Re: [DL] Fudging

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 12:24  PM, Allan Seyberth wrote:
> Agreed on all points.
>
> I tend to cheat a lot less in Deadlands than in other games as 
> Deadlands has the
> fate chip mechanic, which is sanctioned dice fudging anyway.

I don't cheat much, but I do occasionally. Deadlands is, to me, a nice 
balance between the extremes of GM styles  I refer to as 'adversarial' 
(Many D&D games, where the GM has strict rules. Hackmaster is a great 
parody/example of this) and 'Iron Fist' (Call of Cthulhu, as well as 
many World of Darkness games, where everything is at the GM's 
discretion.) These loosely line up with rule-heavy and rule-light 
systems, but not always. Fudging in CoC for example is almost 
necessary... The system relies on the Keeper and Players working to 
spin a good tale, and adherence to rules is secondary.

As I said, Deadlands sits well-balanced between these extremes. 
Marshals are encouraged to make new stuff up to torture their posses, 
but a specific mechanic exists for the Marshal to 'cheat' within the 
rules.

The last time I fudged was in my HoE game last weekend. A posse of new 
characters (A Law Dog and a Huckster fresh from the Weird West) faced 
down 4 MiBD without much help. They needed it, so a few gattling 
bullets mysteriously did negligible damage when they could have caused 
maiming guts wounds. I pulled some punches, but the posse was still 
stretched thin, and I stand by my decision.

it was for the good of the story.