Why do people act like "roleplaying" (in the sense

Sounds like you've had some encounters with shit GMs anon, there is no need to be upset

>>48552155
Because opinions and being right on the internet.

>>48552155
Cool blog post

You can see that you're being an utter hypocrite, right? Your initial point is anger at one style being seen as better than another... And then you conclude on asserting that your preferred style is better than any other.

As long as people are having fun, there is no correct or superior way to play an RPG.

>>48552155
"Roleplaying" games were initially created by taking tactical wargames and then putting a coat of improv-theater over them.

If you really dislike the roleplaying aspect of RPGs, and don't care for the idea of telling a collective story, you would probably enjoy miniature wargames much more than roleplaying games.

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>>48552155

"rollplaying" doesn't refer to players who enjoy the gamey aspects of the game, OP. It refers to min-maxing twerps who only care about cheesing the rules to come up with some kind of crazy optimization and don't actually care about the story or the fact there are other people in the game. They're the kinds of people who talk about "builds" and that shit.

Other than that, listen to >>48552276. Sounds like you just have pussy GMs who keep you alive for the sake of pushing you further along their railroad. I've been in plenty of games where the story is made by the players' actions, even games where I had bad GMs.

>>48552276
>implying there is such thing as good railroading
>>48552286
>>48552304
This is a board for discussion. It's okay to start one. I'm sorry that makes you butthurt.
>>48552338
My point is that I prefer playing a game I can win/lose rather than circlejerk storytime and apparently that's "wrong." My comment at the end starts with "If I have to choose," suggesting that I'm talking about my own opinion not some belief about objective reality.
>>48552347
You're only half right. They were added to tactical wargames, but they were certainly meant to be tactical in themselves. You DO have a chance to fail or succeed that influences the choices you can make. Both of the co-creators of the original D&D clearly saw it as a game of overcoming challenges, just like the tactical wargames themselves.
>>48552359
This is untrue. I have seen "rollplaying" used to refer to any emphasis of games you can win or lose rather than improvisational exercises with dice, many times. And games like 0e, you couldn't really cheese the rules in because they left a lot up to the DM to decide, allowing players to play creatively IN RESPONSE TO CHALLENGES.

My problem isn't even with straight up storygames like Misspent Youth or whatever, that center on telling an interesting story. My problem is with games that are clearly designed around challenges that players are supposed to meet, and with that being what players are led to expect by reading the rules, then the DM bringing them into what looks kind of like a storygame with tactical RPG paint on it, only unlike in most storygames, the only one who can influence the plot is the DM.

>>48552768
Oh, it's virt. That explains it. Move along people, nothing more to see here.

>>48552768

Again, it sounds like you're complaining about railroady DMs. Nobody defends though, not even "roleplayers".

I've played these games for years, and I've never been in a game where I'm not allowed to potentially fail or the GM changes my rolls to make sure I survive.

You should stop playing with people who use games as an arena for living out their novels.

>>48552797
I'm not Virt. Doesn't he shill GW or something?
>>48552820
>I've never been in a game where I'm not allowed to potentially fail or the GM changes my rolls to make sure I survive.
You weren't here for the "do you fudge rolls" thread a week or two ago, were you? Well over half the thread said they fudge dice to make sure players only die when it would be "dramatic."

>>48552876
>GW
I meant DW. My bad.

>>48552155
>"telling a story" (i.e., railroading)
stopped reading there
2/10

>>48552947
>confirmed for never having had one of those "I want to tell a story" GMs who decide on a whim when to follow or ignore dice rolls based on what he thinks would be coolest for the fanfiction you're permitted to witness

>>48552155

You're going to catch a lot of flak for this one OP, but you're absolutely correct.

Somewhere around the time *World games started becoming popular on /tg/, people lost sight of the idea of the game part of an RPG, but they forget that the Game part of it is what helps make the context through which an RPG becomes interesting at all.

>>48552947

That's literally what telling a story is in the context of a roleplaying game, faggot.

MAKING a story is what you want to do. TELLING a story is what happens when the GM flunked his writing class and his group has to deal with the fallout.

>>48552976
Thank God I'm not the only one. Again, I think it's fine if you want to play a pure storygame. I just hate this weird-ass hybrid that's trying to do both and ends up failing at both.

>>48552155
It's okay not to like things.
Don't be a dick about things you don't like.

>>48552155
I feel you man. I love the story aspects of the game, but I've met too many GM's who use "my game focuses on story" as an excuse to not read the damn rulebook, and run a game on rails where how the players act in the mechanical aspect of the game doesn't influence its story in the slightest.

>>48552797
>It's virt

Guys everytime you mention his name he wins. He wants to be remembered for his bullshit, better he dies nameless and unwitnessed, a cautionary tale told to small children

>>48553011
Just getting it off my chest. Basically every GM who says they want a game focused on story wants a "game" focused on THEIR story.
>>48553015
Thanks. It's nice to know some people get what I'm saying.

>>48552964
i'm not saying that those DMs don't exist (i WAS one of them, in my younger years). but not all DMs who want to have a compelling narrative achieve this through railroading.

>>48552976
>MAKING a story is what you want to do. TELLING a story is what happens when the GM flunked his writing class and his group has to deal with the fallout.
i feel you're being pedantic but i see your point and actually agree with you. to me, multiple people can be involved in the "telling" of a story but, again, we're splitting hairs. i suppose your terminology is more precise as it shows that the game is being MADE improvisationally instead of being TOLD premeditatedly. i'm betting that we can both agree that the best way for this to happen is to have a DM who has an idea for a premise, some conflict, some characters but is flexible enough the let the actual course of the story play out with input and ideas from the players.

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>And stop fudging dice. You're cheating your players by taking away even their ability to succeed or fail based on their ability to use resources effectively and choose what risks to take.

I don't think you really appreciate how ultimately arbitrary the game aspect of a roleplaying game really is.

At the end of the day, the entire question of how difficult the game is comes down to the GM's decisions, and whether he decides upon the numbers beforehand or decides them over the course of the battle really doesn't mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. Whether you are "good" at battles is an arbitrary distinction that ultimately relies on your GM, and resource management/rule knowledge/character optimization/luck are not exactly the most exciting traits to be proud of.

As far as fudging dice goes, it's something all good GM's do because they recognize that it's a necessary tool for finessing the construction of a game, kind of like a good chef seasons little by little throughout the cooking process, carefully adjusting the taste minutely in order to achieve harmony and balance.

In a way, GM's that fudge the dice actually provide their players with a greater sense of freedom and agency, because the GM does not have to prepare and calculate each potential scenario to the same degree, making improvising scenes considerably easier. While providing them with a sense of challenge is also important, that shouldn't come at the cost of forcing players to exist in a limited environment.

The GM can't really predict the future, and games often go drastically different than how they might expect them to go. While good preparation may alleviate some issues, there's no reason to force players to endure a dull or otherwise unfun encounter due to a bout of considerable bad luck or some small oversight.

While it's important to maintain the illusion that you're not fudging dice, it's ultimately not much different from any of the decisions a GM must make.

>>48552155
If you want to ROLL BIG NUMBERS and slam back some BREWSKIS with your B-ROS, this hobby really isn't for you. Try wargaming or board games, that's clearly more your speed.

>>48553143
>As far as fudging dice goes, it's something all good GM's do because they recognize that it's a necessary tool for finessing the construction of a game
Kill yourself

>>48553154
What? No. I want to barely scrape by with my life (or not) while I try to hide from the goblin squad going by, then sneak in and steal their shit. I want to sweat whether the wizard uses his one sleep per day because getting caught without it in the wrong situation could mean a party wipe. I want to count my torches and arrows and gleefully gasp in clean air under the afternoon sun as I stumble out of the dungeon with a bit of gold.

What I don't want is to fellate the GM while he recites fanfiction at me.

>>48553213
>playing D&D
Yeah, you really should stick to wargames.

>>48553236
inb4 shilling Dungeon World

>>48553236
>not playing OSR
You should stick to Angry Birds.

>>48553213
your describing Heroquest, not an RPG.

>>48553303
So you've never played any D&D before AD&D2e, huh?

>>48552155
>And stop fudging dice
Haha no. You can't make me either.

>>48553324
>You can't make me either.
That's true. But I can tell you that you're a shitty DM and if you told your players, "Hey, I don't like this dice roll, so I'm going to ignore it," they would be pissed.

>>48553324
See I can't make people, it's just over time it becomes obvious because you can see DCs rubberband depending on what the GM wants to happen. I just leave games. It's easier than forcing conflict with the GM.

>>48553344
That's why you don't tell them idiot.

>>48552155
>having a detailed backstory and personality
>an RPG at which you can win or lose
These aren't mutually exclusive. Even the original context of RPGs, the dungeon crawl beneath or after a pitched battle, has plenty of room for personality while being a clear win or lose situation.

That said, the addition of personality, motivation, and individual development (of several types) is what makes an RPG more than just a skirmish wargame.

Skirmish wargames are much more developed than they were 40 years go, and now clearly occupy the game space between RPGs and traditional WARgames. Most of the perceived overlap is due to marketing, designer denial, or ignorance. There is still some real overlap, and all three categories cover a range of types, but the category a game belongs in is usually quite clear.

>>48553324
My position on fudging is just tell players whenever you do if you don't think it is a problem. See how they react. If they're fine with it then that's great! It also gives people who aren't ok with it the opportunity to leave.

>>48552155
Try to find a group that will cater to your interests instead of complaining about people playing the game differently on the internet.

>>48553360
So you're okay with your high level character getting killed because a random goblin rolled a lucky crit?

>>48553321
you mean the multipe adventures and a campaign that all involved a significant amount of that roleplaying stuff that you hate?

Just go pickup a copy of first edition Warhammer Quest if you want to have dungeon delving with no possibility of someone wanting to include story in it beyond whats in the box text.

>>48553206
>"A DM only rolls the dice because of the noise they make." - Gary Gygax

While a bit extreme, the sentiment behind it is quite true.

A GM is in charge of the entire world. They have no limits, no constraints, and any limits you can imagine are purely those of your imagination. The players are limited, and for them the dice are of considerable importance, but the GM literally has infinite power. Whether he decides that his monsters hit you every time they attack because they "roll high" or because they have insanely high attack bonuses, it doesn't really matter in the end.

But, that's where a good GM shines, because they can be trusted to fudge only when it's appropriate. They need to maintain the illusion of a challenge, which means they can't fudge often without arousing their player's suspicions, and they must do so with careful consideration.

Really, it's just another tool in the GM's arsenal, and pretending that there exists a GM with such perfect foresight and planning that they would never have the opportunity to improve the game by fudging is ridiculous. Even if they may find themselves with only a single opportunity to dramatically improve the game by making a monster miss when it should have hit or hit when it should have missed, I don't see a reason that they should avoid using a tool that's little different from preparing the encounter a little differently.

Roleplaying is not about railroading or even telling a story. It's about being in character and doesn't even need detailed backstory, a basic one that defines personality of character will do as well. Besides you can combine rollplaying and roleplaying perfectly.

Also, fudging dice is a sign of bad GM that either fears presenting danger to players for some reason (could be fear of alienation from having his friends' characters killed or something) or is unable to come up with challenging, but not impossible encounters.

It sounds like you have confused mary sue fanction writers (which often play RPGs and behave like you said) with roleplaying.

>>48553450
I mean you're seeming to imply old GG was a good GM.

>>48553367
Look, I'm not saying don't give your character a personality at all (though I prefer for them to arise through decisions made during gameplay). What I'm saying is, if a DM insists on at least three pages of backstory before a campaign, he's either:

1. Going to keep my character alive no matter what.
2. Going to expect me to write three pages every time my character dies.
3. Not going to make me write the backstory, but going to be more invested in the other players' characters if mine dies because now my character barely exists story-wise.

And all of that is bullshit.

>>48553396
I'm actually complaining more about people constantly shitting all over the style of game that I (and many others) prefer to play, on /tg/ and elsewhere.
>>48553432
Not that anon, but yes. Combat is dangerous. If it isn't, then don't roll and just say "you win" and let the player describe how they kicked the shit out of the monsters, in the same way you can open a regular, unlocked door without rolling.
>>48553442
I said that discovering the world and emerging story are fine. NPCs with motives are fine. The problem is when the DM has "A STORY" in mind and the players just walk through it. And this is almost always the case when you have DM who will favor story AT THE EXPENSE of game.
>>48553465
I'm saying that the people who tend to freak out about a game where the players and/or GM don't have a lot of backstory are all over the fucking Internet, act like playing any other way is somehow wrong, and tend to be the vast majority of players who talk about "story" as a key factor in an RPG.

>>48553432
I mean if the character is high level that is impossible. Goblins do very little damage even on a max crit. But if my character is capable of dying to a lucky crit from an appropriate threat then by all means let it happen. It's part of the game, part of the tension.

I think (and OP can correct me if I'm wrong) that the problem is less one of having story at all, and more one of whether, when the GM has to choose between allowing the players to make choices and preserving the integrity of "the story" as he or she envisioned it before the players came in, the GM chooses the former over the latter.

As an example of what I think OP is getting at: If the players suspect your villain is up to something when he's trying to get into their good graces early in the story, and decide to kill him, and succeed, then that's unfortunate for your story, but don't have him succeed at saves he fails at, or suddenly have powers he didn't have before. They killed him. Perhaps he should have sent a lackey or just been better prepared for the possibility of being discovered. So goes his story.

>>48553506
>>48553521
>Implying you autists wouldn't throw a shitfit if it actually happened.

Yeah okay.

>>48553506
>And all of that is bullshit.
Right, so the GM has the total responsibility to delivering the story to you, and you just have to sit back and let him do all the work to integrate your character into the setting and plot.

