How honest of a GM are you?, Fudgeycakes! Options

[Crimson Jack]

I'm curious what type of GM's we have here. Question is pretty straight forward. Do you fudge a bit, a lot, not at all, or all the time? I very seldom fudge rolls behind the screen, but when I do its always in favor of my PCs. Even when it allows someone to rape the system. I kinda appreciate a story bender like that sometimes.

[Fresno Bob]

Damn! I accidentally Null Voted.

In any case, I fudge for the opposition. Usually I have way more PCs than NPCs, so its the only way to keep them from being demolished.

My PCs suck. They always bitch when they're outnumbered.

[Zolhex]

Still new to being a GM so I voted 100% by the book. I will continue to do so till I consider myself a better GM. Then it will be more along the lines of a little fudgeing in the favor of who it will best suit.

[Tanka]

Usually to however it best screws the players. They can't have a cakewalk, after all.

[Game2BHappy]

How about: "I fudge rolls either way when I feel it benefits the game"?

I fudge rolls every game. Otherwise they would be bored for silly for part of the game and they would all die before the end of the game.

[Ol' Scratch]

I never fudge. It's pointless and wholly defeats the gaming aspect of a Roleplaying Game.

[Arethusa]

I think, Doctor— if that is your real name— that the point of faking rolls is to create a more interesting world, tone, and narrative, and the GM's role as a sort of director is entirely removed. And without the ability to rule via GM fiat, it becomes a simulation— in Shadowrun's case, a crappy one at that. If you want a pure tactical simulation, stop calling it roleplaying.

[Ol' Scratch]

:please:

[Glyph]

I will change or adapt a story as I go, and change the occasional situation on the fly, but I don't mess with the dice rolls. They are there not only to simulate skill, but to add a genuine random factor to the game. If the storyline gets messed up, cool - I'm not going to cheat a player out of a fairly-earned victory because I want some NPC to be there for the next "scene". If they kill the main baddie in the first encounter, then the baddie's lieutenants can be squabbling for power and rival factions moving in for a power grab when the game continues. And if a player, through bad luck, winds up dead, then hey - it happens. Make a new character. If there is no real possibility of your character dying, then why bother playing? Especially a supposedly grim and gritty game like Shadowrun!

[Ol' Scratch]

Exactly. A good GM and good players don't need to cheat in order to tell a good story.

[Herald of Verjig...]

On the rare occasions that I take the time to make a major NPC cameo, one of the players decides to shoot him, and he didn't technically survive, I creatively interpret the events. Usually: if you see it, you can kill it, or at least try to. I also adhere to the suggestion in Mechwarrior 2nd edition about not destroying player characters when you can come up with an entertaining sequence of events after their near death experience. If a guy falls past overflow during the battle itself, I am obliged to laugh at the stupid behaviour that the recently deceased had chosen to take (or be amazed that he lasted that long).

[StealthBanana]

I only fudge when realism demands it.

It destroys the sense of my world when a troll takes an assault cannon round to the head and keeps on running.

[Tanka]

There's nothing to say he couldn't. They aren't explosive, they're just really big fragging bullets. Basically cannonballs, except modern.

Besides; how do you know he took it in the head? If a PC used a called shot and pulled it off, OK, but that doesn't mean the Troll died. He might've staged it some, but, if the PC is good, only down to M at the most.

Although, I want to see your Trolls. If they can stage 18D repeatedly, they've got to be walking tanks. An average Troll with average armor (Anywhere from 1 to 3) is taking anything from 15-17D, which is nigh impossible for a thing with Body 9 for damage staging to soak.

[Zazen]

I fudge to keep new characters alive during their first gaming session. Nothing sucks more than scrapping a cool character to a lucky shot before you've even had a chance to play it once.

Other than that, almost never. Never for the opposition or to keep the "big boss" alive or anything like that. That always feels stupid and contrived. Everyone at the table rolls their eyes in unison as the GM finds some BS way to keep his boss alive after putting him in a stupid position in the first place. "Yeah he dodged all 18 rounds and uhh, resisted the force 23 manabolt too. He jumps out the window and his goons growl. Roll initiative."

[Zazen]

[Tanka]

Meh. So it does. I just can't read for squat.

[Zazen]

They can't be explosive like Big Robocop Gun explosive, though, or they'd have a blast rating.

Because of that I have a hard time imagining what a shot from one of those things would look like.

[Arethusa]

Probably could use rules handling a minor blast radius that would, I assume, be effectively deadened if it explodes with a body. But the entire idea is kind of stupid, so quibbling over realism is not a good idea, in this case.

