This really highlights why I only run and play in groups that do (pretty much) all rolls out in the open. At my home table I have a dice tower and hexagonal tray in which all dice are rolled if they are too be counted. Online I roll all dice publicly. I also run a highly transparent game myself and also do rolls like weather checks, luck tables and random encounters out in the open. I like to give my players as much information as I dare and then let the consequences fall wherever they may but my players also know exactly what is being rolled for so it’s all fair game.
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It is all good Froggy, I for sure respect your stance and tbh with experienced players I would roll everything open and not fudge either! 
So it has to do with the type of players and game. And possibly also because we play every 3 weeks on average. If we spend a lot of that scant session time dealing with death and rolling up new characters that is almost a shame/waste of the playing times (my players and myself don’t necessarily love the aspect of building a character, we just want to play).
I like the hero points thing, I think I will start doing that!
But the way I look at any RPG is that no matter how good or suitable for your group/the GM the system is, it will! fail you sooner or later. But that doesn’t matter. The GM can in theory pick another system or houserule or tweak endlessly, but instead I sometimes simply choose to step in and do what I think is right or most fun. The longer I play, the fewer rules (especially etched in stone ones) I want to use. Always rulings over rules when I feel the rules are getting in the way of fun, speed, or even realism sometimes. Of course that has to do with this group. I have played with very strict/more rules based/crunch groups and that can have it’s fun moments and appeal, but it is not really my preference.
At the end of the day, whatever group is having the most fun, is winning! in my book, no matter what rules they use or how strictly they stick to them.
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Fair, but ask yourself,… why! is there a GM screen at all? … It is not just to obscure GM only info. Why do the vast majority of GMs have a screen and roll at least some, if not a lot rolls behind it,…? Yet I do agree with you in a way, i am tending towards rolling fewer and fewer rolls behind the screen, id say atm I am about at 20% of my rolls behind the screen, down from way more when I started. I figure with a very experienced group that wants that, in future, I will likely roll everything out in open. But not in this newbie group, at least, not yet! Maybe in a few sessions.
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Well, I’ve played a good number of games from different eras, genres and “scenes” and a good chunk of them don’t have a use for a GM screen at all and many (including some OSR games) don’t have the GM roll for anything at all. I would say they are useful for certain agendas of gaming and less useful for other agendas. I started off my OSR gaming just in the last few years and I stuck with the full GM screen deal and being careful about hidden rolls like Hide in Shadows but we always rolled all combat and immediate effects out in the open.
However, the last few months I’ve been toying with some of the non-retro clones like Maze Rats, Into the Odd/Electric Bastionland and Mausritter. Between the advice in Bastionland that leans highly into transparency and this blog post my table is enjoying a whole new way of playing that’s really revolutionized our (virtual) table. Also, just to be clear, there’s no judgment here for how you run your tables. I think the town is plenty big enough for multiple playstyles.
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A very good conversation. I don’t want to lie, even if it’s for players’ own good. Yet I do, mostly after rolling on a random table, then realizing none of the results fit. I feel bad afterwards, feeling like I cheated.
As a rule, I try not to roll at all if I’m not willing to accept the results. In those cases I think it’s better to straight up dictate what happens.
A potentially lethal roll (like a damage roll or a Save) is made openly, and i make sure players understand what dice result is needed for them to survive. This brief conversation builds the tension and prepares us all for what might come.
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One big thing I’ve learned from the OSR, is that the DM is a player too. I’m entitled to some fun, some unpredictability, getting to go on a rollercoaster ride with the other players, not really knowing what will happen. When fudge rolls, I ruin some of the fun for me, and it gnaws at the illusion that the world exists without the players, neutral. I want us to feel like we’ve wrested our rewards from the hands of an uncaring world!
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That’s something I learned in OSR too.
I’ve been having conversations in another forum, more focused on story games, about how the OSR and the story games scene converge on certain themes. One of the strongest point of contact is the fact that both, in their own way, had (re)discovered certain elements of play.
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I don’t think re-rolling or fudging on a random table – if used for dungeon generation – is the same thing as fudging a die roll for damage, conflict or task resolution.
Random tables are oracles for inspiration. Sometimes the results can’t fit the established fiction in any way. Do your best effort to make them fit, but if they don’t, choose the next result or re-roll.
