labcats | Sons of Kryos and Tech Annoyance

On the way up to Boskone, I listened to Sons of Kryos #8, which was a lot of fun. The topic of fudging came up, and I think that

judd_sonofbert's first statement, exactly as spoken, is dead on.

It was: If you are fudging, it is an indication that your system is failing you.

Not that your system is failing you -- that it is an indication that the system is failing you. Not that your system is failing you completely and for always, but that in this instance, the system may be failing you. (Hm, I'm sounding like that section of the Haggadah where all the rabbis analyze the daylights out of each phrase of scripture.)

I think his more definite statements are less correct. There may be something else going on.

You may not be using the system correctly. This is at least worth considering.

The example that comes to mind for this one is a case in someone's game of PtA, where, as far as I can tell, the outcome that happened was so undesirable to the player that the player pushed to change it, and the GM allowed it, at a cost. This may be PtA's system failing -- in this instance. Or, it may be a case of the wrong stakes being chosen. Is that the system at fault or the gamers? I could argue it either way, but the point is that it can be argued either way. The system may be failing -- or may not -- in this instance.

As

mnemex noted, your system may include fudging. Or, as

agrumer once explained it, "You roll the dice. If the number is aesthetically pleasing to the gm, you succeed."

Or, a grayer area. You are not sure what the outcome should be. The dice help you make up your mind. If you have no opinion or you like the results, good. Use them. If you decide you don't want those results, good. The dice have shown you the path you want. Take it.

For example, in my old Cthulhupunk game, we rolled dice to see if one character did a wildly improbably James Bond maneuver of grabbing onto a plane as it was taking off. Not too surprisingly, the roll came up a failure. We were all bummed, and we all felt that this should have been a success. So, by unanimous agreement, we decided to ignore the die roll.

Now, there's a lot of levels to look at this on.

First, the system may have been failing us. It was a somewhat clunky homebrew of CoC and R. Talisorian's Interlock system, with a dab of NightLife. When I switched to OTE in the sequel campaign, I don't think I ran into this problem, and that's certainly indicative.

Of course, by then, I'd become aware of a lot of what was going on with the Indie game movement and the Forge, and I was trying to move towards creative interpretations of die rolls.

Second, my gaming philosophy is not the same as judd_sonofbert's. The dice are my tools, not my masters. They serve me. I do feel free to set aside the rules if they get in the way of fun. Or, another way of looking at it, I have a metarule about the importance of fun, and this codifies the acceptability of a certain kind of fudging.

Third, the die roll was not made secretly. It was not a case of the gm trying to fudge without telling the players. All of us agreed that we wanted to ignore the roll, and I still feel about that.

I don't hold with the idea that if you don't play by the rules you are necessarily and always doing something wrong. This is not only true of roleplaying games. I have used house rules for Monopoly. I have played Cosmic Encounters and Encore with specific houserules to compensate either for general weaknesses in the rules or for how the rules break when the game is played by a particular mix of player. In Encore, with a specific group of people, we had a house rule about two players not being allowed to compete directly with each other, as that would make the game take forever, and we regularly discarded certain categories as "Infinite".

But, anyway, the original statement as phrased is dead on. If you are fudging, it is worth considering why, and considering whether you can find another way to do what you want to do. If you're all happy with what you're doing, good. Who am I to tell you you're wrong?

Unfortunately, my listening powers are temporarily diminished, as my card player is breaking down. It can raise volume, but not lower it. This is a problem. It may be time for a new machine.