As a player, I make a point of telling my GMs that I dislike fudged rolls and I’d rather roll a new character than claim a false victory.
As a GM, I will always at session 0 tell my players that I don’t fudge rolls and often prefer to make my GM rolls out in the open whenever there’s a chance they could kill someone or end an encounter. My attitude is that when the players can see my rolls and I tell them in advance “if this is higher than X it’ll hit so-and-so”, we’re all on the same side as we watch the roll play out.
IMO it’s not the job of the GM to tilt the game system itself towards the players, but rather to balance encounters and challenges to be beatable, and then see what happens right alongside the players.
To answer your question, tell him if it affects your experience of the game. Don’t let it ruin your fun in silence, no GM wants players to do that.
Sure, and you can even improv a reason why that might be the case. “Normally he has a +9 to hit but he was distracted by how the barbarian just decapitated his minion in a single strike on a nat 20”
@MrMusAddict@entropicdrift during our campaign for big rolls our DM rolls on the table I'm sure he BS'S some of the DC's but like hey it does help with the suspense
Sometimes I’ve made a fight too easy so I need to provide the goblins with some backup.
Sometimes the backup was always planned after round 2 but maybe it’s a little less than I planned because they’re already near death. Maybe it’s a little more because they’ve killed most already. Maybe the party was stealthy so less backup. Maybe the party was overly loud so there is more.
Also sometimes the pause to “save” a character comes from determining/calculating if the action is “fair”. Why did they just take that “stupid” action. Maybe I undersold just how powerful this NPC was. But maybe I did describe them as having an otherworldly glowing set of armor and you watched them wrestle a bar full of orcs and slice off one their heads in a single blow.
Perhaps you’ve reached a point between player and DM where this isn’t necessary anymore, but I don’t fault anyone who might fudge a roll to keep the game fun.
I just personally try to balance things without ever taking away from the results on the dice themselves. The changes of plan you listed are all fair game in my mind for balancing encounters. There’s nothing wrong with balancing on the fly, I just think if you’re at the point of lying about the results of individual die rolls, at that point you’re disrespecting both the players and the game system. There’s risk embedded in the system by design. If you don’t want that, play a different system where you can handwave risk away and railroad events without cheating.
That said, this is all just my personal philosophy about GMing and games in general.
IMO it’s not the job of the GM to tilt the game system itself towards the players, but rather to balance encounters and challenges to be beatable, and then see what happens right alongside the players.
IMHO, the GM’s role is a lot fuzzier than that and is wholly dependent on your specific party’s (and their own!) preferences. I’d say this is simply what you prefer to do as a GM, rather than what a GM should be doing.
Right. I was just expressing my personal philosophy in my previous comment, not prescribing how everyone should play every game. At least, that was the intent.
Long time DM currently running Curse of Strahd for my group. I think I’m in the minority but I actually publicly roll everything. I use Foundry and let my players see all of my results. I also insist on seeing all of theirs. I find it actually kind of fun.
I printed the map using a poster/plotter printer in two sections that I split up in photo shop, scaling the map size and resolution to fit a 1in player grid (the grid marks are there, but faint).
I then taped 12 2ft×2.5ft foamcore boards together and glued down the map, using gluesticks for the majority and hot glue to keep the edges down. I taped it so that it is a trifold, condensing down to a single 7ft×21in panel for storage and transport.
Someone else here in the comments suggested cottons balls for fog of war, so I am gonna get those and some poster tack to keep it all vertical. I am gonna track their progress by making player tokens and using poster tack to keep them on the board.
I had been struggling with figuring that out, but cotton balls with a bit of poster tack to keep them attached will be perfect! Thanks for the idea. I was going to do black cardstock with each room cut out, but your suggestion is 1,000,000× easier
Anytime! And FWIW we've used cotton balls in the past and they worked perfectly. Even looked like fog of war lol. You could even spray paint them black/grey if you want to go the extra mile.
It’s a fancy bit of kit but i have to think something home made could be better suited for a given GM. That said might be nice to give as a christmas gift if it’s cheap enough
The map is on paper, using a poster/plotter printer I have access to through work, and the backing is foamboard. Only $40 in materials all said and done.
My thought was to make player tokens and use poster tack to move them around as they explore, keeping it all vertical.
I just finished it this morning at 2:30, so I still haven't worked everything out, but the first reveal will be today, even if I don't think they will start using it today.
The reason I did it was because the group wanted a world map poster of my homebrew setting to put up on the wall, but I am not a skilled enough artist to make it look nice enough. Professional, pre made maps ARE withing my skillset to make a massive poster from.
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