Anyway, I really can't stand the assertion that faking a die roll is somehow evil and wrong. Shadowrun is a crappy simulation, and, to be fair, was never intended to be one. To play the game as a pure sim is quite simply retarded. And, on a similar note, the Shadowrun system is not set up to be run diceless, either. While it depends on how the game is meant to be played, it is, in most cases, best to find a midpoint where dice are rolled to keep an edge of believability and uncertainty while not being allowed to render the story directionless an duninteresting. A GM without the ability to do this is not going to run a good game, and will likely end up with one of these two situations:

GM: "Ok you enter the bar and sit down. I assume you are all getting drinks?
Group: "Yes."
<rolls>
GM: "Wow. Whoops. You hear a scuffle outside followed by two quick shotgun blasts. Matthew and Katie are lying on the floor. Both appear quite dead. Jordan is also on the floor, gripping a profusely bleeding chest wound. Mike, you are mostly unharmed."

Or.
GM: "It's two AM and your group has tracked your archnemesis down to his apartment. What do you do now?"
Group Leader: "We set up across the street on the roof. Put the LMG facing the door and the sniper further back. The two of us with assault rifles go on either side. The guy with the suppressed SMG can go across the street in the bushes."
GM: "Four hours later, he exits his apartment."
Group: "Ok, we open up."
GM: "Ok, he doesn't die."

[Fahr]

in all things moderation, including fudgeing.

I mostly fudge to move a stalled story forward ( EX: no one gets any legwork successes and have no Idea where to go next because they don't know what is happening) or to make a situation more interesting.

Fudgeing to keep people alive, well nope, that is what karma pool and Hand of god are for... and the players have to make the choice for there charechters, and Gm for the Baddies, but never more than once (just like the book says).

-MIke R.

[Sphynx]

I'll fudge, but in a different way than most people. I roll openly, I just never state what I'm rolling for, but generally in favor of the players. I come from a background where the players are the Protagonist of a story, not the mob of a story, and Protagonists don't just die without it being the climatical ending with the ArchVillian also dying or just barely getting away. Admittedly, my players don't fear dying as much as in some games, but that also encourages them to be more daredevilish in their actions and unless it's just a plain-stupid act, even a fudge roll on their part with an overkill success roll on my part won't kill anyone, primarily because the overkill success roll just became a roll for 'something else'.

Sphynx

[Squirtduck]

Having only GMed once (not for Shadowrun), I was totally out of my league, as one of my PCs apparently just wanted me to rubber stamp what he thought were great ideas, so that if any of us objected later on, he could use my "judgements", (which was really his pushiness) as precedence for every more munchy ideas...

Therefore, if I ever GM again, I will probably be a quite ruthless GM, and fudge more than a few dice rolls in favor of my the OpFor...can't have the PCs thinking that an Ares factory loaded with goodies only has pushovers to defend it...:)

[Ferrit]

I've run ShadowRun as GM for a couple of years now and find I don't need to fudge dice rolls much anymore - Either the players have a good plan or the dice rolls go as expected (or near enough :D )

There has been occasions when I have fudged, usually to avoid story trashing character deaths by dumb luck but if the players get the drop on a big badguy I wont do anything to save the poor villain beyond what the they could do or has set up. Likewise if the players do something that would normally get them killed they normally get killed!

[cykotek]

I generally don't fudge rolls, but when I do, it's for one of two purposes: To enhance the story experience, or to save a player from truly, truly awful luck. There are times when my dice decide "That PC must DIE!" and will proceed to roll ridiculous numbers of successes at a steady rate. Since I agree with Sphynx, that the PCs are the protagonists in a story, it's not all that fun to die just because some random, supposedly unskilled mook rolled a rock-solid string of all-successes. yes, bad luck can happen, but I'll usually tone down the overwhelming bad luck to "it sucks to be you, maimed boy".

[bwdemon]

I tend to fudge where important story bits are going to fail if X happens and X is about to happen. All dice are rolled in secrecy, so I can do this without worry. This keeps players from gaining metagame knowledge about their opposition, too, which I find adds a little suspense that open-dice games don't have. If I need an antagonist to survive, but he was just shot full of holes, I'll leave him shot full of holes and have DocWagon or another suitable entity drag him off to recover. If I need a protagonist to survive, but he was just shot full of holes, I'll lie about my roll to the extent needed. I do not like the deus ex machina approach, so I'd much rather lie about my dice than have an NPC save the PCs.

[Namer18]

I'll fudge rolls either way if I don't think they reflect anything realistic. Of course usually I take care of that by introducing my own target modifiers, this usually comes into play with knowledge skills.