How about fuck you, you entitled sack of shit.

If you don't like the way a game is being run, stop bitching and run your own damn game.

>>48553598
We literally said we were ok with it and you respond with:
>nuh uh, you're not actually ok with it
You're both butt flustered and projecting

>>48553506
>I'm saying that the people who tend to freak out about a game where the players and/or GM don't have a lot of backstory are all over the fucking Internet, act like playing any other way is somehow wrong, and tend to be the vast majority of players who talk about "story" as a key factor in an RPG.

I've never seen anyone (aside autistic storyfags) complaining about short backstories if they got all the substance that is needed to define character. And yes stories are also important part of RPGs, but a story should be collective effort of both GM and players. It shouldn't be something that GM himself decides in advance since choices and consequences are the point of roleplaying just like being in character.

>>48553482
I'm implying that the first GM might have some insight into the process.

And, I already said I don't fully agree with him because it's rather extreme. But, the idea behind it, the truth that the GM is in such absolute control over the world that they could very well ignore the dice at all times, is simple to understand with that quote.

A GM, rolling behind a screen and arbitrarily deciding the numbers upon their own whim, would be indistinguishable from a GM following each dice roll. The question is not whether they can use their own numbers, but whether or not they should, and there's countless scenarios where yes, the GM is justified in making a situation lean towards or against the players.

The idea that a GM needs to maintain a sense of "rule purity" by never fudging is great to tell players and to convince them you follow such a strict commandment, but it's altogether as silly as demanding that a GM should never improvise ever. A good GM can trust their own judgement, and if they decide that a situation calls for a simple fudge, then the players will respect that even if they suspect it.

I'm not advocating that a GM fudge every roll, but if they can improve the game by adjusting the numbers rather than being a slave to the dice, then by all means they should.

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>>48553365

>"Stealing is bad"
>'IT ISN'T IF YOU DON'T GET CAUGHT STUPID'

fug ur rite :DDDD

>>48553641
You're lying on the internet so you can win an argument with a stranger. It's obvious.

>>48553674
Why are you so assblasted at the idea someone is ok with character death? Hell my last character died to a ghoul pack because he rolled a 1 on his save against paralysis and the rest ate him.

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>>48553482

I mean, I don't see *you* drawing huge rooms to watch your games, fampai.

>>48553706
GG did a lot for the industry, but a lot of his ideals have aged badly. He had a hardliner attitude on a lot of subjects.

The fact that you're presenting it as a dilemma makes me think that you're just a butthurt faggot who couldn't roleplay his way out of a paperbag.

>>48553703
>More lying
My group is nothing but 11/10 QTs who give me blowjobs because I'm the only guy there and I'm just so irresistible.

Character death itself isn't the problem. It's shitty pointless deaths that fuck everything up. It makes more work for everybody at the table, and if the GM should avoid it by fudging the dice he should.

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>>48553753

>But a lot of his ideas are super problematic and not very progressive at all

Fuck off, you FAE-playing cock-snorting storygaming cuck.

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>>48552155
Wannabe writers will use the whole "It's meant to be a roleplaying game, we're telling a story!" excuse to justify blatant railroading. People who do this don't understand what roleplay is. I notice a lot of newer players and gamemasters fall into that hole, but eventually mature out of it. You can still have fun on the rails, but more often than not it's a manufactured kind of fun. Especially if it's the type where a lot of fudging is involved. Nothing takes me out of a moment more than knowing I should have died and getting a slap on the wrist for it as things continue to move on uninterrupted. Great moments from that sort of game will be overshadowed by a great moment from a genuine sandbox. Your idea of roleplay seems attached only to the railroad/storybook kind of game, which isn't what roleplay is.

Roleplay is creating a character and behaving as they would when confronting, being confronted by, or happening across all the actors and conflicts the gamemaster provides in his world. The fun comes from getting into that character's mindset, making decisions, and seeing where things go.

On the other side, "rollplay" is meant to refer to people who purposefully break the game with ridiculous builds. They have no character, only statistics. They honestly don't care about any sort of relationship at play beyond "What is this encounter and how can I dominate it?" They want to be able to kick everything's ass, because that's fun to them. Which isn't bad if that's the aim of everyone as a whole. After all, sometimes an OP pissing contest between the players and the gamemaster is pretty fun.

tl;dr: You got your shit twisted homie.

>>48552976
>You're going to catch a lot of flak for this one OP, but you're absolutely correct.

No he isn't. You can have BOTH roleplaying AND a game in the same package and you can enjoy both at the same time.

>>48553808
>>48553800
>>48553808
The amount of butt mad and projecting is off the charts. I can't tell if you two are serious.

>>48553506
>2. Going to expect me to write three pages every time my character dies.
>And all of that is bullshit.
I mean, does your character die every fucking session?

>>48553143
>As far as fudging dice goes, it's something all good GM's do because they recognize that it's a necessary tool for finessing the construction of a game, kind of like a good chef seasons little by little throughout the cooking process, carefully adjusting the taste minutely in order to achieve harmony and balance

If you're ACTUALLY good GM, you don't need to fudge dice. It's certainly a tool you can use for certain kinds of games, but unless you're shitty GM or just learning the system, it's not something you need to do.

>>48553845
>HURR YOU SO MAD I WIN DURR

If you have nothing of value to contribute, then just leave.

>>48553815
>On the other side, "rollplay" is meant to refer to people who purposefully break the game with ridiculous builds.

No. That's called being a cunt. Rollplaying, as far as I can tell, refers to letting the dice do the playing instead of you.

Yes, a rollplayer will be a collection of stats, with no personality, but it's in no relation with the power of their character. I have a rollplayer in my group, and he keeps making shitty fighters FFS.

>>48553800
>It's shitty pointless deaths that fuck everything up. It makes more work for everybody at the table

I never understood this attitude in GMs.

>I'm going to present an obstacle to my party
>But there's a non-zero chance somebody will bite it. This will make sure things feel tense, but still easy-going enough for them to get through without too big a problem
>Oh no, the non-zero chance came about. Instead of dealing with the consequences of these ingame events, I'll reinforce that any risk taken in this game is nonexistent.

If you wanted a 100% chance of the players NOT dying in between point A and point B, WHY DID YOU PUT AN OBSTACLE IN THEIR PATH THAT COULD DEFINITIVELY RESULT IN DEATH?

>>48553841

No shit retard, but roleplay arises naturally from people wanting a narrative to go with their game. A series of contextually connected challenges will naturally produce a story by virtue of players wanting to know more about their situation, the gameworld, and their characters.

Games do not arise naturally from roleplay. At the very least, certainly not interesting ones.

>>48553895
>You're a shit GM if you can't predict every single outcome of every single action the players can possibly take
>You're a shit GM if you can't manipulate fate and chance itself so every dice roll lands perfectly where you want it to

Alright.

>>48553851

These assholes expect it.

They keep reams of 'backup characters' in a binder, all full of MUH BUILDZ, or they just erase the name at the top of their sheet and say that someone exactly like who died showed up.

>>48553901
You're literally just telling me I'm lying about my opinions to say I lost the argument. There is no argument here because nothing I can say can change your mind that I'm lying about what kinds of games I want to play.

And GG is a big figure in the industry, but some things he did haven't aged well like the "nothing the players do matter except by the grace of the GM.". It is generally considered an outdated idea.

>>48553955
You're FUCKING TERRIBLE GM if the die landing on the wrong side ruins everything.

>>48553955
If you can't roll with outcomes and change the story depending on the rolls you are a bad GM.

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>>48553904
>Rollplaying, as far as I can tell, refers to letting the dice do the playing instead of you.

Could you elaborate? Not trying to prod or be a dick, just want clarification. As far as I understand both sides are letting the dice play for them. That's how the game works.

>>48553143
>fudging is something all gm's do
Why are you making blatant lies?
It's not fudging, it's lying to your players.

The thing that gets lost in this whole "The gm decides the level of challenge anyway" is that if the players are given agency and are allowed to gather information about challenges, then they're able to decide their level of challenge. A level 5 party can go into a level 2 dungeon or go into the fuck you tower of doom. If the gm arbitrarily changes these dungeons, then they're removing the choice aspect where players can decide how much risk and challenge they want to take and how big rewards they want. That's what it means with "players decide the challenge" if you give players agency to choose what kind of adventures they want, then there's no need to balance encounters.

>>48553973
>And GG is a big figure in the industry, but some things he did haven't aged well like the "nothing the players do matter except by the grace of the GM.". It is generally considered an outdated idea.

"It's [CURRENT YEAR]" has never been a particularly good rebuttal to any idea, ever.

Strictly speaking, Gary is absolutely correct. As gamemaster, he is the one who interprets the results of player action. In a very literal sense, nothing they do matters, save for the impact that he decides on.

>>48553851
Look, I'm in a grad program. I have to write 40-50 pages a week as is, plus a shitload of research. I want to play an RPG that I don't have to think about outside of sessions.
>>48553956
>has never played an old school campaign ever
There's no such thing as "builds," and character generation takes 15-20 minutes tops.

All I'm getting out of this thread is:

"I am a complete asshole who hates stories, and I need a GM who will punish me with character death at every turn, because if I find out that my character can't die, I will do all kinds of retarded shit as an exploit to 'win'."

The problem is that players like that are THAT GUY.

It's like if you go to a civil war reenactment and some guy goes nuts because "WE CAN'T DIE, GUYS! IT'S FINALLY HIGH TIME THE CONFEDERACY WON THIS BATTLE!", and goes apeshit.

>>48554060

>old school

Dude, I can pull out any number of old minmax guides from late 80's/early 90's BBSes that discuss how to minmax characters, and the methods in which you can trick your GM into including shitty rules options so you can get an edge.

>>48554060
>Look, I'm in a grad program. I have to write 40-50 pages a week as is, plus a shitload of research. I want to play an RPG that I don't have to think about outside of sessions.
Maybe an hour of videogames would be much more fun for you.

>>48554038
>fudging is something all good GM's do

>>48554038

Sounds like you wanna play a videogame rather than something more interactive.

>>48554067
>All I'm getting out of this thread is the smug satisfaction of projecting my head-space Bad Person Guy onto actual people, which allows me to feel superior to my imagined people

Alright then. Let us know when your head is out of the clouds and you decide to read absolutely anything other than what you've imagined.

>>48554093
>fudging is something all bad GM's do

FTFY

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See this thing?

Old School games weren't afraid to encourage dice fudging.

That is the ENTIRE PURPOSE of this tool.

>>48552155
You guys all realise that playing any RPG, that is, assuming control of a fictional persona, whatever the context, complexity of rules or specificity of gameplay procedures, is by essence, roleplaying?

That is. Let's say I roll a Fighting-Man 3D6 in order and play the game by simply saying "I go north", "I tell the barkeeper I need this information and give him some coin for his troubles". If he goes and live out an adventure (which might meet a dead end at the end of the village because, let's say, he encountered a nasty troll who knocked him out to eat him), well congratulations, that's roleplaying.

The whole "roll-playing" emerged from a trend of players of newer editions who were more interested in playing with the mechanics of a game than roleplaying, but even then, if someone enjoys things like builds and balance and believes it makes a better game well that's cool for them, in the end of the day, whether he is roleplaying or not doesn't depend on the way he plays the game, only that he plays a roleplaying game. I really dislike D&D 4th edition, and yet, watching Chris Perkins run it is super exciting, and I'm pretty sure he and his buddies are roleplaying.

>>48554067
Then you have a reading comprehension problem.

>who hates stories
I hate when DMs jerk off to their story and make me participate. I want challenges where there is a real CHANCE of character death. Otherwise I could just watch a movie or something. I don't want goblins attacking me with nerf swords. Where did you get me doing insane THAT GUY shit out of any of that? Because I want an actual challenge where I have to make clever choices to succeed?

>It's like if you go to a civil war reenactment and some guy goes nuts because "WE CAN'T DIE, GUYS! IT'S FINALLY HIGH TIME THE CONFEDERACY WON THIS BATTLE!", and goes apeshit.
No, what you're talking about is going up to someone playing a win-lose game and making it impossible for them to lose, and expecting them to find that fun.
>>48554086
I have fun with my current RPG group. I just think it's stupid that /tg/ wants to play RPGs where your characters literally can't do anything to affect the world around them, and also can't be affected by that world, except what the DM decides, which is going to be exactly what he or she decided in advance.
>>48554148
That's not the entire purpose of a DM screen. The purpose of a DM screen is to let players remain in suspense about what was rolled, and to make charts THAT SAY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ROLL CERTAIN RESULTS more accessible.
>>48554172
Yeah. I'm not saying that "rollplayers" never roleplay or "roleplayers" never roll dice. I'm saying that people who think THE STORY is the only important thing would be better off playing storygames, rather than games where story is only one part of a much larger experience.

>>48554148
>ENTIRE PURPOSE
Not even close. There are multiple reasons to have GM screen that have nothing to do with fudging, even if you don't count the occasional need for GM to do hidden rolls for things like spotting ambushes or noticing that someone is lying.

>>48554099
>players get to research and explore opportunities in a world and have decisions over what they do
>this is less video gamey than the GM deciding goals and what they fight for them
Planning a story isn't the same thing as role playing. Role playing involves playing to find out what happens and the story being what happened. A director or author isn't an actor and thinking from an author standpoint is at odds with thinking from an in-character perspective.

If the players have agency to decide what they do, then they're free to think from in character perspectives. If deciding to take on an easier thing, run, decide to create their own quest is allowed then the GM doesn't have to decide the difficulty of things. If the players have agency, then they'll be able to decide what they do rather than doing the leveled quest the GM has planned. If the GM changes things based on their level, then the players are unable to make rational decisions. The setting that changes arbitrarily erodes agency and immersion because the players are unable to make rational decisions about their actions because the world is arbitrary and non-rational. Rubberbanding difficulty makes player agency pointless. Oblivion levelling for anything the players do is far more video gamey in my view.

