Referee Fiat, How Often Do You Indulge In It?

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Had a moment of Dice Hating My Players last night. They were jumping into an empty hex, with some sketchy coordinates to work with (DC 18 roll), the player missed it by 6 points. A misjump was rolled. When the severity of the misjump was determined, it looked like the ship would be destroyed upon entering jump. The players and I just looked at each other a little dumbfounded before one of them said, "So, do you want us to all roll up new characters?"

I pulled out two d6's and rolled once for direction and then both for distance. They are now off course, at the wrong world, and will end up a month and a half behind schedule in the campaign, but at least we still have a game with those characters. I didn't feel that the party should be punished for a bad dice roll.

So I'm just wondering this. How often do you as a Referee make judgement calls in Traveller that ignore rulings and why do you decide to do that?
It seems that Traveller not only allows, but is geared towards a lot of trust in the judgement of its Referees when compared to other games. I just wanted to hear the input from others on this.

 

[RandyT0001]

Number One Referee Rule
The referee controls the dice, the dice do not control the referee.

The story, the RP fun is the most important thing, never let a dice roll change that.

 

[flykiller]

I didn't feel that the party should be punished for a bad dice roll.

it's not punishment. it's the way it is. if the players know they will not suffer adverse consequences of any choice they make then the game experience moves from "gaming" to "posturing".

How often do you as a Referee make judgement calls in Traveller that ignore rulings and why do you decide to do that?

all the time. I and the players have a lot of work tied up in the game and the characters and we don't want to see it suddenly flushed away because of a traffic accident or food poisoning or some other non-adventure-advancing reason (if we want real life then we'll live real lives thank you very much). this approach is implemented by keeping all die rolls hidden and by letting the die rolls guide my decisions, not control them. but I will sometimes let bad or disruptive things through, keeps a sense of realism and keeps the players on their toes.

but, if the players knowingly take risks, then the dice come out and are rolled in the open and the results are applied without hesitation.

 

[The Oz]

I do tend to keep potentially fatal die rolls to myself, in case I need to modify the results without the player's knowledge. Usually I did this by keeping their target number secret (this was CT: no task system, remember).

But like flykiller says; if they try to run across open ground that's covered by enemy guns, they get what the dice say they get, and if the dice say they get shot, they get shot. I might reduce the damage enough to produce unconscious characters instead of dead characters, but they get shot if they ask for it.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I didn't feel that the party should be punished for a bad dice roll.

it's not punishment. it's the way it is. if the players know they will not suffer adverse consequences of any choice they make then the game experience moves from "gaming" to "posturing". </font>[/QUOTE]I'd disagree with you here, there is a lot of grey area between "taking a calculated risk" and "suicide charge". Sometimes bad things happen due to the whims of fate, its hard to assign choice to a die roll - if that were the case then I believe that the players would have chosen for the dice to not have rolled a misjump that resulted in the destruction of their ship.

 

[Malenfant]

If it's combat, I'll let the players die if the dice say so - it's a fight, after all. If they do something unbelievably stupid and fatal, then I will cheerfully let them die too since it's their own damn fault.

But being killed on something like a misjump or random event? No way. You don't get players to spend all that time making characters just to have them die by the equivalent of a bad accident over which they had no control at all. I would probably throttle a GM who did that to me.

As it is, in this example they failed the navigation roll so they got punished for that - killing them all would be going a bit too far there. I think a misjump was a good solution, plus it makes things interesting and keeps the game going instead of well... dead.

 

[endersig]

As a GM, I know I indulge a little more than I should. Say I spent hours fleshing out a particular planet... and the players just stop by to get fuel and jump off. hmmm.... strange jump phenomenon... you end up back on the planet... or they "misjump" in a nice round pattern

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I've known Refs who very obviously and deliberately roll dice and then, without even looking at them (and sometimes while the dice are still rolling), say what the result is. I've even done it myself.

If the dice give a result that's bad for the game, then the dice are wrong.

 

[Flynn]

In general, I'm a "roll in the open and let the dice fall where they may" kind of Referee. I do what I can to minimize the impact of bad dice rolling, but that's more of a creative exercise.

For example, in the situation at the beginning of this post, I have in the back of my head a number of options for whenever I might get the "ship is destroyed" result on a misjump chance:

1) Something akin to the "Deadspace" phenomenon from the Gateway Domain sourcebook occurs, and the ship does a Bermuda Triangle thing: they enter an unusual area of jumpspace and once they do appropriately heroic things to get out, then they emerge several decades later. As far as the records go, the ship was destroyed, but here the PCs are, having misjumped through time itself, so to speak. The campaign then allows us to explore the changes to the setting that have occurred since the ship left its normal time.

2) The ship "misjumps" into an alternate dimension, such as the one described in Challenge magazine #33 (I think, I could be wrong here...). I have a number of possible options for short campaigns in ATUs before the ship finally finds the means to return to normal space. This one doesn't wreak as much havoc with the setting, but requires a little legwork for the short adventure it takes the PCs to find their way home and then pursue it, while overcoming any obstacles along the way.

Once I've actually had the fun of playing the above options out, I'm sure I'll have to come up with others, but we haven't had to do that yet.

In the end, though, I have to agree with Randy's Rule up above: The referee controls the dice, the dice do not control the referee. If you get something you don't like, reroll. So long as you do it in the characters' favor and not against them, they aren't going to mind at all.

Hope this helps,
Flynn

 

[parmasson]

Characters only die by choice. Which means bad decisions plus bad rolls equal death. Everything else just results in a horrible inconvenience. The worst misjump in the world (unless they choose to jump at an altitude of 300 miles) will result in them being stranded on some unknown rock with a chance of survival. In combat the dice roll in the open.

