Fudging Dice Rolls

 

Fudging dice rolls is an issue that many old schoolers particularly take offense at. They tend to be all about "the purity of the dice" and "why bother rolling at all then?" Though I would not say I have never fudged a roll, I can't think of a time in recent years I did, though I can think of a few I wish I had in retrospect.

 In my last long time group, as opposed to previous long running groups made up of people I already knew who were often not that versed in RPG's, I had at least a couple of power gaming or min maxing players come along who tended to take advantage of my general good nature as a player friendly DM. As soon as they saw I had sympathy for players characters and that I almost always gave their situations the benefit of a doubt, if not a special save to give at least a small chance at avoiding perma-death, they took on the personas of jackals who sensed a wounded lamb (player character friendly DM). Yeah, give some an inch and they'll take a mile. 

These are often mooks who don't really care about anybody else's fun, especially the beleaguered DM. They just wanted strong players characters who were more powerful than anybody else. For whatever reason this is the fun they got out of the game. For whatever lacked in their real lives, power or whatever (now that I think of it the wives of these dudes seemed to call the shots in their lives), they had to be bullies in an elf game. But it wasn't just for the reasonable, "fun for all" players that I was a friendly GM. Whatever the case, I was fair to all. But yeah, a few times I wished I wasn't.

But OK, I'm not here to complain about former players I often wished I had dice-fudged to death. But on the issue of DM fudging, I think there is often a deeper issue at large here. Maybe more insidious, and it's something I've noticed since I was a kid in other people's game. 

You see, since I was a teen GM back in the day, I had a tendency to randomize the world in general. Most often in the case of NPC decisions. I called it my "yes no maybe" method. Kayhla the Hobbit speaks to an innkeeper and asks if they can get a free meal along with their room for the night because the party is low on funds. I think most DM's would just say yes or no depending on how they personally felt in that moment. But for me I would put that to a roll. If I had actually imagined a certain personality for this innkeeper, I would make a modifier. Is he cheap? Or is he generous? What is Kayhla's charisma? Then modify the roll. Easy enough. Well, OK, I'm sure plenty of DM's just did btb reaction rolls. But really, the rare times I sat as a player I pretty much never saw such rolls.  OK, that's a fairly petty example, but you can apply that to much more.

Many DM's in my experience, my entire life, just seem to run much of the game out of their head. Mostly in terms of NPC decisions. Players pose something to an NPC, and the DM just yeah or nay's it. He decides from whole cloth what the NPC will do, how they will react. Pretty much based on his own biases. Sure, he or she might have a personality in mind for the NPC that can sway that decision. But it is still a DM decision. No die roll. It comes out of his conscious or subconscious. Out of his head. An example of one of the times I did this was as a teen. One of my players girlfriends wanted to try and play, and long story short the characters had to go to the cities fireworks factory (every game city should have a fireworks factory, in whatever genre) and get some fireworks. They are very expensive, and money was an issue. The new player had her character, a good looking woman, try to flirt a major discount from the guy. Since he was quite old (and I was quite young) I just hand waved that the guy had no libido and would not be interested. OK, again, I was young. The guy may not have still had an active sex drive, but he still might be swayed by a flirtatious young lady. I really should have put it to a roll. But no, I just decided out of my head how he would act. Long story short, the gal player was very miffed, kind of embarrassed at the failure, and quit the game right there. Sure, she could have been a little more understanding and not have overreacted so much. But it stuck with me. I gipped her, and my session, out of a cute little interaction.  And that has stuck with me, and one of the reason's I believe in at least a chance of something happening. 

It is probably a minor issue for most. To be honest any player I have had that I told I like to randomize even minor things in my setting for the sake of getting close to a living breathing world that doesn't entirely come out of my brain, they never seem to care much.  But I think that outside of the rare times there is a 100% chance an NPC would or would not do something (somebody very against sexual assault will almost for sure not commit it. Somebody who is anti-violence will almost for sure not punch a child who tried to pickpocket them) there should be some chance at variances.  Almost nothing should be an absolute. One of the things I love about the concept of The Matrix, is that the simulated world has to seem real; it has verisimilitude outside of some of the crazy powers the strongest individuals (or programs) have. If you get in street fight and you are one of the "unenlightened" then basic rules of physics are happening. What is going on is actually just a bunch of computer code dictating everything.  But that code is aimed at giving a sense of a living world. I really like to think of a game world in those terms. And randomization is one of the big factors of that IMHO.

Fighting and other action pieces are in large part dictated by random rolls. Chances are modified by various factors (strength, skill, dexterity, weapon, etc). Why should the non-action stuff not be dictated by randomness to some degree or another? If not, then IMO its very similar to fudging those action dice.

