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
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.
@@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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
@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
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'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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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!
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: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YH6kyTFMGV4.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).
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.
@@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 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.
"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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 RU-vid, 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
"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 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.
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!"
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
Matt, thank so much for this video and all of your work. That last part at the end was great! I think I laughed literally a sold 2- 5 minutes. Not sure why it was so funny, maybe due my slight inebriation, but it was and I enjoy your sense of humor. Thanks, it was something I needed.
I just really want to thank you, Matt. Your videos are amazing and incredibly useful. I’m about to run my second game soon with my friends and I’m really excited about it thanks to you. (the first one was my accustomed version of the dungeon from your first video and I didn’t know anything about creating characters so I kinda screw it up and it was far too easy for the players?) Your videos are a great source of inspiration and I’m so happy you’re doing this. Once again, thank you for everything, Matt. I can’t wait for more :) Keep it up!
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.
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.
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.
The reference about a low level party dying to 5 shadows gives me flashbacks. Not but two days ago, my entire party except for me died to 5 shadows. I ran after they all fell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Reminder that the DM fudging rolls and hiding the fact that they're doing it is explicitly enshrined in the rules of the game and not breaking the rules at all.
DMG pg. 235. "Dice Rolling". 3rd bullet point: "Rolling behind a screen lets you fudge the results if you want to. If two critical hits in a row would kill a character, you could change the second critical hit into a normal hit, or even a miss. Don't distort die rolls too often, though, and don't let on that you're doing it. Otherwise, your players might think they don't face any real risks-or worse, that you're playing favorites. " DMG pg. 236 and 237. "The Middle Path". 2nd paragraph: "Remember that dice don't run your game- you do. Dice are like rules. They're tools to help keep the action moving. At any time, you can decide that a player's action is automatically successful. You can also grant the player advantage on any ability check, reducing the chance of a bad die roll foiling the character's plans. By the same token, a bad plan or unfortunate circumstances can transform the easiest task into an impossibility, or at least impose disadvantage. "
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.
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 am unopposed to fudging die rolls for dramatic effect, my dice tend to give me dramatically appropriate rolls most of the time. When I do fudge it, it's usually to ignore an errant crit or lower a damage roll. Sometimes rolling all 6s on a fireball isn't what you want to do to the party.
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.
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 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).
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
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.
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.
I'm kinda getting a conditioned sense of anxiety watching you make those rolls, Matt. For the record, I'm definitely on team fudge. The point of the game is fun, right? Why let the dice get in the way of that?
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.
