but they likely will win. 2. Introduce the same enemy later on, suddenly he dies much faster and doesn't really hurt anyone. 3. Make the monster a minion at even later levels and bring them in droves that all have "1 HP" to the players. This approach is obviously hard to pull off.. how do you know they'll be fighting orcs from lvl 1-10? In your own words though, could be henchmen of something else, could be a random encounter, who knows. You don't need to throw an easy fight to show how the party has grown, you need to throw what they've already fought to show it. Or you could be a sadistic DM and throw something they could never hope to beat early on then again later (that's basically Curse of Strahd in a nutshell). People only measure themselves off of other things.
@David Sterling, um yeah, my character has … "Uncanny Initiative". What? You don't believe me, nah man, it's in another extended rule book you haven't seen, trust me. *rolls bluff to DM
Fudging a dice roll feels like a cinematic or cutscene in a video game to me. Sometimes the heroes deserve their moment, same thing with the villians. It's great for drama and powerful moments but always be sure to hand the reins back over when you're done.
I totally agree. I believe that, situationally, a die-roll isn't needed. Sometimes an outcome is absolutely inevitable. When your party ties up a Goblin, questions it, then decides to kill it, you don't have them roll attack or damage. It just dies. Similarly, when a player does something foolish (in my instance, two PCs were trying to bargin with a Pirate Captain and his crew, outnumbered 10:1, and they pissed the captain off), they too must simply die.
I have been fudging dice rolls since day one of DMing. Sometimes it's adjusting damage up or down a couple points for drama, or to avoid some ridiculous result on a table (usually something homebrewed) from happening and breaking immersion. I have also done things the other way, with no screen and no fudged rolls. This was at the request of my players, who thought I was going easy on them. (Spoiler: I wasn't, really.) Turns out, the players that complained about the DM screen meaning I could hide dice and fudge stuff were the ones most uncomfortable with me rolling in the open. Like they knew that 'this roll is really, really, really gonna count' and it upped the stress level a lot. I eventually brought the screen back, just because they were stressing too much to have fun. They were still having about the same success rate as before, but somehow rolls being behind the screen somehow put them at ease. Personally, I found the whole thing amusing.
Andrew Joyce Nice! I have experienced similar feelings with my game group and the screen. We typically use it because a bit of mystery is fun! It's neat to imagine what the DM has back there that he's going to pull on us. We have also used rolling in front of or without a screen to good effect. I'll never forget the time when our party was in a climactic battle near the end of a campaign arc, it was tough and things weren't going well for us. Our DM quietly stood up, set his dice tray in front of the screen and started rolling in the open. Without having to explain anything, we felt that this was really real now, the stakes were higher than ever and our characters lives we're on the line. Whatever the dice said ruled. This ratcheted up the tension of the battle and made it feel more powerful and epic. I wouldn't use this technique often, I think it would be annoying and anticlimactic in a random orc fight in the woods. I think that gets back to Matt's point about fate versus randomness. In that big battle scenario we would be much more okay with the dice ending the life of our character in the service of the quest and the story than be killed (or simply fail) randomly in an unlikely, unglamorous scenario. I definitely agree with Matt, you're the DM, fudge the dice or don't fudge the dice, do both, do whatever is appropriate to make sure everyone at your table has a blast and can't wait until the next session!
Wow, that is super interesting... IME, players are usually the ones who complain about DMs fudging dice, but I suspect that's because they think we do it to make things worse for them. I have a player, too, though who doesn't want me to go easy on them. HE wants hard hard combats. :D
I think perhaps One of the strongest arguments for fudging, is the fact that video games "fudge the dice" all the time. Like ALL the time. Basically no video game uses true random chance when it comes to doing things like hit roles or amounts of damage etc. They all do tons of play testing and then fudge the randomness to curate the experience for the players in edge cases and critical moments. Even if it's only very very rare. Because true randomness, is antithetical to a designed experience.
Funny how many DMs seem to encourage fudging as if the natural state was to always respect the rolls. I used to fudge a lot as a new DM, because I was kinda scared of where it might take me. One roll can force you to forget your planned adventure and go a totally different direction. And a character death seemed like a disaster to me. For me, not fudging is a sign of my confidence as a DM. And the less prepared I am, the more I fudge. I'm more confident about what will happen if they fail or succed this risky sleight of hand on the king (you're doing WHAT ? er, ok, make the roll. I'll make the perception one open for the fun). I know my investigation can still be fun if they fail all their perception rolls - because planning. I make sure they have enough options in general, even when it comes to combat. And I feel confident enough about my stories that a character death won't totally ruin the enjoyment for the player (on the long term, of course he'll be unhappy on the spot). And I came to really like that uncertainty. Dice are also here to reward player's creativity, as they're trying so hard to tip the scales on their favor, and that can be amazing. But yeah, I still fudge sometimes, because I had a nice dramatic idea. I just had to learn to accept the rolls as much as possible.
In my personal experience, every advantage of rolling hidden dice and then fudging can be replicated without needing not to be open to your players, and the cost of having a fudge culture at the table is huge, after players internalize that rolls are hidden and constantly fudged (which might be just a perception they got from knowing, or assuming, you fudged a single time) then rolls start to lose impact, and they feel like they have no more agency in the game. Upfront rolling dice open, and then saying "hey folks, a freak roll happened here, what do you think if we pretend the result was X, not why, and you guys get Y hero's points?" Or, if it is a rolls that affects one player very negatively, you can offer to change it, but cash in doom-horror points instead, and give the character a major, but narratively adequate, setback. It works like a charm.
I almost never fudge my rolls, not because I believe the Dice should have some unbreakable integrity but because it makes Fudging rolls easier. If you tell your players 199 true die rolls they wont notice that the 200th roll was a lie, the roll that really matters.
As a DM I consider the dice as a guide for what happens, not a hard and fast rule. I'll cheat for the players (reducing damage done to them, or secretly lowering the DC, etc) if they need some help (especially when it is not their tactics that are flawed, just their dice) and I will cheat for the monsters if my dice go too cold (which deflates the sense of danger in an encounter really fast). I do have a personal rule that I abide by though: if I ever cheat during an encounter for the monsters, I will NOT kill a PC that encounter. It just doesn't seem right to me that I may have influenced the encounter in the name of tension but changed the outcome to one that eliminates a PC.
I completely agree with this I normally fudge dice to save my PCs from terrible encounter design. Although I usually never fudge my monsters as i make them borderline difficult.
That's a fine philosophy, but I would also say you shouldn't force yourself to start fudging hard in the players' favour just to make up for potentially a single attack roll going from a miss to a hit.
I only do it to prevent a TPK where it wasn't deserved based on their tactics and the situation. It is almost always in a combat situation when any side's dice go to an extreme and stay there. I can always secretly give or take away NPC HP. I can change a hit/miss or the damage rolled from a set of nasty hits from "kill the PC" to "gravely wound" the PC. When I design an encounter I have a pretty good idea how the PCs will fare and I know my players well enough that I know the likely tactics that they will usually employ. Trust me, I am not "forced" to fudge rolls and I don't do it often. After ~37 years of experience playing/DMing I think I know when it is appropriate and when it isn't.
@@CatholicCrab Not yet, I need to paint and put down new floor in my lair first, but it's been added to the budget. Not buying the one that Matt & crew are using, I'll be ordering The Garrison from Rathskellers. Didn't see any coffee/gaming tables I loved (a couple I liked though), and then Matt dropped that vid.
I never fudged die rolls until I started running a second campaign that ran parallel to my main game a year ago, when the party nearly got TPK'd be an encounter that I had planned to be a minor foil to weaken them before their untimely fight with the Big Bad. The thing they were fighting had a multiattack and every attack but one was a nat 20, resulting in the Druid and the Barbarian going down, the Bard nearly dying, and the Rogue near half health. They took a short rest, got as close to full as they could, and went on with the dungeon, eventually meeting up with the Big Bad for their "this is how powerful I am" battle that I had intended as a steamroll for the big bad. As it turned out, every attack I made except for like 2 were nat 1's, the other 2 were both below 4s. They thought the Big Bad was a pushover. After that I started fudging die rolls, not all the time, but just to keep the narrative in check. A CR 4 bandit shouldn't be able to nearly TPK a party of level 16s and a CR25 lich shouldn't be a punching bag.
Matt, I'm probably gonna kill a PC this Saturday, so if you could find a way to break the rules of time and get that video out to me before this weekend, I would greatly appreciate it.
Your going to kill them for a story reason ? I wouldn't , I am happy to let players die when they have chosen badly or its there characters fate ( aka the paladin staying to fight to the last man to stop the enemy sort of thing) . Any time i have tried to story kill a character it hasn't had the desired effect , it hasn't even had any positive effects . But hey that's just me , I am not Matt lol .
Im actually really interested to see how this guy's story plays out: Maybe his players have decided to go after the Dragon that they were warned well in advance would be too powerful for them. Maybe for drama a backstory is going to lead to a needed sacrifice. I don't know what he wants by "breaking the rules of time" but in any case: story time Owen
I had a player decide that he was no longer interested in playing his character and wanted to start a new one. So, we set up a situation where, in story, he sacrificed himself for the rest of the party to escape. Half a game session later, we were still learning just how tough his archetype was.
I think Matthew Mercer (Good Matt, as opposed to our Evil Matt) did a GM Tips episode about player character death. Maybe check that out, if you're in need of advice.
Honestly it depends on how (s)he dies, since most of my games have no cleric or other healer in them, death tends to happen more often, I will give you a few catagories of death and how they affected our game: Death by roleplay fluke (a barbarian had a teleportation mishap, ended up in the Fey wild with only a small hut in sight, he soon after died while fighting a provoked hag): The character was still something the player could be proud of, it removed a character from the party that was stubborn to say the least and thereby made the adventure more enjoyable. Death in combat: against BBEG it feels like a good sacrifice, against just a normal monster it felt unfair, however there is a lot a DM can do here to make the death better, death is a big deal, spend a good amount of time recapping the death and have the death not just have an impact until after the combat, people change after seeing a loved one die. Death for character switch: this honestly is one of the worst ways to end a characters story, my general rule is, if the player wants to switch, make player roleplay a reason for the character to leave. Death by roleplay: generally the best way to have a character death, the players and the DM often feel like that was supposed to happen (granted you need a DM who can follow his rules of his own universe)
A couple weeks ago, through strange coincidence, my party met and teamed up with a party from a D&D series I watch and enjoy on youtube, the cast of Trapped in the Birdcage. I had no clue what this party's actual stats were and was forced to basically fudge every dice roll they made to further the plot. My group of very high level players didn't even question when this party was able to outwit or fail to be intimidated because the story and interaction was just fun. In my games fun always trumps numbers. And I think that is the long and short of what you are saying here. This campaign (my first as a DM) has now concluded and the same group is practically begging me to start the next, which I am working on at the moment. Matt, you have been a huge influence for me on my style and very much reinforced my own ideas on what a DM should be, and I can't thank you enough!
I used to fudge rolls. I see the appeal of doing it to create dramatic situations, or to fix a terrible situation. Thing is, it can be pretty obvious when it happens. I am not the best actor to begin with, but I feel like I can tell when other DM's do it as well. If the players know you fudged the roll, it takes the fun out of it in my opinion. Lately, I have just been rolling out in the open. I find it creates more tension and fun that way. The players are more on edge and paying more attention. Everyone leans in to see the rolls and reacts almost every time. It is true that it can create some messed up situations. But that is why we discuss these things at the beginning of the game. My players like the out in the open rolls, so they understand there are real chances they could die.
"The dice don't care about drama": true! "But you do": no, I don't. "As a Dungeon Master it is your job to create drama": no, it isn't. My D&D is not a drama game. Thank you for highlighting this key difference of approach in such a clear way.
Matt! Matt! Matt! Matt! Whats your contact info? You have got to see this 26 page Power Point slide I made on what your doing wrong in your videos! Matt! Matt!
Quothcraft Pish-posh! I am FedEx-ing a 3d simulation of the beard-to-bookshelf refractory quanta, especially with regards to the intermittent German. It's a level 7 crisis!!!
Kian Pfannenstiel It's an in-community joke. Matt gets [very reasonably] annoyed when people tell him with great urgency that the focus was off, the lighting was bad, the sound was tinny etc., frequently going on Twitter, on reddit, on RUclips, by email. The reality is that Matt has a very sharp eye and ear, so if we see anything, it's a pretty good bet that he has seen it at least three times, and already made the call that it's good enough to put up. Me and dude above me are riffing off of that
I totally see your points and love your argument!! This was another well produced video that brought up very good ideas! However, I still must say that I am sticking with the idea of dice representing fate. Not for any rational reason, more for the fun of it. I love how I, the DM, and my players get to build a story together where anything can happen. While I will know more about the overall situation of course, just thinking of the dice as a doorway to the infinite possibilities that can come from an encounter is much more entertaining than seeing them as ways to generate outcomes. The belief that each roll is fated, and the question ofwhether or not you want to see what lies beyond the door makes every choice feel weighted for me.
