Fudging Dice Rolls is a Skill

When to fudge, and why I often don't use a GM screen

Fudging die rolls is often a crutch of new GMs, and it’s a topic of contentious debate online. Rolling a die, only to ignore the result and go with your gut. It feels like cheating, and it kinda is?

But I think there’s nothing wrong with fudging die rolls. It’s just that most GMs do it badly, and when done badly, it’s devastating to the players’ experience. So maybe it is bad. It’s complicated.

Knowing when to fudge, and doing it well is a skill. A necessary evil to be deployed rarely and carefully.

---

I’m Colin, and I’m a professional video game designer. This is Drolleries, where I write about d&d, ttrpgs, and game design.

---

Why use dice, anyways?

The issue of fudging die rolls always comes back to this question, but I want to give my own answer.

The obvious answer is that dice provide variance, which can make a story interesting by taking it in unexpected directions. Sometimes the dice surprise even the GM and plant the seeds for some awesome storytelling.

Another answer is that the mere act of rolling dice introduces tension to the story. When the outcome is truly uncertain and random, the players are put on the edges of their seats for a brief moment, which makes the following resolution even more satisfying.

But I think the most important purpose of dice is that it makes the outcome feel more real. Rolling dice with known odds and determining the outcome based on previously-agreed-upon rules helps the players buy in to the result, compared to the GM just deciding the outcome based on fiat. Especially in high-stakes, life-or-death situations, it can feel undramatic for the GM to just make a decision either for or against the players. Reducing the GM’s fiat by rolling dice makes it feel more collective — everyone is finding out what happens when the players’ characters meet obstacles in the fiction.

I remember my days of folders as GM screens — too tall, not wide enough.

Fudging Dice Breaks the Illusion

But when the players suspect the GM is fudging die rolls, it breaks this sense of reality. And like breaking someone’s trust, it takes time to rebuild. It undermines the reality of the fictional world; the players feel that the collectively-agreed-upon method by which we determine what is true is being rigged by the GM to say exactly what they want.

However, if the players don’t notice, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

Many games are illusions. When the enemy AI in video games takes into account information they wouldn’t normally have, or teleports when the player isn’t looking, it’s only meant to improve the player’s experience. As long as the player doesn’t notice the enemies breaking laws of physics or appearing somewhere they couldn’t have made it to, it’s all fine. If the player learns these tricks, it might break the illusion for them, but as long as they don’t find out…

And I think the same is true for fudging dice. I don’t think it’s inherently wrong. I just think that doing it poorly has severe consequences, and that it’s often done poorly. Players are smarter than GMs think.

Common Mistakes When Fudging

Most (new) GMs fudge dice in high-stakes situations. When a player character is about to die. When a monster has to make a saving throw or be instantly banished, or polymorphed, or hypnotized. When a boss monster is about to die, and they haven’t gotten to use their coolest ability yet.

But it’s in these high-stakes situations when the player’s suspicion is highest, and the appearance of an objective outcome is the most needed. It’s the most tempting time to fudge, but also the most dangerous.

Especially if you fudge a roll away from the most common result, the players can smell it. If the wizard with AC 15 and 1 hit point left is attacked by a balor demon with +12 to hit, the illusion will be broken if you roll behind the screen and the balor misses all three attacks — even if you didn’t fudge the rolls! I’ve definitely been in those situations as a player, where we all thought that shouldn’t have happened and suspected the GM fudged the result. Even if we couldn’t be sure, our immersion was eroded.

In these high-stakes situations, I used to roll behind the screen. Now, I make it a point to roll out in the open. Even if I’m not using a GM screen, I call attention to the roll and throw it closer to my players so they experience the tension of the die slowing down and stopping on a number before I announce the modifier and the final result.

Fudge Rarely, but Effectively

The best candidate for a roll to fudge is a low-stakes roll where a specific outcome wouldn’t be interesting, but you still want to give the players a taste of danger.

In most situations, if an outcome of a roll would be uninteresting or grind the story to a halt, I wouldn’t roll anyways.

There are some rare cases where you still want to roll so the players feel a sense of danger, but you don’t want to be beholden to the result.

In my opinion, the best candidate for a roll that’s safe to fudge is a random encounter roll. It’s not particularly high-stakes, and if you just decided when the players met a random encounter, they wouldn’t really care that much. But you want them to know that the odds of random encounters are constant so that they feel that time is important and are pressured to be efficient.

---

What I’m Reading

Skeleton Code Machine with another banger about whether players can plan their turns or not. This enlightened for me why 5e doesn’t actually feel tactical to me.

I Cast Light! with a funny article about the role of mentors for magic-users. Reflecting on my own experience, I think I’ve only ran mentors that are benevolent. Maybe it’s time for a crazy old sorcerer with some weird requests for the players.

Monte Cook wrote about how rules define genre. I find it much more useful as a designer to think in terms of genre rather than levels of realism.

Prismatic Wasteland wrote about why players forget about encumbrance and how they redesigned encumbrance in Prismatic Wasteland to get players to engage with it.

Peasantry took a stab at mechanics for negotiating prices and bartering with merchants that I love! Next time I run a game where this comes up, I really want to try this out.