The Dungeon Master is Supposed to Lose 

I've been playtesting my own RPG with my nieces and nephews (7~14). We agree that when the ogre gets a lucky strike against the littlest girl's character sometimes we can move the dice around. "Uncle Will, since we're fighting him together, he gets once less dice to roll, right? And I get one more, right???" Of course, kiddo, let me reroll that.

"A TPK is a bad thing" is not a universal take. Sometimes, failure is fun. For everyone.

I always thought the DM's job was to facilitate the players story. You provide the world, the NPC's and the challenges, but, you should be making it fun for people.

Here's a radical idea: if the most important thing to you is the narrative experience don't play D&D, play a narrativist game. They exist, they tend to be really good, and they tend to include some form of 'consensual deatb only' rule. D&D meanwhile is specifically designed so that death and failure are possible, albeit a true TPK is intentionally unlikely. Also never look into Unknown Armies, it's combat system is designed to make consequences and death likely. The designers know this and actively warn you to avoid fights if you can, but a basic understanding of the damage rules will make it obvious when the GM is fudging the numbers. On the plus side actually having all the advantages, a good gun, and someone who knows how to actually use the thing feels amazing, as does short circuiting a fight because you force an Adept to break taboo.

You are missing the point that there are many different ways to play TTRPGs. There's a huge difference of extreme simulation/gaming where the dice rule absolute and free storytelling without any or very little rules. The important thing is that everyone knows what they are in for and has fun. Edit: Also that 1 minute rule would be totally bonkers in something like Exalted. Sure if you just want to roll dice, noones stopping you.

I'm making a ttrpg all about guns and using said guns, ammo is something that you always have and don't need to worry about. The only time you need to worry about ammo is when you have special ammo types, and when you run out, you can still shoot regular bullets all you need and want.

Eh I roll in the open and will keep rolling in the open. Sorry but like, the dice rolls IS the story, I create scenarios and it's up to the players to decide how they accomplish their goals and such, sure a bad roll can be a "fail" but I am also a believer of "Failing forward". Sure, you unlock a door but now your thieves tools are broken, stuff like that. I don't fudge any rolls nor numbers, no TPK yet but my players enjoy the challenges plus ultimately we are there to have fun and just hangout. Also my own hot take is that a Dungeon/Game Master is NOT a storyteller. I am a conflict/scenario designer, I don't create stories, stories are made through player actions and us retelling fun memories in the future like the time a barbarian cleave through horde of orcs to rescue a downed player and so on.

I mean dice rolling skills is kind of an oxymoron, cause it's not like getting a particular roll is anything but luck and chance.

I disagree with the "you should fudge rolls so the players can always succeed". I'll agree with having some sort of backdoor so any particular or major failure will not necessarily be the end, but the dice are there so there's a chance of extreme success of failure in most cases. Proper planning and character builds can mitigate bad luck, but sometimes you are just unlucky and can "lose". Even in a TPK when one door closes another opens. We make another batch of adventurers that could give the party a chance to try out new things while still living with the consequences of a failed plan.

I love your videos. I have many feelings about the topic of this one, but I VERY MUCH agree with the concept that failure should change the narrative, not bring it to a halt.

I’m generally fine fudging rolls to keep the game interesting but I disagree that the players should always win. If the players make bad tactical choices in combat then I’m not changing the whims of fate to save them. I don’t expect my players to have a full understanding of military strategy but doing reckless things means accepting the risk of death.

I wrote some paragraphs but I'm not feeling like discussing. I really like your videos and I agree mostly with the second person. It's better to not get into situations that depends on rolls than to lie the rolls. I don't know how obvious saying "there's fun to be had in a game about nobodies that can just die and we play stardew valley if that happens" is, probably a lot. I'd like to watch a video on more about inventory design, I really don't like when the characters have quantum inventories but don't want nobody to track unfun stuff.

Personally, I just let the die land where it wills to. If I start fudging rolls, it would feel disingenuous to my players. I wouldn’t want to play with a GM who changes the game reality to either make us lose or win. If there is no risk for anything ever going wrong it feels like playing Bowling with those rails for kids.

