Whatever the Hell it Was

I am going to talk about dice fudging.  But first;

Stumbled across the new Going in Style film, and I can't say I'm interested.  But it made me think of the 1979 version that I'm fairly sure I saw at the drive-in with my parents.  It didn't make much of an impression ... but I remembered the story and I found myself wanting to connect with what that old film was like, from the point of view of someone who is 54 and not 16.

I felt sure the newer film would be looser, more raucous, less paced, jokey and perhaps with a little bit of drama.  The old film, I was sure, was so thick with drama it was hard for me to enjoy.  I watched it another time, on television, sometime in the 80s.  But not since.  I did not remember this scene.




Let me take a moment and explain a little about drama.

Drama is a story where we talk about something we wanted, and we didn't get, or we couldn't have, or we can't now change.  Then we talk about how it makes us feel.  And then we talk some more, trying to get a handle on managing that feeling, knowing that we're never going to succeed at it.  Ultimately, that's where it ends.  The disappointment, the uncontained sorrow and melancholy we feel, it becomes part of us.  And as we get older, we remember it, and we relive it.  Just like Willy here.  We relive it and it aches ... and all the harder because there is no way we will ever find a balm that will remove that ache.

We watch drama, if we're at all interested in being self-aware, and not resolved to destroy our consciousness through the means available, to reflect upon the shared experience of that ache.  To identify with others of our species, who understand what it means to be our species.  It's not the laughter and the joy that makes us care, or love, or lift ourselves a little higher.  It's the mistakes.  The regret.  The losses.  The things that we wouldn't have asked for, that we wouldn't have wanted, that we would be happy to be rid of.  Yet we wouldn't be us if we were rid of them.

Our best works of art are not comedies.  They are not satire.  They are not heroic tales.  Watching enough of any of those, and usually age 30 or 35 is enough, we grow jaded and cold.  We begin to grow bored with things we're not and we'll never be.  We get interested in ourselves.  And two minutes of a film we'll never see, that we never want to see, can cut into us like a knife.

It takes character and resolve to stand up to consequences.  Squeezing out of trouble, shifting the responsibility, finding excuses, rationalizing a behaviour we have that we don't want to look too closely at, those things get to be habits.  They're options we take because we're all too aware that lifting our chin to take the punch is hard, too damn hard, for the way we feel right now or the way we want things to go.  We avoid.  Often when we avoid, we find such success at it that we encourage others to avoid.

And more often than it should, we also learn that finding people a new way to avoid pain and misery is a great business model.  Nothing makes a buck like a rationalization your neighbour hadn't considered.  Turn your rationalization into a book, turn it into a channel, make it into an industry, then spread it around so everyone can buy in.  Because everyone, everyone, is seeking a way not to feel like Willy does at the top of this post.  If you can promise they don't have to; if that's what you're peddling and you can make it sound real, jeebus boy, you're on your way.  You've got a licence to print money.

Okay.  That drama thing is settled, I think. Let's move on.

Crossing the 'Verse recently characterized the paradigm defending dice fudging thusly:

“Sometimes, the die comes up with something that completely deflates the moment; it derails the game; it kills the momentum; or it otherwise destroys the overall feel that you’re going for.”

People will talk about whether it's right to fudge the die to ensure that doesn't happen.  People will talk about whether or not the moment should be deflated or if the game should be derailed. But what they won't talk about is "the moment."  Or, "the game."  Or, its "momentum."  You, the reader, are presumed to understand these things perfectly ~ and most of you will believe that you do.  Yet let's see if we can't define them.

"The moment" is that critical point that promises you're about to achieve something, or obtain something, or prove something that's really terrific.  "The game" is the collection of moments that have brought us to this point, the spectacular collection of lesser "moments" that right now promise a win that will really produce a resounding emotional triumph.  "Momentum" is the inexorable, unstoppable, adrenaline-rushed roller coaster that the players have been riding up until this moment, when the player, or the DM, is going to throw that ultimate, utmost climatic die, upon which total success hinges.

And the die fails.

Drama is a story where we talk about something we wanted, and we didn't get, or we couldn't have, or we can't now change.  Here it is.  The consequence.  The moment of loss.  Failure.  Death.  Disappointment.  The bitter, rancid fruit, in your hand.

It takes a real asshole of a DM to make you bite off a piece of that fruit and swallow it down.  Especially when it wasn't "you" that failed.  It wasn't.  It was the die.  The goddamn, inflexible, unfair die, that doesn't even have feelings, that's just this stupid thing made of plastic, that doesn't really have any actual power to force me to accept its dictates.  Hey, it doesn't have any power, does it?  Fuck no.  And fuck if I'm going to accept what a piece of fucking plastic says.  Not me.