Even game texts that are pretty hardline on “roll in the open, GM can’t fudge rolls” (Blades in the Dark, Ironsworn come to mind) indicate that random generation table results are for inspiration only and can be re-rolled if they don’t fit.
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Good comments! But I think we also always need to remember that most of us here are people who either got into the Old School play-style organically or, we even grew up with it! We are used! to lethality, even if it sometimes can feel unfair or less than logical, the idea is that playing the game is super risky and you are more likely to lose (die) rather than win on a long enough time line of say 3 to 10 sessions. We all also know how to make a new character quick. We are not playing our first character ever, and can detach a little. We have probably had at least one of our characters die before.
And now there is an influx of new players! An unprecedented amount of new people super interested in trying D&D for the first time. If they have any exposure at all to the tropes, mechanics and risk level associated with D&D it is very likely to be with 5th edition and what they have seen in play-throughs of famous GMs on Youtube or TV shows. In those games the power level is much higher and typically characters die seldomly. That is not my kind of game and I stopped playing 5th for exactly those reasons.
But, if I want to bring in new players into the OSR style of play and gaming systems, I always try to factor in their lack of experience. To, slowly introduce them to the fact that OSR is more deadly and risky and that we play different. Because I know if I slaughter half or even the entire party within 2 sessions, the odds of them all coming back or even playing any RPG ever again, are drastically reduced. I have found players who play with me longer, become way more open to trying new rules or upping the risk and challenge level. Again, I feel the need to re-state, I almost never! fudge life and death rolls, once every few years perhaps on average and only with inexperienced players and for very good reasons. It is not my go to.
It is a bit like if you show up at a gym to learn how to box, if an experienced person you trusted to show you the ropes instead goes full throttle and messes you up during sparring, did you really have fun and did you learn a lot? Will it make you want to come back?
I see your argument, but at that point is it not better, more honest and more pedagogic as well to let the lesson be learned, and then openly tell them that you’re going to change the outcome to a less extreme one to be lenient, rather than lying about the result of the dice?
Either that, or directly implement the death leniency mechanics that I suggested above, so that a meaningful price can be paid without affecting the character’s survival. For example, instead of killing a character you might take them out of the fight and give them a permanent scar.
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I think it is far more pedagogical if the rules and dice rolls aren’t altered at all but the difficulty of the adventure (the types and number of adversaries, the fiendishness of traps and puzzles, etc.).
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One thing about boxing is that you have to get punched in the face. Nobody likes it and it’s going to happen and that’s just part of it. So punch them in the face the first time, I say. Punch them pretty hard. Let them know that this is for real and it’s only going to get harder from there. No amount of jump rope, bag or glove work is going to prepare you for being punched hard in the face so might as well get over it.
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Where my analogy and your idea of “punching them in the face pretty hard from day 1” falls flat is that you can not eventually, successfully box or spar without getting punched at least a little. But you can! play RPGs and even an OSR-style game without needing to make it super lethal and stick to the rules and their consequences 100% time, no matter what players experience level is or what the situation is. Hell, even on this forum, there is Chiquitafajita, she is super interested in / busy using OSR, but is looking for a game that is very low on darkness and combat and very cosy, I think that is a totally viable and possible way to do Old School gaming. High lethality is only one of five-ish components that make up an Old School experience for me.
(New) RPGers can absolutely learn how to play the game and have a ton of fun and be extremely challenged without the GM needing to be 100% strict from the get go. After a few sessions (when the newb players know at least the basic rules!) you can of course make a breaking point and be like: “From now on stuff gets real, we are going to play more strict and your PC might die, often even. So let’s all make another back-up character and remember to play more carefully.” You gotta make them want to come back! And perhaps ramp up the difficulty based on their experience. Otherwise you run the risk that OSR becomes what old D&D originally was accused of: only for nerdy people, really hard to learn and by definition dark or violent. I don’t agree with that assessment of D&D, but I do want to reassure new people of that by showing them.
Even in boxing, there is no! reputable boxing gym in the world who would do that! -> Punch a total newb hard in the face during the first lesson ever. Hell, most won’t let you spar or even in the ring until you have a decent amount of lessons = know the rules/basics! If you can not defend yourself or know the rules, it is not fair to apply the rules to the max or to make you play (box) at full tilt with people that will demolish you. Then there is also weight classes, innate aptitude/athleticism etc, that a good trainer would 100% consider.