Been making my combat rolls right out in the open for 20+ years. Never had a TPK. Have characters died? Yup sure did. Did it kill the campaign? Nope, Sure didn't. The 'story' continued, even the story of the 'dead' character continued. the PLAYER rolled up a new character, and when next the group faced the thing that killed their friend, the fight was even more epic because 'real' stakes were on the line. They got revenge for their fallen friend. I don't WANT to kill the characters. But that's not my 'responsibility'. I am not a story teller, I'm a story enabler. Its 'okay' to have a downer session because things didn't go the player's way. How can you 'succeed' if failure is never an option? That doesn't make any sense. Fudging rolls ROBS the players of their adventure, it doesn't save it. There is no 'story' to save. There is no story until the session is over, until then, its an ongoing narrative. The story is what you have when everything's done, and then it truly is 'their' story. The DM IMHO should be a disinterested neutral party. What happens in the game is a combination of the DM introducing 'story elements' the players reactions, and then the introduction of chaos (dice)... determines 'what happens'. IMHO when it's done correctly the campaign animates itself, I become a chronicler of the events, along for the journey. I really don't know what's going to happen, I'm on the adventure with the players too. If you're just going to disregard the dice, why even have them? Just go write your novel. I'll say it loud and proud, fudging dice is a crutch that DMs use because they haven't developed their improvisational skills enough to deal with the consequences when things go wrong.

I feel that the GM is supposed to act as a fair but relatively neutral representative of the game world and its denizens, but when building encounters and adventures, they should plan to have something that is at least a little challenging based on party size and level. Adventuring isnt supposed to be easy after all, but the world should respond based on how players act, making the GM roleplay as everything else to a degree. Build situations for characters to navigate, then allow them to navigate. This means that players have a responsibility to try to imagine how the world would react to any given action before they attempt it. The interaction between interesting environments and situations provided by the GM, and the (hopefully) interesting decisions made by the players, sometimes requiring dice rolls to determine the outcome, is where the story develops. D&D being played as a story engine, seems to skip over that its a chance based, combat focused game. The rules as they stand dont suit the narrative focus its often played for... This is a big a complex problem, and i think D&D trying to be the 'One Game to Rule Them All', and being made massively popular by Live Plays, (which cannot feature TPK or unsatisfying deaths, as the format doesn't really allow it), means people come to D&D *expecting* narrative, rather than creating or finding it together through play.

This seems to have the tone of calling other people's fun bad. "Managing resources like ammo and food isnt fun." Some people specifically alter 5e to make accessing food and ammo more difficult because a high stakes game is enjoyable to them. "A character dying isnt enjoyable." The entire conceit behind Call of Cthulu is that youre character isnt powerful and will, infact, be devestated if not outright killed by the event of the campaign. "The enitre conceit behind encounters is that the players are favored to win." This directly goes against numerous DM tips. One being to not really balance the encounter. Put what naturally feels appropriate and put the onus on the players to overcome the challenge. Dont just hand it to them. Beyond that, it asserts that DMs dictate what is and isnt allowed to be an encounter. If I place a big bad within striking distance of the party well before they are strong enough to fight them, and the party still elects to try their hand, it would destroy the narative to have the characters win that encounter. The big bad is supposed to be threatening to the point where no one else can deal with them, and the new kids on the block took care of it. I also find the argument about about dice being something the players cant control to be missing the point of dice. The entire reason we add these variable creating machines is because they remove absolute control. You can setup the best chances for yourself, but ultimate you cant just force an event to go the way you wanted. On that, I do find myself agreeing with the final point presented in the different perspective. If certain outcomes of dice rolls would ruin a gaming experience, the situation that cause those rolls to be possible was badly designed.

Whenever a new player joins my game (regardless of the particular RPG) and they inevitably ask "so, what happens when my character dies; I don't want to disappoint everyone," I always give my truly gloriously maniacal bratty lopsided han-solo DM grin and say: "oh don't worry, I like interesting stories, and the least interesting thing a character can do is die. I don't kill characters unless the player wants that to happen, it's everything else you should be worried about."

I feel like the main argument kinda went too far in the other direction. I personally roll open but I do make minor fudges in statblocks just in case to keep fights interesting. But a player kill or even a TPK isnt a failure of the GM every time it happens. My first PC death was actually vs a random group of orcs. The party was riding high on a previously more epic accomplishment, and didnt seem that concerned when occasionally my character was requesting help. No one expected the orcs to swiftly coup de grace me the moment I dropped. It was honestly such a humbling moment for everyone involved that I think only a player death like that could have accomplished. In comparison, I did a TPK as a DM that didnt actually end the campaign. I very intentionally used a monster that was intelligent enough to basically outsmart the players (The monster even did previous research through some earlier checks, and used one of the PCs backstory against them in the fight.) The reason it wasnt the end though was because I also took that monster's intelligence in mind: it simply wanted them out of its lair but knew they had to stay alive for their fated purpose. So it simply revived them, took its treasure back, and sufficiently traumatized them with specific phobias so they'd never return. What im basically saying is, getting the knife up to their throat occasionally with a mostly unwinnable situation and only actually cutting them open when dont treat every encounter like the life or death scenarios they should be is how I think it should go. Its still somewhat an illusion, but I find it helps players keep being engaged vs the times I got bored to tears with obviously carebear DMs (which is another point: you underestimate your players if you assume they only find out if you tell them. Players will break the illusion when they get complacent and still manage to win.)

