polonius-rex

i don’t think players are conditioned to expect you to be their little court jesters performing for them on demand, and i think it’s really weird to make the case that they do

your player probably just got into dnd through something like dimension 20, which has its sessions edited down into 1 hour slots, but relatively seamlessly so you can’t tell if you’re not looking for it

sometimes allowing an outcome that should mechanically via the rules of the game and logically via the rules of common sense has more downsides than upsides

it doesn’t have to refer to exclusively player death

it has the meaning you assigned to it before rolling it, whether or not you’re pulling that meaning from a specific table, and whether or not you reveal the system to the players

if you decide ahead of time that a low result is going to be a tough encounter, and a high result is going to be a pile of treasure, then it comes up low and you decide to ignore that and give them treasure instead based on your gut feeling, you’re fudging the roll

if you decide what’s going to happen next based on your pull from a tarot deck, and somehow get “death” four times in a row, anything less than a disaster scenario is fudging the roll

it’s the exact same instinct that leads to “hmm, maybe this piss shit little goblin shouldn’t decapitate the barbarian in one hit because it happened to roll well”

Fudging rolls means stating the result of a secret roll was different than it was in reality

which is what you’re doing when you ignore it…? otherwise you wouldn’t be ignoring it

a band aid to poor planning

you think you can plan around your players’ actions?

But if you’re a thief and want to open a simple lock and nobody’s is trying to defenestrate you at the moment? No need to roll, failure is meaningless. You just killed a dragon? No need to persuade the king to help you.

this conversation is specifically talking about when you’re in a scenario where you logically need to make a roll, but where a bad roll coming up essentially ruins things for both the gm and players

I may discard the result and go with the gut feeling

this is fudging rolls

okay then, for you the game ends here:

your players will probably just work out that they aren’t going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn’t

you can’t just not metagame

if you know a choice will result in a certain outcome, you can no longer make that decision neutrally

in fact, you literally can’t take a risk when you know what the outcome of a choice is, because there’s no risk to take

not even bothering to roll is barely a step removed from just telling your players “i’m not going to make the enemy roll to hit you because then you might die and you haven’t found your long lost brother yet”, and if you can’t see that that’s a garbage scenario for roleplaying i don’t know what to tell you

if you don’t even roll, then you’re robbing your players from the feeling of a near miss

also taken to its extreme, your players will probably just work out that they aren’t going to die at all and start taking stupid risks that they shouldn’t

and yeah, at that point you can punish them, but you’ve been responsible for them getting to that state in the first place, so you’re essentially punishing them for your own mistakes