Thank you so much for this series! I'm first time DM-ing for some first time players and this really helps! On the topic of this video: We're running Rime of the Frostmaiden and the starting quest is a very simple go kill this criminal style quest. They planned it super well - prevented back up, got him alone, worked out an ability...and the guy would have killed them. It might be balanced for more party members, but I was rolling stupidly well and it sucked. Because they hadn't done anything wrong! They'd worked hard and strategised and I could tell they were really into it and I didn't want to punish them because I didn't know enough to balance the encounter properly beyond the stat block given. So some of the multi-attacks missed, and some of the damage was lower than it was. With the liberal use of every healing spell they could assess, 2 of the 3 party members finished the fight with the criminal dead at their feet, as requested, with like 1-2HP remaining with the third completely tapped. They were so thrilled they managed to survive! I watched this one particularly today to get some insight because I've seen exactly that contention since, that fudging the rolls is cheating, and I was feeling kinda weird about that decision that seemed great until I started reading opinions, but I think I agree with this view more. Sure, later in more challenging encounters when they are supposed to be deadly or the players have made relatively "foolish" decisions (for whatever reason, like ignoring all warnings/hints/putting aside important info) it makes more sense, and is explainable, that there are heavier consequences. But this was the starting quest! For a bunch of brand new players! It was supposed to be, well, not easy but it shouldn't have been a TPK!! And everyone had fun and thought it went great and talked about how close/hard that was! I think that story/experience is better and maybe I'll try to fudge less and less as we advance (as I get better at knowing how to adjust the encounters for the party, and my players on spellcasters realise they needed to pick their spells themselves, they don't get given to you leading to a 10min period of us speed picking spells in the middle of combat...) but I think in the end these guys are playing it for that story and honestly so am I - and sometimes that requires setting aside randomness a bit or "adjusting" the randomness based on choices.
This is definitely one of my favourite videos on this channel so far, I agree with almost all of the points and it is thought provoking in terms of how we see "fate". I am interested to learn more about what you mean when you say that D&D is not a storytelling game, however. I hope to see a video about that in the near future.
"Sometimes you won't roll above a 7 all night..." Had a night like that last week, where I'm not even sure I rolled as high as a 7 after the first round of combat. As a player it was one of the MOST frustrating moments in a D&D session, and unfortunately wasn't something easily solved by fudging (playing online seems to make fudging difficult in general).I will always prefer a DM find a way (through fudging rolls or otherwise engineering the fight) to help a player constantly rolling poorly. I'd rather my character die in a heated back-and-forth than survive but be completely ineffectual, the latter barely even counts as playing the game. 2, 12, 17, 8, 17, 14, 7, 20, 9, 14, 6, 4 clearly, those are what you rolled.
I've prepared a session where, just to make a point, the enemies would only hit on nat 20 and AC on said enemies was comparatively low, because players were complaining that they were getting rekt by the fights that shouldn't be too hard for them on paper. I've legitimately almost rolled more 20s than my party did double digit numbers between them that day. And that's with players making unauthorized rerolls.
I am a long-time gm. I learned to only fudge in 2 cases: 1. On behalf of the players. I never let dice kill the players. By that I mean random rolls. Choices kill players. 2. To advance the story, or liven up a drudginly boring encounter. I don't fudge for any other reason. Including making a villain look badass. Players who catch you cheating like that will inevitably think you're out to get them.
Additionally, your improv chops can be huge when it comes to dice rolls, both real and fudged. The uncertainty of specific moments is the real juice behind the drama you can create, and being able to rationalize and describe the scenario to your players with as much gusto and believability regardless of the 'to fudge or not to fudge' fate of the dice lends itself to those memorable moments that players will talk about long after a session. When players can go an entire session without discerning what things you had planned from what was totally unplanned (usually thanks to their creativity), I believe that immersion can create a powerful experience.
Senpai... wtf. I thought I knew what I was going to get when you talked about this video last time, but the Kreig Speil intro was off the CHAIN. I await an Adam Kobel rebuttal. I am so pumped to have at least a new video per week. Big ups for Willow clip.
Adam Koebel has talked many times about it, more recently in his Office Hours series: ruclips.net/video/YH6kyTFMGV4/видео.html&list=PLAmPx8nWedFVGdrP2JmcYzdvZC8sWV5b4&t=2307
I think Matt had a good point ( I’ve heard Adam’s side before) - do what works for your game and players, but the addendum I think ( especially if your players are new) - let your players know how you view fudging your rolls up front. ( in my games we always laughingly referees to the DM as the - Dice Modifier).
Thanks for yet another great video Matt, I have been watching since shortly after you started posting the "running the game" series, and before watching these, I was always pretty sure that I would not be able to run a game, but now, I believe you have given me the confidence in my own abilities to do so. Also, I believe watching other DM's in the past made me think, "wow, they put so much time into every single detail, I could never do that." But now I realize that, yes, while there is a lot of work put into DMing, most of the 'work' is improvised, and after a while, very little preparation is needed to run a fun and fulfilling game for everyone at the table. Speaking of improvising, I have been improvising some of the tools used at our table, so I don't need to spend a lot of money on battle-mats, minis or props. Most of the items I use are hand-made, like 1-inch grid 16"x16" tiles made from gluing wrapping paper, that has the grid-lines on the back, to pieces of cardboard, then covering the whole thing in packing tape to be able to use dry-erase markers. the 16x16 size is arbitrary, it's just what I decided on, but I can combine them in any way I need. I've also taken to creating minis out of perler beads, I believe I posted them on reddit a while back. I even crafted a dice tower from perler beads, and can easily be found by googling "perler dice tower". I also work in a place that uses a lot of styrofoam, so my next experiment will be in creating things from carving styrofoam pieces, my goal is to create a Tavern from them.
I did it like you do for a very long time, but in my recent Princes of the Apocalypse game, I've been rolling all of my dice in the open, without fudging, and it's been great! I would rather play it your way if I had new or less experienced players in my group, I think, but my players seem to collectively agree that there's something more exciting about knowing their own mortality might be waiting around any corner, and I can't save them if things don't go their way. Rolling in the open for the DM is almost never done as far as I can tell, but my players seem to love the thrill of peril. Still, to everyone, make sure that your whole group is okay with any changes like that! Matt's way is probably the best way for 90% of groups.
Hmmm this is one of those times I will have to disagree with Matthew Colville as I prefer not fudging dice rolls. Especially in the style of D&D and roleplaying games I play where retreat is often an option and combat is not something that is sprung on players four or five times a session but something that carries more weight. I think one thing that is very telling about this is that many DMs that do this including Matt would not want their players to know how much they fudge/lie about dice rolls as they would trust them less or be upset by that. I also think there are far more interesting ways to make combat encounter that is going badly less deadly than just roll in secret then lie. I prefer to roll out in the open and do not have a screen at all for this reason as well as a belief that a DM is basically a player with a different role to play. So a DM lying about Dice and a player lying are more similar in my eyes as the DM does not have this mythical all knowing status that protects them from having to play by the same rules.
There is no dramatic weight to dying to a kobold at level 1. There has been no story, you don't even CARE about your character yet. The only thing that has happened is that you died and have to create another character. Literal waste of time. Literally might as well Erase the B on Bob for character name, put an R in, and now Rob has joined the party. Thats how much a level 1 character death matters.
I remember my group was trying to sneak past these guards to get into some Tombs. So, I was like “Hey I got this” and excitedly rolled. I looked down and saw it....a 1. However, the guards were cool and we played cards with them.
Hey thanks for the video Matt! I was always against fudging the dice, and when I use Fantasy Grounds I purposely make it so all of the players can see my rolls. It is good to know some people do fudge their rolls, I have always ran with the idea that "if they do something terrible, or awesome, they know THEY did it." Also helps because I am a new DM so they know when something bad happens.... and I say I roll my third Critical on the same character in one night.. they know it is legit. But yeah... my game does have a high kill count, I am running a pre-made campaign and i have 3/4 PCs die already.
I think while it's good to do it sometimes, it can still be fun to get 20 natural 20s within the first 5 minutes, and then get 2s and 4s for the rest of the session. Good times.
You say that until your party's tank get's critically hit 5 times in an encounter that was meant to be easy and loses an eye in the first 10 minutes of a session lmfao, feels omega oof man
If the tank takes 5 crits in short succession and only loses an eye from the ordeal, they probably had it coming. How is that anything other than a source fun bar talk? "See this scar?" *Tank points to their dead eye* "That comes from the fight I was stabbed in the spleen, the kidney, the lung, and the heart all at the same time!"
Hey Matt! I ran a full campaign fudging the dice basically with the same idea, I wanted the cool and dramatic stuff. But what happen was, as we progressed, my table started to become predictable. It felt more like a show where the dramatic stuff is always assured, which is hard to relate because that’s not what life is. It was only when I stopped doing that in the next campaign, and stuff like a level 2 character being killed by a random gnoll started to happen, that my players started to really immerse. That felt like life, like something that was real. Without the DM tension corrective, my players felt like their actions could make the difference in any given time. Drama in this kind of context was in another level of awesomeness, but of course, not as frequent and controllable as before. So I don’t know man, I’m not a great actor/liar and perspicacious to make my fudging feel like reality. And I definitely don’t want my table to be a predictable cliche Hollywood show. Can you tell us more about how you fudge? Something like this has ever happened to you? Thank you!
As usual, MC's on point with this one. The dice are like the rules of grammar. You start by following them and learning how to masterfully work within their constraints, then you learn to fudge (or even ignore) them when it's appropriate to do so. The first step is fundamentals. The second step is expertise.
This really speaks to the problem with the D20 system for how much randomness it interjects. A highly skilled character may have a +10 to a skill, but that's only 1/3rd of the possibilities. The other 2/3rds is randomness. Your skill means half as much as fate, and that's horrible. If you're a highly skilled locksmith, you shouldn't have a 25% possibility of failing a moderate (15) difficulty skill check. If you extrapolate out difficulties and average skill levels to common tasks in the everyday world of your setting, blacksmiths should be throwing away or having to start over on about half of their work. Bakers should be burning 25% of all their breads and pastries. I suppose you can say, "Well just assume they 'Take 10' or 'Take 20' because they're not stressed or in combat," but then characters should be doing that in ALL non-combat situations too.
I find that the Pathfinder System deals with this a little, it gives you greater bonuses on your skills so that eventually the DC 25 locks can only be failed by rolling a 2 and because the master level locks are near 40-45 in difficulty they are impossible for anybody but a master Lockpick. It allows you to focus your character on specific skills so much that the swingyness of the D20 is mostly nullified. That being said, I'd probably put baking bread at a DC 5, and the concept of a Baker's dozen is actually based on the idea that 1 of every 12 buns will be slightly over-cooked and so an extra one (the 13th bun) is baked to replace the "burnt" bun so that they can be sold by the dozen without selling the "burnt" ones.
I thought i knew where this was going to go but then BAM Colville comes out of no where with Prussian war games and the best gm roll a dice and go hmmm. This made my night thank you Matt.
If we as DMs fudge roles to curate the fun, why don't we let players do it too? Whenever the subject of fudging roles comes up I think of Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark. In those games the GM doesn't role dice, only the players do, and those games are just as fun as D&D. Still a great video tho. I strongly disagree with most of it but I agree that if fudging works for your game, then you do you.
Great outro! I once recharged fire breath 5 turns in a row, rolling in front of the screen. It was dramatic, but took a heavier toll on the party than that encounter was supposed to. If I'd been rolling behind the screen, I'd probably keep the first three, and then fudge the rest. 24 solid seconds of fire spewing death seems dramatic enough.
5:48 That's quite the leap. Using their experience to change the charts to be more in-line with how they believe such events would play out is fudging a roll? Sounds more like they're making their own house rules and using their experience to compliment their ability to explain the context of events. For example, if you made a sand bear sting itself you'd normally think it'd weaken it since it poisoned itself. However, since this is a manifestation of your fears and nightmares it instead grows more powerful. (Hey Puffin fans) No where near the same thing as complete reversal of events due to a roll not mattering in the first place. Particularly since that game is a player versus player scenario, no matter the referee they'd use the same chart for both sides - official chart or not.
They aren't changing the charts, they're disregarding the results the charts would give according to the dice rolls. If they were modifying the charts to be more suited to their opinions of realism or taste on how the game should run you'd be right--that's homebrew/house rules But using your experience to overrule the results dictated by the dice/charts? That's definitely fudging. I think Matt should have touched on that more. He may fudge to correct his own mistakes in things like encounter design, but fudging also has its place when you as the GM have an opinion that something should work out some way other than what the dice say. Whether that be an enemy flubbing a spell attack at a crucial tense moment or something as simple as whether the guard believes the players' bluff. You can of course just not roll dice in some of those instances but preserving the illusion that the result was meant to be can be important, even if the reality is that you're deciding what happens.
Thank you for this extremely good video, I have fudged die rolls before to make things dramatic, and I have always felt guilty about it. You have absolved that guilt from me. Thank you Matt :D
I personally dislike fudging as I like not knowing how things will turn out, and I like the idea that even mighty heroes can be caught out by an unfortunate turn of events. I do sometimes "fudge reality", for example if the party is really struggling versus something trivial and it would be a total anti-climax, just before the killing blow I might have an ally burst onto the scene to save them, or a much greater foe appear and frighten off the original attackers, allowing the party a chance to escape, or something even simpler, like giving the party full cover when I would normally give half. This has issues with feeling "natural", but I find I like the fact that it drives the story forward. The other thing I tend to do is allow people to deal a killing blow if they land a massive amount of damage and leave something on a few hitpoints, that's just common sense DMing, allowing the characters to shine, that sort of thing.
What you describe as "fudge reality", at least for certain in the first two examples, is known as a deux ex machina. Some people, me included, find that stuff more anticlimatic than a fudge roll, because the agency is given to a third party who come out of nowhere. With that im not saying that your way of doing things is worst, is just different, and if you're having fun is all good. But the way i see it, a fudge roll is less intrusive in the narrative. Sorry for any misspelling, this is not my home lenguage.
I like the term Fudge Reality. Because I roll all my dice in front of my players, and they roll on the table as well, usually in a nice wooden Dice Tray, there's no cheating that way. But if they are just not hitting a monster, and someone finally gets a crit, I'll take away a lot more points than they rolled. But, there was a session last summer where 4 players had to take down 3 Ogres, I let the dice fall where they may, and it was an hour of brutal combat, some close calls, and a critical hit with a spell, and after they won, the party felt like they had actually accomplished something epic. The town was saved, and nobody on their team died. So I'm not taking anything away from them when another encounter goes faster than it should, because I think it all balances out in the end.