Last night in my session I had to stop mid-session and have a chat with my players because they were consistently rolling under 10 and I was consistently rolling over 15 (I'm the GM) to let them know I wasn't going to let this ride any longer, I started making them roll with advantage and re-rolling dice until they got something over 10 as well as heavily nerfing my enemies and puzzles until they could get the session under control because I was not having fun running a torture session where I just throw them in an evil dungeon for eternity.

Overall the second person is right about game design, but in the end, it's something to be decided together by players and GM, as for example I have friends who could stare at excel tables for hours and therefore enjoy resource tracking, in the end it's about everyone at the table being on the same page about what's fun, same goes for character death.

Difficulty and possibility of character death lends an air of legitimateness to the game. If there is no danger of failure/defeat, then there’s no real reason why we should be playing this game. The potential for failure gives us the sense that this is worthwhile to do and lends us a sense of accomplishment when we overcome odds and win the day. It gives us reason to play this game and be engaged in the adventure. Ultimately it gives us an experience we can relate to others. When we fudge dice so characters don’t die; we are robbing players of that experience of losing a character. We’re robbing them of that experience of dying in the game; of failure. Everyone seems to think that D&D is a narrative game. That is false. It is a misunderstanding of what is actually going on at a gaming table. This misunderstanding is so ingrained that people are writing narrative focused RPG games; and forcing preconstructed stories onto their D&D group. what is D&D? let me explain. D&D IS NOT A NARRATIVE GAME. Let me say that again.D&D is not a narrative game. D&D is a game about creating memories and experiences. The narrative element comes into play later. That narrative is the story that the players tell after the game session or campaign has ended. The stories we tell our other friends about, or reminisce with our D&D group about later. We’re not writing a story as a group during the game. We’re not sitting down and writing out a story on paper like Tolkien did. What we’re actually doing is creating memories to share with other people later. It’s actually more natural than writing because we are telling a story about something that we experienced; we are recalling memories and sharing them. This is so natural that it’s ingrained in children at an early age; what happens when daddy comes home from work? His kids want to tell him about their day. They want to tell a story about their experiences; and since they are very young; every experience is new to them and hopefully exciting. (yes this applies to other TTRPGs as well; let's not be too pedantic here) Therefore the players need to face the possibility of defeat; because that provides experiences, emotions and stories to commit to memory to tell and retell over again. Therefore it’s paramount to the experience of playing D&D that players face the potential of losing characters. People misidentify it and instead think what they are doing is writing a story; IE creating a narrative as they play since they relate these stories to others later on.

A DM isn't a hero or a villain, a DM is a rules arbitrator, nothing more. At least that's the intent.

Gotta respectfully disagree. It truly depends on the type of game you are running. In a narrative focused storytelling game, absolutely. I am all for that. It’s more of a conversation between players and GM. But if it is a more “traditional” game, and it is talked about during session 0 that this is going to be a potentially deadly game with no GM fudging, that isn’t bad game mastering. It is just different. It is dependent on the GM being a neutral party and the players being smart. Room full of skeletons and they keep rolling crits? Run away. Think of a different plan. Don’t just continue to smash your head against the problem. The ONLY thing I think is bad GMing that you mentioned is “the players missed the one clue they needed” Clues shouldn’t be behind a dice roll if they are necessary to move forward. Also, to dice odds, that’s why I tend to prefer to play games that aren’t d20 based…play something with a bell curve!

I think this is not an only "dice fudging" problem. Narrative and scenario can always be tailored in a way, player agency allows to overcome challenges without dice rolls. I think the dice rolls' greatest merit and reason to be there is to differentiate the characters. "You hit an Ogre with a roll of 9, you mage on the otherhand, can only hit it with a 16 or up." Or... simply being able to open a lock. However, defeating a Lich will not be about dice rolls on the long run. You need to investigate him, find the soulstone, gather supplies etc. When you are about to face the lich, if the party is prepared, they will negate the opportunities for dice to fuck them up. DM might need to fudge dice on lower levels, as players don't have the tools to deal with bad rolls. But to come back to my first point, monsters don't need to "kill the characters", respawn them in hell, get them captured, make them lose an eye etc. Narrative and scenario can always solve this problem.

If, during session zero, the GM and players agree to let the dice land as they fall no matter what, then okay, everyone knows what they're getting themselves into. But I think I speak for the majority of players when I say that most players want a game that's challenging without letting severe bad luck do much more than to set them back a bit, not force them to throw away all plans they had for their character (by killing said character). My GM has a system for this: if your character would die, you can instead keep them alive, at the cost that they have to take on a serious injury.

