As a DM, I ask my players at session zero, do you want me to fudge rolls to make the game more fun/interesting, or let the dice fall how they may? I’ve never had a table ask me to not fudge the dice.
In 22 years and close to probably 100 games that I have ran, not once have I been aske not to fudge. But also, I’ve not been asked to reveal when I do. Which is actually pretty rare. I’ve probably only fudged maybe a dozen rolls in that time.
That’s seriously crazy to me! Wow. It’s one of the things I would definitely say ‘do not do’ if a GM asked me that. Obviously I know everyone doesn’t feel as I do, I’m just surprised that in so long, no one has really cared.
I hate to say it, I think you might be in the minority here.
My take has always been that D&D isn’t an adversarial game - the DM isn’t trying to ‘win’, they’re just trying to keep things entertaining for the players.
The trouble with random is that it doesn’t always follow story beats, and doesn’t always feel fun.
A big boss not getting any hits in due to bad rolls deminishes the perceived threat, and the ultimate value of the victory. Stupid zombies that just won’t stay down despite the fact that everyone is now bored with them can easily be kept down.
As long as you know when to do it, it can be super useful for everyone.
As I mentioned, I understand there are different tables abd thoughts on this, and as such, different DM styles as well.
For me, while it’s the DMs job to help keep things entertaining (though that’s everyone’s job in my mind), it’s also the DMs job to be consistent in the world, since they essentially are the world. I personally don’t like fudging because half of the reason my tables play is for things to be determined by the dice, not the DM. I get that other tables play for story and are fine with fudging.
In my experience, this isn’t a thing you can discuss to try and convince people otherwise. This isn’t me trying to tell people fudging is bad and they should feel bad. I honestly just think after 22 years and hundreds of games, it’s crazy that no one cared about it. That’s all.
The computer-designed objects called trajectoids follow a predetermined path when rolling, and usually look somewhat like peeled potatoes. Examples of trajectoids
I haven’t seen a trajectoid with an obviously arbitrary, complex path, such as someone’s signature (as opposed to demos of epicycles), so there may be limits to what lines can be made.
I think the similarly-looking gömböcs are cooler: convex, uniform objects that always return to one stable orientation when laid on a flat surface. gömböc gif
Not entirely irrelevant to D&D. Now we know that a skilled scholar could sculpt a boulder to roll in a specific way (for an Indiana Jones-style trap) without casting spells. Still, adjusting the terrain is a more productive way to do that.
But they’re not useful as dice. Nobody ever uses a die’s trajectory shape to determine a random in-game outcome.
A gömböc could technically count as the most rigged die – only ever rolling up one number – if the only requirements for a D&D die were for it to be a convex object with uniform density.
[Swords DCCXXXIX: CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON, by Matthew J Wills]
Panel 1
[A sword with a brightly glowing blade. The hilt is blue and scaly, while the guard forms the shape of two yellow-eyed, green-scaled dragons consuming one another’s tails to form a circle. The pommel features a ring hole from one side to the other. At the tip of the blade are two dots and a very thin line forming a slightly smiling face.]
A SWORD THAT GLOWS BRIGHTLY WHENEVER YOU’RE HUNGRY
Panel 2
[A sword on a wavy dark blue background. The blade is large, heavy, and only sharp on one side. There is a large spike like a dorsal fin bending backwards from the blunt edge, two divets like side fins on the flat, four divets along the sharp edge, and a large crack digging into the tip, reminiscent of a toothy maw. The hilt is dark brown, seemingly bound with leather straps.]
A SWORD THAT ONLY WORKS UNDER WATER
Panel 3
[A sword with a blade enclosed in pink-and-white striped wax, like a decorative candle. The hilt is blue, with a crossguard that curls up towards the blade. At the tip of the blade, the wax is melted away, revealing a dark, sharp interior like the wick of a candle, and more reminiscent of a wooden stake than of a blade. This tip is on fire, and the fire blazes forwards to form a more conventional sword-tip shape.]
A FIRE SWORD THAT ONLY LASTS FOR A SINGLE DAY
Panel 4
[A jagged, decrepit sword, curved in multiple places. The tip curves forwards then hooks back again like the tip of a khopesh, with two distinct, sudden corners to change angle instead of a gradual curve.
Beneath the tip, the blade is partially enclosed in a wooden guard of some sort. There is a spiral marking leading into a line on the upper part of this, and the wood is unenclosed at the front until the very bottom of the blade, where it closes over and curves to a very thin point before curving back to meet the hilt.
From the spot just above the hilt, grey hair like a beard emerges from the wood. The hilt is wrapped in white strapping of some sort, and the pommel has a ring hole from one side to the other, and three spikes, one on the bottom, two on the sides.]
A SWORD THAT STEALS THE VICTIMS AGE AND ADDS IT TO THE WIELDERS
I am a human who transcribes posts to improve accessibility on Lemmy. Transcriptions help people who use screen readers or other assistive technology to use the site. For more information, see here.
I'd get the fourth sword, then I'd take a regular dagger, and cut open a pregnant cow or cat or dog or something. I'd then slay all the kittens or calves or puppies with my new sword. Since the animals are not born yet, they would have an age of less than 0. When we add their negative age to mine, I'd become weeks or even months younger per kill! With this I will have everlasting youth!
Am I really so strange? There are tales as old as time itself where powerful people seek everlasting life, and they are willing to commit far worse atrocities to reach their goals. For me the price is merely the lives of a few barnyard animals, common livestock that would have died for the goals of man anyway! This is no different than you eating a meal.
Is the amount of food that would barely feed a small army really such a high price to pay for a longer healthier life? I think not!
Nah, I'm completely fine. I was only trying to find a way to get the most benefit from the four choices given in the post. We don't live in a world with magic, so I don't see myself ever doing anything like that.