Yep, it's definitely something I would try and avoid if it becomes too 'cheesy'. It can feel like the DM is giving you a free get out of jail card, which is unfun for everyone. One way of avoiding that is to make the outcome bad, but not TPK. Maybe the goblins want to capture the party and sell them as slaves to the highest bidder, leading the narrative towards an escape the dungeon type mission. Another good way of making it fit well is to have things going on in your world independent of the PCs. Hint at the possibility of the ally/terrifying monster turning up before the encounter has even started. That way when you pull it out of your DM bag it feels less like you're trying to make up for your dice rolls and more like you're just pushing the narrative on to the next step. Another way of counteracting bad dice rolls is to give your PCs one-use magic items that act as weapons of last resort. Most players that I know would treat the use of such items on a small encounter as a meaningful failure. They just wasted their cool magic orb on kobolds! Or whatever. Which means they don't feel cheated by the DM into being given a good outcome they didn't deserve (at least according to the dice).
I ran an ongoing dungeon with the same group of 5 players that went on almost every weekend, Saturday and Sunday for an average of 4.5 hours a play. Sometimes as much as 7 hours. The game continued for 5 years. Clearly, the players were having a great time. They never knew that I almost never read a chart or told the players the correct rolls I the DM made. I did what made the game make sense and feel real. I think there are 2 kinds of DMs. Those who fudge and those who lie about it. (PS: still, as a player, I have never questioned a DM on their roll. They are the MASTER of the game.) Our notebooks which were voluminous were, in fact, 'novels.' We would reread them and reminisce years later with no end to the joy of it all.
For the record, I've never been bothered by an occasional sound issue, or a more casual less edited video, I love all of your content. HOWEVER, these new studio videos have been getting better and better, and I really appreciate the standards to which you hold yourself. Amazing video!
I loved this video and I completely agree. No one other than you and the group you are playing with knows what game is fun for you. So if the players love the random out come of dice, then don't fudge, if they prefer not to be whipped out because you made some mistakes then modify the dice rolls when needed. Ultimately you are the people at the table, not the people on reddit complaining about fudging. I have always been very clear with my players, telling them that i occasionally fudge the dice. But I also adhere to the rule of not letting them know. I don't think my players have ever "caught" me modifying the roll. Normally they are to focused on the action to notice.
My biggest disagreement is with the notion that the DM is responsible for the story, and for the "fun" of the group. As far as the story goes, for me that is a negotiation between the players, the DM, and the rules. The social contract I have with my players is built on that premise. No one person has any more say as to what occurs than the other players. You mentioned it in the video, and I agree with the statement of "If you are going to fudge, why roll?" As an example lets take a basic encounter that isnt intended to wipe the players out. From my point of view, if I as the DM have already decided in my head that the players as supposed to win this fight, I no longer have investment in that encounter and dont see any point in rolling, or even having the encounter to begin with. If an encounter has no stakes, why is it in the game? Kind of like the Chekovs Gun of DMing. "If this encounter doesnt move events along in a meaningful way, it has no business being in the game." And as a result, any encounter that has stakes, should carry the possibility of failure. Including a TPK. This is what makes RPGs worth playing for me. As always though, loved the video and I think you articulated your thoughts very clearly. Nice work.
Randomness is not the opposite of drama. Drama is sometimes the result of randomness, but not opposites. Great video, though. I still learned a lot here!
Tried my hand at DMing one time, I think I fudged 70% of the rolls. I also dramatically overestimated my players' ability to roll above a 10 so the encounters wound up feeling FAR more intense than they should have. I was also rolling uncharacteristically well. There was no choice, I didn't want a TPK at level 1.
I like the effects. rolling, then looking up. Reminds me of the last video where we'd see Matt on the ground or suddenly appearing somewhere else. It's the little things.
Randomness is a cruel mistress. I put a Beholder Zombie in front of my level 5 party and out of the 4 possible options, it rolled to use its Disintegration Ray FIVE consecutive times. It evaporated the Fighter's brother, the fighter himself tanked the ray (and is the only member of the party with enough HP that he could reasonably do so), and the ranger succeeded the Dex save twice. By the FIFTH consecutive Disintegration ray roll (25%x25%x25%x25%x25% = about a 0.1% chance) I fudged it to be the exhaustion ray lmao
DMG pg. 235. "Dice Rolling". 3rd bullet point. And pg. 237: "Remember that dice don't run your game - you do. Dice are like rules. They're tools to help keep the action moving." It's weird that we have a book full of advice on how to run a good game, published by WotC, that literally says it's okay to fudge rolls, and yet this is still a point of contention. If you don't like doing it, don't do it. But don't say only bad DMs fudge rolls. The DMG doesn't agree with that.
The DMG isn’t holy scripture. I disagree fundamentally with the premise behind the quote you reproduced, and whoever wrote it. Dice are what make a role playing GAME a GAME. Rolling one and declaring the result irrelevant is cheating. It’s better to just not roll at all and declare the result as the omnipotent DM.
@@mrmaat Sorry, I understand quite well where you're coming from, and I hope you care to read my explanation for why I disagree with your position. I think the only thing that makes any game a game is that it's fun. The purpose of having rules in a game is to facilitate fun. If a rule is failing to facilitate fun, it must be changed or disposed of entirely. Not everyone agrees that having an adventure that can be derailed by an errant dice roll is fun. The prospect of that happening is probably thrilling to you, I imagine it could be very creatively stimulating, but not to everyone. People are entitled to play in whatever way is most fun for them. The DMG is, by necessity, as you said, not holy scripture. We're not obligated to follow it. In that same vein, why are we then obligated to treat dice rolls as signs from heaven that can't be disobeyed? If they must be obeyed for it to be a game, then how can you say you're playing Dungeons & Dragons if you're deliberately disregarding the rulebooks? Moreover, the "role" in role-playing game clearly doesn't refer to the "roll" of the dice. It means that players are filling a role as a character in a fictional world. I hope the idea doesn't upset you too much, but it's actually possible to play a role-playing game without using any dice at all. The essential characteristic that defines it from other types of games is the act of mutual storytelling, even if that story is very simple. And fun, of course. It's only a game if it's fun. To your credit, almost everyone agrees that using dice is fun. It provides an element of impartiality and excitement for unknown outcomes. It's just that some of us find that a few things are too important to be left to random chance. Does all that make sense? Obviously you're entitled to disagree and play the way you think is best.
@@LeviathanLP You do realize you just reiterated what they said? "It's better to declare the result as an omnipotent GM" & "Some of us find that a few things are too important to be left to random chance." The end result is the same. However, fudging a roll then tells a player that this result is just how the dice fell, and not due to the whims of an external force. And once that player finds out that you'll baby sit them then you alter the way they'll approach every dice roll from hence forth. As well as pull all previous moments of fun & unfun into question. In addition you waste time having to roll dice that have no real consequence, as such they only slow down the storytelling.
Great video. I do not fudge dice but sometimes set up a way for the players to get out of trouble based on the decisions they have made through roleplay and I do warn the players that not all decision will have good outcomes but it does have good roleplay results and typically leads to the players wondering why they were saved but then are blown away when they realise that a small insignificant decision came back to help them. Tossing a coin in a well, giving a hungry animal some food, or making a deal with a shady character could all possibly but not always result in aid later. I normally chose the most subtle detail so they don't know it until they are in trouble. Although I perfer not to fudge dice rollst, I do roll red herring rolls where I will roll dice at random so players don't start to be more cautious simply because the DM rolls some dice. I tell the players I am just rolling some dice for fun. I also have them roll perception checks for all rooms even empty rooms so they don't automatically get scared to go in just because they rolled poorly.
In my humble opinion, If a DM routinely fudges rolls, then that can lessen the impact of any action a player is making. By forcing your monsters to hit and miss X amount of times, how often a player is seen, sees, etc, then that actually takes a players agency away when building and developing a character. The dice does not have agency, but a player can predict the average dice rolls. A player can't predict the average DM fudges to hit/miss. Also, DMs are not omnipotent. Sometimes fudging a dice roll can remove any possible story or dialogue that the DM did not foresee. At that point the DM could be railroading due to their bias. A dice does not have that problem. The dice is there to be random, if a DM doesn't want a random outcome, they should not roll or ask for a roll. The issue of course is that it's extremely hard to properly balance an encounter based on your party composition, at least for newer DMs. And even if a DM can build an encounter around a party, the players who are controlling said characters might not even do the actions which a DM predicts. I think those rare cases though when monsters are destroying a party due to rolls only, fudging those rolls is also bad, but you as a DM can determine how a monster acts. That way, you don't fudge rolls which keeps the integrity of agency in place, and you don't TPK the party if the dice rolls just say; "nope, you dying" in an otherwise non-deadly encounter. Remember, it's not just the DM telling a story. The players are too. If a player envisions what their character should and shouldn't do (or be able to do), then shouldn't they also fudge rolls? You can probably see how messy the game can get then right? That's just my take on it anyway.
I refer to this as "smoke and mirrors" and while it's a valid form of DMing, you must absolutely ensure your players don't find out, or they'll be very unsatisfied. Pre-rolling behind the screen is clever, but I personally find it reprehensible as I dislike lying/being lied to. Still if it works for you, more power to you.
I have an idea, and this just came to me while watching this video. I think a cool thing to do if you aren't a fan of just changing rolls during the game, have a roll pool. Whenever you need a good roll to be a bad roll or vice versa, you mark down a tally on some sheet and mark if it is good or bad for the players. You then have that roll in a pool of dice rolls, which only fits a certain amount of rolls in it. You can either switch out the rolls with other ones, but at some point when the pool gets filled, some huge event happens to the world, the effect being the same as the player effect of the roll pool. So say that you have a dice pool that is filled with really good things for the players, and you have been making things harder for them because of your dice rolls. You then create some large world event that helps the players, maybe a country or faction honors the heros, or a country joins the players side in a war they fight. It wont be something that will affect the players directly but is something that may give them an advantage (or disadvantage) in the future, and still keep true with the dice, just in a different way.
You must be one of the most un lucky dice rollers ever , sure once a party is over level 5 things are safe , the moment you roll a couple lucky rolls with a level 1 or 2 party , battles go down hill fast ..
Tpks aren't a hard and fast measure of whether you're doing your role as a GM right. Your players having fun is. And anticlimatic and unsatisfactory tpks are bad for player fun. And yes. GM for the super low levels, and you'll find you already have your work cut out for you keeping them alive, from precariously building your encounters, to making sure they don't find that dragon horde you intended for 10 levels in the future.
While I totally agree with what you said, I would have loved to hear stories about not fudging dices and rolling in public as a GM (I knew you talked about it in the past especially taking Jim Murphy as an exemple). Of course as everything related to playstyle it might work or not depending on the group you're playing with, but it made absolute wonders at our table. We played a huge campaign last year, I was the GM and at the begining I was rolling behind my screen. Then when things got more tense in the campaign, when the story reached the end of 2nd act, we just got the idea of trying rolling in public (except for passive checks such as perception/insight, which I rolled in secret to avoid metagaming). And gosh, it made our game sooooo much better. We never got back and it convinced the GM of our new campaign to do the same. I'm an advocate of the idea that dices are here to create tension, and maybe 50% of the results of the fights, but good idea should be as impactful as dices. And rolling in public makes you, the DM, on the exact same boat as your players. You also have no idea of what the dice will dictate and you'll have to stick with that. The only difference is that you're also a storyteller so you have agency over what the results imply (so if you fear the mighty double natural 20, you can still chop off some fingers or an arm instead of the head of your player character) We got some absolutely crazy tense sessions with that, with me and the players really freaking out together (because as a GM now you don't have you plot armor stock in case something bad happens). I remember one session with a fomorian lord who had put our Wizard under a domination spell and to a critical amount of HP and the team had to rescue him without killing him while he had been given the instruction to act as stategicly optimized as possible against his own fellow party members) and the Fomorian Lord was just absolutely crushing the domination spell rolls and no one could argue with that or think it was railroaded (honestly I was freaking out for a TPK, the numbers were absolutely insane). And those results forced the player to restrain the Wizard and flee with him on their shoulders because the Fomorian was too strong. It's been almost 6 months since this scene happened but we still often talk about it because of how tense it was and how exhausted and relieved we were (including me as a GM) once the party finally managed to flee. During this fight I remember all of us having our smile just vanished in a second when I rolled a nat19 on the Fomorian throwing his dagger at the fighter holding the inconscious wizard (down to 0 HP or even less). GM : "So you're sprinting as fast as you can to the teleportation circle, the Lord Fomorian is chasing you and as you're able to cross the door he can't pass through he decides to throw his sacrificial dagger to the fighter holding the wizard" ... *nat 19* The whole table : "Oh....oh....HOLY S***" Gm " As you're about to cross the teleportation circle and get back to Harmondale, you feel a strong impact on your inconscious friend...Wrynn (=wizard), even tho you're inconscious, tell us what happened please" And even Wrynn's player was 100% fine with that We also got the exact contrary with the players crushing numbers and me rolling stupidly bad dices and even tho it made one of our BBEG absolutely ridiculous, we remember it as something super funny (the BBEG-associate got one shotted by our ranger running a double nat20 on round 2 of the fight). It also allows you to be within your players at the table and not at the edge of the table hidden behind a screen, ant it makes it super useful for acting and immersion.
I am afraid I must disagree. One of my core rules for myself as a GM is to never request or make a roll that I am not okay with any possible result of. The same way that I don't ask my PCs to make a Perception check, unless I'm okay with them failing (I would just give them the clues they need, and save a check for anything like hidden loot or additional incite that they might want but don't need) I feel it is wrong of me to roll a die against them, unless I'm willing to accept the result of that roll. I don't typically run a lot of D&D (though I am currently running a 5e Actual Play on my channel), and maybe if I was someone who only ran D&D (and closely related systems), I would understand the need for fudging for "drama" but it is my opinion that the rules apply to the GM, and that the rules matter. A GM who is fudging is cheating. If you find you have to break the rules of the game, every single game session, in order to enjoy the game you are playing, then I believe you are playing the wrong game. Try Dungeon World, the GM can't fudge at all in that, they don't roll any dice at all. Or try FATE, a few good rolls might cause the PCs to be Taken Out, but that just means you get narrate how they lose, it doesn't have to result in death, unless you want it to. Or try any of several other systems with different mechanics.tldr; if you feel you have to fudge the rolls, then you are playing the wrong system for the game you want. Try something else.