This makes me wonder if a DM could reasonably write a story where dying or getting a tpk would be a fufilling outcome for everyone involved

You don't necessarily have to fudge rolls to always let the players win, but if you don't, you should always have a backup plan for what happens if they lose. A lot of the time I keep a single friendly NPC in reserve as an emergency button: if the players lose, they'll get bailed out by a rescuer, but only that one time. Depending on the situation you can also do things like have them be captured and interrogated, or something else distracts the villains from finishing them off, but always have a plan for how you're going to get them out of the situation when they can't do it themselves.

As an old DM, I do most of what you and your friend suggested with one small difference. I don't carefully craft a tailored challenge for my players and their characters, I sloppily throw together a scenario that sounds fun to me and watch as they bulldoze through it with hijinx and lucky rolls. Makes for a great game.

6:15 ITS REAL TO ME DAMMIT

Having the game end on a TPK could be an issue of its own. Why not have a backup one-off on hand to run a Deus Ex Machina for the original party? Or use their deaths as a segue into an adventure through the afterlife? What I'm saying is you shouldn't need to fudge the dice, there are other options. I do respect dice fudging on the reason that "Every other option is either unfun or a huge amount of work for me, so this."

13:10 okay at this point in the video I'd have to point out : there's several ways to approach characters deaths that isn't solely "well that's the session/character is gone ." that's an opportunity to tell a story . I'd suggest taking a 5 to 10 minute break after the combat is resolved , speaking to the player during the break and asking if they want to continue with the character that died or make a new one and how much they're wanting to continue now or make it apart of the narrative . From there you as the gm/dm can do several options : make them undead character who runs off revenant rules , make them a wraith that only the spiritual or closest connectdd character of the party can sees with them having limited influencel over the physical world (one of my favorite video games of this year : Banishers is all about this ) or they're on the other side doing a spirit quest to come back while the party is trying to get their body resurrected (since several high fantasy and sci-fi rpgs have magic like this ) , or if you want to do the nuclear option : a deity (potentially the one character(s) in the party worship , turning their eyes on to the party/their followers in need and basically possessing the body for a situation where they revive the party but now it's changed or altered to be clearly something more than normal that brigmd the character back BUT also leaves the character notably no longer fully whatever species/heirtage they were like a glowing rune or unusual feature .

You've come at this topic from an odd angle compared to past videos - IMO there's a wider discussion to be had about tuning a game on the fly and designing out chokepoints where a couple die rolls would jeopardize your campaign. Making analogies to linear forms of narrative that have different strengths and weaknesses to TTRPGs while suggesting that GMs are being adversarial for not per-determining specific outcomes comes across as solidifying a stance you made as opposed to engaging with the question in a way that is actually going to change anyone's point of view. It feels like a missed opportunity because, even though I don't share your opinion, I enjoy comparing my table's experiences with other tables.

This is kind of silly. Its a game of chance a dice game at that. If you remove the chance to lose you are no longer playing a dice game. In fact by your own logic the same experience could be had by having you and your players hang out and just state what happens with you as the GM just adding an obstacle or two in their path every now and then. Chance is what makes the game interesting and it is what leads to cool moments. A game system that does this well is Ironsworn where you are by design a highly skilled Viking who is meant to go on an epic quest but each decision leads to a strong hit, weak hit, or miss that makes the story unpredictable for you as the player/GM. I personally run my games with very very few notes and roll on random tables to figure out what happens next until a story is fully formed. It also leads to wacky fantasy events that leave my players laughing. For example a shady trader who sells a powerful potion would only trade this potion in exchange for the players convincing the illiterate greatest warrior in town who happens to be this trader’s crush that the love letters he has sent are not from a ghost but in fact this guy who likes em. This only came to be because I rolled it and it also saved me time. Same with combat. If some dies to a random encounter the players mourn the dead or perhaps seek a way to revive them typically leading to a quest of some kind. Failure doesn’t need to ruin a story but can instead make that story far more interesting and lead to moments that the GM may have never thought of.

It seems to me that there’s 2 different kinds of DMs. The storyteller and the final boss.

Agreed. I think if a decision completely halts the momentum of the game or makes it incredibly not fun for the folks at the table then it is best to curve that result. I have noticed asking the player directly, what they would like to happen helps. Have a conversation/"give and take" on what consequences would be appropriate when we have those lucky rolls. Setting those expectations will help everyone. Great video and it was great to Glaive Guisarme Games, I have had their games on my radar!