One thing for sure.  My DM's going to understand.  My DM ain't gonna pick a hunk of plastic over me.  And anyway, it should have worked out, right?  It should have.  Everyone can see that it should have.  Damn it.  Damn IT!  It should have come out right.  But that's all right.  My DM is not an asshole.  My DM knows what's riding on this. Look how this moment was spoiled.  This would be a pretty fucking shitty game if the DM didn't understand how this ruins everything.  Fuck yeah.

Those are the thoughts going through your head, those at the thoughts going through the other players' heads, those are the thoughts going through the DM's head.  It's just a die.  It's not real.  And things should have worked the way they were "supposed to."

I've seen this many times as a DM.  I've had players throw over the table.  I've had shouting, and swearing, and players threatening to quit.  I've had a player quit, and never come back.  Once, I had to physically throw a player out of my house.

I am playing a different game.

Let's redefine those terms, as I see them, and not as most see them.

"The moment" is every moment in the game.  No moment is special.  No die roll is special.  Events turn, patterns form, die rolls become critical, sooner or later the ultimate, utmost climactic die is thrown.  But it is the player, and not me, who has shaped the moment when everything hinges on that die.

"The game" is the collection of player choices that brought the player to this risk.  The player entered the dungeon.  The player stayed longer than was wise.  The player failed to run.  The player did not bring enough help, or resources, or resisted retreat to get more resources.  The player runs the game.  The obstacle in front of the player is set up, but the player never has to overcome it.  It's a big world.  There are many obstacles.  If the player has to overcome this one, this specific one, it is not my business what happens.

"Momentum" is in no way hinged to success.  For my money, the player screaming at their loss, the player throwing over the table, the player shouting in my face, the player railing and throwing dice and storming out of the game all sound to me like one FUCK of a lot of momentum.  No one is bored.  Drama is spectacular.  Everyone talks about it.  Everyone redresses what happened.  Everyone offers an opinion.  Everyone is engaged.  The moment is real.  The moment is memorable.  The moment is profound and moving and, in its ugliness, in its misery and melancholy, the moment is beautiful.

The player I threw out of the house that day made up with me a year later and rejoined the game, with a new character.  All but one of the players I've had that stormed out in anger because yes, I was going to honor the die, came back within 20 minutes.  They came back and apologized.  They were told it was fine.  They learned their friends could forgive. Their friendships became stronger.  They rolled new characters.  The new characters came to be loved.  Old characters, even those who had reached a high level, were honored, but well forgotten.  People lived in the present.  The drama made for good stories.  The stories made for great jokes and laughing and camaraderie on a deep, esoteric level.

Because I was an asshole.

I don't know what makes me an asshole.  Maybe it's the subconscious effect of seeing that scene from Going in Style when I was 16, and a lot of other scenes besides.  From a very young age I ate every movie I could see, often three or four a day, all day, if I could find them on TV.  I did not care what kind of film.  So maybe watching hundreds of hours of misery, of fighting, of people swearing to hate people, of reconciliation and comprehension, innured me to the panic that someone might not like me because I was willing to let their character die.

Because in those moments, I was willing to let the chunk of plastic matter more to me than their feelings did.

Maybe it was because I loved the game more than I loved my friends.

I like to think I expected more of my friends than a typical DM defending the virtues of fudging dice seems to expect.  I like to believe that a bad die roll in a bad moment isn't that big a deal; and that someone swearing at the table over a die isn't that big a deal; and that shit happens, and so what?  Players will get over it.  At least, the players I care about will.  I've seen people lose their shit over a lot of things ... a lot of petty things, as it happens.  It's not a big deal.

It's definitely not enough of a deal for me to compromise a die roll.  It is so easy to do that.  So easy.  And once it's done, and rationalized, and excused, and the consequences easily avoided ... well, it's so easy to do it again.  And again.  And again.  And each cheat cheapens the drama.  Each cheat steals the potential for a player to experience the full game.  Each cheat steals.

I'm not ready to steal a life experience from my friends for the sake of avoiding a bitter result.  I don't care if the experience is a good one or a bad one.  I look at that two minute piece of film at the top of this post and I think, do I want that moment of sadness removed from the world?  I think it is beautiful.  It is more than a man feeling sorry for himself.  It's resilience.  It's having the strength to talk about it openly, and see the mistake for what it was, and to regret the mistake and be a better person, even if now, this late in life, it makes no difference to anyone except that person.

I celebrate that.  And I celebrate players who have gotten past their dead characters.  And DMs who have taken the storm and forgiven the player, and never held the player accountable for having an honest, bitter piece of fruit to swallow.  Hell no, I won't cheat.  I won't rationalize cheating.  I won't preach cheating and I won't condone cheating.  Cheaters steal all the reality and beauty, and ultimately the love, from the world.

No matter how they rationalize it.