Mmmmmm. TTRPG Fudge. Delicious?
Or: How to alienate subscribers faster than confessing one's 'storygamer' predelictions.
Fudge. It’s one of those words that has acquired a very particular meaning among the cultural micro-niche that is TTRPGs. Like ‘murder-hobo’ or ‘chuckle-f*ckery’ it is a term of art but - unlike the last two - its apparently simple definition conceals, I believe, some more nuanced positions (I feel the same about ‘meta-gaming’ but will save my thoughts on that question for another time). ‘To fudge’ is largely synonymous with ‘to cheat’, but what I will be arguing here is that this is too simplistic and we should not automatically assume that the terms are interchangeable.
Fudging in RPGs comes in two broad flavours and textures; the sugary, crumbly stuff of player fudge and the GM texture that is richer and creamier (we ignore here the infamous ‘Voodoo Butter Fudge’ of Frank Zappa touring legend…)
“That guy, I saw him roll and the dice came up a six and, bold as you like, he scooped it up and claimed it was an 18.”
“I had an Armour Class of 22 and - what d’ya know? - the fledgling vampire hit me every single round!”
Obviously, I’m not defending those sorts of behaviours. Not necessarily because cheating’s bad, mmm’kay but because cheating of that kind is just predictable and oh so bleedin’ boring. Everyone in the hobby pays pious lip-service to the idea that those sorts of actions are just ‘cheating yourself’ and I agree in the sense that, if you fudge purely for mechancical advantage in an RPG - whether as a player or a GM - then you are so far off the point that, to quote Wolfgang Pauli, ‘Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!’ (‘Not only is it not right; it is not even wrong’). Trying to explain to a player or GM who manipulates dice rolls in order to ‘win’ that this is pointless is like trying to explain the concept of the pedaloe to a wasp. Personally, I’ve always found self-interest a more reliably persuasive motivator than piety and here we must return to the distinction between player fudge and GM fudge.
The reason I deprecate that sort of grubby attempt to secure some tawdry advantage by players - and the reason why I can be depended on not to do it - is not because I’m particularly honourable, but because I get more enjoyment out of failure at the table than I do out of the relentless, tedious, uninteresting carousel of success. In other words, the form of fudging I indulge in as a player is directly related to the reason that I play RPGs at all. I don’t play characters to ‘win’ and I don’t play them as an exercise in self-insertion or (alter-) ego satisfaction. I play characters for entertainment, amusement and - sometimes - for moments of pleasing narrative resolution. And ‘resolution’ should not be confused with facile ‘victory’. Some of the most gratifying experiences I have had as a player have been when I am able to say of my character that, like Macbeth, ‘Nothing in his life became him, like the leaving it’. I once deliberately mis-stated my character’s current hit points during the concluding encounter of a one-shot because his failure - his death - was more dramatically satisfying (to me, at least) than his survival.
I should clarify that this is a form of fudge that has to be indulged in with great care. It is important to follow the rules when cheating. It is not for me, as one player, actively to sabotage the aims of the group as a whole by manipulating my dice rolls in circumstances where my character’s failure would risk some existential threat to the game. It is also the case that, in consuming this particular flavour of fudge, I have, as a player, an acute sense of the responsibility I owe to the GM not to detrail a session. Here, if we are counting up my multiple sins against ‘proper’ role-playing, I ask for my habit of meta-gaming to be taken into consideration. How does my character know that what they are experiencing in-game is an ‘existential threat’? In some cases it might be obvious but, in many instances, it isn’t clear to the character. But I, as a player, do know this more or less reliably because I’ve spent 40 years playing these games, and spent even longer consuming the story-telling tropes and beats in the various media that RPGs borrow from. Where there is some doubt, I will always play it straight - let the dice fall where they may - but where I have a high level of confidence that the encounter - be it social or combat related - will not result in a total derailment of the game, I will fudge it so that my character fails if falure is likely to prove interesting or, at most, irrelevant to the outcome.
