What am I talking about? I'm talking about fudging. Fudging is often called necessary cheating, and many GMs (and some game devs) think that it's something you just have to do whenever the dice go the wrong way and ruin the story/game.
Obviously, I disagree rather strongly. And I disagree with such vehemence because I used to be on their side of the fence. You see, for a decade and a half I ran games where I fudged on a whim. I fudged to protect my players from bad outcomes that were "unfun". This fed into an attitude where they pushed the boundaries of what was safe or sensible in the game world, because no one ever died or had terrible consequences happen.
Negative effects that could cripple or kill PCs was not something one did because it was "not sporting" - but it was perfectly fine for players to use any dirty trick they could get their mitts on, and against all reasonable sense, there was an "anything goes" attitude around our table.
Granted, I was part of the problem. I let them do this. I, because I was occasionally a player and wanted to use these toys too, encouraged my players to use them in the off chance I might get to play with them (considering how rarely I got to play in those days, I really should have just put my foot down and resigned myself to being the forever DM and at least had a good time doing that).
To the point, fudging rolls in favor of the players gave them a sense that they couldn't fail. It gave them a sense that their actions didn't have weight in the game world, because not only would nothing truly bad happen, but also they didn't have to examine any situation closely because the solution would present itself. Made the mistake of hinging the solution to a puzzle on an Intelligence roll and the PCs flubbed it? Well, let them re-roll or maybe tweak the difficulty behind the scenes if it was close.
PC should be dead because they were down to a handful of HP and refused against all reason to use healing items, and an enemy dropped them below -10? That's okay. They didn't do that much damage.
On occasion I even fudged in favor of enemies, because my players would run roughshod over them, and it was no fun to have an encounter I spent hours on be trampled in a few minutes. There's lots and lots of justifications - and they're generally all bad in one form or another.
The Role of the GM
Perhaps the GMs most important duty is to cultivate an appearance of impartiality. I say "appearance" because that's what most GMing sections/GMing books will tell you to do, and then on the other hand say "fudge when the players aren't looking". To be sure, appearing to be impartial is certainly healthy for the game. Players won't question your rulings as often if they think you're doing a good job.
But, things get ugly when they catch on that you've been fudging. Most players will never challenge you on fudging in their favor - they know it is in their "best interest" to let you keep doing that. Instead, they'll try to push for more and more latitude, trying to see how much they can get away with. Whether it's this extra cool class, or special race, or arguing with you about how a situation "should have gone" until you relent (relenting is something you should not do unless you've clearly made a mistake. Coming clean on mistakes is both healthy and necessary for the game to run smoothly, and it helps that impartiality by showing that you're a human being who makes mistakes, but is self-aware enough to admit it).
Eventually you find yourself in a situation where the PCs always win, and if you try to salvage the game and your impartiality by standing by the dice and actually being impartial rather than just appearing to be, you'll likely have your players in revolt because you've just changed fundamental expectations for how the game is to be played. And this revolt is your fault. It's your fault because you defined "fun" to mean "never fails" and the possibility of failure is a fundamental necessity in a game that tells stories through player agency. It's your fault because all of this could have been avoided by choosing not to fudge, and instead let the dice inform your player's expectations for how the game world works, and what they can and cannot do successfully. It's your fault for allowing them to roll in the first place if you were just going to let them succeed anyway.
If you have some complex plot that needs the PCs to survive so you can keep telling it, you've probably made a serious mistake as a GM. First of all, the "plot" shouldn't be something the PCs have to follow, and the story in a roleplaying game should be organically told through players interacting with the game world. If all you've got for them is a railroad, then don't be surprised when they think it'll be more interesting to be train robbers, or to blow the rails up, or to become rail barons. Even the best concealed and best told railroady plot is going to produce a feeling of dissatisfaction from players because they know deep down that their actions have been curtailed, and their actions (through which they exercise agency) are all the control they actually have over the game.
The dice are not control. The dice are an illusion of control. And the dice can just as easily be fickle. When a player rolls dice, the outcome should be uncertain. They are trusting to chance and some small amount of skill at affecting that chance, and when they fail, they need to feel the consequences of that failure as keenly as they do the successes. Otherwise, success becomes less special, and failure is a minor inconvenience. If a player is demanding a roll because they know they'll succeed by rolling, both you as the GM, and the game system has failed categorically.
If that smarts, it's because you know it is true. And I have to confess I'm not innocent of this.
Fudging against the players is against the spirit of the game, cheapens the entire experience, creates the potential of a player/GM fallout, and ultimately reflects poorly on the GM in question because they already have greater power than the PCs, and the GM is effectively taking their power away when he does this. It's like playing a god and then using cheat codes because that wasn't powerful enough for you.
I too am guilty of this.
An Act of Will
Fudging is a choice. It is a conscious decision to cheat in order to nudge the game into the outcome you think it should have. You think the game will be more fun if the players succeed. You think the game will be more fun if the enemies manage to ambush the PCs rather than being spotted like the dice said. You think the story will be improved if the PCs fail to catch the villain.
Be strong instead. Let the dice determine what happens, and let the story be shaped by the player's successes and failures. Let it stand on their choices, both foolish and sensible, brave and cowardly. Even if this means someone (or everyone) dies. At least they'll die because of a choice they made, rather than a choice that was made for them by you. By encouraging this mindset, players will not only take less foolhardy risks, but they'll also be willing to take responsibility for their own failures in the game when they do happen.