I generally agree with this stance, but there is a time and place for making rolls for the sake of player experience. This is very group dependant - I prefer to see the rolls myself, but a friend of mine wants anything hidden from his character to be hidden from him. I'll make rolls for the sake of appearance with him and not tell him what they're for... they're actually for nothing, but it makes it harder for him to tell when something real is happening that his character wouldn't be aware of. If he wasn't in the group, I wouldn't bother making fake rolls or hiding the results - but we'd discussed comfort with metagame knowledge and he prefers to be kept in the dark.
Pffft, die rolls? Hell, everything in the world is my creation. I fudge it all: DC's, AC, HP, damage, advantages & disadvantages, bonuses & penalties all over the place (several times, back and forth if necessary), when a group runs away or if they fight to the death, whether they regroup and try to sneak-attack or to get reinforcements. As long as it's dramatically appropriate, if it seems plausible to me based on what's happening I'll run with it. Especially in a d20 system with absolutely no bell curve where an extreme result, 1 or 20, is just as likely as an average result, 10; doubly so in a game with half-hazard or non-existent information on a huge variety of situations; and doubled again in an epic fantasy setting where magic and monsters and gods are common. If you want plausible reliability based purely on number crunching, you better get a really good computer and some decent machine learning algorithms going, otherwise it's much more fun to use the dice more as RNG guidelines than as absolute rules
The dm screen and the dice and the theatrics behind it add a lot to the player experience. A favorite practice is to ask for a saving throw or roll a hidden die and write something down without explaination
I disagree with the "routine encounter going bad" being a GM mistake. If the player KNOW that they will win against those weak enemies then why even have them in the game? If the dice go bad, that weak enemy should in my opinion pose a real threat - if the gm fudges the dice to save their players from facing challenge, then it's a GM mistake in my opinion.
Ah yes, the goblin that was supposed to simply be a meatbag to carry the information for the actual story and fight later on has killed the 5-person party because the dice decided to be an asshole that day. Why would this be your definition of fun?
Its not just to make it a pointless encounter. Its for the unplanned for scenarios. First or second session, a brand new player has joined the game and is having fun. in the encounter that day, an enemy manages to land what should be a massive damage attack. The new player is already scared and on edge, and learned the lesson that every fight is dangerous. You don't have to actually kill the character. They can instead get knocked down, and then saved later, thus both keeping the sense of danger, and not also giving a brand new player a really bad experience. Or maybe that person is already laughing about it and has plans for a new character, so slice em in half.
Man, if i didn't fudge dice rolls I swear half my players would never reach 5th level. I always think it's hilarious when a long fight goes on, the players feel like they're on death's door, they're on the edge of their seats grumbling about how tough the encounter was and how lucky my rolls were, etc. Then I ask them, "And how many of you died?" The answer is 0. Your comments on the "curated experience' resonate so much with my DM style.
Great summary of Prussian Kriegsspiel's connection to D&D. One thing I might add: when you correctly talk about how die rolls impart to players a sense of fairness, they also give the referee a way to decide events impartially when they can't trust themselves, even. Back when referees were adjudicating between competing parties (and in early D&D, they still were, sometimes) rather than "playing the world" against a collaborating party, referees needed a way not to show favor, even unconsciously, to one competing party over another. "Impartial" is even built in to the German word they used for "referee." It's no coincidence that dice got attached to wargames at the same historical moment that referees gained the power to decide events in those games without the supervision of players: dice play an important part in hedging against the risk of unintended bias. This principle had a lot of interesting interactions with early RPG play, and is perhaps the root cause for tensions RPG designers are still trying to resolve today.
If Dungeons & Dragons was a country you'd be a national treasure, Jon. ⭐
Schiedsrichter? There's no 'impartial' implied there. Closest I can render it English is "difference judge".
Source: speak German
Nineteenth century wargames used the German word Unparteiischen. Well, some used Vertraute (trusted).
Aha, I stand corrected. Gotcha
It didn't take me long as a dm to start fudging rolls. My players had battle where they killed the big bad before they could do anything, and die to random they nearly died due to too many random encounters in a day. Fudging really does help to add drama
Rolling dice just for sound effects since 1812.
A fun thing to do. When they enter a room, roll a die. Make sure they can hear the roll. Make a noise about the roll. Then never mention it again. They'll be so paranoid.
When traveling, I ask for their perception modifiers and roll some perception checks to see if they notice birds or a fox or something innocent like that.
I do this to throw off metagaming. One of my players checked 3 more times when all he saw with his roll (which he didn't know was over 20) was a nest of birds.
@@FlyingDominion How can he not know his own roll?
@@Canadian_Zac haha you sir are a monster. My DM does this as well and it makes me so worried.
@@ManJackThe for rolls where the character wouldn't know how well they did (perception, insight, and anything to know something) I roll for them and narrate the result.
"I leave the tavern."
"Roll for Intelligence."
"2."
"You stay in the tavern and drink until you have alcohol poisoning."
"Uh, excuse me, I'm playing Jorran the Sellsword, not myself"
Alchoholicism seems more tied to wisdom than intelligence, just ask tony stark
@@EdsonR13 that boi Tony is INTELLIGENT enough to build artificial intelligence but not WISE enough to know not to drink 7 martinis and then fly around Manhattan
@@brandeluna6419 This is the best wisdom vs. intelligence comparison I've ever seen.
Actually played a game like this long ago in high-school, with our own ultra simplistic homebrew system. Even walking in the intended direction was sometimes left to the dice. It stands as some of our favorite tabletop moments in a decade of play, nothing has ever spiraled so ridiculously out of control in any other game.
Matt, this is getting very annoying. In your video's you sometimes make a statement that I disagree with. And then you explain yourself. And then I realise you're right.
He knows what he's talking about... 40 years of D&D and almost no gray hair? Impossible without high level dark magic.
ED M he is the Forgotten Deity Kol Ville
At least you are open to new ideas. We can't grow or change without that capacity.
He probably rolls high in persuasion
I think he's just good at building tension, even between sentences in a video. As a good GM ought to be
I want a one hour version of Matt rolling dice and going "Hm."
I'd watch this
The "hmm" after the rolls have me dying lol
I started "Hmm"ing along 😂
@@cjace77 I know right!?
Interesting
Made the point of the video really stand out. :)
As a DM that's one of the few things I hate about having to play with my friends through the internet. When I throw a die it's just on the screen hidden from everyone and they can't hear the die rolling about and try to read what my reaction to it is and then watch them squirm as they can't tell whether it was a good or a bad roll lol
That ending lol
I too laughed out loud.
I also LOL'ed. To get me to legit LOL is quite the feat.
Same- he's a crafty funny man, that Colville!
Ikr
I always stop watching when the end is near, your comment made me un pause the video... xD worth it
I badly misinterpreted this topic. I'm going to have to call the chocolate factory.
There is no way of knowing... which direction we are going...
"This video, this studio, my life..." made me tear up a bit. I'm so happy I could help contribute to your and your crew's happiness.
Oh good I'm not the only who crie-*ahem* I mean teared up
I like the rule that you only fudge rolls to fix your own mistakes. Because that's always the biggest contention for players, they feel like the DM is taking away their agency by curating the rolls. But you as the DM could make literally anything happen, at any time a meteor could come down and split the planet in half at precisely the same second that the Sun went supernova. The fact that you are giving them a fight against some kobolds means you are already heavily curating the experience. In the grand scheme of things the players have very little agency, so it seems cruel to take even that away from them to force your conclusion. So if they are in a bad situation due to their own actions, let the dice fall as they may. But if they are in a bad situation because you simply misjudged the difficulty, then fudging the dice is an acceptable extension of the world building you were doing anyways.
That's my main takeaway from this and a good way to put the philosophy I already had to words. I never fake a critical in either direction, miss or hit, and I'll never make an attack hit that missed.
Upping bonuses throughout the fight, loosely keeping track of wounds on my baddies, introducing environmental factors if I feel it isn't narratively satisfying for them to kill someone yet, that I'll do. But when it comes to die rolls, I only fudge down or in the players favor when I know the result would be incredibly unsatisfying for the majority of the table.
There are ways to make it so combat is not only depended on the rolls of the dices.
Playing on a grid is a good way to do this.
4th also to keep the game from becoming a roll play game.
Depends on your game, I gave my players 6 plot hooks in the first session to choose from and 3 other points of interest.
They had all the agency in the world.
Unprepared ToDie
I would not call making sure events happen as fudging the dice roll. If I need something to happen then it the roll for how good the action happen.
That's not how agency works. Agency is their ability to make decisions of what their character's will do. Taking away their agency is something like "you fail your wisdom save, you are mind controlled, you see red and those you once considered friends have been betraying you this whole time, roll to attack your former friend, Goldmoon the cleric." not "the bbeg saves against your fireball, because he was waiting for it, and knows you are a firebug who loves the fireball spell"
Things in the game happening because they make sense or don't make sense like making a kobold not crit three times against a level 9 barbarian is not removing agency. I think that word is used too much.
I fudge dice rolls but have a two rules
1) the players can not know
2) Only if it is not the players fault (I will still give players outs of most situations but they have to work them out or invent one I like)
Basically, fudge the die results to fix your own mistakes as GM, not their mistakes as players.
Two things I'll never know:
1. The numbers Matt rolled this video
2. The Krabby Patty formula
Shredulex Oh that’s Easy the Krabby Patty secret formula is.....”Fades to Black”
It’s crabs
It's probably either nothing or MSG. What better way to drive interest in a product than to say you have a secret ingredient, only to be a cheapskate and not have anything special after all. Totally in character for Mr. Krabs. MSG also makes everything taste better so there's that too.
Let's see...
He rolled: 4 8 15 16 20 3 20 20 2
The party's future was at stake. The Paladin had the Chain Devil's chain around his throat, and the end of this epic arena battle (and the party's lives) was only a couple hit points away. The Devil raised his weapon for the killing blow ... and I rolled a 14. That's a hit, the Paladin dies, the game is over for these characters. I deftly turned the die to a 1 as I lifted the DM screen to prove that FATE had saved his life. The Paladin took advantage of this opportunity and struck ... with a natural 20. The chain devil's head rolled off of his shoulders, wide eyed in shock. The room ERUPTED. It was f*$%ing heroic. And there's no way I'd ever let them know. I didn't CHEAT, I gave him one last chance to be a hero, and it was incredible. THAT is not cheating; that's being a good DM.
Side note: my brother, which whom I've been playing since I was 11, was sitting beside me and saw me flip the d20. To his credit, he never said a word.
That's how you do it!!! Nice!
Way to go!! And props to your brother!
This is where I disagree that was an epic moment for the party to experience defeat and come back and try again that you robbed from them.
@@Dragonspassage I disagree with you. He didn't rob them of anything, he gave them an experience that they enjoyed immensely (from what the post states). It is different than your method, perhaps, but still a success in the drama nonetheless.
For the record though, "being a good DM" is dictated by the players at the table. Not by the DM writing the post, nor his online critics 😜
One funny moment, I can say, was not fudged - the party was after a "white dragon", that ednded being an "albino" red (lych) using ice spells... at the great battle, one warrior charged screaming, only to roll a nat 1 vs the fire breath, and durn to coal and ash.. that warrior was supposedly, the last to act, when the wizard (player was distracted by the whole scene and forgot his initiative) found was still to act.. two silly spells and a disintegrate.. dracolych is desintegrated in an epic "nooo" revenge act, rolling a nat 1 too... latter the warrior was ressurrected and they got a villain out of a simple dungeon boss - they never found the phylactery that was lilely inside the lava at the heart of the icy volcano...
...needless to say, I do fudge rolls if drama calls... no need to kill a pc on a random roll of a futile random minor battle.. often I "save" the roll for a dramatic moment... and I am certain, that one moment vs the dracolych, would have been one if luck had not trully rolled it so.. it was fun, players still talk about it after a full decade...
so, kudos for the your great moment with the paladin...
I like to a little of both extremes, sometimes a fudged die is needed - sometimes I let a boss do a devastating attack to the party by rolling a special die on the table for them all to see. They think I'm CRAZY - and I like that.
I've only fudged one roll in hundreds of hours of GMing. A group of brand new players between 12&14 years old were playing Lost Mine of Phandelver. The first fight. Two goblin archers had surprise and both rolled 20's. It would have killed the PC. The goblins wound up just taking most of the hit points.
just started playing lost mine of phandelver with 3 friends, the fight against 4 redbrands ended up with me rolling 4 critical hits in a row (and a 20 and 21 on initiative), this downed 2 players out of the 3, I ended up fudging the rest of my dice rolls on turn 1 to make sure I didn't get a tpk on turn 1 of the fight before the pcs even got to react
@@AndyR_927 I am looking to run this campaign for my kids - it will be their first experience of D&D. I am certainly going to fudge rolls to make sure that it is fun for them.
When they get older and more experienced in the game they might face character deaths but not the first time out.
the first fight in LMoP is terribly balanced
@@kori228 No, it's not. My four players barely took any damage.
There’s a solid argument that the first goomba of Super Mario Bros. 1-1 is the most successful killer in the history of video games.
The LMoP initial goblin encounter, by now, is probably that goomba for tabletop games.