It could be argued that what I have just said amounts to ‘I cheat, but only where the outcome doesn’t really matter’. So what’s the point? That would be true if the only criterion for what matters in a game is some measure of objective mechanical impact or consequence. But I would argue that this is to draw the boundary of what should concern or interest us at the table too narrowly. I regularly run and play in games where, in a three hour session, no dice are rolled at all. None. In games that I run, this has become almost as much of a standing joke as my capacity to organise an alleged one-shot… But this is because I GM games and often play in games where the focus is on those aspects other than things which have a mechanical expression: players’ in-character interactions with each other and with NPCs, the exploration and evolution of relationships within the party and the pursuit of activities that inform and are informed by the setting but that do not involve hitting things with axes.
And if one’s reaction to this is ‘Christ alive! That sounds awful!’ then that’s fine. I’m not here to tell you what you should do and, until someone does the decent thing and dies having first proclaimed me the Tyrant of RPGs Always and Forever, I’m only explaining what I do and why. Because what fudging allows me to to do as a player is to conjure a narrative result even in situations that should - strictly - be governed by the laws of statistics and the physics of tumbling maths rocks. Selfish? Up to a point, Lord Copper. It is true that I am fudging strictly for my own amusement and, although it is possible for my wilful lack of success to generate a situation that the whole table finds interesting, it would be dishonest to claim that those conjunctions of happy circumstances are common.
The argument, therefore, is that some ‘fudging’ is not axiomatically to be entirely defined as ‘cheating’. To cheat carries with it some notion of gaining an unfair advantage. This is why fudging for mechanical benefit is ‘wrong’ (or at least, stupid and pointless) because that is cheating, properly conceived. My preferred flavour and texture of player fudge gives me an advantage solely with respect to what I happen to enjoy in games which, if it has any mechancial effect, it is the creation of disadvantage for me as a player and my character.
If fudging as a player is a tangle of (perhaps contradictory) nuances, then engaging in the same behaviours as a GM is even more fraught. I trust we can all agree that the weird notion of RPGs as a ‘competetive sport’, of it being a case of GMs versus players, is one of the very few areas in the hobby about which there is something like an objective judgment to be made that this is tiresome and silly. So we can dispense with the parodic strawman of GM fudging as a way for the GM to ‘win’ or ‘defeat’ his players. But it remains the case that, irrespective of the motive, any action by the GM to ‘put his thumb on the scales’ seemingly creates a binary philosophical disjunction within the hobby about what RPGs are. The disjunct is between those who regard GMs as referees and those who regard them as guides and therefore conceive of RPGs as games or as stories.
I can entirely see and appreciate the point of view of those who hold that the role of a GM is to be a referee - to present the world accurately and consistently to the players, to interpet the stated goals and actions of the characters fairly and to manage opposing NPCs or agents mechanically without fear or favour according to the rules. All of this is to the good and I can (and do) happily play in games all the time where this is the attitude and assumption of all those at the table. But I have my doubts whether this ideal is actually truly achieveable in anything other than games that rigidly adhere to pre-written adventures run strictly ‘by the book’ such as in Pathfinder Society Play. Since I’m not that interested in running pre-written adventures, and certainly not in situations where I am supposedly barred from tinkering with them, the following discussion has no application in those cases.
Consider the question of ‘fairness’ in a loosely structured homebrew or sandbox game. We would say, I think, that a GM should be ‘fair’ and we all sort of know what this means in this context and generally we are referring to an absence of arbitrariness. Once the combat starts the chips fall where they may. A monster will employ its mechanical abilities to its best advantage in a life or death struggle, and the dice will determine the outcome.
No fudge in sight. Right? Except no. Except not.
Because by the time that fight starts, unless running a scripted scenario without any flexibility, the GM has already done more than put their thumb on the scales of the universe; they have instead summoned that entire universe into existence. Of course, there are some constraints of narrative credibility and consistency that will have to be obeyed - a great and ancient dragon should not be found walled up in a dungeon with no means of escape or sustenance. But, beyond that, before any dice are rolled, the GM in any form of homebrew or sandbox game is at liberty to determine whether a cave contains a spider or a carrion crawler, two starving cut-purses or a 30-strong band of brigands. In another context, the merchant your party has to convince to part with a certain object might have some attribute or artifact that allows him to resist the blandishments of the party’s most silver-tongued member. Nor need this relate only to increased risk and difficulty. A GM who prepares an NPC or event can just as easily decrease the threat or challenge it presents to serve some specific function in play. In any form of encounter, a GM can be implacably ‘fair’ and play by the strict rules, but the fact is that the likely mechanical outcome has already been massively influenced by the choices made when creating that element to begin with.