>>48554212
>I have fun with my current RPG group. I just think it's stupid that /tg/ wants to play RPGs where your characters literally can't do anything to affect the world around them, and also can't be affected by that world, except what the DM decides, which is going to be exactly what he or she decided in advance.
What does that have to do with coming up with a few developed backstories for a couple of extra characters?

>>48554213
The GM screen also puts rules references in a position that's hard for players to reference in play and separates the GM physically from the players, marking his position as special. It also encourages a GM to sit in his chair the entire session and obscures a clear view of the GM's bodylanguage when he role plays.

>>48554244
I said from the beginning, most DMs who focus heavily on story just want to tell their own story while everyone else watches. Like a multiplayer JRPG. Story can be done well, but if it's at the expense of the game, it basically never is.

>>48554277
It also means the players aren't going to see his notes(or, for that matter, any props he might've brought for the session) by accident.

>>48552155
Also, I think you'll have a lot of fun trying out OSR games if you're not already playing those.

>>48554244
I think too much emphasis is placed on backstory and not enough on motivation desu. A character with 90 pages of backstory whos motivation is "I just want to sit behind a bar and get drunk" is a worse character than a guy with the entire backstory of "Krognar is a badass whos parents got kild by goblins. Eh want to build army and tek over kingdom."

>>48553955
A good GM would deal with consequences of that roll rather than fudge it because good GM doesn't make kissing players' asses or keeping with plans (because GMing is really more about improvisation than planning in advance) a priority.

>>48552155
It's backwards, though.

>>48553996
His arguments shows that there is some point behind OP's rant despite it being deeply misguided. Railroaders are cancer in this hobby because they take away the choices from RPGs and to make things worse try to keep illusions that players them.

>>48552155
>And stop fudging dice. You're cheating your players by taking away even their ability to succeed or fail based on their ability to use resources effectively and choose what risks to take.
Fudging is usually done to mitigate the effects of the GM failing, like if they balanced an encounter really badly. I still dislike it and wouldn't do it, but it's not too hard to understand why some do.

As for the main thing, railroading, whether it's hidden by some choose your own adventure-style choices, can be good for some players but I agree they are missing the point of playing RPGs and might as well just be writing a CRPG.

But it is possible to focus on roleplaying without focusing on the game part, some call it sandbox but I'd just call it true roleplaying, where the characters can make meaningful choices and the GM simply controls the world to respond to the players' actions, by making NPCs and knowing their actions, but without knowing anything more except maybe what would happen without the player characters.

I think if you're playing D&D and want only this, no combat or anything, you are pretty fucking stupid and should play GSS or Ryuutama Green/Blue or something because you're not taking advantage of the system. But narrative can still exist while having combat and good GMs won't even separate the two but make combat a meaningful part of the narrative.

>>48554038
I agree, but
>If the gm arbitrarily changes these dungeons
As long as the GM doesn't design one dungeon, and wherever the players go that's what they find, I think the only other reason to change a dungeon is to fit the level of the PCs. So if they party gets to level 10, the dungeons I had set up for level 1 with goblins might be meaningless and isn't there anymore, but I'm not going to just let the level 5-7 dungeons go to waste, and scaling it to be a bit more difficult isn't lying, that's just leaning towards scaling instead of simulated worlds, which if you don't want to spend fucktons of time is a good decision.

Fudging is lying, and IMO should only be done as damage control if you've made huge mistakes and don't want an encounter to have no meaning/kill no party when it shouldn't. It's a different GM style, just like scaling vs. simulated worlds, but I vastly prefer not fudging both as a player and GM.

>>48554519
You basically said what I was trying to say, but less angrily. I'm absolutely fine with story if it's the story that emerges from what the players do (with a real risk of failure and real challenge). I just hate story when it replaces the game.

When I initially decried "roleplaying" in favor of "rollplaying," I was criticizing the style of roleplaying that tends to be done by people who claim that only what they do IS roleplaying and that, for example, dungeon crawling or other challenge-oriented games were not "real" roleplaying at all.

What I'm getting at is, if the only "real" roleplaying is that which leaves the entire concept of a game behind, such that failure is either impossible or only minor, and success just brings you closer to your GM's pre-planned climax, which itself is going to go a certain way no matter what, then I think "real" roleplaying is lame.

>>48554008
A rollplayer only thinks in the things that are on their sheet. They don't improvise, have ideas, or give, well, character to their character. They are there to roll dice and let that decide how things work out. Instead of "I try to convince the governor that our cause is just" the rollplayer says "I roll diplomacy". If they make a decision that falls outside the purview of dice, they will still refer to things written on their sheet if they can ("my character is lawful good, so he says yes"). A rollplayer is a slave to his character sheet and dice, instead of the other way around.

This is of course a very extreme case, it's more of a spectrum, and they usually aren't even bad folks to play with, just don't expect anything memorable that isn't provided by them rolling amusingly well/bad at something.

>>48554666
A roleplayer better say more than just "I convince him". That's still a rollplayer.

>>48554666
see
>>48554662

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>>48552768
>My point is that I prefer playing a game I can win/lose rather than circlejerk storytime

and I'd rather play a game with deeper motivations than "I gil da ork wit my infinity darkness dragonblade attack i can use as an at will attack, gib munny".

There's nothing wrong with prefering a crunchier playsession but if we both just use extreme examples and just be condescending cunts to each we'll get nowhere. Poweergaming munchkins and circle jerking freeform players are free to have there fun as well but most people want a happy balance of fluff and crunch, most people jsut tend to lean more towards fluff because it's easier. Fiction has no hard rules and therefore muh ork rapebaby is way easier than going through 20 splatbooks to make Infinito, the omnidimensional cluster nuke throwing hyper ninja.

Basically, like most things the correct answer lies somewhere between the fucking extremes.

>>48554038
>is that if the players are given agency and are allowed to gather information about challenges, then they're able to decide their level of challenge

You mustn't forget that the GM is allowed to surprise his players. Hell, he's expected to.

Players can gather information about challenges, but the GM can throw curveballs, surprise encounters, or otherwise challenge the players without them having prior knowledge.

In the end, lying to your players is what GMs do anyway. There's really no dungeon. There is no world. Everything is according to his whim. To try and pretend otherwise is the real lie.

>That's what it means with "players decide the challenge" if you give players agency to choose what kind of adventures they want, then there's no need to balance encounters.

A false choice isn't really a choice. 5th level party can go into the "Babyland where you won't get any experience" dungeon or the "Instant death" dungeon or the "Dungeon that's roughly appropriate for you," and which one will they pick every single time?

Of course, that's just a bad setup, but that's really what the end of this discussion is leading to.

Fudging is good or bad depending on whether the GM is good or bad.

It's simply another tool, and if you are a good GM, it's a fantastic one that allows you to play things a little fast and loose while covering up any rough spots that will inevitably come up regardless of how careful and precise you were going into it.

>>48554636
If you want to scale intelligently, have a few more villains than the players can take on at any one time. So if the players skip the goblin dungeon, then the local necromancer takes it over and now it's a higher level dungeon.
Scaling can work in a sense as long as it's not arbitrary. The players could decide to keep tabs on the necromancer before tackling him and know something's going on in the goblin dungeon.

The thing is a lot of folks seem to argue for gamey oblivion style scaling where you just up stats to keep everything on the players level. Or the players enter an area and the GM changes it on the fly and the players had no way of knowing that this wouldn't be a 2nd level dungeon. It's the arbitrary nature of it that erodes the ability of players to make rational decisions. If the players are unable to make decisions based on setting information, then the players aren't making real decisions since their decisions are pointless.

>>48552155
Because people (just like you, incidentally) need to feel that their objectively equal and identical way of playing the game (as a purely entertainment-based system and thus 100% subjective) feel the need for the things they like to be "right" or "correct" somehow and thus other views to be "wrong" or "incorrect" because for some reason you are almost pathetically hungry for some kind of external validation for some bizarre and nonsensical reason.
Here's the thing; the reason you dislike roleplayers (looking down on the way you like to play) is, in a wonderful example of blatant hypocrisy, the exact same thing YOU are doing RIGHT NOW, and no matter how much your "feelings" tell you you're right to be a hypocrite the fact of the matter is that BOTH views are valid because both views are about finding a way to maximize subjective entertainment.

tl;dr: Stop being a hypocrite and begging for external validation of your subjective opinion like a hungry crackwhore needs her next fix. Just enjoy what you want to enjoy and don't play the types of games you don' want to play.

>>48554709
>>48554798
please see >>48554662

>>48554767
>Scaling can work in a sense as long as it's not arbitrary.

Except, the local necromancer taking it over is arbitrary.

Do you really not understand that? That the GM can easily "rationalize" any alteration or adjustment at their whim?

Hell, a GM can go ahead and say "Well, that attack missed because this guy activated a scroll of Chaos Shield, a powerful spell that adds to their defense at strange intervals."

Arbitrary, the players have very little chance of knowing about it, virtually indistinguishable from fudging, but somehow, it seems like this would make you feel better.

ITT: OP very poorly expresses a hatred for hugbox DMs and railroaders and other people vehemently defend something else.

>>48554829
There is no "real" roleplaying, I agree,
The way that game is played "matters" as much as the results as next year's Super Bowl will in 50 years; not even the slightest bit, possibly less since there's a chance someone might win money or something that becomes the kernel of a vast inherited family fortune or whatever.

The part that matters is "did you have fun"?
If Y, keep playing.
If N, stop playing.

>>48553213
Then find a group that fits that. My ideal game is basically a deadly ass game of sword and sorcery where the players and the bad guys are on roughly equal footing in power and cleverness and planning wins they day (along with a good amount of retreating and blitzkrieging). I play that game in real life, with friends and we all have fun because we are all on the same page about dice rolls being final and death coming from any direction.

HOWEVER! When we played a high fantasy romp in D&D and just wanted to be big goddamn heroes I was GM and I fudged dice because at certain points the outcome would've fucked up the pace and feel of the game. I didn't tell my players about it then but after the campaign when i mentioned it to them they were happy I fudged a little. But to be fair I've known these people for years and played many games with them so I'm actually unfamiliar with playing with randos at the FLGS. Maybe it's radically different? Just my two cents.

>>48554712
The players are never going to have complete information. if they sneak around they can get more info, if they rush in they'll have no info.
The GM can change some things behind the scenes but the most important part of keeping immersion is to keep the "canon". If it's been presented in play, then changes can't be arbitrary. A level of consistency and persistence has to be kept. One of the reasons experienced players seek out information in setting a lot ime is that they want to force the GM to be unable to change things arbitrarily by establishing details in play.

Why would it be a false choice? The players might go into babyland dungeon to powerlevel a character. They might cut a threat in the bud. They could be playing a game other than d&d where monster xp doesn't exist. The instant death dungeon could be survivable for smart players. They might just sneak in and steal some high level loot. They don't have to beat dungeons.

What I'm talking about comes to a core thing of "Is it possible to make rational decisions?" If the game changes in arbitrary ways(which of course always punishes smart play and rewards being a dumbass when difficulty rubberbands) regardless of information then the players can't make meaningful decisions. At this point, whether a game is a railroad or not is a cosmetic decision. The players have no reason to attempt to influence the story because their decisions are unable to be made rationally.

A big thing with fudging is having the players respect you. Pro fudging GM's always claim that players don't know or that it's hidden. It's always known. A GM who blatantly lies to their players never really gains full respect. If a GM fucks up and needs to fudge, they can for one have a gamestyle where encounter balance or difficulty doesn't need to be precisely defined. Or they could as well own up to a mistake and discuss it with players rather than lying and trying to hide their fuck up.

>>48554849
The necromancer is nearby and has goals. This is why you want to think from a very meta perspective when planning a campaign.

You're trying to argue that "lol, no you don't hit. His AC just changed but I'm going to pretend you can't calculate that and lie about it." and "All goblins here have +20 hp for reasons." is the exact same thing as "Your spy told you that a local warlord was recruiting the goblins a couple months ago. You can go confront them or do a scouting mission to figure out what you're doing."

I guess d&d and dogs in the vineyard are the same exact game since you play a character in both of them. They both have the same organization of having a GM and players so they're not at all different from each other.

It's the information part and being based in setting changes. If the guys stats suddenly change, then you're destroying the players ability to make decisions. You're saying "The gm has dictatorial power and can make arbitrary decisions." which is true but not examining what decisions the GM makes or how they run their game beyond that level of detail.

>>48554935

Who hurt you?

No, seriously.

Did you have a bad GM?

Why don't you trust GMs?

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>>48552155
I can do both.

I really try to feel out what the other players are doing before going full meta or full fluff. but either way I like to give both some kind of excuse for why they have their abilities. It's kinda fun trying to fluff out an optimized character.

>>48555047

HURRRRRRR ITS BULLSHIT WHY DOES SARUMAN HAVE SUPER STRONG ORCS I CAN SEE THE MONSTER MANUAL HERE ORCS HAVE 1-8 HIT POINTS FUCK YOU GM, I'M GOING HOME YOU CHEATER

No one wants to be railroaded, at least not knowingly. For a competent group of players the general rules seem to be

0.Make sure everyone is on the same page and HAvING FUN
1. Don't railroad, talk to your group about what they want, your fun as GM is just as important as their's (if your legendary heroes campaign turns into rug salesman simulator and you aren't having fun running that let your group fucking know instead of being passive aggressive)
2. Fudge only when it will ruin the game completely (if a character dying reasonably ruins the game completely your group is shit)
3. Don't powergame for the sake of it. If your group agrees to play a squad of average joe soldiers don't make a 5 star general ultra time wizard.
4. Don't be a dick

>>48555047
Like, the point of the necromancer is that it's based in things that have been priorly established in the campaign and is a logical outcome of the setting.