What is so great about this (And I know this is obvious and it's the purpose of the video but I applaud it anyway because it is brilliant) is that just like at 10:49 when Matthew rolls for the purpose of the "for instance," because we as viewers don't know what the roll is, and he says "Like that" we maybe assume that it is a certain roll. Maybe it was a 1 and that was the reason he smiled and the same goes for a 20, but what if that roll was a 6 or a 15? It doesn't matter. Matthew is the story teller in this instance and he gets to decide the outcome for HIS story -in this case- the video we are watching.
I personally LOVE the idea of fudging rolls for the purpose of story-telling.
At the very end you say that you had a camera taping the rolls.... I don't care if that's true or not, I don't want to know what those rolls were because I like DM's fudging rolls for a purpose and in this case the purpose was this video and the example.
Matthew, you are brilliant. :D
I used to fudge dice rolls a lot, and my players hated me for it. I was a bad judge of what the most dramatic option was, and ended up railroading my players to do things they didn't want. For me, (and this is only my experience, so not applicable to everyone) rolling openly and being honest with my players forced me to be a better DM. I learned to let the players succeed and fail even if I wasn't prepared for it. I may eventually fudge rolls again, but for now I'll avoid it because it wasn't good for me.
I feel like you may be a bit biased towards a certain side in this debate Randomizer 🙂
@@lucas56sdd In other words they had a perspective on the discussion? Yeah. And it's appreciated; fudging die rolls definitely has its dangers, which is something to keep in mind, even if you still choose to employ the technique.
I think it was more a statement about their name 😂 @@Kurbling
@@TnTyson81 In retrospect I agree. This might be my darkest moment :( At least I brought 6 people down with me. @lucas56sdd 10 months later I laughed at your joke, and I apologise \o/
I roll openly, I had negative experiences with players thinking I was fudging dice rolls in their favour, though I've never fudged, so i started rolling openly and it's added some great drama to the game. Sort of like watching a circus show without a safety net. I've never had a TPK,
I am also fairly liberal with combat information though, I feel like it makes sense for characters to figure things out in combat, and a lot of the party enemies will flee at certain HP percentages effectively lowering their CR. I think there are other tools for guiding the narrative away from DM mistakes than fudging individual dice rolls, but I definitely understand why some tables use it as a tool, it's just not for me.
in the words of chris perkins "Make it up is the very essence of the game".
I openly tell people before we start playing that I will fudge the dice if the rolls cause the game to becoming boring. I also normally build a relationship with people before hand who trust me to do what ever I can to make their game enjoyable and know that I am going to try and kill them, but I will do so fairly. That is just me though.
I love that every time Matt picks up a die it's a different one than the one he just rolled/had in his hand!
"The job of the DM is to curate the game experience." YES! This is something I've always believed.
I don't always fudge dice rolls, but when I do, it's to make the game experience better for the players.
"Fudge your dice, or your players' characters will die by falling down a set of stairs."
@TheSmart-CasualGamer if that is the case, do not design it that way.
"I can show them to you right-"
Cooooooolvillleeeeeeee!!!!!
I know everyone has their own way.
I fudge absolutely 0 die rolls, and have never tpk'd. I don't use a dm screen, rolling every die roll in front of my players. They have come close to a tpk a ton, but I trust them enough to make smart choices. The most powerful moment of last session was when I rolled a 20 on an attack roll against one of the pc's childhood friends.
My blood went ice cold when it happened, but that feeling that everyone felt is what made that moment memorable.
I think that being open with the rolls makes everything feel "real" for my players.
Funniest thing is this whole campaign was centered primarily around the players getting their sweet revenge against this guy.
Couldn't have said it better myself. One thing Matt talked about which I found really interesting was the idea of being unhappy when easy encounters wipe a party. I'd argue maybe controversially that having an encounter where the battle has a foregone conclusion is a bit of a waste of time. I'd compare it to a filler episode of a television show, I just can't personally get behind it. I skew my games more lethal though (in theory, like you OP I've yet to get a TPK and haven't killed a PC in years). I think there should always be a chance for a hero to have a tragic ending. If a hero never retires and keeps adventuring eventually they're going to die in my opinion. If an adventurer could do anything else and be happy, they should.
Thats just my two cents though. I think encounters where the PCs are going to win as a foregone conclusion are boring to play as a player, and boring to run as a GM. Then again Matt has talked extensively about a similar philosophy where he'll put his players in situations where he has no clue how they'll escape.
A combat where winning is a foregone conclusion can be useful for other reasons than challenge though. If your PCs have been escaping one impossible situation after another, it only stands to reason they'd eventually fight opponents that were woefully unprepared to go up against these legendary warriors that have a bunch of adventuring experience under their belts. A curb stomp in the players' favor can show off how far they've come if against an old foe they've outgrown or somebody that's more bark than bite.
Or maybe it's some mooks that are only there to slow them down while another objective is getting away from them, like a bad guy running away or a timed puzzle? Or, on the note of disposable enemies, there to distract you from the mines buried in the ground as a one time surprise. Hard to check for traps and fight at the same time (even if it's technically bad sport, and you should find story factors for why it was a one off occurrence if you don't want combats to bog down mine sweeping checks afterward).
Maybe your big bad or their right hand man is only a strategist with no combat ability of their own but refuses to back down? Then it can be about subduing them without killing them, or a little bit of catharsis or twist when suddenly they drop dead from the first round of combat. Maybe the combat was too easy you find a gaping wound in the bad guy hidden under their armor after the fact that the party didn't inflict? Where could that have come from...?
...But, on the other hand, ultimately combat can take up a lot of session time, so it's entirely understandable not wanting to "waste" it on an encounter with low stakes. Although, if the party is in a situation where they by necessity have to go through a lot of battle without a lot of rollplay opportunity to break it up, should definitely throw in an easier one just for the sake of a breather. Or, on the flip side, introduce an easy encounter every now and then to lure the party in to expending some resources while still pressing on afterward.
That actually leads into another thing, the ways of playing very wildly. If a group or DM feels like it's unrealistic for an adventuring day to consist of less than 10 encounters for instance, it's just not reasonable for all 10 of those encounters to use up most of the party's resources by themselves.
You are right about letting them feel the power they've earned. We all know critical role(?) Well, my favorite moments are not when everyone is on the verge of dying. They are when the players have gained the upper hand on npc:s underestimate them. The latest example of this isn't technicly even in combat: s2ep37 where Nott creates paranoia using illusions.
I find there is a much easier way to introduce the party to the idea that they have grown in power. 1. Introduce a monster early on such as an Orc to fight the players - it'll be a struggle but they likely will win. 2. Introduce the same enemy later on, suddenly he dies much faster and doesn't really hurt anyone. 3. Make the monster a minion at even later levels and bring them in droves that all have "1 HP" to the players.
This approach is obviously hard to pull off.. how do you know they'll be fighting orcs from lvl 1-10? In your own words though, could be henchmen of something else, could be a random encounter, who knows. You don't need to throw an easy fight to show how the party has grown, you need to throw what they've already fought to show it. Or you could be a sadistic DM and throw something they could never hope to beat early on then again later (that's basically Curse of Strahd in a nutshell). People only measure themselves off of other things.
So early that my DM thinks I fudged my Dex save.
*check
@David Sterling, um yeah, my character has … "Uncanny Initiative".
What? You don't believe me, nah man, it's in another extended rule book you haven't seen, trust me.
*rolls bluff to DM
Waiting with great anticipa-
Wait for it...
@@peterrasmussen394 ...well?? We're waiting!!
I wish gifs worked on RUclips.
Please remove the cause, but leave the symptom.
.........tion
@@pringles_mcgee Sweet merciful satisfac-
I can tell those Gamescience Dice from anywhere.
Accept no substitutes.
Fudging a dice roll feels like a cinematic or cutscene in a video game to me. Sometimes the heroes deserve their moment, same thing with the villians. It's great for drama and powerful moments but always be sure to hand the reins back over when you're done.
I totally agree. I believe that, situationally, a die-roll isn't needed. Sometimes an outcome is absolutely inevitable. When your party ties up a Goblin, questions it, then decides to kill it, you don't have them roll attack or damage. It just dies. Similarly, when a player does something foolish (in my instance, two PCs were trying to bargin with a Pirate Captain and his crew, outnumbered 10:1, and they pissed the captain off), they too must simply die.
I have been fudging dice rolls since day one of DMing. Sometimes it's adjusting damage up or down a couple points for drama, or to avoid some ridiculous result on a table (usually something homebrewed) from happening and breaking immersion.
I have also done things the other way, with no screen and no fudged rolls. This was at the request of my players, who thought I was going easy on them. (Spoiler: I wasn't, really.) Turns out, the players that complained about the DM screen meaning I could hide dice and fudge stuff were the ones most uncomfortable with me rolling in the open. Like they knew that 'this roll is really, really, really gonna count' and it upped the stress level a lot. I eventually brought the screen back, just because they were stressing too much to have fun. They were still having about the same success rate as before, but somehow rolls being behind the screen somehow put them at ease. Personally, I found the whole thing amusing.
Andrew Joyce Nice! I have experienced similar feelings with my game group and the screen. We typically use it because a bit of mystery is fun! It's neat to imagine what the DM has back there that he's going to pull on us.
We have also used rolling in front of or without a screen to good effect. I'll never forget the time when our party was in a climactic battle near the end of a campaign arc, it was tough and things weren't going well for us. Our DM quietly stood up, set his dice tray in front of the screen and started rolling in the open. Without having to explain anything, we felt that this was really real now, the stakes were higher than ever and our characters lives we're on the line. Whatever the dice said ruled. This ratcheted up the tension of the battle and made it feel more powerful and epic. I wouldn't use this technique often, I think it would be annoying and anticlimactic in a random orc fight in the woods. I think that gets back to Matt's point about fate versus randomness. In that big battle scenario we would be much more okay with the dice ending the life of our character in the service of the quest and the story than be killed (or simply fail) randomly in an unlikely, unglamorous scenario. I definitely agree with Matt, you're the DM, fudge the dice or don't fudge the dice, do both, do whatever is appropriate to make sure everyone at your table has a blast and can't wait until the next session!
Wow, that is super interesting... IME, players are usually the ones who complain about DMs fudging dice, but I suspect that's because they think we do it to make things worse for them. I have a player, too, though who doesn't want me to go easy on them. HE wants hard hard combats. :D
I think perhaps One of the strongest arguments for fudging, is the fact that video games "fudge the dice" all the time. Like ALL the time. Basically no video game uses true random chance when it comes to doing things like hit roles or amounts of damage etc.
They all do tons of play testing and then fudge the randomness to curate the experience for the players in edge cases and critical moments. Even if it's only very very rare. Because true randomness, is antithetical to a designed experience.
Funny how many DMs seem to encourage fudging as if the natural state was to always respect the rolls. I used to fudge a lot as a new DM, because I was kinda scared of where it might take me. One roll can force you to forget your planned adventure and go a totally different direction. And a character death seemed like a disaster to me.
For me, not fudging is a sign of my confidence as a DM. And the less prepared I am, the more I fudge. I'm more confident about what will happen if they fail or succed this risky sleight of hand on the king (you're doing WHAT ? er, ok, make the roll. I'll make the perception one open for the fun). I know my investigation can still be fun if they fail all their perception rolls - because planning. I make sure they have enough options in general, even when it comes to combat. And I feel confident enough about my stories that a character death won't totally ruin the enjoyment for the player (on the long term, of course he'll be unhappy on the spot). And I came to really like that uncertainty.
Dice are also here to reward player's creativity, as they're trying so hard to tip the scales on their favor, and that can be amazing.
But yeah, I still fudge sometimes, because I had a nice dramatic idea. I just had to learn to accept the rolls as much as possible.
In my personal experience, every advantage of rolling hidden dice and then fudging can be replicated without needing not to be open to your players, and the cost of having a fudge culture at the table is huge, after players internalize that rolls are hidden and constantly fudged (which might be just a perception they got from knowing, or assuming, you fudged a single time) then rolls start to lose impact, and they feel like they have no more agency in the game. Upfront rolling dice open, and then saying "hey folks, a freak roll happened here, what do you think if we pretend the result was X, not why, and you guys get Y hero's points?" Or, if it is a rolls that affects one player very negatively, you can offer to change it, but cash in doom-horror points instead, and give the character a major, but narratively adequate, setback. It works like a charm.
I almost never fudge my rolls, not because I believe the Dice should have some unbreakable integrity but because it makes Fudging rolls easier. If you tell your players 199 true die rolls they wont notice that the 200th roll was a lie, the roll that really matters.
As a DM I consider the dice as a guide for what happens, not a hard and fast rule. I'll cheat for the players (reducing damage done to them, or secretly lowering the DC, etc) if they need some help (especially when it is not their tactics that are flawed, just their dice) and I will cheat for the monsters if my dice go too cold (which deflates the sense of danger in an encounter really fast). I do have a personal rule that I abide by though: if I ever cheat during an encounter for the monsters, I will NOT kill a PC that encounter. It just doesn't seem right to me that I may have influenced the encounter in the name of tension but changed the outcome to one that eliminates a PC.
I completely agree with this I normally fudge dice to save my PCs from terrible encounter design. Although I usually never fudge my monsters as i make them borderline difficult.
That's a fine philosophy, but I would also say you shouldn't force yourself to start fudging hard in the players' favour just to make up for potentially a single attack roll going from a miss to a hit.
I only do it to prevent a TPK where it wasn't deserved based on their tactics and the situation. It is almost always in a combat situation when any side's dice go to an extreme and stay there. I can always secretly give or take away NPC HP. I can change a hit/miss or the damage rolled from a set of nasty hits from "kill the PC" to "gravely wound" the PC. When I design an encounter I have a pretty good idea how the PCs will fare and I know my players well enough that I know the likely tactics that they will usually employ.
Trust me, I am not "forced" to fudge rolls and I don't do it often. After ~37 years of experience playing/DMing I think I know when it is appropriate and when it isn't.
It's always a good day when Matt Colville releases a video!