Cant agree more, I'll let my players die IF they are being DUM ( as players )

I will politely disagree with almost everything said in this video. The most important mistake in this video is that you think that everyone has the same definition of fun as you. There are people whose fun could be made by hardship, risk, and tactically challenging games. I'm not saying that you shouldn't tinker with some stuff in the universe without the knowledge of players to enhance the fun, but you want to create an invisible guardrail when players maybe want to feel the risk which is a real challenge to the character death is part of. It can be connected to the used setting as there are more Grimm-dark settings where death is common, regular enemies are actually threatening and players need to think 2 times before engaging in combat. There are also settings where resource management is important as it big part of the experience (like in post-apocalyptic settings) where removing resources management for PC is a completely immersion-breaking thing as lack of everything is one of the main themes in these catastrophic worlds. And even if that wasn't your concept you don't need to cheat the dice, you can just change enemy statistics or reconstruct staff in the world (either by NPC or locations) that will help players with the fight or with recovering after it so they could still complete the adventure. PS. Yes, it would diminish Frodo achievements if all his success came from author idea that he need to succeed (aka have plot armor) rather own talents and skills. Of course you can't completly remove plot armor from the story, as it would always mean failieru of protagonist but overuse of it completly destroy tension and feel like good guys didn't earn their win so ending would be unsatisfying.

I think my problem with this whole argument comes from the premise that the goal of a ttrpg is good storytelling. Usually when I'm playing something like D&D, what I'm interested in is the act of roleplaying itself; embodying a character in a fictional world, facing challenges in that world from the character's perspective, and playing through the outcome of those challenges using the rules of the game. This can create stories worth telling, but during play my concerns aren't really whether what's happening would make for a satisfying narrative. Sometimes a character uses a spell or an item in an unexpected way, and a threat you hyped up gets bypassed entirely. Sometimes a character dies ingloriously, and they're replaced with a new character. A lot of it would make for a bad book, but the reasons I roleplay are different from the reasons I read books! There are certainly games with rules that promote more structured storytelling. Fate is an rpg where you can always avoid dying by accepting a narrative loss, and it helps give campaigns in the system a general tone of high-heroic pulp. Blades in the Dark makes sure something narratively interesting always happens if you roll. Powered by the Apocalypse games have playbooks in place of classes, whose progression guides players towards genre-appropriate character arcs. Gumshoe guarantees detectives find the necessary clues, because it's more interested in what the cost of solving the mystery is than whether or not players solve it. I like these systems, and in a lot of cases I even prefer running them to more traditional ttrpgs because I think that narrative scaffolding can help guide roleplay in fun ways, but at the end of the day I think surrendering to the roll of the die is inherently part of the fun. There's a reason why even in a fiction-first system like PbtA one of the guiding principles is "play to find out what happens." Nobody should know the outcome of a scenario before the players engage with it.

nailed it at the end with the only real problem: if a dm wants to have failure as an option in an important part of a campaign, that doesn't mean they "win", that just means they have to prepare for that failure on top of that success same goes for a tpk in a high stake situation, what does it actually do? do you restart the campaign like it's competition rules from the 70s? do you move on to another game or even another group at that point? or did they prepare restocking, evolution, changes and power imbalances in the dungeon or the evolution of the milieu because of the players' failure? one is lazy, one is a group ender, and the other is way too much work for most dms who put themselves in that situation in the first place as always when you dig deeper it just sounds like arguments by people who haven't had any long running group or played at all, because even if players do end up knowing they won because of in-moment rebalance anyone who talks in group would just say it's fair game same goes for the ammo example, a dm who does care about it would say "hey this encounter is supposed to be long count your arrows for that one" and not let the burden fall on the players to know whether or not they're playing the dm's game "right" if they miscount by one once in a while or if that encounter was even thought of with their resources limitations in mind obviously a bit different when it's expendable ammo, even more different if said ammo isn't easy to make/pricey, but I'm pretty sure there's always easy ways that aren't "bring a counter to the table" even in contemporary tech rules-heavy games

I've done both, and if fudging is involved, the players will know, and the Agency will be gone. Its a bad practice. Every table Ive done rolls on the board, agree'd it was more fun and there was more gravity and agency.

I feel like the fundamental problem here is that both you and the people you are responding to are asserting your opinion on a topic that varies highly depending on the type of game you are playing as if it's this universal, unchanging rule that automatically applies to all groups across the world. But that's nonsense. Different people play the game in different ways. Your opinion on this shows very clearly that to you, the point of being a DM is to tell an engaging story. That's fine, but it isn't the only way to play. Dnd is narrative, but it is still a game. You make a character who has a bunch of mechanics dedicated to making them good at winning fights, in various ways unique to the exact character creation decisions you chose to select. You got to a combat, and laid out a battlemap with interesting terrain to provide the opportunity for clever tactics by the players. You put them up against monsters with unusual abilities and vulnerabilities to encourage the players to tailor their approach to the enemy they're fighting. And then you secretly arrange it so that, even if the players built weak characters, ignored the opportunities afforded by the terrain, and play right into the strengths of the monsters, they'll win anyway? If the point of your campaign is the narrative, then that's perfectly fine. But if you want your campaign to be focused on the gameplay, and the tactical decision making, it's generally a good idea to allow for death as a consequence of mistakes.