Way too many D6's!

I’m sure everyone who reads this who has gamed for many years has a ton of D6’s. They are the most common of the die, and us gamers tend to bleed off the dice from board games like Monopoly into our RPG dice collection as time goes by.

Towards the end of my 90’s campaigns, I was running a lot of Champions in addition to my AD&D and Cthulhu games. As a matter of fact, I think the very last game I ran before my several-year semi-retirement was in 2000, and it was Champions.

Champions uses D6’s for damage. Sometimes LOTS of D6’s. If you have somebody like Galactus show up, you can bet your ass you will be a living black hole, gathering up every single D6 you and your players can possibly muster from dice bags and backpack pouches. A dice roll including upwards of 50 dice was not out of the question when the big boys were playing on the board (although I have to admit, I usually preferred the street level games with more down-to-earth heroes and a lot less D6 rolling).

So for several years after that, my dice bag, a big sock really, sat with some D20’s, D4’s, D8’s etc and a big honking shit load of D6’s. Probably around 60 of them in there.

No big deal really, but when I started a new AD&D campaign last year, I just toted along the same bag with all the same dice in it. So each game, when I needed to roll a D20 or what-not, I had to grabby grab and hope I got lucky, or pour alllllllll those dice out on the table and sort through for what I needed. This pain in the ass continued on into this year, and even into a Star Wars KOTOR game I am running for another group. Players just sat there with mouth agape as I yanked out handfuls of D6 hoping to find a 20 amongst them. Often after a few moments a disgusted player would toss his D20 at me “use this, dude.”

Why didn’t I just eliminate all but 5 or 6 of them (let’s face it, for D&D you don’t really need more than 4 or 5 D6 max)? Well, when I had some kobolds attack the other month, and ran out of goblin-size miniatures, those D6’s came in damn handy to represent the little bastards. Not only that, I had them with 3-6 hit points, and you can actually face-up the dice with the appropriate number of points, and if the thing gets hit and lives, you just turn it to the number of hit points it has left! Genius!

Still, I guess it would behoove me to maybe at least put the 6’s in their own bag. But somehow, in some twisted way, I think I am getting used to having a gagillion D6’s in the bag. Let’s face it, as soon as I don’t have them I might need them for something. Maybe Tiamet will show up and blast the party with 50 dice worth of breath weapon. It could happen.

The elusive all-Tavern game

All DM’s rely heavily on the inns and taverns of their world. These are iconic places where, whether it is in-game time or in-between game time, characters ultimately spend more of their life in these places than anywhere else.

If I had to guess, I’d say that 3 out of 4 of my campaigns from around 1978-1990 began with a bunch of characters who didn’t know each other (actually, I had a habit of having at least a couple of PC’s meet on the road to the tavern, just so there is some role-play back n’ forth right off the bat) hanging out in the boozer when some wizard/cleric/nobleman tripped in with a hammer, nail, and poster advertising for a group of stalwarts to go crawling into the local dungeon jobber for one reason or another.

While these public houses are great places to get adventuring gigs, info, and entertainment, they rarely take up large amounts of actual play time. They are usually just places that keep characters from having to hang out in the street or market squares in between dungeon delves. If things are going slow in the game and the characters are listlessly mooning around the beer hall, you can always have a gang of rakish rogues or barbarians march in as fist-fodder to pass some time. Doesn’t matter if it is some fancy uptown establishment, or some half-orc shit hole, a nice dust-up always gets the juices flowing. I almost can never resist creating a bar fight (it doesn’t help that in my younger, more aggro days I got involved in more than a couple of fights at dive bars here in Venice Beach and other places).

I always wanted to run an entire game set in a tavern. Characters drinking, brawling, wenching, gambling, etc. Recently I played a video game called Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, and in your first levels you are hanging out at an Inn that is haunted by an elvish girl’s ghost, who sings a melancholy tune as you drink your ale and chat to the locals. Eventually you get a job clearing out the rats from the basements, and then deeper below where undead stalk around in the catacombs beneath the establishment. It’s great fun and easy to pull off in a low level game, but it doesn’t really count as a “Tavern Game.”

What I always wanted to see was characters mostly taking it easy, having fun on their time off. Play some cards or dice, chat to the lassies, have a brawl or two. An entire game of just hanging out. But in the past it doesn’t seem to take long for players to get antsy about moving on to big fights and big treasure. I mean, you cannot just force them to play out their roles in a tavern for several hours. A lot of it just seems to depend on their mood. If they have been involved in a lot of violent, life or death combat, it seems to make it easier to get them to take it easy and do some character-developing role-play.

