Re: drinks
So, AsenRG, your PC has made it through a ten thousand post game that’s taken two real-life years to complete, he’s made himself a small fortune, built himself a castle and he’s just about to rescue the princess he wants to marry...
But suddenly, you roll a string of 1s and if the GM rolls more than 3 on 1D6 your character will die.
You’d prefer your character to die than for the GM to fudge a roll ‘for the sake of the story’?
If so, I admire your honesty, but I suspect you’re very much in the minority. I think most players would want to ride off into the sunset with the girl and/or have another adventure with a cherished character rather than see their character die over a stupid bad luck roll.
I’ve heard far more players complaining about the dice being against them than complaining about GMs fudging rolls. In fact, this thread is the only place I’ve ever heard anyone say that...
Personally, I’d like to see a ‘karma’ fudge option, whereby a GM can secretly choose the result of the next roll made by a certain character, so the poor PC doesn’t roll that string of 1s in the first place. You wouldn't use it often, but if a player has just rolled three 1s in succession, the last thing he wants is a fourth.
As for ‘torpedoing’ games...
I suspect this is the inflammatory comment that got most people's goat and exploded the debate. It's the main reason I've bothered to respond.
As the GM, I have to think up plots and story hooks and interconnections not just for one character, but for all the characters, and all the NPCs, too. And that’s a lot of hard work. Hard work that I don’t want to repeat just because I rolled Snake Eyes on the dice roller.
Even if only one player wants to be fudge-free, that means every time that player has a character die, I have to write that character out of the plot, figure out the knock-on effects, think up ways to bring that character’s essential contributions into the story by another means, and spend time with the player developing a new character with new ties and interconnections to the other PCs... Just having such a player in the game is a fair sized torpedo in itself. :(
Having said that, if my players come to me as a unanimous group in the OOC thread and say to me openly, “We’ve decided amongst ourselves that we want to play this game entirely without fudges, come what may,” then I’ll run the game the way they want it, without any rancour. They’ll probably spend half their game-time rolling up new characters, but if that’s what they want, that’s fine by me. Until I get bored with perpetual character generation and thinking up new plot lines for the new characters (which probably won’t take long) - then I’ll close the game and open a new one with new players who are less demanding.
However, if one or two players try to browbeat others and/or spoil my game, ruining my fun or the fun of other players, I’m with BBR, I’ll ban them outright. They can go and soapbox in someone else’s game - if they can find a GM who will let them.
If you don't like my game, leave it by all means, but don't try to torpedo it. I own the nukes.
IMO, if you want your life to hinge on the roll of dice, go play in a casino. RPGs, even dice-moderated ones, are more about the story than the dice. Most gamers play games specifically because it’s an environment where we can beat the odds, rather than having the odds beat us - they’re an escape from the ‘bad dice’ we all-too-often roll in RL. Why on earth would we want to roll bad dice in a game, too?
We play games to win.
The way in which we succeed is interesting, and the dice add variety to our successes.
Getting a few hard knocks and bouncing back is exciting, and the dice can facilitate both the knocks and the bounce back.
Not succeeding at all, or having some initial success only to have it all taken away from you, simply sucks. That's not what the dice are for, IMO.