Super funny video 😁 I will say that fudging is okay occasionally, but ultimately it's a patch job on something, and if you really don't want something in possibility space that it is better to switch systems, house rule or homebrew before reaching that point in play, ideally.

it also depends on if your players are reckless for example your 20 skeleton scenario if they stayed and fought instead of running thats their choice if i fudge so they survive i take agency from them let them die due to thier decision

I don't mind fudging dice. I try my best not to do it often but occasionally if a combat is lasting too long I tend to fail more saving throws for weakling monsters just to keep the game moving. However I don't design my dungeons and adventures to be won. I design them often to try to kill any adventurer who interacts with them. It's why whatever reward exists there still exists there and hasn't been snatched up by someone else. If the party survives they get to celebrate. If some or all party members die well they get to make new characters. Either way fun times are had by all. That being said, randomness can make for unfortunate story telling. I've heard Margaret Wies describe the heroes of the lance all died in their table top game at pax tharkus because they fell off the rope when descended down into the dark. They retconned it for the books because that wouldn't make for a good book. I should remind everyone they aren't writing a book. It's a game and play it however you enjoy it. I prefer on the brutal side with a touch of grace.

I personally don't think it's the dm/gms job to help facilitate a story and choices. But create challenges the players want to be apart of and help shape via their usage of characters. Given that systems Like OSE , Börg, Shadowdark, Traveller and even Cyberpunk(2013/2020/v3/cyber generation & now Red) exist where the whole point is your character can die rather easily through out the playtime (with Traveller being explicitly a game where they can die in character creation ), it's kind of silly to me to think "yeah the gm/dm...just there to lose ultimately." sometimes the dice simply say the character making the big heroic moment bites it, but looks co doing it and that's fine. But it's your table if you want to play that way go ahead.

I might be a little hasty typing this but, hard disagree. I'm at the 8:30 mark and to be honest, I'm the "overly competitive asshole" you keep gesturing vaguely at. My players love it. As far as I'm concerned, it's my job to put the players in winnable situations and narrate how they get to the other side of them. I'm not Tolkein, I'm Gandalf, telling Bilbo to take the ring to Mordor. My players are going into the final dungeon of the campaign right now, and I can think of nothing worse than pulling my punches in the BBEG's own home. And when one of my players DMs his regular game, I hope he doesn't pull his either. If we get a tpk here, we get to move on to campaign 2 and see what happened between the two, what effect the bbeg's victory had, and hear the story behind it all. Or my players could just press forward and press A for 50 more hours

also character permadeath is fun. the girl at the end's suggestion of getting knocked out for a while frankly seems boring. knowing that there is actual risk in the game beyond having a minor setback is cool, even if the act of dying sucks. i agree that it should be more within player control though. you could improve dnd's death saving throws by simply allowing a character to keep moving and existing even as they begin dying, and maybe even give them ways to succeed on saving throws easier. to improve her suggestion, i don't actually think sitting a combat out is bad design. if the system was otherwise especially lethal, where it's expected some players go down each combat, then i could see the grander threat of "if everyone is knocked out, you all die, tpk" filling that hole, whereas if the system was a bit easier (like dnd) then death could work more like losing all your items, losing a level, or having to at least make that specific character sit out for a couple months instead of just hours. i can see the complaint but stories have texture and to go back to the lord of the rings example, frodo can't die to the orcs but Boromir does. losing main characters at pivotal moments is great, even as someone who's mostly been a player and has gone through the player side of that multiple times. it sucks to abandon future plans but neither player nor GM should be so married to their idea of how the story is going to end up. rpgs are communal experiences, influenced by the other players and the dice are tools to push the whole group out of their comfort zone and into the mentality of adventure, embracing the unexpected. this experience isn't completely destroyed by making players immortal, but it certainly is weakened. edit: wrote this before hearing about her idea for narrative consequences. okay first, that's not always an option, at least not one that gms can think up on the spot. second, i see how it minimizes the issue but does it fix it? it might work for a light hearted fantasy campaign or in something like blades in the dark where damage is entirely narrativized to disincentivize combat as a default mode of play, but what about a setting like fallout? when the party waltz's in and is gonna try and blow up the enclave's oil rig, how would it make sense for the consequences to be anything but certain death? maybe i'd be more fine with a system like "This is a boss fight or a climactic moment, you die here, you're gone for good" so characters don't just keel over to a bunch of goblins but that's not what's being suggested.

