This is revisionist heresy. Gary Gygax, who is expected to be cannonized via a trebuchet in the next couple of years, explicitly said that the official books are more like guidelines than actual rules.
And I mean that I actually had beverages with Gary at a science fiction convention back in the early 90s, and he said stuff like “If you want to pack a healing kit that heals +5 damage, do it.” Being serious now, it’s about the story, not the rules. I know that’s the point of the joke, but it’s been almost 50 years now and people we are still arguing about rules lawyers.
I always thought the White Wolf games that called the DM the Storyteller and explicitly made dice rolls optional were the apex of the interactive story idea.
On the one hand, games should enable you to tell the story you want to tell. If you're fighting against the games rules and contents to make your story work, changing a rule, or even the system you're using, is the right call.
On the other hand, we've all seen stories where the established rules of the world break for a moment to let the protagonist win a fight they'd obviously lose. It's always a low point in the story, unless the story is just bad. The audience starts to feel like there are no stakes because physics will just bend to help the hero win.
If the rules of the system already in use would kill a character, then maybe the story is one where that character dies. It's not the one you planned, but it's the one that's happening.
One way to think of this is that the players and the GM are all trying to tell a story together, and dice rolls exist to resolve conflicts between the stories they're trying to tell. Or if you prefer, conflicts between their stories and a world that has other ideas.
Normally the player wants something to happen, and the GM calls for a a die roll, the GM is represents the world opposing that event... and that's one of the many roles they fulfill at the table. However if the GM and the players all agree that the story should go the same way, you don't need to roll a die at all. That means if the player thinks they made a persuasive argument, and the GM believes the NPC should be convinced by it, then the GM doesn't have to say "roll persuasion" they can just say "yes that works"
Perhaps a better example - you don't always need to make a player roll to find traps when they're looking, especially if their score is much higher than the DC - you can just say "while investigating, you find this trap". Maybe your story is more interesting because the trap is ingenious and needs something clever to disarm it, maybe it can't be disarmed, and triggering it is a choice they have to make or go another way. Maybe the existence of the trap is only there to provide context or detail to the group, and it's not intended to be a threat.
This goes for attacks too. Almost all of the time, the players will have less fun if they know the world is pulling its punches, because they'll know there's no risk and they'll always win - it's not fun or satisfying to beat a challenge that was rigged in your favour after all.
But... if the GM knows for sure that everyone will be miserable if (x character) dies, and they think it will make the game or the story worse, they can just roll a die behind the screen and not look at it, then say "oh it missed" just... don't do it every time.
The whole fun of D&D is that nobody knows what the story will be until it plays out. Players don't know what the DM has planned, and the DM doesn't know how the players will react. And neither of them know what the dice will say.
On the one hand (again), I agree that you don't always need to roll. A 29 passive perception will let you see everything from traps to shat pants, and I'll just skip the perception rolls to move things along.
On the other hand, I don't want to base my decisions on player actions (good arguments) rather than character actions. Sure, it's a good lie, but you have a -2 to deception rolls. If I ignore that, then the dude with a +12 might as well have not bothered building a character.
On the third hand, I struggle as a DM with not holding back. I'm TOO nice. I don't want your character to die either. But if the story is going to have weight and your actions have meaning, that means bad things must be possible. If letting a hero live would feel cheap, it may be worth more to let them die. Plus, memorials and funerals are great RP.
I should make it clear, I'm at no point advocating for planning how the story will play out in advance - there's no point in playing the game if the story is completely pre-planned. Personally I think if you want to tell a completely planned story "writing" is a great outlet for this! I'm saying that, if in the moment, you get the feeling that the fun of the table is at stake, it can be worth a fudge.
For me, the most common "fudge" is if I'm running an official module with a random tables, especially encounter tables. I'll usually start by rolling on it, but if I see an option near my result that I think makes a better story in the moment, I'll swap over to it. If there's a cool thing I want the players to see, I'll try and make sure they get to see it over yet another encounter with 2 gargoyles at level 12. (I'm thinking of a real 5e module here!)