Hell, some of the most respected boxers of all time and some current champions are so respected because they get hit extremely little, Mayweather, Fury. Never mind fairly recent knowledge on CTE/brain damage, most professional fighters spar at 60% of power or less, with headgear, even with extremely experienced opponents.
To bring it back to RPGs and even OSR a little more, some people box or play RPGs to relax, or to get fit / a bit better at it, some people are going for hyper realism and rules as written, all the time. Neither is “wrong”. But I do think if you don’t tailor your game a little! to the experience of your group (whether that is using way too many rules and overpowering them because 5e book says to do that) or making them feel like they fail or suck at DnD by being super harsh, 100% of the time from the first second they play,… I think in both cases it might miss the point. The point is to have fun. When the style of play or rules get in the way, you throw it out the window. Even Gygax was a huge proponent of that, it is in the DMG, nonwithstanding how harsh he liked to play.
And he played super harsh with experienced roleplayers and wargamers or people that knew exactly! what they were getting into because Gygax had that reputation. Other than co-inventing RPGs it was what he was and is most famous for.
Even in certain OSR systems, with inspiration or action points or advantage, those are all really arbitrary decisions the GM makes. When you give them, why, how good a player needs to describe things or how good the plan must be before you give them those boons,… it is not hard and fast and set in stone at all.
I might give a total newb player advantage or more likely inspiration if she grasps and successfully uses a bit complex mechanic for the first time ever and proceeds to roleplay that action rather well, but an experienced player I would expect a heck of lot more off, before I gave them advantage or inspiration.
At the end of the day, if your players are having a lot of fun and feel very challenged and keep wanting to play with you, you are doing it right! I just always try to remember that what is very challenging and fun for one (old hand), is likely nigh on impossible and even severely demotivating for another (newb). But yeh it does appear we might have to agree to disagree. 
Everyone has their own experiences and preferences and style.
I see your point, but I also extremely disagree to that for a simple reason: if they don’t know which rolls you fudged before they have no idea about how hard the next part is going to be. Maybe you made a single critical hit a normal hit, maybe you halved the damage from the dragon’s breath just once, maybe you did it more.
I think there are three ways to approach what you are trying to do:
- What Skerples did in The Tomb of Serpent Kings (take a look especially to the “false tomb”): progressively ramp up the difficulty, keeping clear patterns and without changing the rules. I’ve run the Tomb with people who never played an RPG before and not only they loved it, they learned from it. They have tackled far more lethal dungeons without much trouble. In fact, if your main concern is how to introduce new players in the OSR style of playing, you should read Skerples’ post on the Tomb. He did a very good work at addressing the topic and, whether you choose to follow the same lines or not, it will be helpful.
- Roll the dice and the be explicit when you decide to overrule them. Tell the players what the consequences of the dice roll would be and why you are changing the result. This way, when you decide to tell them “now things get serious” they have a nice grasp of what is going to change.
- Stick to dice but throw them lifelines: “the Ork hits you with his axe but…”. I don’t like this solution as much as the two above, but, again it has the nice advantage of giving agency back to the players. Things have gone bad, but they can somehow salvage the situation if they think smartly.
In general, the problem with fudging rolls is that you change the rules in a way that is both unreliable and unknowable to the players. When they decide to take a risk the have a more or less precise idea of the success chances. If you start changing those chances (and maybe you don’t do it the next time) you are impairing their judgment. That’s why most games, when talking about rulings, state that you should tell the players immediately when you make one, write it down and apply it consistently. This way the players know how it’s going to work and can rely on the rules to make their decisions.
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Fair points. And I agree with you. And I disagree too. XD
I like Tomb of Serpent Kings a lot! Only issue I have with it, it is a long dungeon with many chambers. It could easily take a group of new players 2 or 3 sessions of 4 hours each to tackle that. To me, in the first few sessions I want to introduce players to most aspects of RPG. Not just dungeon delving. I want them to go into town, to talk to friendly NPCs, to forge a bond with one or two perhaps, to trade and buy things in shops, to traverse a few different areas and terrains, both wildernis, dungeon, city and perhaps more. I can’t do that if I am spending all my first 3 sessions running a dungeon.