Ehhh...Yes the DM is supposed to lose; but no- the challenge isn't fake; in the sense of: If I make a challenge for my players; it's not designed to lose; it's designed for drama. My goal, and the most fun I have - is when a combat is on a knife's edge and my players can't just go on autopilot to win. I want the threat of character death and even a TPK on the table; as much as I want them to succeed. IMO; the desire for 5e DMs to fudge is because you want that drama; but you can't get it unless you purposely avoid the game: fudge dice, enemies that only die when the DM says so, etc. PF2 has its own issues and quirks; but it's sooo much easier to get that dramatic moment; while also dialing in the math such that tactics really pay off.

No, I would rather play a game where the only thing that matters is the GM's whims

DM sadism should just be when you throw a particularly spicy curveball at the player/party to really liven things up. Just being straight antagonistic is weird for a game with any sort of narrative.

to the lady at the end its not bad game design i say this because thats her opinion i know people who enjoy the tracking i know people who love the lethality hell theres an entire genre dedicated to the brutal and hardcore its called the osr dying is part of the game the problem is 0 putting you unconcious instead of letting you run also to the things they care about being the stakes i know players who get pist about fucking with that kinda stuff so again in my opinion she is stating her opinion not facts

I fundumentaly disagree im afraid. The players assume the dm is going to be truthful about rolls. If you lie about that its all fine and dandy until the players find out. Then they are gunna feel shitty all time after that becouse they dont know when they are actually succseeding at somthing or just being givin a gimme.

7:20 I feel like we need for info there..did you die and came back as a serial killer?

this is so obvious I watched it on 2x speed. Thats not a knock against the video, I am just tired of wierd people who don't understand how TTRPGs work at their core. When I was very young, I asked my uncle (who was DMing at the time) if it didn't get frustrating that his monsters kept dying and he kept losing. He told me "no, you aren't playing against the party as the DM. You are playing for the party. You make the story. If they win, you win." It is that simple. Once you get that, this entire video (at least the first part) becomes redundant.

i dont know how to explain properly how i dont fully agree with what you said. Maybe because i don't fully understand your argument or I'm exaggerating it in my mind. I have counter arguments/critiques, but they may be badly explained, and may come of as agressive, which I'm sorry if it does. What I'm trying to disagree with is that dm fudging for the player's advantage isn't always good and shouldn't be used at every table with every group. (i am bad at explaining and this is very rambly) (oh gosh this is so long and badly written but i've written it) Some conter arguments i have - The dm doesn't have to tell them they are fudging the rolls for the players to know that the dm is fudging the rolls. Like, it can be learned other ways, be it by accidentally seeing the dice, or just knowing your dm's style. And that doesn't necessary mean it will harm the game, but maybe one time you'll think that "We were lucky this time! We could have lost!", but then you remember that it might just have been the dm deciding that you win. Which might not matter that much to some, but it might for others - dnd (and other ttrpgs) are not just their stories or narrative. They are also games, with rules. And for some people, it's more about the game than the narrative. So like, for some groups, strategy, builds, and ressources are interesting things to keep track of and play with, might be a part of the reason they play the game. In these groups, the game and the difficulty and risk might matter more than the narrative, and they might find fudging on the part of the dm worse than facing the consequences. They might prefer taking (or missing) the option to retreat over the dm letting them win a fight they should have lost. - Sometimes, a character dying can be interesting for the narrative. It's high stakes, and feels high stakes, if well handled. - While i do agree that character death sucks, and TPK should never happen without some narrative justification (at most tables), i don't think fudging should be the default way to stop that from happening. Encounter design is the first method, but as you said, the dm's responsibility to provide a fun game to everyone doesn't stop when they start playing the game. The dm can change behavior of enemies when defeat is imminent (demanding surrender, letting them a chance to flee, making a deal, etc.), use suboptimal tactics when needed and makes sense (not confirming kills on downed pcs, no focus fire, etc.), maybe even offering rescue. The dm can still fudge rolls, but other techniques can be used before or in conjonction with it. - The "just go play another game"/"go play Dayz" comment feels immature? Maybe it was meant at like, the dms who laugh with glee as the players lose, which then, okay, sure. But if it's more general, well, they still are reasons why people may play ttrpgs, even dnd specifically, and not play the same way as you. Maybe i misunderstood those comments - Another thing, when you mentioned the "missing the clue due to bad rolls", the best way to avoid this situation, is to not make your whole story locked behind one roll that the players may fail and never have the chance to attempt again. You either dont make it a roll, or dont make it the only clue (or way to get the clue). Way better than lowering a DC 18 to a DC 10 Now counter-counter argument I think fudging becomes important when the game becomes bad, when it becomes annoying, irritating, unfun. Imagine someone is playing a rogue, maxed out for stealth. But the dm keeps rolling awesome, and they never manage to do any stealth whatsoever. This is bad both narative-wise and game-wise. In the story, they are meant to be a very stealthy rogue who can hide from anything, but somehow always gets caught. Game wise, they especially built their character to be sneaky, but due to their bad (or average) luck and the dm's excellent luck, their decisions don't matter. If this is something that happens often, and the rules can't be modified to make it better for your player, maybe the dm should fudge time to time, just so the players has a feeling that the decisions they made matter. If the players are genuinely annoyed that they keep failing despite everything they do to succeed, then letting their decisions matter is a good thing.