Well, not for everyone...my bank account cried after that table reveal the other day. 🤣
@@BusyBadger you didn't...
@@CatholicCrab Not yet, I need to paint and put down new floor in my lair first, but it's been added to the budget.
Not buying the one that Matt & crew are using, I'll be ordering The Garrison from Rathskellers. Didn't see any coffee/gaming tables I loved (a couple I liked though), and then Matt dropped that vid.
Oh, whew! I thought you just insta-bought one right after you saw it.
I'm planning to make a table at home with a receded center like that one has.
I never fudged die rolls until I started running a second campaign that ran parallel to my main game a year ago, when the party nearly got TPK'd be an encounter that I had planned to be a minor foil to weaken them before their untimely fight with the Big Bad. The thing they were fighting had a multiattack and every attack but one was a nat 20, resulting in the Druid and the Barbarian going down, the Bard nearly dying, and the Rogue near half health.
They took a short rest, got as close to full as they could, and went on with the dungeon, eventually meeting up with the Big Bad for their "this is how powerful I am" battle that I had intended as a steamroll for the big bad. As it turned out, every attack I made except for like 2 were nat 1's, the other 2 were both below 4s. They thought the Big Bad was a pushover. After that I started fudging die rolls, not all the time, but just to keep the narrative in check. A CR 4 bandit shouldn't be able to nearly TPK a party of level 16s and a CR25 lich shouldn't be a punching bag.
Matt, I'm probably gonna kill a PC this Saturday, so if you could find a way to break the rules of time and get that video out to me before this weekend, I would greatly appreciate it.
Your going to kill them for a story reason ? I wouldn't , I am happy to let players die when they have chosen badly or its there characters fate ( aka the paladin staying to fight to the last man to stop the enemy sort of thing) . Any time i have tried to story kill a character it hasn't had the desired effect , it hasn't even had any positive effects . But hey that's just me , I am not Matt lol .
Im actually really interested to see how this guy's story plays out: Maybe his players have decided to go after the Dragon that they were warned well in advance would be too powerful for them. Maybe for drama a backstory is going to lead to a needed sacrifice. I don't know what he wants by "breaking the rules of time" but in any case: story time Owen
I had a player decide that he was no longer interested in playing his character and wanted to start a new one. So, we set up a situation where, in story, he sacrificed himself for the rest of the party to escape. Half a game session later, we were still learning just how tough his archetype was.
I think Matthew Mercer (Good Matt, as opposed to our Evil Matt) did a GM Tips episode about player character death. Maybe check that out, if you're in need of advice.
Honestly it depends on how (s)he dies, since most of my games have no cleric or other healer in them, death tends to happen more often, I will give you a few catagories of death and how they affected our game:
Death by roleplay fluke (a barbarian had a teleportation mishap, ended up in the Fey wild with only a small hut in sight, he soon after died while fighting a provoked hag): The character was still something the player could be proud of, it removed a character from the party that was stubborn to say the least and thereby made the adventure more enjoyable.
Death in combat: against BBEG it feels like a good sacrifice, against just a normal monster it felt unfair, however there is a lot a DM can do here to make the death better, death is a big deal, spend a good amount of time recapping the death and have the death not just have an impact until after the combat, people change after seeing a loved one die.
Death for character switch: this honestly is one of the worst ways to end a characters story, my general rule is, if the player wants to switch, make player roleplay a reason for the character to leave.
Death by roleplay: generally the best way to have a character death, the players and the DM often feel like that was supposed to happen (granted you need a DM who can follow his rules of his own universe)
A couple weeks ago, through strange coincidence, my party met and teamed up with a party from a D&D series I watch and enjoy on youtube, the cast of Trapped in the Birdcage. I had no clue what this party's actual stats were and was forced to basically fudge every dice roll they made to further the plot. My group of very high level players didn't even question when this party was able to outwit or fail to be intimidated because the story and interaction was just fun. In my games fun always trumps numbers. And I think that is the long and short of what you are saying here. This campaign (my first as a DM) has now concluded and the same group is practically begging me to start the next, which I am working on at the moment. Matt, you have been a huge influence for me on my style and very much reinforced my own ideas on what a DM should be, and I can't thank you enough!
LOL... terrific video, Matt! I especially loved the ending, showing the rolls.
I used to fudge rolls. I see the appeal of doing it to create dramatic situations, or to fix a terrible situation. Thing is, it can be pretty obvious when it happens. I am not the best actor to begin with, but I feel like I can tell when other DM's do it as well. If the players know you fudged the roll, it takes the fun out of it in my opinion. Lately, I have just been rolling out in the open. I find it creates more tension and fun that way. The players are more on edge and paying more attention. Everyone leans in to see the rolls and reacts almost every time. It is true that it can create some messed up situations. But that is why we discuss these things at the beginning of the game. My players like the out in the open rolls, so they understand there are real chances they could die.
"The dice don't care about drama": true!
"But you do": no, I don't.
"As a Dungeon Master it is your job to create drama": no, it isn't. My D&D is not a drama game.
Thank you for highlighting this key difference of approach in such a clear way.
Matt silently humblebragging how large and extensive his dice collection is. Don't ever change
Matt! Matt! Matt! Matt! Whats your contact info? You have got to see this 26 page Power Point slide I made on what your doing wrong in your videos! Matt! Matt!
Quothcraft Pish-posh! I am FedEx-ing a 3d simulation of the beard-to-bookshelf refractory quanta, especially with regards to the intermittent German. It's a level 7 crisis!!!
Only 26 pages? Get in line, peasant.
Why would he ever want you to send him a PowerPoint telling him how he's wrong?
@@kianpfannenstiel Oh, my sweet summer child
Kian Pfannenstiel It's an in-community joke. Matt gets [very reasonably] annoyed when people tell him with great urgency that the focus was off, the lighting was bad, the sound was tinny etc., frequently going on Twitter, on reddit, on RUclips, by email. The reality is that Matt has a very sharp eye and ear, so if we see anything, it's a pretty good bet that he has seen it at least three times, and already made the call that it's good enough to put up. Me and dude above me are riffing off of that
I totally see your points and love your argument!! This was another well produced video that brought up very good ideas!
However, I still must say that I am sticking with the idea of dice representing fate. Not for any rational reason, more for the fun of it. I love how I, the DM, and my players get to build a story together where anything can happen. While I will know more about the overall situation of course, just thinking of the dice as a doorway to the infinite possibilities that can come from an encounter is much more entertaining than seeing them as ways to generate outcomes. The belief that each roll is fated, and the question ofwhether or not you want to see what lies beyond the door makes every choice feel weighted for me.
I want a t-shirt with a D20 and "The Unknown Future" below it.
Thank you so much for this series! I'm first time DM-ing for some first time players and this really helps! On the topic of this video:
We're running Rime of the Frostmaiden and the starting quest is a very simple go kill this criminal style quest. They planned it super well - prevented back up, got him alone, worked out an ability...and the guy would have killed them. It might be balanced for more party members, but I was rolling stupidly well and it sucked. Because they hadn't done anything wrong! They'd worked hard and strategised and I could tell they were really into it and I didn't want to punish them because I didn't know enough to balance the encounter properly beyond the stat block given. So some of the multi-attacks missed, and some of the damage was lower than it was. With the liberal use of every healing spell they could assess, 2 of the 3 party members finished the fight with the criminal dead at their feet, as requested, with like 1-2HP remaining with the third completely tapped. They were so thrilled they managed to survive!
I watched this one particularly today to get some insight because I've seen exactly that contention since, that fudging the rolls is cheating, and I was feeling kinda weird about that decision that seemed great until I started reading opinions, but I think I agree with this view more. Sure, later in more challenging encounters when they are supposed to be deadly or the players have made relatively "foolish" decisions (for whatever reason, like ignoring all warnings/hints/putting aside important info) it makes more sense, and is explainable, that there are heavier consequences. But this was the starting quest! For a bunch of brand new players! It was supposed to be, well, not easy but it shouldn't have been a TPK!! And everyone had fun and thought it went great and talked about how close/hard that was! I think that story/experience is better and maybe I'll try to fudge less and less as we advance (as I get better at knowing how to adjust the encounters for the party, and my players on spellcasters realise they needed to pick their spells themselves, they don't get given to you leading to a 10min period of us speed picking spells in the middle of combat...) but I think in the end these guys are playing it for that story and honestly so am I - and sometimes that requires setting aside randomness a bit or "adjusting" the randomness based on choices.
This is definitely one of my favourite videos on this channel so far, I agree with almost all of the points and it is thought provoking in terms of how we see "fate". I am interested to learn more about what you mean when you say that D&D is not a storytelling game, however. I hope to see a video about that in the near future.
Bravo sir. Bravo. Best video ever. The history, the argument, exemplary.
"Sometimes you won't roll above a 7 all night..."
Had a night like that last week, where I'm not even sure I rolled as high as a 7 after the first round of combat. As a player it was one of the MOST frustrating moments in a D&D session, and unfortunately wasn't something easily solved by fudging (playing online seems to make fudging difficult in general).I will always prefer a DM find a way (through fudging rolls or otherwise engineering the fight) to help a player constantly rolling poorly. I'd rather my character die in a heated back-and-forth than survive but be completely ineffectual, the latter barely even counts as playing the game.
2, 12, 17, 8, 17, 14, 7, 20, 9, 14, 6, 4 clearly, those are what you rolled.
I've prepared a session where, just to make a point, the enemies would only hit on nat 20 and AC on said enemies was comparatively low, because players were complaining that they were getting rekt by the fights that shouldn't be too hard for them on paper.
I've legitimately almost rolled more 20s than my party did double digit numbers between them that day. And that's with players making unauthorized rerolls.
I am a long-time gm. I learned to only fudge in 2 cases:
1. On behalf of the players. I never let dice kill the players. By that I mean random rolls. Choices kill players.
2. To advance the story, or liven up a drudginly boring encounter.
I don't fudge for any other reason. Including making a villain look badass. Players who catch you cheating like that will inevitably think you're out to get them.
I love how every time Matt pulls up a die it's always a different color XD
Additionally, your improv chops can be huge when it comes to dice rolls, both real and fudged. The uncertainty of specific moments is the real juice behind the drama you can create, and being able to rationalize and describe the scenario to your players with as much gusto and believability regardless of the 'to fudge or not to fudge' fate of the dice lends itself to those memorable moments that players will talk about long after a session.
When players can go an entire session without discerning what things you had planned from what was totally unplanned (usually thanks to their creativity), I believe that immersion can create a powerful experience.
Senpai...
wtf. I thought I knew what I was going to get when you talked about this video last time, but the Kreig Speil intro was off the CHAIN. I await an Adam Kobel rebuttal. I am so pumped to have at least a new video per week. Big ups for Willow clip.
I am also wanting to hear what Adam says about this :)
It is spelled: Kriegspiel .. thought you might wanna know ^^
Adam Koebel has talked many times about it, more recently in his Office Hours series:
ruclips.net/video/YH6kyTFMGV4/видео.html&list=PLAmPx8nWedFVGdrP2JmcYzdvZC8sWV5b4&t=2307
haha yeah I have a genuine burned-in neural pathway that makes me flip my e and i in all manner of goofball ways.
I think Matt had a good point ( I’ve heard Adam’s side before) - do what works for your game and players, but the addendum I think ( especially if your players are new) - let your players know how you view fudging your rolls up front.
( in my games we always laughingly referees to the DM as the - Dice Modifier).
Thanks for yet another great video Matt, I have been watching since shortly after you started posting the "running the game" series, and before watching these, I was always pretty sure that I would not be able to run a game, but now, I believe you have given me the confidence in my own abilities to do so. Also, I believe watching other DM's in the past made me think, "wow, they put so much time into every single detail, I could never do that." But now I realize that, yes, while there is a lot of work put into DMing, most of the 'work' is improvised, and after a while, very little preparation is needed to run a fun and fulfilling game for everyone at the table.
Speaking of improvising, I have been improvising some of the tools used at our table, so I don't need to spend a lot of money on battle-mats, minis or props. Most of the items I use are hand-made, like 1-inch grid 16"x16" tiles made from gluing wrapping paper, that has the grid-lines on the back, to pieces of cardboard, then covering the whole thing in packing tape to be able to use dry-erase markers. the 16x16 size is arbitrary, it's just what I decided on, but I can combine them in any way I need. I've also taken to creating minis out of perler beads, I believe I posted them on reddit a while back. I even crafted a dice tower from perler beads, and can easily be found by googling "perler dice tower". I also work in a place that uses a lot of styrofoam, so my next experiment will be in creating things from carving styrofoam pieces, my goal is to create a Tavern from them.
Was just watching some Jim Murphy videos. Pleasant surprise.
I did it like you do for a very long time, but in my recent Princes of the Apocalypse game, I've been rolling all of my dice in the open, without fudging, and it's been great! I would rather play it your way if I had new or less experienced players in my group, I think, but my players seem to collectively agree that there's something more exciting about knowing their own mortality might be waiting around any corner, and I can't save them if things don't go their way. Rolling in the open for the DM is almost never done as far as I can tell, but my players seem to love the thrill of peril.
Still, to everyone, make sure that your whole group is okay with any changes like that! Matt's way is probably the best way for 90% of groups.
Hmmm this is one of those times I will have to disagree with Matthew Colville as I prefer not fudging dice rolls. Especially in the style of D&D and roleplaying games I play where retreat is often an option and combat is not something that is sprung on players four or five times a session but something that carries more weight.
I think one thing that is very telling about this is that many DMs that do this including Matt would not want their players to know how much they fudge/lie about dice rolls as they would trust them less or be upset by that. I also think there are far more interesting ways to make combat encounter that is going badly less deadly than just roll in secret then lie. I prefer to roll out in the open and do not have a screen at all for this reason as well as a belief that a DM is basically a player with a different role to play. So a DM lying about Dice and a player lying are more similar in my eyes as the DM does not have this mythical all knowing status that protects them from having to play by the same rules.