Because it's a logical outcome, it's rational to the players. They could invest resources into investigating it, they could predict it, etc. It's not an arbitrary decision on the part of the GM in the sense that there's in setting reasoning for it.

That's part of why setting up a campaign requires meta decisions. A strong rogues gallery and a detailed initial area. That way the GM has established the necromancer early on and isn't just materializing an arbitrary threat from out of the void because the players gained levels.

>>48555074
>why does sauruman have super strong orcs?
The players could investigate and figure out what urak-hai are. If the players trust the GM not to fudge or make up arbitrary bullshit, then they'll investigate rather than just accepting that the GM wants to fuck them over or "we're strong so the GM just created stronger orcs"

The players are only going to question it or look for in setting reasoning if they have a basic level of trust that the GM doesn't lie to them.

>>48554935
But why exactly would good GM need to fudge dice? Only reasons I can see is either pathological need/desire to please players, falling to railroading because he lacks actual storytelling (that is improvisation) skills or being so narcissistic that he absolutely wants players to hear "my speshul cool story that I planned for months" and won't accept anything else. Besides in case of player choices making "muh cool story" impossible to do, he can tell it OOC after the game (if it's actually that good) or even better use it for later.

I can understand it's good tool for beginning GMs (and have used it myself in rare cases because I'm not that good at GMing), but I fail to see why it should be used as anything else than absulute last measure in case of emergency.

>>48554935
>The GM can change some things behind the scenes but the most important part of keeping immersion is to keep the "canon". If it's been presented in play, then changes can't be arbitrary.

You are underestimating the power of the GM. The concept of "canon" is adorable, but when push comes to shove, a GM has a thousand tools at his disposal to alter and adjust the world.

They can change anything, especially in a world with magic, and explain it away quite easily, if they even need to explain it at all. Do you honestly think the players care if the goblin dungeon they've only heard rumors about is actually controlled by a necromancer or not?

>The players might go into babyland dungeon to powerlevel a character. They might cut a threat in the bud.

But they don't get any experience, and there's only weak babies there. And, the Instant Death dungeon is simply instant death, regardless of how smart you are. This is basically a broad example I'm using to help illustrate a point for you. A point, that, as I continue to explain it to you, might be beyond you.

>Pro fudging GM's always claim that players don't know or that it's hidden. It's always known.

Known and suspected are two very different things, and no, it's not even always suspected, unless there's a player who is a bit of a cunt who suspects everyone. It doesn't even take a particularly clever GM to hide fudging, and I'm betting there's been countless times when a GM pulled the wool over your eyes with something as simple as them professing "I NEVER fudge."

>A GM who blatantly lies to their players never really gains full respect.

That is what GM's do. They blatantly lie. They are creating a fictional world, populating it with myths and illusions, communally constructing a story with the players using the dice as a source of inspiration. Hell, it's a bigger lie to say the dice matter, when in fact the GM is in complete control of when the dice need to be rolled and the consequences of those rolls.

>>48555219
The only reason I think to fudge dice is if the rules are giving an answer that's completely unacceptable to the group. At that point, it should be followed by discussing possible rules changes after the session.
>>48555227
If the players trust a GM to be fair and interested in the players creating the story; then they'll give a shit about the GM making completely arbitrary changes.

You're arguing for why lowered expectations should be celebrated and encouraged.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that you're arguing in favor of toxic gaming where the GM doesn't respect the players and that the GM has to earn player respect seems foreign to you.

>>48555227
You're pretty much arguing that the players being able to make rational decisions is pointless.
I'm guessing you've never made a meaningful decision in game if you think whether that's possible isn't an important part of letting players create the story.

>>48555219
But why exactly would a good GM need to avoid fudging dice? Only reasons I can see is either pathological need/desire to pretend that dice rolls only they see matter to anyone, a bizarre misunderstanding of what it means to lie to a player, or an arrogant and foolish dedication to a strict outline at the expense of the player's ultimate ability to challenge their imagination and creativity.

As to why a good GM needs to fudge dice, it's because they can recognize opportunities where adjusting a die result can lead to more interesting challenges and encounters, and overall a better experience for everyone. To pretend there's never a moment where any GM, regardless of how skilled they might be, would be unable to improve the game by ignoring a die roll, is just not really understanding what golden opportunities might look like.

It might even be as simple as rolling random loot on a table, and instead of offering the pointless item the players are just going to sell, they choose the next one above it that will make the rest of the dungeon a lot more exciting.

Fudging is a great tool if you're a good GM, and being a slave to dice is just admitting you don't know when to trust your own judgement over a random number generator.

>>48555383
...until your players realize you're fudging and stop caring about the game because they know they'll never fail at anything unless they try something you don't approve off.

>>48555383
Arbitrarily changing the setting and results of dice is smoothing over poor GMing rather than something good. If you need to fudge, then you've fucked up already at that point.

If I wanted to just play a win/lose game with no element of creativity, story telling, or imagination, I'd just play a vidya.

If I wanted a "circle jerk fan fiction" I'd do freeform role playing. But that's shit so I'd never do it.

Tabletops are good if you want gameplay AND structure to a story, but IMO the story is the most important part.

>>48555342
>then they'll give a shit about the GM making completely arbitrary changes.

I don't think you really appreciate how easy it is to "disguise" an arbitrary change.

Hell, even under the example of "goblin dungeon repurposed by a necromancer" is just applying a two-second attempt to rationalize what's ultimately the GM wanting to scale up a dungeon.

>>48555365
>You're pretty much arguing that the players being able to make rational decisions is pointless.

Not at all. Suspension of disbelief is a powerful thing.

What I'm revealing to you is just how little importance the "game" aspect really is, and how easily it can be changed on a whim.

No matter how "rational" a decision a player might think one is, the GM can either believe it to be irrational, or simply even leave it up to the fates and have the players carefully planned action fail on account of some incredibly bad luck.

The GM needs to maintain a suspension of disbelief, but that's ultimately separate from any consideration over whether they fudge or not. A good GM can convince the players that each roll and decision they make matters, even if they're fudging every single roll, while a bad GM can easily convince the players that each roll and decision they make doesn't matter, all while following each dice roll exactly.

>>48552155
I agree fudging dice is bad, and the DM *controlling* (rather than arbitrating) the outcomes kills the experience.

I agree storygame elitists are obnoxious.they're a different kind of game. No everyone prefers them, fuck off.

I agree plot armor is not fun, particularly when it's just DM whims, not part of the game. "I burn edge not to die" I'm alright with. Spending edge to reroll, I'm alright with. Not my preference, but it's okay.

Playing as a writer instead of a character, and directly interacting with the narrative /scene/environment through game mechanics outside your character? Generally not good. It's jarring. The more often it happens, the harder it is for me to get into character or get invested in the game.

>>48555438
>...until your players realize you're fudging and stop caring about the game because they know they'll never fail at anything unless they try something you don't approve off.

We're talking about good GM's here.
Good GM's know when and how to fudge, and even if it's discovered, it's done in a way that the players can approve of and respect.

This isn't mystic talk here. I know GM's who fudge, and even when they do it not quite as cleanly as I'd like, I respect the times they do it because they are making decisions that benefit everyone else's experience.

And it goes both ways, with sometimes making a too difficult challenge easier, but also sometimes making a too easy challenge more difficult.

>>48555453
> If you need to fudge, then you've fucked up already at that point.

Not really. No GM is perfect or can plan for everything. Often, they'll need to improvise something on the spot, and fudging helps smooth over small things that might escalate into an actual problem if left alone.

If you NEED to fudge, something might have gone wrong, but a good GM doesn't only fudge when he desperately needs to (typically because they don't paint themselves into that kind of situation), but when they know that fudging a result will improve the game.

>>48554353
But anon, character motivations flow out of a backstory.

>>48555553
The difference between the necromancer and the 2 second attempt is that the necromancer has existed in the setting priorly rather than materializing from nothingness. The key is the players can gain information about this change, make decisions based on the change, etc. If your game doesn't support the ability of players to make meaningful decisions, then I'm not surprised that they don't make those decisions or you don't think they care about it.

You're not telling me anything new. I used to think about it like you did back in my early 20's. Whether the meaning is illusionary or not will influence how the GM runs their game. I doubt you're as smart as you think they are.

You're not understanding what rational decision means in this context. Whether the GM believes it to be rational or not doesn't effect whether they can make a rational decision. The big thing is whether they're able to gain information and if that information is arbitrary or not. This isn't to say that their information is truthful or that they can get information.

The GM doesn't need to create a story to have a story. You can have all kinds of illusionary things but if the players ability to make decisions based on information isn't there or if the effect of their actions is decided based on the GMs interest in what happens, then there's no reason for them to take charge of the story or be invested in it.

The real point of respecting your players is that you'll have a bunch of babby players if you babby them. If you want players to play smart, be invested and take charge of the story; then you need to treat them with respect rather than thinking of them as playthings. When you treat your players as creative and intelligent adults, they're much more likely to step the fuck up.

>>48555644
>I agree fudging dice is bad, and the DM *controlling* (rather than arbitrating) the outcomes kills the experience.

You've never actually sat behind the DM's screen before, have you?

They set up the experience. They control everything from how many monsters appear to who they attack to when they choose to run away or fight to the death.

Believing they're sacrificing control because they're listening to dice is kind of like believing that a man is disarmed because he took five bullets out of his revolver. When it comes down to it, they've got the shot that counts, whether it manifests itself as fudging a dice roll, or having another group of monsters appear to make the battle harder, or even just ass-pulling a divine intervention.

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>>48552155
When people contrast role-playing and roll-playing, they don't typically mean what you're saying they mean. Roll-playing is when you aren't interest in much beyond the mechanics of a system and how they play out. How good are your attributes? What's your chance to hit in combat? How does a feat affect your saving throws? Did you critical on that last roll? That kind of thing.

The story/plot exists for little more than to set up the next fight, and things like acting in character and learning the history of setting are annoying distractions that slow the game down. Basically, you're approaching the adventure as if it like a wargame and treating things like characterization like that superfluous page of text that pops up in an action video game that you just hit a button to skip past because it's not telling you anything pertinent to the mechanics of the next board you're about to play, but rather explains the story behind how your character got involved in shit (and you don't care, because you're there to blast shit, not read some military fan fiction).

Roll-playing is preferring to gloss over all that annoying role-playing shit and just roll the damn dice already.

>>48555689
I'm more saying that a character with a paragraph backstory and a strong motivation is better than someone with pages of backstory who only reacts to things and has no real motivation of their own. The motivation is more important than the history part of a backstory.

>>48555763
>he difference between the necromancer and the 2 second attempt is that the necromancer has existed in the setting priorly rather than materializing from nothingness.

There is no difference between the necromancer existing before hand or appearing later, especially because the players are understood to not be omniscient.

>The real point of respecting your players is that you'll have a bunch of babby players if you babby them

Respecting players also includes not pretending that the dice rolls matter compared to more important concerns. And, once again, fudging can go either way, so you might actually fudge an encounter to make it harder.

Treating them as "creative and intelligent adults" does not mean pretending that they're little children that will cry and throw a tantrum because you fudged a die. If they're adults, they should have long since realized just how arbitrary the entire game is, instead of falling for the childish pretenses that are the equivalent of believing the Wizard of Oz is a glowing head or that the Tooth Fairy is real.

If the players are adults, they'll recognize good fudging and carry on, without acting like they're invincible or that their actions have no consequences. If anyone is belittling players, I daresay it's you.

>>48555644
Ugh, phone posting. At least you get the idea.

>>48555685
If you fudge dice in secret, and I find out, how can I trust you to ever GM fairly? How can you expect me to be invested in anything my character accomplished when for all I know, skill+luck doesn't ever enter into it, and it's all just you deciding what you want to happen?

That's me speaking as a player. Because of those views as a player, I'm a sandbox dm who runs plot threads concurrently on a timeline that the pcs may or may not get involved in at their discretion, that they *can* fail through bad luck, poor decisions, or waiting, and roll in the open and write down the decided target dc before the player rolls.

If somehow I goof and make a homebrew boss monster too hard or something? I'll lower its hp, (or some other stat the pcs haven't seen used).

>>48555871
>There is no difference between the necromancer existing before hand or appearing later
So if you return to a village and it's been replaced with wilderness with no in-setting reason for this and the only response is "Fuck you, I'm the dictator." then this is completely okay?
If the players don't know about the necromancer, maybe they never investigated that part of the campaign. Maybe the necromancer keeps very good operational security. The key takeaway is that it was possible to get that information in the first place.

I'd say you're belittleing them by robbing them of easy victories or defeats. Deciding that the players shouldn't be able to make rational decisions or that their ability to make meaningful decisions doesn't matter disrespects their ability to play or decide what they want to do in the game.

You view what's possible for the GM to do and deciding that it's a responsibility for the GM to be an arbitrary dictator of the game or that the GM ultimately doesn't need to support the players in the game. It's belittleing to defend the idea that the players decisions shouldn't matter, the GM has no reasons to exercise restraint in their power, or that the only justification the GM needs to give is "Fuck you. I'm the GM and you're the player. This is a game. Suck my dick."

>>48555880
>If you fudge dice in secret, and I find out, how can I trust you to ever GM fairly

Because, scary as it might sound to you, sometimes "GMing fairly" includes fudging.

What is more fair? An encounter going sour due to a series of bad rolls that tip the balance of the encounter into a spot that ruins everything you've done beforehand, or adjusting one roll so that a challenging encounter is simply crippling, rather than fatal?