If I want my players to win and they win, am I really loosing?

21:10...wow that's ..not a great approach imo

I get how the oppositional DM mindset would have made sense in the extremely primitive days of DnD, where a lot of people experienced it as a contextless dungeon crawl where the DM's primary job was to draw the map and control the monsters. Its survival into the DM-as-storyteller era is totally bizarre - although, there is a very similar phenomenon in video games. You see it every so often when a thread goes viral of ways that various video games created the illusion of greater challenge than there was. I think there's a certain kind of person who wants to engage with highly authored gameplay experiences, but also wants to believe that it was them who made it happen. Im analyzing it purely from a player psychology perspective here, because the idea of a storyteller DM rooting for their players to fail is just deranged, like a movie director rooting for bloopers.

Matt Colville really alleviated my worries and stuff with fudging my rolls when he made the point that homebrewing and running a game all your own is difficult and you cannot easily playtest it, nor should you have to. If im running something every week im gonna prioritize making encounters that are fun and interesting, not necessarily fair in either directions so yeah, im gonna fudge my rolls and adjust how my monsters work sometimes. If my players are struggling a lot more than I anticipated in what was supposed to be a low stakes encounter with some goblins im not gonna sacrifice one of their characters for my ego ajd mistake, im gonna change fate so they get a cool moment of coming through on top despite it all. If I make a cool boss monster that quickly becomes stale or die without a fight I'll add a legendary action/ reaction or something on the fly, I wont sacrifice the players fun or my narrative weight over my mistake either. Im new to DMing so its def a skill issue but I will never judge someone for fudging rolls non-maliciously.

Making decisions not matter for anyone or hinging entire adventures on a single dice roll that you lie about is bad GMing actually

If you think you know better than the dice, then why bother asking them?

DnD was meant to be a narrative game... beep wrong! TTRPGs were meant to be simulators of fantasy/sci-fi etc life, аn another life sim, I don't like it when people turn TTRPGs from it's pure meaning and strength's into a book/movie/video game with extra steps so your opinion is not correct, plus gamma world 7 edition is the best... beep no! the best edition is 4 edition!

Strong Disagree. It is the job as DM to make and/or present an adventure that can be succeeded at. And certainly as a DM it's your right to cheat and fudge rolls to de-legitimize your players accomplishments. Of course this is mostly your opinions, not some sort of objective truth. Really any method of DMing can work presuming a proper session 0 and getting your group on board. But I absolutely loathe cheating as the DM. I probably go too far in the opposite direction as for the sake of clarity I'll often break down a DC or communicate too much about what possible outcomes can occur. I don't roll dice behind a screen precisely because of fudgers like yourself.

iiiiiii dont think not fudging rolls says anything about whether there's a player vs dm mentality at the table. the much more interesting argument ive heard is that players can TELL when you fudge dice rolls. eventually they'll notice how enemies start missing when they go down or how they succeed on the important checks automatically. really, at least in a system like dnd, you shouldn't gate info that is crucial to progression. if players have to open that door, don't lock it, or at least make sure no single roll determines if they can get the key. fudging may sometimes be unavoidable but fudge is a sometimes food, a tool to be used as sparingly as possible and only in the case of absurd and unexpected results, and you need it a lot less than you'd expect. don't have life threatening combats if the fight isn't worth dying over.

Hey, it's cool if you don't understand why the imaginary stakes are what make the game fun. Lemme send you Bunnies and Burrows, that seems more your speed.

Ironically this video works as a great explanation of why I'm against fudging dice

Nope. The mindset that the DM is there to basically give the PCs a bunch of good feels, says more about the way a lot of players today seem to think things should always be "fair and balanced". Nope. The dice rolls and their results, and how the PCs respond, actually make the story. If you want a "story teller" to run the game, then buy a book and read to your group. Or... play the game, roll the dice, and grow some thicker skin when things don't go your way.

As a fellow DM, Preach brother

I agree with the overall point, but not with fudging rolls. If there's an issue with players dying all the time then there's either an issue with the campaign design or the game itself. Additionally, there needs to be a mechanic to potentially continue play in some way if the worst should happen. But part of the fun is allowing the dice to screw you over just as much as having them benefit you. And players aren't usually so dim that they won't quickly catch on that the DM is pulling punches, and when they realize this, it really sucks. I'm actually surprised this is an issue: in my own DMing experience, I usually struggle to not fudge the consequences of bad rolls because I want the players to experience everything I've put together. But maybe that's just me.