Or I could, but would have to let them know that it is fine to return to the dungeon after going to town etc. As much as I advocate that GMs have a duty to teach their players the game and the rules, I also feel they should be able to tell part of the story, do different and varied things, some of which require no game mechanics much less exploring a dangerous area etc. One of the best sessions I ever ran involved the PCs getting involved in the fish and sausage selling business, we spend half of a session on this. It was 100% unplanned and unscripted by me, there were 0 rules from the book that applied, no rolls were needed and yet we had the most fun and the players learned a lot. For instance, they learned one of the most important things and feelings I associate with RPGs, that they can do anything, and that the game is about story-telling and cooperative world-building and character development as much as it is about rolls, combat, and rules.
In that hour I also learned at least as much about their preferences as players and their character’s trait as I did during any combat encounter or dungeon delve session.
I think we are conflating two things. Fudging a single truly critical/life or death roll once every few years! in extremely unusual circumstances vs fudging (important) rolls on the regular or every session etc). I have done the former, I never do the latter. The issues in your last paragraph are non-existent or miniscule when we are talking about the former, and that is what I have been advocating since the start of this thread.
When I wrote “without the GM needing to be 100% strict from the get go” I did not at all mean fudging dice results! I meant being slightly lenient when players do not know how certain rules work, what their characters can do and a few other things. The discussion is interesting but has veered off from the initial premise. Which is cool! But I thought I should clarify a bit.
Lastly, I play very rules light, my players seem to prefer that. They trust me to make fair and consistent ruling, and so the two problems you mention: the rules being unreliable or unknowable that has never been a problem. The 20 or so rules I / we do use in 85%+ of the time, all these are in printed out and given to every player days or weeks before the first session. They are very clear and applied very consistently by myself and players.
I am not saying I am “right”. Certainly not! How I play might not suit every player and definitely not every GM. But I do base it on GMing (only, I have only played 20 or so sessions as a PC), for 30 years and for over a 100 persons, vast majority of them newbies. My ideas are very akin to a GM with 40 years experience and a far better GM than I, Professor Dungeon Master. He for example advocates for not even bothering to roll damage for monsters, but to know/estimate the average that they do and simply apply that if they successfully hit with an attack roll, except of course if it is at a critical juncture or roll, then you do use the dice. He has his very, thoroughly considered reasons for this, check his Youtube videos on the rules he (does not) use.
That is not even the most extreme thing he does. He has no initiative as such, he doesn’t do skills of feats at all, there are no bonus actions, no two attacks and on and on. Some of his players have been with him for 30 years, some started with him not that long ago. People love his videos and Patreon. By that I mean to say his way of playing, with way more GM discretion and setting target numbers rather than relying more on written, unalterable rules, is very viable. Now if this way of playing is something you would hate as a player or GM, I don’t blame you one bit! But myself and my players love it. So I think we perhaps disagree because we have a fundamentally different way of looking at the game and rules, how we GM situations and what we consider a succesful and well-run game. And we might both be right! In fact, I highly suspect so. The fact we write so much on these topics is because we obviously care! That is great sign I think for any person who is GMing.
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I’ve split the discussion in two other topics, because you raised some very interesting points (I’m loving this discussion, we are at the third generation of topics starting from your post) which are not related to the “fudging rolls” part.
I agree that this is less of a problem, and I have done it sometimes, but in the last months I’ve decided against it anyway. Since it’s still a pretty recent decision for me (I’ve been doing as you do for 10+ years and stopped like 6 months ago), I hope that the reasons that prompted me to stop are still clear enough in my mind to be exposed here.
Player agency
Unless there are communications problems (like they misunderstood the situation, you didn’t tell them something or such), they decide to do something while accepting the risks. If they charge the goblins instead of slowly working their way around them, they are accepting the risk of being clubbed to death by some green weirdos. While it can sometimes be an anticlimax, being hit by the consequences is part of the game. Maybe they did even count on that.
Long and not completely useful story about that time I wanted my character to die
This was the first time I started thinking against fudging. I was playing Vampire: Dark Ages and had been growing tired of my character. He was a very interesting character in a lot of ways (and is still one of my favorite characters ever), but he was starting to be out of place in the adventure. He had less and less motive to stay in the coterie and the rest of the group was becoming more and more aggressive, while he was a vegetarian scholar. So I’ve decided to retire him - or just have him killed.
Before I could speak with the GM about my plans, the character got involved in a very dangerous fight. He had no chances of survival, but the only reason he was sticking with the group was on the other side of the battlefield and pretty much in danger. I decided to make him charge across the fight, shoving vampires and vampire hunters away in his last, desperate attempt to save his favorite human. It was a very epic and satisfying way to get rid of the character. Being pretty good at maths, I knew his chances of survival were non-existent.