>I'll lower its hp, (or some other stat the pcs haven't seen used).

That's fudging. Not fudging the dice, but fudging the stats. Which is ultimately not at all different from fudging the dice.

Like shit, don't tell me you've been actually agreeing with me this entire time, but foolishly thinking there was a meaningful difference between fudging dice and stats.

>>48555766
Nice assumptions. See >>48555880.

Most of the time my encounters aren't prescripted either, they come from where the PCs are, and when they go there. I make heavy use of custom designed random encounter tables a lot of the time.

Though as mentioned, if I legitimately fucked up I will reduce my custom creatures hp. Very rare occurrence though. Hasn't needed to happen in the past two years of gming.

>>48555967
?So if you return to a village and it's been replaced with wilderness with no in-setting reason for this and the only response is "Fuck you, I'm the dictator." then this is completely okay?

Make up an in setting reason. Ta dah.

>I'd say you're belittleing them by robbing them of easy victories or defeats.

I'd rather rob them of easy victories and defeats then rob them of challenges.

And, hell, who ever said they don't have opportunities for easy victories and defeats? I'd just rather they have them because of them being clever or stupid combined with luck, rather than just luck alone.

>>48555880
>If you fudge dice in secret, and I find out, how can I trust you to ever GM fairly?
It's something you want to be careful about, for sure. But when you fudge things, you're typically doing something to improve the immediate game experience, so you just have to counterbalance that against the damage you might do to people's long term enjoyment of the game. It's kind of like happy endings in books or movies. All other things being equal, happy endings are the way to go. Assuming the story is well executed, you're rooting for the protagonist to win. You're in their corner and when victory is achieved, you feel a sense of elation. The problem is when a happy ending becomes so predictable that it undermines the tension in the story and takes away one of the most important motivations to actually read/watch the thing.

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>>48555968
>An encounter going sour due to a series of bad rolls that tip the balance of the encounter into a spot that ruins everything you've done beforehand

>Random chance was fun until it turned out to be random

Why do all fudge shills sound like this

>>48555968
I just got here. You're responding to my second post. I am not the op.

I think there's a meaningful difference in that i strictly limit my fudging, and don't fudge player dice roll results.

I don't fudge dice to protect the players from death when is their own fault though bad luck or bad choices.

The only fudging i do is weakening monsters I drastically misdesigned, and again, I haven't needed to in the past two years.

>>48555553
>What I'm revealing to you is just how little importance the "game" aspect really is, and how easily it can be changed on a whim.

You sound like the worst kind of GM. Why even pretend to play the system you chose to play if all you want to do is tell your shitty story?

>No matter how "rational" a decision a player might think one is, the GM can either believe it to be irrational, or simply even leave it up to the fates and have the players carefully planned action fail on account of some incredibly bad luck.

And here is where a good GM distinguishes himself from the likes of you. It's his role, as a GM, to be a fair judge, and to decide how well the player's plan works to solve the challenge before them. Sure, some rolls might be involved, but a good GM usually rewards their players for creativity. Although it's understandable that you wouldn't know a good GM if he spat in your fucking eye.

>The GM needs to maintain a suspension of disbelief, but that's ultimately separate from any consideration over whether they fudge or not. A good GM can convince the players that each roll and decision they make matters, even if they're fudging every single roll, while a bad GM can easily convince the players that each roll and decision they make doesn't matter, all while following each dice roll exactly.

Actually, you're completely wrong. Transparency in a game is a very, very easy thing to achieve, by just rolling dice in the open. Now, at this point you can still influence the HP any particular monster has left, but other than that, there's not a lot of wiggle room.

>>48555852
Sure, but a guy who can't write more than a fucking line of backstory, probably won't care about little things like motivation and playing his character during the game. You know?

>>48556003
This is about a roleplaying game, not a movie. I want to get into character and play my character in the world. I want my decisions to have consequence. I can't do that without the possibility of failure and death based on how dangerous the situation is. I'm not looking to see "how Steve gets to the good end and never had to run away".

>>48556003
>All other things being equal, happy endings are the way to go.
Pfft. Fucking shit tastes. Who bittersweet masterrace here?

>>48555968
>Because, scary as it might sound to you, sometimes "GMing fairly" includes fudging.

That's the literal opposite of fairness. If you're going to play by the rules, then play by the rules. If you're not, then you might as well throw them out entirely. Fudging might, in some cases, make for a BETTER game, but it sure as hell is not FAIR by any meaning of the word.

>>48556089

Also, generally if the system has (you don't die unless you get massive negatives), it's pretty easy to not kill characters unless you want to.

And some systems, rather than attempt to do non-lethal damage, just say you do knock out characters at hp 0.

Why do character kill or kill in combat then?

Generally for narrative reasons.

Like it doesn't make sense for the "heros" to live survivors.

>>48556246

Do you think that "pardoning" people is fair?

Or do you assume that the writers of any law or rule have perfectly designed it, and there can be no mitigating circumstances?

>>48556068
>I don't ever fudge player dice results.
This is important.

You setting the DCs after you hear my result, really kills it for me as a player. Ive yet to meet a GM who does this that sets the DCs in any way even resembling consistency, and after a little while, it shows.

Then , every time I succeed or fail (unless I rolled a 1 or something), I always suspect the GM is just fucking me around again, because pattern recognition.

>>48556252
What the fuck are you even trying to say? Which side of the argument are you even on?

>>48556278

This. Every GM likes to pretend they're smart and totally concealing their fudging from their players, but patterns and tics start to reveal themselves pretty quickly whenever they make a habit of it.

If you guys had a poker face that good, you'd be in Vegas playing poker, not in your basement playing D&D.

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what a weird thread, i don't get why you would lie in the first place
you're the DM, can't you just say what happens instead of rolling if "the player would understand", whats the point of pretending to roll and lying if your defense is "if they found out about the fudging they would understand" then just don't lie to them in the first place
i think its because you know if they actually found out they would be annoyed, otherwise you wouldn't lie

>>48556272
Pardoning is a legitimate part of the legal system. If we're going to make that comparison, then pardoning would be invoking rule zero while fudging is more akin to tampering with evidence to make sure the trial goes the way you want it to, or perhaps arranging someone to escape from the prison.

>>48556272
I think most "mitigating circumstances" apply in law, not in a game.

If you *really* want an allowance for mitigating circumstances in a game, it should be covered mechanically, like shadowrun's edge stat.

>>48555997
>rather than just luck alone.
So you should change the rules.
This is what I mean about "fudging keeps a GM from improving their game or investigating structural problems"

If you think luck is too big of a thing in your game, discuss it with your players and reduce the influence of the dice. This is part of being honest with your players.

Everyone seems to argue to fudge to allow players to live when they otherwise wouldn't. How is this any different from
The opposite, fudging go kill players when they would otherwise live. Both could be done in pursuit of "the narrative" however the GM defines it. Both are the same action. It's the same action to the same ends, one the person merely tries to justify to themselves.

>>48556388
Such as switching your d20s out for 3d6, or 2d10., and deciding on what the new crit ranges will be based on how often you want crits to happen.

>>48556355
This. If its defensible, why lie about it. I once had a crit kill a pc at the beginning of the campaign in the first round of combat before the player has ever taken a combat action. Rolled it in the open.

I told the players "that didn't happen" and everyone said "yeah okay fair enough".

Now we don't start at level 1 anymore.

>>48553521
See, this is the attitude Iwish more people had. I've had fellow players throw tantrums until we had to redo upon that of leaving, which is a big deal when that player and that player's girlfriend are the only other players. I died 4 times prior in that campaign to crits and casters, btw. Took it in stride each time. Each time came back with a character with a completely different personality. I was actually complimented on the shaman who was cut in half by a crit on the first turn of combat.

>>48554689
I loathe when people say, "I convince him," instead of giving a possible argument. Speak for your character! Hell, it might change the DC! You might not need to roll something you thought you would because you said something the NPC liked. It also gives your character depth. Two characters would try to convince the shopkeeper to give a discount, but HOW they would do that differs.

I think the biggest issue OP has is being invited to sit down and play a role playing game and finding out all the "role playing" and all the "game" has been removed. People just need to get a clear understanding of what kind of game is being played, but even an improv troupe wouldn't tolerate being railroaded by one member.

>>48556221
Bittersweet would get really fucking old if 95% of stories ended that way.

>>48556161
And I'm not suggesting that there should be no possibility of failure or death. But if the GM miscalculates and the party is basically defenseless against some monster power, which doesn't work the way he thought it would (thus leading the challenge to be different from the one he intended), it's perfectly alright for him to secretly tweak things.

And, honestly, in cases of lame, anti-climactic, unfun deaths, if the GM can get away with tweaking things to avoid them without the player's being any the wise, then more power to him. If he never lets anything bad happen, then things aren't going to be as exciting anymore, but if he reduces the bad things that happen by specifically addressing the least fun instances, that tends to be a net positive.

>>48556221
>>48557902

I generally prefer the endings to be a natural resolution to the game being played.

If all the players managed to get through and win the day then fuck yeah happy ending.

If we win but a few of us die on the way or fail to save so and so then bettersweet.

Hell even a TPK can be enjoyable if the game is run right

>>48557980
The happy endings thing was aimed at books and movies more than role-playing games, which are a lot closer to simulations than the other two are. With that in mind, you should probably end up with bittersweet more in RPGs (since there is no question of the integrity of the simulation or the disadvantages of railroading in a book or movie). I would say that in RPGs, you want to avoid an overabundance of bad endings, TPKs and so forth, even if that means putting your thumb on the scales. But like putting your thumb on the scales, this is something you need to do discreetly, and as a result, there are limits of what you can accomplish with it without serious repercussion. You might be able to fool somebody into thinking something weighs 10 or even 20 percent more with your thumb on the scale, but you can't get away with 300 percent.

Play a game with both.
Story + challenge + inter-character stuff is possible.

>>48558522
Yeah. But if you emphasize whatever story you already have in your head as THE most important thing, you're going to end up with jack shit as far as challenge goes, and probably limit the inter-character stuff as well.

>>48558555
Maybe I've just gotten super lucky with my DM.

He's definitely got an overarching story, but will adjust based on players interactions.

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>>48553143
This, holy shit this.

It's like GM's are practically subhuman or something and everything is for the glorious, never-mistaken, always-noble and precious players and nothing else. The guy who actually breaks his back to make a story, world and much more for your selfish sake? Nah, fuck him, let's all have fun, and by all, I don't mean that one guy who is our servant, of course.

>>48553143
Word.

>>48554465

This.

The first guy also ignores that there are game styles beyond the narrative of heroic success. Therea are players and GMs who enjoy a simulationist approach too, where bad luck = shit the player just has to deal with.

What's with the hate for GM's? It dumbfounds me.

Sorry I am a bit new to this board, I might be asking a wrong question.

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>>48553143
>In a way, GM's that fudge the dice actually provide their players with a greater sense of freedom and agency

I'm sorry friend, but I'm at my bullshit allowance for the day. I can't read anymore of this.

>>48559054

Agreed. It's like an avatar of cognitive dissonance is shitposting on /tg/.

>>48553952

>If you wanted a 100% chance of the players NOT dying in between point A and point B, WHY DID YOU PUT AN OBSTACLE IN THEIR PATH THAT COULD DEFINITIVELY RESULT IN DEATH?

If my players are at a bar, and a character starts a bar fight somehow, if another character (lets say for argument sake that its a character who was against fighting) ended up dead because of it, it may be better for the group if that character doesn't die, but instead is heavily injured.

Character deaths can be (depending on the game) a big deal mechanically speaking, players are not always willing to just say "hey, its part of the game, no problems here." especially when possible days/ weeks/ months/ years have been spent with this one character.

Now I totally agree that if that scenario happened, it is part of the game, that character should be dead and we according to the rules of the game should be forced to live with it. But if my group is going to have more fun if the healer wasn't killed effectively by accident, I don't find issue with fudging a roll or two.

We're a bunch of people sitting around a table playing house, however people want to play, who cares?

>>48558861
>BOW DOWN BEFORE THE DM. THE DM IS YOUR GOD AND YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD COUNT YOURSELF LUCKY TO BE IN HIS PRESENCE. GROVEL BEFORE THE GOD-COCK OF THE DUNGEON MASTER, LEST HE KILL YOUR CHARACTER! YOUR PALTRY "ACTIONS" ARE IRRELEVANT! ALL IS AT HIS WHIM AND HIS WHIM ALONE! REMEMBER THIS! RULES ARE NAUGHT, FOR HE IS THE DUNGEON MASTER, AND YOU ARE IN HIS DUNGEON!
Go fuck yourself. Seriously. If you can't have fun being surprised along with the rest of the players when one of them crits the boss and kills him round one, or when they come across a troll encampment and two of them get eaten even though it was a random encounter, or if you can't handle the possibility that the players actions might ACTUALLY affect the world around them, then you should not only not be DMing, you are, and I say this without the slightest touch of irony, having fun wrong. Because despite the way you've tried to frame it, you aren't just having fun WITH the players, you're taking away their ability to actually BE playing a game in order to stroke your own ego.

Go fuck yourself.

>>48559046
I DMed a game every week for a couple years until about six months ago. I don't hate DMs. I hate DMs who use DMing as an excuse to make themselves feel better about being shitstains by bullying their players and taking away player agency, deciding for themselves what happens in all cases, so that if the DM thinks what you did was cool or serves his/her plot, it succeeds, and if he or she doesn't, then it fails, but ROLLS THE DICE ANYWAY SO THE PLAYERS CAN'T TELL THEY'RE BEING LIED TO.

Fuck these shitty DMs.