There's a bit of a sticking point with the argument "if you ignore the stats, the dude with the +12 might as well have not bothered building a character at all!" - because "if you ignore what the characters say, then the dude who came up with the brilliant argument might as well have not bothered roleplaying." - It's the same kind of argument, and I'm not advocating for either in the general sense. I'm saying "play it by ear". If in the moment you feel that this argument should convince the guard, regardless of the skill of the liar - don't roll the dice. That doesn't mean "don't ever roll the dice" it means that sometimes when you think it fits the story you're telling and the mood of the players at the table, you should just say "okay yes, that works!" Dice rolling is for when there are multiple credible outcomes to a situation, and you want to pick between them with chance.
Many DM's instinctively feel that a player who is creative and who concocts a brilliant believable lie should get some sort of "reward" over a player who just says "I've got a +15 to deception, so I'm just gonna invent a lie that convinces him we're innocent" and rolls. Or as another example, if two characters have +5 to deception, and one tells a great lie while the other tells an unbelievable one, people often feel that the good lie should stand a better chance to work - because that's how it works in stories.
Good roleplay is, of course, always its own reward, but the story feels more immersive if good arguments and good lies "work better" than bad ones in similar circumstances.
If you're the kind of DM who wants stuff like this to matter, but you don't want to just give the players a "free win" you can always implement a "situational bonus" to checks - some DMs will say "I'm going to give you +5 to this deception check because that was an excellent lie" - some DMs might say "Convincing the guard of that like is easier than convincing him of this lie, so the DC is lower" and some might say "that's a really believable lie, so I'm giving you advantage" or "the guard is really inclined to believe this story, so I'm giving him disadvantage on insight" - all of these can let you make sure that good roleplay feels effective in the story. The core books do talk about situational bonuses as something you should consider for checks in general, and they often recommend advantage or disadvantage as the approach. My preferred method is to adjust the DC for a check, or if it's opposed, provide a small advantage or penalty.
As always, everyone should run their table how they want. I'm just talking options. The "right" answer to a question like this is "whatever your table enjoys most", and the "wrong" answer is to stick with a style nobody at your table likes (and the books offer several approaches to these problems, so there isn't a defined "right answer" by the strict reading of the books)
One way to think of this is that the players and the GM are all trying to tell a story together, and dice rolls exist to resolve conflicts between the stories they're trying to tell. Or if you prefer, conflicts between their stories and a world that has other ideas.
It really is conflict between players and the GM, usually. A player succeeding every single roll in an encounter represents a total success for the player. A player failing every single roll in an encounter does not typically represent a total success for the GM, because the GM usually wants the player to be able to succeed. It's much more conflict between the player and world in the vast majority of cases unless either the GM or the player is a shithead and are making the meta-level relationship needlessly adversarial.
There is a wide range in how RPGs can be played. For TSR era D&D there it has a lot of in built mechanical flexibility. White Wolf games like WoD or Exalted adds a layer of dramatic flexibility at the expense of in-built heroics, which works well for a dark modern setting.
I really like a lot of games for different reasons. WW games, particularly Wraith, are some of the more interesting to run. Due to the higher reliance on player creativity and inter-character interactions. I really enjoy Wraith's shadow system for creating interactions between players for character flaws.
Paranoia is perhaps one of the most interesting GM experiences because it encourages so many deviations from standard gamemastering; railroading, PvP, splitting the party, killing PCs, ... . Still it works so well.
Hey, at least Satan comes to sessions on time. Last time we played, jesus was 3 days late!
At least he actually turned up for you! He came the first time and it was great, but I've been waiting years for him to come again and nothing. I guess he just doesn't want to hang.
I fudge die rolls all the time. Both ways. Satan is more than welcome at my table.
At least for my table, fun is the only goal. Some people do have fun being rules lawyers...though not at my table!
I mean, what kind of adventure would it be without a deal with at least one devil? Satan knows how to party.
Needing to fudge dice usually means the rules have failed.
A common trope is "I don't want my PC to die!". Fine. Reasonable. You can have rules about that. Look at how Fate handles "concede" and getting taken out. Look at how DND does jack shit.
Many games also have a fail forward mechanic. You don't need to fudge their check if the rules have mechanics for "if you really want to succeed but luck isn't on your side, here's what you can pay to succeed"
DND kind of sucks.
Youre right. Its not like death was part of the mechanics from the start, they also could be ignored.
Also, there totally isnt like 5 different ways for the players to rez a pc.
And lets forget about habing NPCs do the rezing as a sidequest.
I say all that, but I love death. I WANT my PC to die if he dies. Thats how you get thrills. Suspense. Tension. Playing with cheats on is fun, but gets boring fast.