He survived. After that, the GM told me he had fudged a couple of rolls to reduce the damage he took because he thought it was too powerful a scene to have it cut down. I felt somewhat robbed. I had taken a calculated risk because I wanted that character to go down that way, and instead he was saved. I could have told him what I was planning straight away, but I was relying on the fact that there was no way in hell that, playing along the rules, I would have needed GM’s intervention to get what I wanted.
Removing the consequences or reducing them reduces the players’ agency, because their actions have less impact on the game world.
The role of the dice
As a GM, you have the authority to call for rolls or to simply decide when something happens. Since I’ve stopped fudging rolls I’ve started questioning more when a dice roll is required and when it’s not - or when some actions from the monsters are a good idea and when they are not. If you accept that the dice response is final, you too (as the players already do) start thinking in ways to call it only when necessary and when you are ready to accept the results.
To make an example: the Fighter enters a room with a trap. What I would have done before was just to roll for the trap (saving throws, damage, whatever) and then, if I was really disappointed, just fudge the roll. What I’m doing now is think about the possible outcomes before:
- They Fighter, with no way to know it, triggers a trap. Roll for everything (it may be lethal, am I ready to kill off a character at this point?)
- I could just remove the trap, maybe placing it a couple of steps inside the room, to give the Fighter a chance at spotting it
- I could give some warning, maybe giving the whole party a chance for a perception check or another way to search for the trap.
More often than not I just go for option 1, which is the most streamlined (and why did any character enter a room without checking it?) but sometimes I go for 2 or 3. Maybe the Thief’s player was too slow to react and the Fighter took the initiative - instead of deciding what’s going to happen I can get the Thief’s attention back (“As Fighter enters the room you notice a slightly different tile in the floor”) and put the decision-making process in the players’ hands.
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I fudge rolls some of the time each session but I am careful about when it happens. The priority is the story and how engaged players are. I also believe in GM fiat. Part of the social contract we all share is having fun. As GM, a lot is on my shoulders to ensure a fun experience. If fudging one number means that the enthusiastic Halfling gets to live against all odds, and everyone cheers, then I have no issue with it.
I allow players combat rolls, damage rolls, and initiative rolls. Other rolls, like Thief skill checks are done by me behind a screen. Allowing the player those rolls tends to highlight the mathness of the experience, and I’d rather stick to narrative and character.
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To quote Last Year In Marienbad, if someone can’t lose, it isn’t a game. Even life is a game in those terms. No fudging, no “DM screen”. Characters should all come with exciting and interesting backgrounds created quickly and easily based on the concepts behind their class and the imagination of each of the players, including the person telling the story or part of the story.
If character creation takes hours then of course players will be very frustrated if actual play kills them off in minutes. That is a fault of the game system and its inherent lack of balance. Dungeons and Dragons itself has constantly tried to find ways other than the most obvious way to get around this problem because it incorporated the murderousness of wargaming with the story telling of Braunstein and at a certain point the owners decided to stop evolving. Then newer editions have simply added fudging and various other forms of cheats and hacks without ever really addressing the underlying game problem.
Total Gravedig of this topic.
Wanted to revisit it because for about two or more years I roll every roll out in the open and I don’t think I have ever fudged any roll (and it was already extremely rare when I posted about it even 3 years ago). And the funny thing is I play Shadowdark now, which has far fewer hit points and is more lethal than any game I have played so far.
The reason why I stopped fudging -and highly doubt I ever will- is because I have gotten better as a DM (I don’t really ever have to “correct” something that was unfair or really off) and my players have gotten way better and really far away from 5E expectations and very much into OSR thinking. In the OSR scheme of things, they really don’t even die often at all, despite me becoming more “hardcore”,… and they seem to relish the prospect or at least the possibility of death and handle it great when it happens. It certainly doesn’t hurt that rolling up and starting to play a new PC is faster and easier than it has ever been for my group.
So, I really have 0 regrets about the very few fudges I did! But had I known before my first session what I know now,… I think I would have switched to OD&D ish rules, done everything in open, never fudged and simply managed my players expectations. I never really enjoyed running high power level games, at all, but I -and many of my players way back- pretty much had no idea that there was a better, and ultimately much more fun, way to RPG. 
Better late than never!
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