>>48559114
>you are, and I say this without the slightest touch of irony, having fun wrong
/tg/

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>>48559046
I think it's because in some areas (not where I live) there are very few people that GM games and so players feel 'trapped' with GM's because there are no others to choose from. Especially millennials who actively work against each other making a decision as a group, no one wants to be subjected to that and I bet few volunteer to GM. I have no comment about RPG popularity, but it's probably becoming more difficult for people to find GM's (as the GEN-X people start to get older and less patient with newbies) and when they do, like at a store (for fucksake), the GM's can turn out to be fucking horrible choads. Also, GM's want players to choose from (because most RPG players are terrible) so they run only those systems guaranteed to bring in a lot of players (Pathfinder, 5E basically) and mr. "I need to play Torchbearer because I read about it on the internet" is shit out of luck finding a GM.

>>48559133
Read the next sentence. Shitting all over your players to have a good time yourself isn't just having fun wrong, it's being a human being wrong.

>>48559054
You should finish reading that sentence though.

>because the GM does not have to prepare and calculate each potential scenario to the same degree, making improvising scenes considerably easier. While providing them with a sense of challenge is also important, that shouldn't come at the cost of forcing players to exist in a limited environment

I'm curious, lets say that I am a GM who fudges rolls for my group, and my group has fun. Now lets say I am a GM who doesn't fudge rolls and my group has fun.

Why the fuck does it matter which of these I am?

Now if I did one of those things and the group HATED playing, there is of course a huge problem that needs to be fixed, but if I play my make belief game one way and you play your make belief game another, why the fuck does anyone care?

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>mfw /tg/ has badwrongfun near me

>>48559114
>That greentext wall

Wow look at all that shit absolutely nobody said.

>>48559253
I think your correct here, we have a GM that runs a game once a year that is notorious for fudging rolls, yet characters die often enough that it doesn't matter and no one notices too much. He hates when his big bads drop in one round though, but he forgets that the HP number on the page is something he ultimately decides! Players yell at him and it's hilarious.

>>48559315
If you just break the rules you set down to the players willy-nilly by doing things like fudging dice rolls and changing enemy abilities mid-fight and shit, you are being shitty to your players. That is a human being, being shitty to other human beings while pretending to be their friend.

Now, if you are defending a human being being shitty to other human beings based on "I'm the DM," then you're saying the DM has the right to be shitty to the players. In other words, the DM is above all that "being decent to other people" garbage.

What I said in greentext is basically that, taken to its logical conclusion.

>>48559253
Because it's a good tool that doesn't deserve any sort of negative stigma. You can choose not to fudge, but there's no reason to decry people that do

>>48559444
Then why not tell your players, "Hey, the dice say you die there, but I don't want you to?"

Could it be that it would ruin the game for them to know you're playing with safety gloves on?

>>48559444
>lying to your friends and cheating in games you play with them doesn't deserve any negative stigma

>>48555547
>the story is the most important part
>implying it's not the adventure

plen

>>48553482
He was.

A lot of the 'bad GM' rhetoric he gets accused of was specific instance and they are always taken out of context. Such as "if a fellow player kills your palandin's mount, your paladin should kill his ass" is because a paladin's mount was a gift from his god to the paladin, an angel given mortal form to serve the paladin as a mount. Someoen just killed a god's servant in cold blood, yes you should fucking smite his ass. Tomb of Horrors was a response to 'Gary is too nice of a GM' and never really meant for tourney play - someone other than Gary offered it to the tournament for use.

>>48553450
>the illusion of a challenge
>the ILLUSION of a challenge
So basically, never actually present real challenges to your players. Delude them into thinking they actually made good choices or bad ones according to your godly wisdom.

I actually think Gygax was a pretty cool guy, but if you think you should only give the ILLUSION of a challenging experience to players, you're so full of shit.

>>48559532
>separating story and adventure
Idiot.

>>48553143
>In a way, GM's that fudge the dice actually provide their players with a greater sense of freedom and agency

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

And now lets tune in for our daily 5 minutes of hate

I'm not going to let a player die an ignominious death in the most exciting combat scene in the adventure. I'll let him die an ignominious death failing a climb check on a slippery rope in a dark cave, but not as he is facing the Master of Demons in the Highest tower of the temple while his friends fight with him. I'll let him die a spectacular death during that fight, sure.

If I fudge dice, it's not for MY story, it's for THEIR story. I want them to be able to claim a glorious death if they persevered to the end of the campaign.

People don't get that the idea behind a game is fun, but the idea behind a roleplaying game is so that the player's characters can be fucking amazing.

>>48559687
>the idea behind a roleplaying game is so that the player's characters can be fucking amazing.
That is not true for storygames (about a good story) OR for challenge-focused games (about players overcoming challenges by thinking cleverly, and getting the fun and satisfaction that comes from that, as well as enjoying the story that emerges from the series of related obstacles).

>>48559212

Or you could invent scenes when they're called for anyway, like literally every GM does, and still not fudge.

>>48559687
How gracious of you to open up windows in your iron-clad narrative where the player's actions actually matter, it's most generous, where is the line to suck your cock?

>>48555547
>a win/lose game with no element of creativity, story telling, or imagination, I'd just play a vidya.
You've got shit taste in vidya if that's what you think a vidya is.

>>48559799
To be fair, that doesn't even seem to be what OP was suggesting.

>>48552155
Because, and get this, there is very little actual fucking skill involved in tabletop gaming. There's no real competitive element to it, and so the shitstains who are treating it like something they can win at are almost without fail bringing endless amounts of cheese and rules lawyering to the table and generally getting in the way of gameflow or doing their best to outshine other players if the system allows for it, and if the system doesn't allow for it? You're playing a game of chance. There's no strategy to that. Rollplaying is inherently pointless.

You know why I play tabletop? You know why I GM? It's an experience you don't get by reading a book or watching TV, because it's a genre where you, YOU are interacting with the world through your character. You have the power to change things. You have choices and possibilities which are far more numerous than in any choose-your-own-adventure book.

I don't fudge dice because without consequences for actions there is no fucking story.

>>48553063
Yeah, but being able to identify him means we can better ignore him.

>>48559819
Play a game that isn't easy to cheese.
>You're playing a game of chance. There's no strategy to that.
Weird. So the top poker players in the world just have a magical aura of luck around them? Or maybe there's such a thing as probability and you take it into account when making decisions. Hmm, which one seems more likely to you?

I actually enjoy the interaction with the world element. And I enjoy story when it arises naturally and/or is just enough to give flavor. Hell, I think the original Ravenloft is awesome, and it's full of story. The problem is that DMs who come in all STORY STORY STORY invariably railroad the shit out of players, fudge dice rolls to make things "more dramatic," and otherwise turn "YOU are interacting with the world" into "YOU are in a museum full of mediocre art and not allowed to touch anything."

I approve of this spoiler.

>>48559687
old d&d was actually very much so about dying in stupid ways to random encounters, many extremely deadly attacks and poisons, pretty much all adventurers died ignominiously as they were considered stupid enough to even enter a dungeon

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>>48560003
And if that's what my PLAYERS want, that's fine. If that's not what my PLAYERS want, then I'll adjust my story to fit their tastes.

An inflexible GM is a person asking to suffer like an OCD sufferer in a candy shop.

>>48553143
>player agency
>comparing tabletops with other RL activities
Blatant *World delusional fan, everybody. Avoid this kind, they can't hear you over their holy god Vincent Baker words of wisdom.

>>48560198
The GM never rolls dice in an PbtA game. There are no dice for them to fudge.

>>48560358
GM's don't need to roll dice to fudge them.

>>48560393
Regardless, conflating the *World games with the idea of GMs railroading for the sake of telling their own story seems odd, since the systems give almost inordinate narrative control to the player characters if run the way the books say to run them

I don't really understand the problem in fudging rolls. If you don't do anything BUT fudge rolls, you're doing something wrong, but sometimes fudging (or faking rolls) really just keeps the game feeling like a game instead of a story on rails. How?

Do people really think that every time an opposing wizard tries to do a spell, the spell check should always go by the dice? Why? One of the planned setups in the GM's notebook might be an opposing wizard failing a spell and causing some interesting effect with that, such as collapsing the building the players have to now escape from.

Not rolling the dice (To just make it an automatic fail) would really make the setup seem lazy. But by pretending to fail it, even if it's transparent, the players feel that there might have been a chance for that wizard's spell to succeed. Is it wrong to fudge in those situations?

>inb4 MUH STORY
No, you don't understand what I meant. A GM is not a passive punching and poking bag that the players interact with, the GM is the one who must provide the players something to interact with.

Is it wrong to have events following the PC's, even if they "technically" shouldn't happen there? If all the stuff is in the north, and the players are expected to go north, but the players decide to go south, should south be like it is in the notebooks, unremarkable and normal? No, you move the stuff to happen in the south! But isn't that fudging the game, isn't that lying to the player? The south wasn't supposed to be in the middle of a civil war but hell if I'm damned if it wasn't.

So how is changing entire campaigns passable, even admired, but changing small scenes is bad?

Of course, most of the time fudging is not what I described, but it would seem people here would probably condemn my example, too.

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>>48560903
>but sometimes fudging (or faking rolls) really just keeps the game feeling like a game instead of a story on rails.

>Literal dice-rolled randomness is more railroady than me as the GM stepping in to dictate what happens

Jesus christ.

>>48553063
Every board has him. /tg/ gets virt, /k/ has Ant-Man, /mlp/ has RBC, even fucking /b/ has Katy teh Penguin of DOOM.

Winning, losing, doesn't matter. What matters is remembering how fucking stupid and desperate some people are.

>>48552155
You have the equation wrong. Roleplaying and Rollplaying are two different, equally valid things. Just like choose your own adventure books are a valid thing, along with community theatre.

It's quite literally okay to have absolutely no in-character dialogue and treat the entire thing like an elaborate board game. Hell, that was the entire point of 4th Edition.

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>>48552876
>I'm not Virt.

Sounds like something Virt would say!

>>48560991
Learn to read?

I said that the GM has to provide the setup, and if their setup demands something, should they automatically happen? Or should they roll for EVERY SINGLE THING that happens in the background?. Because GM's are gods that can pull shit up out of their arses. Or alternatively godlike architects who have time to write every single alternative possible.

There is no winning move here. My example was to provide an edge case where a thing that going by the notebook of GM would happen automatically (A sorcerer failing a spell) suddenly gains perceived depth when the players are there to witness the character, "failing the roll."

Do you fail to understand that?

>>48561086
What kind of a shitty sorcerer fails a spell? Why is the group fighting some special needs sorcerer?

>>48561140
>What kind of a shitty sorcerer fails a spell?
Got hit during casting and failed Concentration roll.

>>48561140
Nice one, trying to divert the conversation.

Well, going by the dice, every time a sorcerer casts a spell, they roll. Every rolling system has the possibility to roll the lowest possible result, meaning that they should, for all intents and purposes, fail a spell.

>>48561160
Also true.

>>48553143
This guy gets it. Illusionism IS roleplaying. Accept it fairnessfags. Everything else is just an attempt to remove the advantage of the GM existing and created a closed system with the GM as adventure-generating-robot. Removing GM fiat (via fudging) is basically removing what makes most rpgs what they are. When you grow up you'll figure that out.

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>>48561315

>Unapologetic railroadfags trying to speak condescendingly to literally anyone

>>48555553
How the fuck does suspension of disbelief have anything to do with what they guy was talking about?

What he's talking about with rational decisions is that say for example
>I have 5 bucks. How many 1$ burgers can I get with it?
If the GM arbitrarily changes the price of the burgers or refuses to let the player find out how much the burgers cost, then how are they going to make a decision about buying burgers?

He's talking about the basic conditions to be able to make decisions as to what to do in play.

>>48561448
If they aren't even pretending to have an objective gameworld or have fairness, then it's no wonder they think railroading is the bestest. Their players are unable to make decisions on a rational basis because everything is arbitrary. So there players follow the rails because it's literally impossible to make an intelligent decision to do something the GM won't allow.

>>48561448
In all fairness, GM Fiat is a big part of what lets a story evolve. I, for example, might alter a monster's statistics during a fight if I feel it would make it more interesting. I've never had a complaint about it, no player has asked to check the statistics or abilities of the monster, and the players generally seem enthusiastic about the twists.

The freedom to alter the game's events is a big reason a GM is a Storyteller and not just a Referee. Not that there's anything wrong with people wanting a rules tight game.

>>48559089
If you really care that much about your players dying, then why have dying be a thing that can happen?

Either this player starting swinging at an NPC, and accepted death as a possibility, or an NPC swung at a player, which is something you control, and can make not happen if you don't want the player to die.

>>48562179
It's entirely reasonable for a character to die if it's narratively appropriate.

>>48561448
Let me know when you're 12th birthday is and I'll tell you the truth about Wrestling and Santa Claus too, okay buddy?

>>48562716
Or if it seems like what would happen given what they did or what was done to them. Or if they started a fight and the enemy rolled high enough to kill them. Though I guess that falls under "what was done to them."
>>48562974
Not that anon, but I'm 29, I don't fudge dice, I don't get butthurt about my character dying, and I prefer a game where I can make decisions based on in-universe logic that doesn't just change every time my DM gets a wild hair up their ass.

How I handle this with my group is we use 'reasonable die rolling'. So for most formats on a d20, 2-19 are handled as rules dictate. For stupid stuff like "roll to punch the stationary wall" we just take into account the relative stats and situation and determine whether rolling is necessary, and mutually agree on a bullshit probability of the event occuring. The results are rolled into the narrative, and no fudging occurs because every player is satisifed with the possible outcomes before dice are rolled. Maybe I just DM some statsitically anomalies in terms of awesome people, but most people here are too splerglord to find better people to play with or to discuss shit without it turning into an argument.