Also, there totally isnt like 5 different ways for the players to rez a pc.
Depends on character level, setting, game tone. Not a universal solution to a universal problem.
And lets forget about habing NPCs do the rezing as a sidequest.
Not every game lends itself well to an unexpected sidequest. Also what is the dead PC's owner to do in the interim? This introduces a lot of questions and is also not a universal solution.
Did you read how defeat works in Fate? You can have death.
https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/conceding-conflict . If you don't want to go look it up, I'll summarize here:
In a conflict, before a roll is made, you can Concede. This is a Player action, not a character action. It means that you give up the conflict, but you get a say in what happens. You don't get whatever you were fighting over, but so long as the group agrees it's reasonable you can get something like "taken prisoner" or "left for dead." You also get a Fate point, which is nice. (D&D also has an extremely lackluster meta currency system, but that's a separate discussion). Note that it's not the DM just deciding what happens to you. That's for getting Taken Out.
If you instead let the roll happen, and you take more stress (damage) than you can hold, you instead get Taken Out. When that happens, you have no say. Barring normal social contract stuff, whoever was coming at you has free rein to just be like "And the spell explodes your head."
This is in the rules. To me that's much better than D&D's wishy-washy "maybe the DM will do this or that" standard. I don't want to hash this out at every single table I join from first principles.
D&D kind of sucks because it leaves a lot of important things up to the DM, so you get wildly different experiences depending on whatever half-baked whims this table has. And you have to have these conversations over and over again. And some people never will know there's other ways things could be, and leave the hobby or just be unhappy.
Some people might say "leaving more up to the DM is better" but that's wrong. Clearly going maximum calvinball "whatever the DM says in this moment" is not the platonic ideal of a game. At least not for me or anyone I know. Some rules are important. D&D is missing some important ones. And has too many rules in other places.
No system is perfect, has every rules and isn't relying on the master to some degree. But then, if you dont like death as being part of the game, why play dnd at all then ?
It would be like not liking horror and picking CoC.
If you want your PC to always survive no matter what, either play a system with it in the rules or make a deal with the DM. But blasting dnd because its not part of the core rules (besides all the ways to bring a PC back from the dead that are already there) isnt fair.
This is aggravated by DND being mega popular. Many people who would enjoy some other kind of games don't get to play them . Or don't even know there are options. Or the alternatives they find are close relatives of dnd that don't change much of the fundamentals.
Many new players may not even know that you can have a "hey I don't want my character to die unless I consent in that scene" conversation. If that was in the rules, they would likely know!
But DND simply doesn't address this. At least not in the phb. It's very cut and dry "if you drop to 0 hit points and fail your saves, you die."
That's a very specific style of play that's not appropriate for the most popular game.
Of course any popular produce in any medium will show their strenghts and weaknesses to the world. But better to try a defective product than none at all.
It's fine so long as everyone's on board with PC death, but this is just an example of D&D struggling to hold onto a giant audience with conflicting views. If they get rid of death, the people who actually play D&D the way it's meant to be played get pissed off. If they don't, the more narrative-focused players (who really shouldn't be playing D&D in the first place) will get pissed off. So they just ignore it.
In video game design there is the MDA framework. Where mechanics (rules) create dynamics (gameplay flow) that express aesthetics (genre and emotional expression). Thus in d&d the rules change the actions players take and these actions determine the tone and feel of the game. This is why Silvery Barbs is miserable, the dynamic it creates diminishes the roleplaying aesthetic by breaking suspension of disbelief.
When looking at 5e the fact most players don't just homebrew a few rules, but gut large mechanics (light, encumbrance, gold, travel) of the game. This has completed removed WotC's control of D&D's dynamics. This breaks the aesthetics of the system. 5e in it's current state is not a heroic fantasy game, but everyone thinks it is. Which is why so many tables fail and new DMs burn out.
I've been collecting Chick Tracts I find laying around, and my Holy Grail is finding a copy of the one about the satanic game of dungeons and dragons, titled Dark Dungeons. Unfortunately it's a niche subject and not included in their variety packs, you have to order it specifically, which means unless I find a very specific crank still caught up in the satanic panic there's a very low chance of ever finding it in the wild
I roll dice because it makes a nice noise and enhances the experience for the players: they think I'm rolling secret stuff that'll result in an ogre attack!