So finally in the last game it just sort of happened. The party is still in a large town on the souther frontier. Having just fought wererats and a gnomish automaton below the town, and an alleyway encounter with the drow party from the previous games, the players decided they wanted to hit the big dive bar for a bit of a rest from the mayhem. So we started the game with them traipsing off to Silvio’s.

I’ve used Silvio’s in games of years past. Formerly a violent den of scum and villainy where a party once attacked it to rescues a child held hostage by gangsters, the place was now run by Silvio’s son, who has made attempts to clean the place up a tad. No longer involved in rackets and gangs, Silvio Jr. just wants to make legit money. So the Tavern now had better booze and food, fair card and dice games (and rat roulette), a small stage for bards, and a cage fighting hall downstairs in the basement.

It was the time of the spring festival, and lots of things were happening in town, but the players seemed content to have their characters relax for a bit. I didn’t mind, I just want the players to have fun and sandbox their own evening. So they decided to spend it at Silvio’s (probably prompted and enticed by a flyer I printed out and had a street kid distributing in the game).

Helena the fighter-girl settled down with some rat roulette, while Ormac the gnome and Dell the elvish monk rattled some dice. After jamming with the house musicians a bit, Vaidno the bard picked up on a dark-haired, doe-eyed serving wench who was sending him smiles. But it wasn’t just quiet gambling: Krysantha the female drow fighter/druid with the double scimitars went down to watch the cage fights, and after seeing the mountain of a man “Creature” whipping ass on all takers, she decided to volunteer to take to the cage. All the other characters came down to watch, and hefty bets where laid on Krysantha. With wooden swords Krysantha and Creature wailed on one another, until finally the big man went down like a sack of bricks. Krysantha took on a couple of more fights before striding out of the cage to collect her winnings.

Other characters were waiting in the wings to assist, like the corner handlers in a boxing match . So even though only one character battled, the other PC’s got to be involved, and some went around making bets. Everyone made money. Betting on herself, Krysantha made a few hundred gold pieces.

Helena was the funniest: the young fighter sat herself down at the rat roulette table, and spent a good chunk of the evening making small, one gold piece bets on the rolls. She was so excited to finally get the right rat, and get 3 gold in winnings (after losing around 6). This is a character who had adventured a bit, and had previously earned hundreds. Ah well, maybe she was just happy to make a little cash without having to steal or kill for it.

OK, my Wednesday night games are only around three hours long. I never could have stretched this encounter out to one of my old 6 hour weekend games. Or could I have?

Anyway, that was fun, and the players all want to go back there for an evening before leaving town. I hope this really fun game where not much happened wasn’t a lucky fluke.

The No-Maybe-Yes Method

The guy who first ran D&D for me as a kid pretty much made it all up as he went along. No books, just a couple of dice and some miniatures. You rolled and he said if you hit or not. Maybe another die roll for damage. What was left was pretty much his getting his ya-ya’s out by killing my characters in whatever sick ways he could make up at the time.

So at some point I got rules books and started DM’ing. In those earliest days I winged it as far as reactions and random NPC things relating to character actions. Just like my first DM, I made some things up ( but was a much more player friendly DM).

I think in the earliest days I just rolled a D6 and let 1-3 be “no” and 4-6 be “yes.”

But some guys I knew in the early 80’s turned me on to their two dice “No-Maybe-Yes Method” of making an on-the-spot determination of some random factor.

Roll the two D6, and add them up. Let 2-5 be various levels of “no,” let 6-8 be various levels of “maybe,” and let 9-12 be “yes.”

It’s really mostly for if you need to make a quick determination that is a no through yes, with some maybe’s in-between

So you merely pose a question to the dice then roll them. Suppose you need to know if the farmer has a daughter because the bard in the party is feelin’ romantic. Just ask the dice “does he have any daughters?” No means no. Get a 2-5 and it’s “no.” Get a 7 and “maybe” means you should roll again in this case, and if you get a “no” this time he has no daughter, but if you get a “yes” he has a daughter/daughters but lies and says “no” (he knows all about those big city bards). Roll a 10 in the first place, then he has one. An 11 or 12 could mean two or more daughters.

You can use the method for a quick result anywhere, just pose your question. “Maybe” is always fun because that is when you get to stretch your wing-it muscles a bit. Is there treasure in that cubby hole? A “maybe” could mean yeah, there is some, but there is also a poisonous brown recluse spider hanging out in there as well.

You can modify the roll any way you like, depending on the situation. Does the farmer’s daughter find the bard attractive? If he has a high charisma, add a plus to the roll.

Do you have a No-Maybe-Yes method of your own?