And death happens. Causes and likelihood of death are discussed for the setting and the format, and we tweak numbers as needed in scenarios where we disagree with the official rules. One general example of a dying related house rule is that if you lose 1/2 of your health in one turn, you go into shock and need to be stabilised in five turns or you die (but this stability check is easier than a dying state check). 1/3rd if it's a sneak attack, you're not expecting the wall to slam on you, etc.

Critical confirms are treated mostly the same, and there's critical failures too.

So critical confirms work the same way they would in say, 3.5. Roll a 20, roll again to see if you crit, and then apply crit results. If it rolls 20 again, we roll a third time to see if 'schenanigans' are invoked. Three rolls of 20 in a row means improbable but still possible things occur. So roll 3 20s? Your sword catches a fault in their blade and shatters it, and the momentum carries through to strike them.

The inverse happens as well. Roll 3 1s in a row, and you slip on a loose rock and shatter your ankle mid combat. Hope you don't bung up the rolls on those attacks of opportunity youre about to receive.

>>48562179
I dont care, but depending on circumstance, some players might. Rather than have a player be miserable for a session because their character got killed by some rando that got a lucky crit.

I'm not saying that refusing to fudge rolls is wrong, my other group tends to enjoy the extremely high risk situations that a small conflict can become, but my other doesn't. I enjoy playing both ways.

>>48563010
> I prefer a game where I can make decisions based on in-universe logic

Really? You honestly think you make decisions differently between whether or not your DM is fudging or not?

You don't even know.
You really have no way of knowing.

All you can do is guess and suspect, and there's nothing worse than a player who keeps second guessing their GM, regardless of whether they really are fudging or not.

>>48563251
>there's nothing worse than a player who keeps second guessing their GM, regardless of whether they really are fudging or not.
Yes, there is. A GM who fudges is worse.

>>48563150

Cont.

Combat is strange and weird and people have a horribly romantically view of it. If anybody has watched Battle of the Bastards from GoT, thats apparently a fairly accurate representation of what the average person could expect.

But we want ninja-esque flipping 6 foot tall great sword dual wielding hyper barbarians in full plate metal casting magic using their dick as a wand, because thats generally what Hollywood has sold us. The protagonist is better, more skillful, and has more grit than the army of nameless mooks that he mows down (or dies fighting for narrative sake).

So the big house rule we often invoke is the "somebody else" rule. Which is to everybody else, you're the random mook. If you run face first into a wall of enemies, you'd be skewered and then laughed about over the next campfire, maybe even become an inside joke. "Remember the jackass who rushed twenty of us head on?"

So players don't get any plot armour. neither do the NPCs, though. BBEG can be pushed down stairs and break their necks, and the hobo you're fighting in an alley can shank you to death. Shit happens.

>>48563287
Here's something you're going to hate.
I'm going to plant a thought in your mind, that you won't be able to shake.

Every GM you've ever played with? They fudged. Even if they rolled out in the open, they were adjusting stats in the background, eliminating or adding encounters where they originally didn't plan for them, and were performing a wild range of alterations behind the scenes.

All under your nose.
And, the ones who professed that they hated fudging? The ones who convinced you they never, ever fudged? They convinced you of that just so it would be easier to trick you in the future.

Good night. Enjoy that doubt and suspicion.

>>48563326
I DM, though, and I don't fudge. Given that there's at least one who doesn't, it makes sense that there are more.

>>48553063
he did diserve his win though, his shitposting was great and the grade of destruction he caused to threads will probably never be matched.

>>48563339
>I DM, though, and I don't fudge

I know, me too.
*wink wink*

>>48554857
Threads done, boys. Pack it up.

>>48560903
>Is it wrong to have events following the PC's, even if they "technically" shouldn't happen there? If all the stuff is in the north, and the players are expected to go north, but the players decide to go south, should south be like it is in the notebooks, unremarkable and normal? No, you move the stuff to happen in the south! But isn't that fudging the game, isn't that lying to the player? The south wasn't supposed to be in the middle of a civil war but hell if I'm damned if it wasn't.

I don't know why you consider that fudging because it's just a good example of how GM should deal with players' decisions and fail to see anything wrong with that. In this case I think fudging would be that GM forces players unable to go south giving players no agency to change the story even in small ways.

Fudging rolls is something that I don't like to do, but fudging the difficulty is something that I do some of the time in d100/percentile games.

Mainly because any roll can have up to a dozen different negative and positive modifiers. Lets say a character is shooting at an enemy, but is wounded, firing one handed, at a small target, at close range, with an advanced targeting system, with 3 round burst, hyped up on combat drugs and with training in their particular weapon. That sort of thing can be pretty common. I'm not going to slow down combat for the entire group just to look through all the tables so that I can calculate that nonsense. I'd much rather be thematic and keep the combat flowing at a steady pace, so I'll use my intuition, my knowledge of the rules and the description of combat (both from myself and the players) to decide how much the roll is modified by. If its a little bit off from RAW, who cares? The combat is still running no problems, and the difficulty isn't being fucked up with to the point of becoming too easy/hard. The important thing is to be consistent, from player to player and from encounter to encounter, do that and you'll have no problems.

Keeping the tempo of the game high, and not getting bogged down in minutia is a very important part of GMing, but one that is never really brought up that often. What I just mentioned doesn't really happen in D20 games though, generally speaking there are very little negative or positive modifiers on rolls, and if there is its generally just whichever one is highest.

But I'll never fudge the roll itself. If I say that you need a 50 to pass, you need that 50.

What you faggots don't understand is that, just like you, this exists on a spectrum. Group's range all the way from freeform roleplay to board gamers. Neither extreme, nor any of the steps in-between are actually greater or lesser than the other. They're just how that particular group prefers to play their nerd game. Do you even realize you're having the narrativest/simulationist/gameist fight again?

>>48552155

I'm both with you, and against you, here.

Personally, I've always considered the "Rollplaying" to be focusing ENTIRELY on the crunch and treating the story and world around you like a simple backdrop for kicking the shit out of a tribe of orcs because it makes your dick hard. Rollplaying is showing up to the game as Pun-Pun and shitting all over the DM's world just because you want to wank your ego.

And yet I do agree with you, that taking away the challenge and fudging rolls constantly is boring and takes away the fun.

However... your assertion that "Roleplaying" must include railroading and a GM unloading his writer's fanwank all over the group is something I disagree with. I would argue that that isn't roleplaying, but rather shit GMing.

I would assert that true enjoyment of the game requires a healthy balance in the middle. A place where you are allowed to use the game's mechanics to overcome challenges that in turn build up a story that the GM -AND THE PLAYERS- tell.

>>48559603

Not him but...

Unless the GM prefaces every encounter with not only an open roll of the die but a detailed list of every opponent's stats/hp/spells/etc. before you engage them, there really isn't any real way for the player to know how difficult a particular encounter will be.

It all comes down to the GM, who controls every single aspect of the game's world except for the players, to provide a challenge that rewards the players for their smart decisions.

Rule 0 allows the GM to make a judgment call in instances where the rules don't cover an action the player wishes to take, stats are a suggestion to give the GM a rough power scale when designing encounters for their players, and the dice are there to serve as a random element so that victory is not always a guarenteed slaughter to either side of the fight.

A good GM recognizes the tools at his disposal and uses them to give his players a good time, anyone who says differently either have never GM'd before or have never actually encountered an instance where the lack of these tools caused the campaign as a whole to suffer.

>>48553641

Why are you okay with throwing all your hard work away due to one bad roll?

Do you just not care beyond the concept of the world being a game to play in?

>>48564214
Because his preference is for a lower suspension of disbelief than yours personally is. He feels more secure in his game's validity when the results are absolutely out of his hands.

>>48564214
I recognize that playing as someone who does dangerous shit means playing someone who might have to face the consequences of doing dangerous shit.

If I'm only ever in danger in a boss fight, why bother rolling dice at all in other fights? Why don't we just gather around and tell stories about cool obstacles we faced and how we overcame them individually and as a team, until we get bored, then actually play a game when we go to fight the boss?

I am okay with my character dying because I understand that my character is in a situation where dying is a possibility. If I don't want my character to have the possibility of dying to some orcs, my character will run the fuck away. Oh, you say, but what if he gets hit with an arrow as he runs?

If I don't want my character to have a faint chance of dying even in that way, he'll stay in town and try to woo a farmer's daughter or some shit.

Excitement comes from the dangerous situations. The dangerous situations are dangerous because there is a real chance of characters dying.

>>48564255
There are consequences besides death. The threat of dying is a really old cliche.

>>48553586
Not entirely true. If the gm is making the big bad pass saves he should have failed then yes, that's bullshit. However, elements of a character, plot or encounter that the pcs have yet to interact with (directly or indirectly) doesn't yet exist, and can still be modified within reason. If it hasn't been established yet, or at least doesn't support something that has been(motives etc), its not a part of the story.

>>48564255
This man is correct and everyone who disagrees is actually stupid or misinterpreting his argument

>>48552155
I'd take this seriously but if you just want to throw dice, there are video games for that anon. You don't need to pen and paper, or even play with other people.

>>48564290
>There are consequences besides death.
Sure. But we're talking about games centered around doing dangerous shit and trying to not die. Otherwise character death wouldn't have come up.
>>48564294
Yeah, I can agree with this.

>>48564165
Some of us like reminding angry teenagers that ttrpgs are never objective gamestates. it's all just like hollywood old west sets- nothing behind that storefront.

It's sad and pathetic to enjoy this, sure, but it is entertaining too.

I mean this is all in good fun. I never fudge and you shouldn't either, citizen.

>>48564322
Please see >>48554662

>>48564255
>>48564310

You do realize that it's possible for your character to face consequences without dying right?

The best consequences are the ones where the character has to live with their fuck-ups for the rest of their life, knowing that they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Then again, I'm the type of GM who will have the Fighter's sword arm become crippled for the rest of his life from a lowly goblin just because he got cocky and decided that he could solo 20 rabid goblins by himself, at the cost of the party's attempts at being stealthy.

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>>48564369
>Then again, I'm the type of GM who will have the Fighter's sword arm become crippled for the rest of his life from a lowly goblin just because he got cocky and decided that he could solo 20 rabid goblins by himself, at the cost of the party's attempts at being stealthy.

So, instead of killing a character, you just make a player want to intentionally kill him off so he can reroll a not-shit and sabotaged character?

>>48564325
>But we're talking about games centered around doing dangerous shit and trying to not die.

Let me rephrase. A GM that hangs the threat of death over his players when there's no chance of it is being ingenuine, but I was referring to the narrative implications of boss fights versus random encounters you mentioned. If the random encounter's threat and tension isn't derived from the fear of death, then it's arguably silly to involve that.

I'd also argue that every random encounter having a fear of death associated is potentially numbing for when they do arrive at the "boss fight", but then I've seen grueling repeated near death experiences done well in a campaign before.

>>48564369
I'm using "death" here as a catch-all for "anything that means the character retires from adventuring and is replaced." Sorry for not being clear about that. Entirely my fault.

But if I'd said I'm okay with my fighter losing his sword hand or no longer being able move faster than a hobble, then >>48564214's question would still stand, and my answer would be the same.

>>48564325

>Otherwise character death wouldn't have come up.

Oh you poor naive child.

Be grateful to GM's who keep you alive out of protection, rather than sadistic pleasure.

In death, you won't have to worry about losing your leg and dealing with the fact that you're effectively dead weight on the rest of your party because your leg got caught in a bear trap, infected, amputated, and cauterized because you were too cool to check for traps in the wilderness.

>>48564406
see
>>48564391

>>48564380

>So, instead of killing a character, you just make a player want to intentionally kill him off so he can reroll a not-shit and sabotaged character?

You misunderstand friend.

I didn't sabotage his character.

I simply gave him the consequences of striding up to a horde of goblins and getting hit with a critical strike to his arm.

And no friend, I'm not going to let him off that easily either. People don't just kill themselves because they sustained an injury, they don't call it quits after one failed venture, they don't just call upon the grim reaper to erase their mistakes.

They keep going.

I'm going to have him play it through, see how he reacts to being in a disadvantage, have him live with the consequences for the rest of his life, and watch as everyone around him succumbs to blows that weren't prevented due to his sword arm being crippled.

And then, after he makes through the tunnel of shattered glass and tainted blood, after I see the dead hope in his (character's) eyes after surviving the dangers of the dungeon, after I see him mull over the death of allies and loved ones, I will give him a present.

A +1 masterwork prosthetic hand with a built in sword attachment.

Then, we'll see where it goes...

>>48564406
>>48564391
>>48564380
You guys seem bad at anchoring dramatic tension on anything other than the threat of physical harm.

>>48552155
As a GM I like to do both railroading/narrative and sandbox/emergant adventures. It depends on who I am GMing to. Some people just like to watch a story unfold and make Walking Dead -esque choises ("Do we let the evil prince live and repent or kill him for sure") while some of my players want to wander around in detailed sandbox and see how small actions cause huge consequences. My game of choise is railroad/narrative as it takes far less time. Coming up with a railroad adventure ( story and encounters ) takes about 10 to 20 hours in advance and 1 to 2 hours between sessions while sandbox worlds require (at least for me as I like to have lots of detail) 100 to 500 hours in advance and a dozen hours between sessions.

>>48564477

Pain is an excellent motivator for improvement.

>>48564380
You know there are ways to get around this in most setting and it can be good adventure seed in it's own. Search a magical healer or have party raise funds in order to have cybernetic surgery or something. Crippling character is not that bad idea and can be better than just killing him/her off, but I do agree that it's very bad idea if the setting doesn't have any ways to counter it because then the character can be pretty much considered dead.