Impressive, you had a more evil response than mine!
I feel like the chances of you getting a drunk or some sort of criminal who decides to kill you all the way with the sword and take all of your gold while not knowing what the sword does would eventually end up killing you, though. It's even possible that there's nothing nefarious behind it too, they just happen to stab you in the right way where you end up bleeding out or something.
Or maybe, some poor men's wives would appear and hunt you down. Angry that you somehow stole something from them when they already had nothing. After stealing their husbands' youths, they're now out for blood! I dunno, haha.
Roll over and check to see what time it is on my phone. If it’s within 20 minutes of when I get up, I’ll probably go ahead and shower and make breakfast. If it’s more than an hour before my alarm I’d definitely try to go back to sleep.
You’ve got four friends over. They don’t play D&D, or any TTRPGs. They spot your cabinet full of awesome D&D minis, and your cool poly dice, and say ‘hey could we play now?’ What do you do?
My favourite is the mimic accidentally/on purpose placed inside a bag of holding. Any time the party take something out of it there’s a nonzero chance it’ll be a mimic instead of what they were after.
Seems like a good way to grant the party a bag of holding early on. They just come across it discarded in a corner somewhere, and are stunned that an item in such good shape was just abandoned. It appears brand new and has a mix of mundane objects and apparent treasures inside, and the words “Bran’s Bag of Holding” is stitched in elegant lettering on the outside. If they try to dump it out to do an inventory, one random object remains inside. It takes a very high skill check to notice this, as the mimic mimics the inside of the bag as it holds on. If they dump the bag out a second time, the assortment of objects is the same except for a single item. Asking around reveals that Bran was a famous local adventurer who disappeared suddenly.
Funnily enough, i'm doing a Roll20 campaign with a group of friends, and the setting is that their adventurer's part of an ingame adventurer's guild (helps explain new members and real life absentees).
I was thinking about having them meet another party that's part of the guild since my players aren't the only ones whose a member.
I wing it. You know that sensation of DM scrambling you feel when your party goes off the rails and is somewhere doing something you never expected?
I just DM a short session in that way.
I tell them what they are, race/class wise, then ask them to think about what kind of person this is, and to act like that person. I don’t use sheets, just scrap paper and some dice, and the plot that I take them through is probably going to very closely resemble an episode of a show or the intro to a movie I’ve watched recently. I follow the actual rules insofar as they are convenient, but what I’m really doing is just trying to show them what role playing feels like.
It is a complete misunderstanding of what TTRPG players want and need. This is mostly because they are so focused on profits instead of their player and creator community.
If they really cared about their community they would have just created an API to access the rules and allowed third parties to pay for access. Then we would all have the ability to move to various 3rd party services and keep access to the rules and supplements that you purchased. They would have also created an open market place for 3rd party vendors to sell new content on the same system. Those things serve the community.
If they had done that first and then decided to provide a virtual table top that also competed in the same marketplace, I’d be more OK with it. But that doesn’t seem like that is what they are trying to do. They are building a walled garden. I’ve seen every walled garden fail under its own stupidity or weight, or both.
I always tell my players: the best sessions aren’t the ones that are planned and executed perfectly. It’s the sessions where things go tits up and you manage to find a way to prevail that stick with people.
You could give ambiguous riddles, and hint at the trick by having the creature get flustered and angry when someone provides an answer that is correct but not the expected answer.
Like “I am a key that opens no door.”
There’s monkey, donkey, turkey, piano key, musical key, whiskey, malarkey, lackey, jockey, computer key, keystone, typewriter key, and probably some more that they will think of.
There are a bunch of riddles that can be made more ambiguous by leaving out one of the lines. Getting the riddle wrong could also be a hint that the creature is not as clever as he thinks.
There’s also the riddle my grandfather like to tell.
What is red, you hang it on a clothesline, and it has four legs?
A fish!
But a fish isn’t red! (Well, you could paint it red and then it would be)
You don’t hang fish on clotheslines (It’s mine, I can do what I want with it)
Fish don’t have four legs!! (Yeah, I threw that in there because I didn’t want the answer to be too obvious.)
Make sure the players understand that it’s not just you who is the idiot.
When the setting was first released it was styled Plane Scape and though has subsequently been used as Planescape the registration may date as far back as the initial early 90s.
Trademarks are a funny thing though, take Coca-Cola. If they register only COCA-COLA with the hyphen, that doesn’t allow Pepsi to make a sparkling brown sugar drink called Coca Cola. Intention is important in these matters, not just the technicality of what is registered. Registrations also allow for “stylisation”, which means you don’t need to register a new mark to stylise your existing mark.
The trademark would say Registered and Renewed if that was the case, because it would be far older than 10 years, and you need to renew trademarks at least once every about ten years. The current live trademark was only filed in 2016 and registered in 2020 according to this link. Besides, the image for the word mark uses the spelling with no spaces, so it’s not consistent.
Justia works with US trademarks and law. In the US trademarks currently need to be renewed every 10 years - prior to the reduction in the late 1900s they appear to be needed to be renewed only every 20 years. I don’t live in the UK, so the apparent 30 year renew requirement is much longer.
Also it seems Wizards of the Coast were somehow able to keep their Planescape UK trademark registration intact despite letting every other Planescape related trademark registration become canceled/abandoned. I’m not sure if they had to keep up with the trademark, or if registrations in the UK last much longer without having to be kept up to date. I guess they let it lapse at the time in the US for some reason, but when they started Dungeon Master’s Guild, I think they realized they should have live registrations for the legacy setting names they had to have more power under the law to manage the use of them. I think a company would want to keep other companies in check when they’re licensing certain IPs to others.
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