Totally agree with this viewpoint, all about rolling in the open.
There is no dramatic weight to dying to a kobold at level 1. There has been no story, you don't even CARE about your character yet. The only thing that has happened is that you died and have to create another character. Literal waste of time. Literally might as well Erase the B on Bob for character name, put an R in, and now Rob has joined the party. Thats how much a level 1 character death matters.
@lanmandragoran8337 then do not bother with rolling until they do matter. Or better yet, give the players fate pints/extra lives to use.
Great ending, and the info about the origin of war games was absolutely fascinating! Thank you!
I remember my group was trying to sneak past these guards to get into some Tombs. So, I was like “Hey I got this” and excitedly rolled. I looked down and saw it....a 1. However, the guards were cool and we played cards with them.
Hey thanks for the video Matt! I was always against fudging the dice, and when I use Fantasy Grounds I purposely make it so all of the players can see my rolls. It is good to know some people do fudge their rolls, I have always ran with the idea that "if they do something terrible, or awesome, they know THEY did it." Also helps because I am a new DM so they know when something bad happens.... and I say I roll my third Critical on the same character in one night.. they know it is legit. But yeah... my game does have a high kill count, I am running a pre-made campaign and i have 3/4 PCs die already.
I think while it's good to do it sometimes, it can still be fun to get 20 natural 20s within the first 5 minutes, and then get 2s and 4s for the rest of the session.
Good times.
I'll leave that for the players. It really fucks me up bad when the dice fuck with my plans in ways that just aren't interesting!
You say that until your party's tank get's critically hit 5 times in an encounter that was meant to be easy and loses an eye in the first 10 minutes of a session lmfao, feels omega oof man
I got 4 20's within one encounter. Needless to say my players had a bad(good) time.
If the tank takes 5 crits in short succession and only loses an eye from the ordeal, they probably had it coming. How is that anything other than a source fun bar talk?
"See this scar?"
*Tank points to their dead eye*
"That comes from the fight I was stabbed in the spleen, the kidney, the lung, and the heart all at the same time!"
"Never would've expected such damage from 8 twig blights now would ya!"
This guy's poker face when rolling is mastery level. It shows you've been playing and running the game for years.
Awesommeeee
Hey Matt!
I ran a full campaign fudging the dice basically with the same idea, I wanted the cool and dramatic stuff. But what happen was, as we progressed, my table started to become predictable. It felt more like a show where the dramatic stuff is always assured, which is hard to relate because that’s not what life is.
It was only when I stopped doing that in the next campaign, and stuff like a level 2 character being killed by a random gnoll started to happen, that my players started to really immerse. That felt like life, like something that was real. Without the DM tension corrective, my players felt like their actions could make the difference in any given time. Drama in this kind of context was in another level of awesomeness, but of course, not as frequent and controllable as before.
So I don’t know man, I’m not a great actor/liar and perspicacious to make my fudging feel like reality. And I definitely don’t want my table to be a predictable cliche Hollywood show. Can you tell us more about how you fudge? Something like this has ever happened to you?
Thank you!
GM = 50% simulator + 50% storyteller
Nice description. This is a game with rules, but at the end of the day the story is what is remembered
As usual, MC's on point with this one. The dice are like the rules of grammar. You start by following them and learning how to masterfully work within their constraints, then you learn to fudge (or even ignore) them when it's appropriate to do so. The first step is fundamentals. The second step is expertise.
Totally on board with this video. And the pauses for you to roll the dice, had me leaning in to hope for an answer of what you rolled.
This really speaks to the problem with the D20 system for how much randomness it interjects. A highly skilled character may have a +10 to a skill, but that's only 1/3rd of the possibilities. The other 2/3rds is randomness. Your skill means half as much as fate, and that's horrible. If you're a highly skilled locksmith, you shouldn't have a 25% possibility of failing a moderate (15) difficulty skill check.
If you extrapolate out difficulties and average skill levels to common tasks in the everyday world of your setting, blacksmiths should be throwing away or having to start over on about half of their work. Bakers should be burning 25% of all their breads and pastries. I suppose you can say, "Well just assume they 'Take 10' or 'Take 20' because they're not stressed or in combat," but then characters should be doing that in ALL non-combat situations too.
Robert Williams yeah the D20 system is too swingy. I agree completely. Maybe use 2d10 or 3d6 for skill rolls, especially trained/proficient ones.
I find that the Pathfinder System deals with this a little, it gives you greater bonuses on your skills so that eventually the DC 25 locks can only be failed by rolling a 2 and because the master level locks are near 40-45 in difficulty they are impossible for anybody but a master Lockpick.
It allows you to focus your character on specific skills so much that the swingyness of the D20 is mostly nullified.
That being said, I'd probably put baking bread at a DC 5, and the concept of a Baker's dozen is actually based on the idea that 1 of every 12 buns will be slightly over-cooked and so an extra one (the 13th bun) is baked to replace the "burnt" bun so that they can be sold by the dozen without selling the "burnt" ones.
This is why you don't make players roll for things they should be able to do without any risk of failure
That was a GREAT way to end the video. And its great to hear that the PDF is coming "Soon". So excited.
Oh, Willow. The greatest and most perfect adventure movie ever made. One of my favorites of all time.
I thought i knew where this was going to go but then BAM Colville comes out of no where with Prussian war games and the best gm roll a dice and go hmmm. This made my night thank you Matt.
If we as DMs fudge roles to curate the fun, why don't we let players do it too?
Whenever the subject of fudging roles comes up I think of Apocalypse World or Blades in the Dark. In those games the GM doesn't role dice, only the players do, and those games are just as fun as D&D.
Still a great video tho. I strongly disagree with most of it but I agree that if fudging works for your game, then you do you.
Great outro! I once recharged fire breath 5 turns in a row, rolling in front of the screen. It was dramatic, but took a heavier toll on the party than that encounter was supposed to. If I'd been rolling behind the screen, I'd probably keep the first three, and then fudge the rest. 24 solid seconds of fire spewing death seems dramatic enough.
5:48 That's quite the leap. Using their experience to change the charts to be more in-line with how they believe such events would play out is fudging a roll? Sounds more like they're making their own house rules and using their experience to compliment their ability to explain the context of events. For example, if you made a sand bear sting itself you'd normally think it'd weaken it since it poisoned itself. However, since this is a manifestation of your fears and nightmares it instead grows more powerful. (Hey Puffin fans) No where near the same thing as complete reversal of events due to a roll not mattering in the first place. Particularly since that game is a player versus player scenario, no matter the referee they'd use the same chart for both sides - official chart or not.
Thumbs up for a Puffin Forest reference. Was that the one with Wallace?
Also, you know what's worse than sand bears? "Murder Elementals!"
They aren't changing the charts, they're disregarding the results the charts would give according to the dice rolls. If they were modifying the charts to be more suited to their opinions of realism or taste on how the game should run you'd be right--that's homebrew/house rules
But using your experience to overrule the results dictated by the dice/charts? That's definitely fudging.
I think Matt should have touched on that more. He may fudge to correct his own mistakes in things like encounter design, but fudging also has its place when you as the GM have an opinion that something should work out some way other than what the dice say. Whether that be an enemy flubbing a spell attack at a crucial tense moment or something as simple as whether the guard believes the players' bluff. You can of course just not roll dice in some of those instances but preserving the illusion that the result was meant to be can be important, even if the reality is that you're deciding what happens.
Very wise and thoughtful perspective sir. I salute you.
Thank you for this extremely good video, I have fudged die rolls before to make things dramatic, and I have always felt guilty about it. You have absolved that guilt from me. Thank you Matt :D
I'm about to start DMing for the first time. This video has me convinced that "I will consult the bones" will be an utterance I utilize frequently.
I personally dislike fudging as I like not knowing how things will turn out, and I like the idea that even mighty heroes can be caught out by an unfortunate turn of events. I do sometimes "fudge reality", for example if the party is really struggling versus something trivial and it would be a total anti-climax, just before the killing blow I might have an ally burst onto the scene to save them, or a much greater foe appear and frighten off the original attackers, allowing the party a chance to escape, or something even simpler, like giving the party full cover when I would normally give half. This has issues with feeling "natural", but I find I like the fact that it drives the story forward. The other thing I tend to do is allow people to deal a killing blow if they land a massive amount of damage and leave something on a few hitpoints, that's just common sense DMing, allowing the characters to shine, that sort of thing.
What you describe as "fudge reality", at least for certain in the first two examples, is known as a deux ex machina.
Some people, me included, find that stuff more anticlimatic than a fudge roll, because the agency is given to a third party who come out of nowhere. With that im not saying that your way of doing things is worst, is just different, and if you're having fun is all good. But the way i see it, a fudge roll is less intrusive in the narrative.
Sorry for any misspelling, this is not my home lenguage.
I like the term Fudge Reality. Because I roll all my dice in front of my players, and they roll on the table as well, usually in a nice wooden Dice Tray, there's no cheating that way. But if they are just not hitting a monster, and someone finally gets a crit, I'll take away a lot more points than they rolled. But, there was a session last summer where 4 players had to take down 3 Ogres, I let the dice fall where they may, and it was an hour of brutal combat, some close calls, and a critical hit with a spell, and after they won, the party felt like they had actually accomplished something epic. The town was saved, and nobody on their team died. So I'm not taking anything away from them when another encounter goes faster than it should, because I think it all balances out in the end.
Yep, it's definitely something I would try and avoid if it becomes too 'cheesy'. It can feel like the DM is giving you a free get out of jail card, which is unfun for everyone. One way of avoiding that is to make the outcome bad, but not TPK. Maybe the goblins want to capture the party and sell them as slaves to the highest bidder, leading the narrative towards an escape the dungeon type mission. Another good way of making it fit well is to have things going on in your world independent of the PCs. Hint at the possibility of the ally/terrifying monster turning up before the encounter has even started. That way when you pull it out of your DM bag it feels less like you're trying to make up for your dice rolls and more like you're just pushing the narrative on to the next step. Another way of counteracting bad dice rolls is to give your PCs one-use magic items that act as weapons of last resort. Most players that I know would treat the use of such items on a small encounter as a meaningful failure. They just wasted their cool magic orb on kobolds! Or whatever. Which means they don't feel cheated by the DM into being given a good outcome they didn't deserve (at least according to the dice).
I ran an ongoing dungeon with the same group of 5 players that went on almost every weekend, Saturday and Sunday for an average of 4.5 hours a play.
Sometimes as much as 7 hours.
The game continued for 5 years.
Clearly, the players were having a great time.
They never knew that I almost never read a chart or told the players the correct rolls I the DM made.
I did what made the game make sense and feel real.
I think there are 2 kinds of DMs. Those who fudge and those who lie about it.
(PS: still, as a player, I have never questioned a DM on their roll. They are the MASTER of the game.)
Our notebooks which were voluminous were, in fact, 'novels.' We would reread them and reminisce years later with no end to the joy of it all.
Plot twist, every time he rolls a die and then cuts the scene, he's swearing profusely because of "another G****** nat 1"
For the record, I've never been bothered by an occasional sound issue, or a more casual less edited video, I love all of your content. HOWEVER, these new studio videos have been getting better and better, and I really appreciate the standards to which you hold yourself. Amazing video!
LOL - Absolutely LOVE how you cut the video at the end to punctuate your point: THE JOB OF THE DM IS TO CREATE DRAMA. Well played, Matt. Well played.
I loved this video and I completely agree. No one other than you and the group you are playing with knows what game is fun for you. So if the players love the random out come of dice, then don't fudge, if they prefer not to be whipped out because you made some mistakes then modify the dice rolls when needed. Ultimately you are the people at the table, not the people on reddit complaining about fudging. I have always been very clear with my players, telling them that i occasionally fudge the dice. But I also adhere to the rule of not letting them know. I don't think my players have ever "caught" me modifying the roll. Normally they are to focused on the action to notice.
My biggest disagreement is with the notion that the DM is responsible for the story, and for the "fun" of the group. As far as the story goes, for me that is a negotiation between the players, the DM, and the rules. The social contract I have with my players is built on that premise. No one person has any more say as to what occurs than the other players. You mentioned it in the video, and I agree with the statement of "If you are going to fudge, why roll?" As an example lets take a basic encounter that isnt intended to wipe the players out. From my point of view, if I as the DM have already decided in my head that the players as supposed to win this fight, I no longer have investment in that encounter and dont see any point in rolling, or even having the encounter to begin with. If an encounter has no stakes, why is it in the game? Kind of like the Chekovs Gun of DMing. "If this encounter doesnt move events along in a meaningful way, it has no business being in the game." And as a result, any encounter that has stakes, should carry the possibility of failure. Including a TPK. This is what makes RPGs worth playing for me. As always though, loved the video and I think you articulated your thoughts very clearly. Nice work.
Randomness is not the opposite of drama. Drama is sometimes the result of randomness, but not opposites.
Great video, though. I still learned a lot here!
Tried my hand at DMing one time, I think I fudged 70% of the rolls. I also dramatically overestimated my players' ability to roll above a 10 so the encounters wound up feeling FAR more intense than they should have. I was also rolling uncharacteristically well. There was no choice, I didn't want a TPK at level 1.
I like the effects. rolling, then looking up. Reminds me of the last video where we'd see Matt on the ground or suddenly appearing somewhere else. It's the little things.
Rude Matt Colville, RUDE! But that ending was funny
Randomness is a cruel mistress.
I put a Beholder Zombie in front of my level 5 party and out of the 4 possible options, it rolled to use its Disintegration Ray FIVE consecutive times. It evaporated the Fighter's brother, the fighter himself tanked the ray (and is the only member of the party with enough HP that he could reasonably do so), and the ranger succeeded the Dex save twice.