>>48552155
Go play at Pathfinder Society or some other shit like this than you asswipe. Why would you play a tabletop rollplaying game when we have video RPGs?

>>48564462
>they don't call it quits after one failed venture,
Sure they do. People do that all the time. Not saying they kill themselves, but they change careers.

"Oh, shit. I lost the use of my sword hand. I guess I'll go back home with whatever treasure I manage to get out of here with and see if that farmer's daughter I used to know will marry me. We can start our own little shop."

The above makes perfect sense and for many characters it's exactly what they would do.

>>48564477
I got the impression we were talking about the kinds of games where people go in holes where there are monsters and try to steal their shit. The threat of physical harm is the main threat in that situation.

>>48564348
This is better. Thanks.

>>48554662
A tinge of dice fudging is suggested, but not necessary. The point is to keep the illusion of challenge without breaking it, because the main reason why I and probably many others do that is to avoid telling players and their characters to fuck off forever because the dice tell you to. You're human beings. They're objects. Players can get quite invested in their characters and it's easy to notice when killing them off is going to kill their mood to play. Dice are just numbers on a polygon. Dice should have authority on what happens in the game but you as DM should be above the dice telling you what to do, as you are suppose to be the golden rule, not the dice.

That said, the dice must still have an authority over your player's actions, since you are leaving the fate of battles to its hands, you cannot subtract from that by visibly kicking the dice around. That's why you don't go around celebrating fudging the dice in front of your players. They need to believe you aren't just puppet stringing them around by having the dice act as the chaos that keeps the game interesting. That means you have to leave it to the dice, except in the rare occasion where the dice will ruin the fun. If you are fudging the dice for any other reason, then you're overstepping your boundaries as DM, which, while vast indeed, needs to obey certain unspoken rules.

>>48564496
>HURR DURR CHALLENGES ARE BAD AND ALL AGENCY SHOULD BE SACRIFICED AT THE ALTAR OF THE NARRATIVE THE DM ALREADY HAS IN MIND

>>48564487
It is, but the fear of failure, as well as a desire to protect others from harm who might not be Heroes is also valid. Oldest trick in the book is getting a player to care about a character, and then placing it in harms way. That keeps the story safe, while still providing real consequences. Just like the threat of personal harm, you generally don't want to overdo it, mind. Otherwise your players will think you're Fridging and stop caring about the NPCs.

>>48564497
>I got the impression we were talking about the kinds of games where people go in holes where there are monsters and try to steal their shit. The threat of physical harm is the main threat in that situation.

If that's the case, then yeah, go full fucking Gameist. The whole enjoyment of a hack and slash derives from the tactical components. You can still do some variation, with, like, protecting magical items and shit, but if you're straight up Crawling, who the fuck cares about the Greater Narrative anyways?

>>48564497

>"Oh, shit. I lost the use of my sword hand. I guess I'll go back home with whatever treasure I manage to get out of here with and see if that farmer's daughter I used to know will marry me. We can start our own little shop."

In order to do any of that though, you have to make it out of the dungeon.

With a horde of rabid goblins now aware of you and the party's presence.

While you're gimped and weaponless.

Have fun

>>48564496
see
>>48554662

>>48564532
>Have fun
I will. I just think it's reasonable for the character to retire after that. And that's an exciting story, right? You might die, and you might get out, go back, and have a tale to tell, an exciting memory, and a bit of money to start a comfortable rest of your life.

Oh, and look, /tg/! It happened without the DM starting with a desire to forcefeed me his fanfiction.

>>48564497
>I got the impression we were talking about the kinds of games [which are not roleplaying games at all, but rather quirky little wargames.]
If you care about a good narrative and/or simulating a believable world, don't play D&D in the first place, mong.

>>48564546
You know it's funny. We have this fight on /tg/ all the time, and yet Japanese gamers are apparently handed scripts somewhat commonly by GMs. And yet they often have fun.

The idea of being handed a script frightens and disgusts me, but eh, who am I to call badwrong fun?

>>48564546
...What kind of DMs did you have?

I mean, it really all depends on the DM and the players. One's fun is another's trigger, and all that. I have no qualms against players wanting to get fucked, hell, that does sound like pretty fun times. Sometimes however people make characters with the intention to building a story with them, and they shouldn't exactly be killed off if it's considered tactless by most of the people in the group. Those are admittedly very, very rare occasions that thankfully with good DMing you should never have to invoke divine intervention.

Though, people who are so self-absorbed with their power fantasy character? THOSE can get axed and there would be nothing wrong with doing so.

>>48564584
Eh, it's a perfectly good shell on which to build a story. Not the ideal one, but it works more or less. Simulationists probably should stay the fuck away, though.

>>48564509
Are you retarded? What is the point of playing a pure combat game when you can play video games that do the calculating for you? Why would I play any tabletop RPG if my character doesn't have a backstory, an arch, some goals and dreams that I can realize in time? What is the point of playing D&D for example if I only come together with a group of people to sit and roll dices and beat the game. Hell I don't even need a DM for that I can just roll against an adventure book.

Why can't you rollplay faggots understand that story and the game goes together hand in hand?

>>48564584
I'll raise.

What's better for a narrative, immersive campaign?

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>>48564584

>a good narrative

Shut the fuck up. The narrative of a p&p game is literally nothing but contextually linked challenges. Alright? That's it. Literally any game with a conflict resolution system (read: all of them) and a GM who links the narrative surrounding one event to another can have a "good narrative." So shut the fuck up with this stupid D&D snobbery.

>simulating a believable world

We can all poke holes in various game designers' poor knowledge of economics, geography, and biology, but trying to imply that D&D did not take noteable and painstaking efforts to elaborate on the details of its world is purely false.

And I fucking hate d&d 3.5e, you disgusting bandwagon-hopping faggot. Retards like you piss me the fuck off because you throw around stupid buzzwords like that, only serving to dilute the conversation.

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Now that we've all had our five minutes of bait, let us bury this terrible faggotry and never speak of it again.

>>48564621
No, it isn't. D&D in the gameist's twisted vision is a themepark land full of "dungeons" housing "monsters" who hoard "treasure" and they're just "adventurers" who plunder it. It's got less narrative depth and believability than most video games.

>>48564642
Practically anything that's not D&D or based on D&D. D&D is literally an evolution of wargames, built entirely around resolving combat encounters - a concept which simply doesn't even exist in nearly any other RPG.

But if you want a generic system recommendation, then I'm just going to recommend you a generic system. GURPS is my favorite generic system.

>>48564639
I consider myself further on the Narrativist/Simulationist side of things, and I still think that's the opinion of a moron. There's a lot of fun to be had with the tactics of pen and paper gaming. Besides, video games are often very limited in scope. Tabletop RPGs give you a lot more freedom to craft interesting scenarios and explore interesting mechanics.

>>48564667
If I used the phrase "perfectly good skeleton", would you understand my words better?

>>48564214
I bet you savescum in roguelikes

>>48564667
You are right, which is weird when you look at how it's evolved today.

It's probably better for people who still want to play a board game or a video game but want it to be their own in a sense. That isn't wrong, but I can understand if you want better immersion there are way better options than choosing something based off D&D.

>>48564667
>themepark land full of "dungeons" housing "monsters" who hoard "treasure" and they're just "adventurers"

Dungeons and Dragons is a set of mechanics, not a setting. The only real theme park aspect is the focus on power restoration via resting, which is geared towards dungeon crawling. Also the idea that martial classes need loot to become the equal of casters, but that's sort of being moved away from.

What I like to do is whenever I would feel tempted to fudge dice because of something like it being really really close, I tell them they can have the success BUT with a drawback, like you do make the jump, but you break your ankle, or you hit the target, but your gun jams.

Failures are still failures though. One of the groups allegedly favorite runs ended in a level one TPK. A crypt of ghoul template mobs in enclosed areas using hit and run, grappling and their paralyze. They said they felt like at every moment until the last player died they were going to make it, despite all the setbacks. Triumphing barely over one obstacle to nearly beat the next, by the very teeth. Then they died to the boss. Maybe it would have been more satisfying to let them win. Maybe. But hey they went back, new characters, and while tried to avoid meta gaming, did some and got to the boss, and then had to fight their old now ghoul characters. Failures are just new challenges waiting to play out in my book.

Or you could, ya know, so what your group thinks is fun

>>48564783
*Do what your.

God damn it.

>>48564783
There is only one true fun. All other funs are heresy against the one true fun.

>>48564805
Infidel! The only true fun comes the great fun snake! Behead those who insult his prophet, bozzo the clown!

File: Pillars of Pentegarn - Skeletal Elf Lydia - Her demise always gave 10 yr old me a boner.jpg (235KB, 400x668px) Image search: [Google]

235KB, 400x668px

I just want to let you guys know that I suddenly remembered an old CYOA book and well.... file name.

>>48564840
Comes from*.

I'm so done, screw mobile posting.

>>48564849
Saving your waifu... for later.

>>48564255
>Why don't we just gather around and tell stories about cool obstacles we faced and how we overcame them individually and as a team, until we get bored, then actually play a game when we go to fight the boss?

Because it would be like the playground in kindergarten. 'I have a force field!' 'Well I have a force field breaker!' 'My force field is immune to force field breakers!'

>>48552155
Because "Role" players can do both.

>>48564867
You son of a bitch.

>>48564878
Have you tried not playing with Kindergartners? I find it improves the ERP elements a lot.

>>48564890
Very few people are any better.

>>48552155
It sounds like you're butthurt about shitty DMs and not the actual concepts you're discussing. I can tell this because the definitions you provided are fucking retarded.

Roleplaying is literally role-playing. You play a role. Meaning you make some character, either with a personality and backstory and so on or you grow them out of just messing around the first couple sessions.

Telling a story, in the ttrpg sense, isn't railroading. Many shit GMs who just want to "tell a story" have a specific story in mind ahead of time (and so they railroad to hell and back), but just "telling a story" can easily also mean just having the game world react to what the players do.

There's nothing wrong with just roleplaying, though at that point why even bother with a system, and there's nothing wrong with just rollplaying, though at that point why bother giving your character a name?

Most people, from what I've seen, look for some balance between the two (not necessarily exactly in the middle, but not 100% one and 0% the other).

tl;dr you need to stop playing with asshats.

The fudging dice thing really comes down to the degree degree to which any given GM's dice fudging affects the game vs what everyone is looking for out of the game, plus personal opinion on how much is appropriate. I personally prefer very, very mininal fudging, just enough to stop complete bullshit like some enemy rolling 10 natural 20s in a row and oneshotting someone from full health wtih 0% chance of success.

>>48564926
I disagree. There are plenty of people who can get the Gentlemen's Agreement through their head. Personally, I like mechanical framework because I like building, mind.

>>48564974
I've found the opposite to be true. Even within mechanical frameworks.

Fudging is super useful when you have whiny players

I had people playing fucking Eclipse Phase, literally the most death friendly game to exist and they still whined like babies when they died.

They still refused to stop putting themselves in danger though.

So sometines you have to fudge, not because you want to direct the story, not because you've messed up your consequences but because it's no fun when the party throws an epic shitfit because the NPCs used the combat rules correctly.

>>48565066
In this case you really need to teach your players to accept disappointment. It won't be easy and will likely take a long time, but it's worth it as games become more interestinf when you have players that can deal with failure without throwing tantrum like some big babies.

>>48552155
Stick to Descent then.

>>48564969
I personally do the opposite, to keep a munchkinned up characters from killing the BBEG turn one.

It's not a One Punch Man scenario.

>>48552155
Sounds like what you're looking for is a video game, OP. You can approach challenge from a fully structured environment and the computer will never, ever let you leave it.

>>48565273
That's even worse because in reality you're punishing players for being creative. A better way to approach would be to tweak the system, so that it's less abusable or change it to another one if you can't bother coming up with house rules.

>>48565375
Nothing creative about entering "CharOp/how do i break x-system"

>>48565426
You know you're just a bad GM if your game is easy enough to break without players needing to be creative.

>>48565450
Are you suggesting every GM make up their own game system or just shitposting.

>>48564329
>if the players go south rather than north, I have no ideas of what's to the south and don't know how to improvise as a GM so I just move the north to the south
You're pretty much saying that because you're shitty at running a game, all GM's must be shitty.
This is why fudgers never improve over the games they ran at 17. They take shortcuts rather than addressing failings at running a game.

>>48564667
See, you're supposed to fill in the gaps. Based on that logic, Nehwon is also a "theme park," since there are underground places with monsters in them, and sometimes the two protagonists go there to steal the treasure and have to trick, avoid, or slay the monsters inside.

Oh, wait. Those things don't automatically remove narrative depth. They're just there for a specific kind of story.

>>48564883
I was referring to a specific subset of roleplayers who act like anyone who likes the challenge elements is having fun wrong, and like only they are the "true" roleplayers.

>>48565214
Descent isn't even all that great as a dungeon-crawling board game. And I'm not looking for a board game. I just prefer for story to emerge naturally from the game rather than have the DM railroad the shit out of me or otherwise emphasize the story in his/her head over the game we're all supposed to be playing together.
>>48565285
That is the exact opposite of my complaint. My complaint all along was that GMs who take D&D (or any similarly challenge-focused game) and try to make it about "the story" tend to not give a shit about little things like player agency or consequences to actions that could interfere with the shitty novel they have in their head.

>>48563365
Are you fucking kidding? virt wasn't Jim Profit come again. He wasn't even on Sergalfag's level. He was a basic bitch of a troll whose tepid bait got far more of a response than it deserved because /tg/ was hungry for a new celebrity shitposter.

He didn't earn this notoriety, you're just giving it to him for free.