Throwing Bones
On dice and rolling in particular, I have this advice to give: Never, ever make players roll for something that should succeed. Not even to see "how well" they succeed. The main reason for this is that success for routine tasks speeds up play, keeps players focused on the actual interesting dice rolls (rather than seeing how well they succeed at starting their car), and it encourages them to manage their actions by taking up an in-game resource, which is time. Time is super important for OSR games, but all games in general to a lesser extent.
I'd almost make the argument you shouldn't make players roll if failure is assured either. However, in this case, you may not wish for the players to know that failure is the only outcome. I'm not completely on board with disguising assured failure, because it can feel like you've tricked a player into a bad situation by letting them roll and telling them they failed. It's too close to fudging, and it smacks of the player vs. GM mentality that 3rd edition was a reaction against. But then again, telling a player that failure is the only outcome can also feel a lot like GM fiat.
To illustrate this, I had a player in a d20 Call of Cthulhu (yes, I know, d20, ew) game get quite angry with me because when he tried to use a lorry that had brought them to a megalithic structure they were now attempting to escape, I told him the engine wouldn't start. He demanded that he be allowed to roll his Drive skill. I said no, that it would be pointless, rolling the die wouldn't change anything. The lorry wouldn't start.
Frustrated and angry, he fumed the entire game until its conclusion. He argued that I should have let him roll because it let players feel in control, and I explained that it would have been a waste of the group's time to roll, because he would have failed anyway. I explained that the cultists he had been trying to run from had disconnected the lorry's battery while the group had been away from it and he could have rolled 100 or 1,000 on his Drive skill and still failed. Cars do not start if they don't have a battery, or if they have a dead battery.
Had he examined the lorry's engine, it would have been immediately obvious why it wouldn't start, and he could have reconnected the battery, started it, and drove away. And I'd have let him. But that isn't what happened.
In his opinion, I should have let him roll and then told him what was wrong, then let him roll again (Repair skill this time) to fix the problem. Which to me, seems like a rather daft way to play a roleplaying game. Having every in-game interaction be determined by a die roll not only seems incredibly boring, but it also removes any possibility of player cleverness being the deciding factor. Which I suppose, flows neatly into the argument for and against player knowledge and skill vs. character knowledge and skill - an argument for another day, and one I've already briefly covered in my opinion on skills in OSR.
Meaning, and Being Robbed of It
When the GM fudges, he fosters mistrust. But the greater crime is that it takes away player agency, and renders their actions and choices meaningless. Say you were playing a tabletop board game involving fighter planes, and you could be sent into an uncontrollable spin that required a Pilot skill check to avoid an unpleasant and potentially fatal outcome (like a crash). Let's say this game is based on World War I fighter planes, and one of your pilots is flying the Fokker Eindecker I, a plane notorious for a mechanical flaw.
This mechanical flaw was that the synchronization of the propeller and the machine guns mounted behind it was off. The way it was supposed to work was that when you fired the guns, the bullets would travel in between the propeller blades, and that the guns could not fire if a blade was in the way.
However, the Eindecker was the first airplane to mount synchronized machine guns (and was in fact, the very first fighter plane built by a government), and her synchronization wasn't perfect. Occasionally she would blow her own propeller off and she would crash. This is one of the possible ways German Ace Max Immelmann died (the other two are friendly anti-aircraft fire, which was the official story, or possibly his propeller was hit during the dogfight by the British).
So, let's say you chose to put one of your pilots in an Eindecker I, knowing full well they have synchronization problems, but it's a small chance (say, 1% for the game's purpose), and the lower point cost means you can have it be flown by an ace pilot. But, then the unthinkable happens! You rolled a 100 for your attack, and the Eindecker has blown one of the blades of its propeller clean off, and now you must make a Pilot roll to avoid crashing (Immelmann had blown two of his propeller's blades off before the crash that killed him and made it back to base through some confluence of miracle and tenacity).
You roll, and fail. All is lost. Your ace has crashed, and in an era without parachutes, is very unlikely to have survived. But the referee decides that you succeed at the last moment, and don't crash.
Are you happy with this? Do you like having all of your choices rendered meaningless because the supposedly impartial referee is letting you off the hook consequence free? What's the point of taking the risk of failed synchronization if the Eindecker I can just have that consequence ignored? Why should you get the extra points for taking the flawed Eindecker if there's no possibility that it will ever come up in play?
If you had gambled and won, you'd feel great, like you'd taken on the odds and beaten them in your winged death trap. But, if you won simply because the referee had let you survive the consequences by ignoring them, then your victory is a hollow thing, dependent on the whim of someone else. The victory isn't yours at all.The referee stole both victory and defeat from you, infringed on your agency.
And that's what makes roleplaying games worthwhile, ultimately. Is that ability to make a choice that has meaning within the context of the game world and the rules. To let your successes and failures determine the story of the game.
A year and a half ago we were playing a module that allowed us to be lords and rule over a once lawless place we'd been exploring. One of our players, Anne, had asked the question "What if we lose? What if we're overthrown because we're bad rulers?" to which I replied "Then our story becomes one where we are fleeing our overthrow, and we are lords in exile - failure doesn't have to be the end of the story. It can also be a beginning."