By the FIFTH consecutive Disintegration ray roll (25%x25%x25%x25%x25% = about a 0.1% chance) I fudged it to be the exhaustion ray lmao
DMG pg. 235. "Dice Rolling". 3rd bullet point.
And pg. 237: "Remember that dice don't run your game - you do. Dice are like rules. They're tools to help keep the action moving."
It's weird that we have a book full of advice on how to run a good game, published by WotC, that literally says it's okay to fudge rolls, and yet this is still a point of contention.
If you don't like doing it, don't do it. But don't say only bad DMs fudge rolls. The DMG doesn't agree with that.
This! Exactly this! In a perfect world there would be zero discussion about his. Fudging rolls doesn't makes you a shitty DM.
The DMG isn’t holy scripture. I disagree fundamentally with the premise behind the quote you reproduced, and whoever wrote it. Dice are what make a role playing GAME a GAME. Rolling one and declaring the result irrelevant is cheating. It’s better to just not roll at all and declare the result as the omnipotent DM.
@@mrmaat Sorry, I understand quite well where you're coming from, and I hope you care to read my explanation for why I disagree with your position.
I think the only thing that makes any game a game is that it's fun. The purpose of having rules in a game is to facilitate fun. If a rule is failing to facilitate fun, it must be changed or disposed of entirely.
Not everyone agrees that having an adventure that can be derailed by an errant dice roll is fun. The prospect of that happening is probably thrilling to you, I imagine it could be very creatively stimulating, but not to everyone. People are entitled to play in whatever way is most fun for them.
The DMG is, by necessity, as you said, not holy scripture. We're not obligated to follow it. In that same vein, why are we then obligated to treat dice rolls as signs from heaven that can't be disobeyed? If they must be obeyed for it to be a game, then how can you say you're playing Dungeons & Dragons if you're deliberately disregarding the rulebooks?
Moreover, the "role" in role-playing game clearly doesn't refer to the "roll" of the dice. It means that players are filling a role as a character in a fictional world. I hope the idea doesn't upset you too much, but it's actually possible to play a role-playing game without using any dice at all. The essential characteristic that defines it from other types of games is the act of mutual storytelling, even if that story is very simple.
And fun, of course. It's only a game if it's fun. To your credit, almost everyone agrees that using dice is fun. It provides an element of impartiality and excitement for unknown outcomes. It's just that some of us find that a few things are too important to be left to random chance.
Does all that make sense? Obviously you're entitled to disagree and play the way you think is best.
@@mrmaat I also think it's kind of novel that you're more strict about how a game is played than the official rulebook is.
@@LeviathanLP You do realize you just reiterated what they said? "It's better to declare the result as an omnipotent GM" & "Some of us find that a few things are too important to be left to random chance."
The end result is the same. However, fudging a roll then tells a player that this result is just how the dice fell, and not due to the whims of an external force. And once that player finds out that you'll baby sit them then you alter the way they'll approach every dice roll from hence forth. As well as pull all previous moments of fun & unfun into question. In addition you waste time having to roll dice that have no real consequence, as such they only slow down the storytelling.
Great video. I do not fudge dice but sometimes set up a way for the players to get out of trouble based on the decisions they have made through roleplay and I do warn the players that not all decision will have good outcomes but it does have good roleplay results and typically leads to the players wondering why they were saved but then are blown away when they realise that a small insignificant decision came back to help them. Tossing a coin in a well, giving a hungry animal some food, or making a deal with a shady character could all possibly but not always result in aid later. I normally chose the most subtle detail so they don't know it until they are in trouble.
Although I perfer not to fudge dice rollst, I do roll red herring rolls where I will roll dice at random so players don't start to be more cautious simply because the DM rolls some dice. I tell the players I am just rolling some dice for fun. I also have them roll perception checks for all rooms even empty rooms so they don't automatically get scared to go in just because they rolled poorly.
Noooooooo!!!!!!! but the die rollllllllls!!!!
In my humble opinion, If a DM routinely fudges rolls, then that can lessen the impact of any action a player is making. By forcing your monsters to hit and miss X amount of times, how often a player is seen, sees, etc, then that actually takes a players agency away when building and developing a character. The dice does not have agency, but a player can predict the average dice rolls. A player can't predict the average DM fudges to hit/miss.
Also, DMs are not omnipotent. Sometimes fudging a dice roll can remove any possible story or dialogue that the DM did not foresee. At that point the DM could be railroading due to their bias. A dice does not have that problem. The dice is there to be random, if a DM doesn't want a random outcome, they should not roll or ask for a roll.
The issue of course is that it's extremely hard to properly balance an encounter based on your party composition, at least for newer DMs. And even if a DM can build an encounter around a party, the players who are controlling said characters might not even do the actions which a DM predicts. I think those rare cases though when monsters are destroying a party due to rolls only, fudging those rolls is also bad, but you as a DM can determine how a monster acts. That way, you don't fudge rolls which keeps the integrity of agency in place, and you don't TPK the party if the dice rolls just say; "nope, you dying" in an otherwise non-deadly encounter.
Remember, it's not just the DM telling a story. The players are too. If a player envisions what their character should and shouldn't do (or be able to do), then shouldn't they also fudge rolls? You can probably see how messy the game can get then right?
That's just my take on it anyway.
I refer to this as "smoke and mirrors" and while it's a valid form of DMing, you must absolutely ensure your players don't find out, or they'll be very unsatisfied.
Pre-rolling behind the screen is clever, but I personally find it reprehensible as I dislike lying/being lied to. Still if it works for you, more power to you.
I have an idea, and this just came to me while watching this video. I think a cool thing to do if you aren't a fan of just changing rolls during the game, have a roll pool. Whenever you need a good roll to be a bad roll or vice versa, you mark down a tally on some sheet and mark if it is good or bad for the players. You then have that roll in a pool of dice rolls, which only fits a certain amount of rolls in it. You can either switch out the rolls with other ones, but at some point when the pool gets filled, some huge event happens to the world, the effect being the same as the player effect of the roll pool.
So say that you have a dice pool that is filled with really good things for the players, and you have been making things harder for them because of your dice rolls. You then create some large world event that helps the players, maybe a country or faction honors the heros, or a country joins the players side in a war they fight. It wont be something that will affect the players directly but is something that may give them an advantage (or disadvantage) in the future, and still keep true with the dice, just in a different way.
Yeah i still do not fudge. I roll everything in the open. No tpks yet!
You must be one of the most un lucky dice rollers ever , sure once a party is over level 5 things are safe , the moment you roll a couple lucky rolls with a level 1 or 2 party , battles go down hill fast ..
Tpks aren't a hard and fast measure of whether you're doing your role as a GM right. Your players having fun is. And anticlimatic and unsatisfactory tpks are bad for player fun.
And yes. GM for the super low levels, and you'll find you already have your work cut out for you keeping them alive, from precariously building your encounters, to making sure they don't find that dragon horde you intended for 10 levels in the future.
While I totally agree with what you said, I would have loved to hear stories about not fudging dices and rolling in public as a GM (I knew you talked about it in the past especially taking Jim Murphy as an exemple). Of course as everything related to playstyle it might work or not depending on the group you're playing with, but it made absolute wonders at our table.
We played a huge campaign last year, I was the GM and at the begining I was rolling behind my screen. Then when things got more tense in the campaign, when the story reached the end of 2nd act, we just got the idea of trying rolling in public (except for passive checks such as perception/insight, which I rolled in secret to avoid metagaming).
And gosh, it made our game sooooo much better. We never got back and it convinced the GM of our new campaign to do the same.
I'm an advocate of the idea that dices are here to create tension, and maybe 50% of the results of the fights, but good idea should be as impactful as dices. And rolling in public makes you, the DM, on the exact same boat as your players. You also have no idea of what the dice will dictate and you'll have to stick with that. The only difference is that you're also a storyteller so you have agency over what the results imply (so if you fear the mighty double natural 20, you can still chop off some fingers or an arm instead of the head of your player character)
We got some absolutely crazy tense sessions with that, with me and the players really freaking out together (because as a GM now you don't have you plot armor stock in case something bad happens). I remember one session with a fomorian lord who had put our Wizard under a domination spell and to a critical amount of HP and the team had to rescue him without killing him while he had been given the instruction to act as stategicly optimized as possible against his own fellow party members) and the Fomorian Lord was just absolutely crushing the domination spell rolls and no one could argue with that or think it was railroaded (honestly I was freaking out for a TPK, the numbers were absolutely insane). And those results forced the player to restrain the Wizard and flee with him on their shoulders because the Fomorian was too strong.
It's been almost 6 months since this scene happened but we still often talk about it because of how tense it was and how exhausted and relieved we were (including me as a GM) once the party finally managed to flee. During this fight I remember all of us having our smile just vanished in a second when I rolled a nat19 on the Fomorian throwing his dagger at the fighter holding the inconscious wizard (down to 0 HP or even less).
GM : "So you're sprinting as fast as you can to the teleportation circle, the Lord Fomorian is chasing you and as you're able to cross the door he can't pass through he decides to throw his sacrificial dagger to the fighter holding the wizard"
... *nat 19*
The whole table : "Oh....oh....HOLY S***"
Gm " As you're about to cross the teleportation circle and get back to Harmondale, you feel a strong impact on your inconscious friend...Wrynn (=wizard), even tho you're inconscious, tell us what happened please"
And even Wrynn's player was 100% fine with that
We also got the exact contrary with the players crushing numbers and me rolling stupidly bad dices and even tho it made one of our BBEG absolutely ridiculous, we remember it as something super funny (the BBEG-associate got one shotted by our ranger running a double nat20 on round 2 of the fight).
It also allows you to be within your players at the table and not at the edge of the table hidden behind a screen, ant it makes it super useful for acting and immersion.
I am afraid I must disagree. One of my core rules for myself as a GM is to never request or make a roll that I am not okay with any possible result of.
The same way that I don't ask my PCs to make a Perception check, unless I'm okay with them failing (I would just give them the clues they need, and save a check for anything like hidden loot or additional incite that they might want but don't need) I feel it is wrong of me to roll a die against them, unless I'm willing to accept the result of that roll.
I don't typically run a lot of D&D (though I am currently running a 5e Actual Play on my channel), and maybe if I was someone who only ran D&D (and closely related systems), I would understand the need for fudging for "drama" but it is my opinion that the rules apply to the GM, and that the rules matter. A GM who is fudging is cheating. If you find you have to break the rules of the game, every single game session, in order to enjoy the game you are playing, then I believe you are playing the wrong game. Try Dungeon World, the GM can't fudge at all in that, they don't roll any dice at all. Or try FATE, a few good rolls might cause the PCs to be Taken Out, but that just means you get narrate how they lose, it doesn't have to result in death, unless you want it to. Or try any of several other systems with different mechanics.tldr; if you feel you have to fudge the rolls, then you are playing the wrong system for the game you want. Try something else.
I generally agree with this stance, but there is a time and place for making rolls for the sake of player experience. This is very group dependant - I prefer to see the rolls myself, but a friend of mine wants anything hidden from his character to be hidden from him. I'll make rolls for the sake of appearance with him and not tell him what they're for... they're actually for nothing, but it makes it harder for him to tell when something real is happening that his character wouldn't be aware of. If he wasn't in the group, I wouldn't bother making fake rolls or hiding the results - but we'd discussed comfort with metagame knowledge and he prefers to be kept in the dark.
I agree with many of your points, but fudging rolls as a DM in D&D is not cheating. It is well covered in the rules.
Your channel, sir. It is not about RPGs. It is philosophy. The best kind.
Pffft, die rolls? Hell, everything in the world is my creation. I fudge it all: DC's, AC, HP, damage, advantages & disadvantages, bonuses & penalties all over the place (several times, back and forth if necessary), when a group runs away or if they fight to the death, whether they regroup and try to sneak-attack or to get reinforcements. As long as it's dramatically appropriate, if it seems plausible to me based on what's happening I'll run with it. Especially in a d20 system with absolutely no bell curve where an extreme result, 1 or 20, is just as likely as an average result, 10; doubly so in a game with half-hazard or non-existent information on a huge variety of situations; and doubled again in an epic fantasy setting where magic and monsters and gods are common. If you want plausible reliability based purely on number crunching, you better get a really good computer and some decent machine learning algorithms going, otherwise it's much more fun to use the dice more as RNG guidelines than as absolute rules
The dm screen and the dice and the theatrics behind it add a lot to the player experience. A favorite practice is to ask for a saving throw or roll a hidden die and write something down without explaination
I disagree with the "routine encounter going bad" being a GM mistake. If the player KNOW that they will win against those weak enemies then why even have them in the game? If the dice go bad, that weak enemy should in my opinion pose a real threat - if the gm fudges the dice to save their players from facing challenge, then it's a GM mistake in my opinion.
To soften them up for the next weak encounter. Build tension. Not every stubbed toe has to lead to a leg amputation my dude.
Ah yes, the goblin that was supposed to simply be a meatbag to carry the information for the actual story and fight later on has killed the 5-person party because the dice decided to be an asshole that day.
Why would this be your definition of fun?
Its not just to make it a pointless encounter. Its for the unplanned for scenarios. First or second session, a brand new player has joined the game and is having fun. in the encounter that day, an enemy manages to land what should be a massive damage attack. The new player is already scared and on edge, and learned the lesson that every fight is dangerous. You don't have to actually kill the character. They can instead get knocked down, and then saved later, thus both keeping the sense of danger, and not also giving a brand new player a really bad experience. Or maybe that person is already laughing about it and has plans for a new character, so slice em in half.
Man, if i didn't fudge dice rolls I swear half my players would never reach 5th level. I always think it's hilarious when a long fight goes on, the players feel like they're on death's door, they're on the edge of their seats grumbling about how tough the encounter was and how lucky my rolls were, etc. Then I ask them, "And how many of you died?" The answer is 0. Your comments on the "curated experience' resonate so much with my DM style.