And what criteria does a GM use when imaging and creating such encounters? Well, they might be seeking to be ‘fair and balanced’. This is fine and, in many ways, unobjectionable, but it does, I think, lead to a certain monochromatic quality to games where encounters are ‘evenly matched’ to the characters’ abilities. Given enough time, relentlessly samey 50-50 risk ends up feeling not that dissimilar to any other predictable outcome. But I actually think it is at least as common for GMs to have other things in mind when creating an encounter. These might be whether it is an important inflection point in the game, a chance to evoke some atmosphere or tone, an opportunity to allow a specific character to shine, or to introduce some new plot hook or avenue of exploration or action. This is also why GMs limit the mechanical challenge posed by an encounter, because an easy win can, if employed judiciously, be as interesting or satisfying as a hard won victory. In short, a GM takes these decisions in service not of the game but of the story.1 This is all starting to be redolent of the warm, sugary aroma of fudge.
What, after all, is the practical difference between a GM who crafts an encounter, event or NPC of a given level of threat or difficulty or power to achieve some story-related goal but applies the resulting mechanics scrupulously at the table, and one where a GM, in the moment and on the fly, alters something about the encounter to achieve a narratively compelling consequence? To say that the former is ‘objective’ only pushes the question back one stage further to the creation of the encounter where, unless the person or monster or circumtance or event is, in some sense, designed to be mechanically ‘neutral’ or ‘balanced’, the GM is indulging in behaviour that drastically meddles with the odds. There’s a word for that…
This raises the obvious question of the limits of a GM’s capacity to fudge and these, I would suggest, should look something very like the guidance for player fudge described above. In summation, this can be rendered as Thou shalt not, as a GM, fudge to ensure any form of mechanical advantage for thyself nor to impose any such disadantage on thy players. Any manipulation must be in service of the story - to create drama, tension and narratively satisfying results. What qualifies as ‘satisfying’ is extemely subjective and it would be hopeless to try to provide anything like an even partial list, because every group at every table in every adventure will have a different idea of what the word means in their unique circumstances. But we do know, from other media, the sort of things that can make an event memorable or dramatic or enertaining and, by analogy, we can work to bring them about.
Star Wars, Episode IV, the final reel. Luke Skywalker, pursued by Vader, engages in a desperate struggle to guide his torpedoes into the exhaust chute of the Death Star. He shoots. He scores. Does Biggs (or is it Wedge? I can never remember which one survived the Battle of Yavin) then fly in behind him and ‘make sure’ by firing again? No. Because, narratively, that sucks. Transpose the action to a grim fight in the lich’s lair. The paladin rolls a natural 20, critting with his ensorcelled weapon but the lich had 34 hit points left and the paladin only did 32 points of damage. Next up in the initiative order is the mage who, after the long and desperate struggle, has only an Acid Splash spell left in the locker. Now, I concede that a case can be made for the dramatic thrust of holding relentlessly to the mechanics and allowing this last-ditch, desperate roll of the dice by the mage to serve as the climax of the encounter. But in the totality of all of the assumptions about the scene and the implied setting and tone of a game that concludes with a stand-up fight against an undead sorcerer king, I know what I find more compelling. A paladin cutting down the evil lord with a mighty stroke of his magic sword is going out with a bang; a mage sputting some corrosive substance over the enemy on his next turn is a wimper. And the only difference between these scenarios is the shaving off of a couple of the lich’s hit points. Pure fudge.
Delicious…?
For the avoidance of doubt, when I say that the GM makes decisions in service of the story I am not implying that the story is conceived narrowly as ‘the things that the GM wants to happen’. I mean the story that the table, as a group, either expressly through discussion or impliedly by player choices, has decided it wants to tell.