 

[DaveChase]

There are fates worse than death. I think Flynn touched upon some of them

Some thoughts about the ship destruction:

Aliens snatch the crew just before the ship explodes and they enslave the crew/experiment on the crew/make them an offer they can't refuse.

The crew makes it to an escape pod, just before the ship blows. Who picks them up

pirates, the Imps, or ??

And on stupid mistakes, I agree that if the players go out of their way to make them selves dead then so be it. If one player makes the rest of the players dead, it can get interesting some times during the next roll up session.

Once during a session, (I was a player) we were playing PSI type characters in training. We were attempting to escape from a planet and just before we launched, my character had a vision (note from the refree) that showed us blowing up if character Y started the engines (none of my visions had been wrong yet). Player Y, X and W said 'what ever' when I reported the vision to them and they let Y start the engines.

After the great big explosion we all rolled up newcharacters. And for some odd reason my new character was always watching the other characters (LOL).

Dave

 

[Liam Devlin]

I have to concur with Mssr Malenfant here, and Flynn, and Mr Randy Tyler.

YOU'RE the Gm, the dice are YOUR tools, not your master.

as for the scenario....Have them misjump into the edge of a system with [maybe if they do it right], enough thrust and vector to aim at a planet in said system [with T20/ and TNE any bingo fuel left for final thrust and maybe a decelerration...guess they make it, and they're marooned on a TL-2 primitive world and in need of parts...[and the new adventure begins..surviving/ getting help, messages, etc..]

As for Mr Chase's scenario--we did that once and we all died. The two that made it to the ship deliberately engaged the jump drive at 300 miles, and turned the ship and selves inside out rather than be boarded and arrested. Yes, the CT lawless days..remember those well.

Yes, we rolled new characters, but we got another GM too!

 

[shar_leigh]

I have to admit that I will fudge the dice results sometimes but only in very rare circumstances. If the players are rolling bad, did stupid things, etc. then the dice usually stand. Where I usually fudge it is when the players did everything right, did heroic stuff even but the dice rolls were just bad. Then they might be injured, ship destroyed, etc. but they survive. Sometimes they also might WISH they had died but then this is traveller. It's always been known for being harsher then some of the other games.

I do like the deadspace idea though.

 

[flykiller]

the dice are YOUR tools, not your master.

well ....

if you only go where you want, and never let the dice have a decisive role (good pun, yes?) then your game will never be anything more than you expect and plan. but if you let the dice intrude and impose a course or event once in a while then your game will acquire a dynamic you can't get from simple centralized referee planning. least, mine does. worlds and characters are hard work and you don't want to give them up easily, but sometimes plans fail and people die, and if you let reality have a place in the game then it gives the role-played characters an opportunity to gain depth. instead of thinking of the dice as either masters or tools, think of them as partners.

best roleplaying I've seen is when a character dies.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Yes, but they have to die in a narratively correct way!

 

[Whipsnade]

Blatant, 'out in the open' applications of GM Fiat were pretty rare in my games. Like many others here, I preferred to let the dice lay as they fell.

Besides, stupidity on the part of the PCs requires that they take the ensuing lumps.

The types of GM interference I usually engaged in were along the lines of giving the PCs another chance at recognizing something or someone, tailoring NPC groups to the PCs' current abilities, and letting the PCs have another 'bite at the apple'. All of these (I hope) not noticable to the players at all.

It also helped that I nearly always rolled my dice behind a book or screen!


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by flykiller:
if you only go where you want, and never let the dice have a decisive role (good pun, yes?) then your game will never be anything more than you expect and plan.

All I expect and plan is for the players and myself to have a good time.

Originally posted by flykiller:
but if you let the dice intrude and impose a course or event once in a while then your game will acquire a dynamic you can't get from simple centralized referee planning. least, mine does. worlds and characters are hard work and you don't want to give them up easily, but sometimes plans fail and people die, and if you let reality have a place in the game then it gives the role-played characters an opportunity to gain depth. instead of thinking of the dice as either masters or tools, think of them as partners.

I do think of the dice as "partners". Although I will exercise my judgement and keep my own council in determining if my "partners" are giving the wrong advice in a given situation.

Originally posted by flykiller:
best roleplaying I've seen is when a character dies.

Me too! I love a good self-sacrificing death scene! However, its hard to achieve that in a situation that boils down to, "The players flip a switch in the course of normal play and then die because of it."

Now, I agree that the dice should be allowed their input. However, depending on the context imposed by the action of the scene, I will use my own judgement to interpret the input of the dice. IMHO, this what defines being a Referee - using ones own judgement to adjucate rulings during play.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Heck, I even warn my players indirectly if they are making a bad move. If you let the dice run it, they should run it totally. Might be interesting to see life going by totally at random. The Ref would be another PC in that case, like the banker in Monopoly.

Example, I had a group once that encountered a bomb. Set to go off in minutes. So, they not only pick a character to difuse the bomb that has no demolitions skill, but they all also decide to stand AROUND the bomb and help! They didn't really realize what they were doing.

Lapses in common sense like this happen. The above situation is to encourage the PCs to run from the scene. Knowing when to run the RPG challenge, to fight the urge to solve it like "Die Hard".

In the above case, I gave them a chance to reconsider, or better yet to consider carefully, then act. Mortality should be one of the places where the Referee needs to weigh "realism" vs. the good of the game. Flexibility serves everyone well in these cases. Especially since so many RPG circumstances present a good opportunity to collect a "Darwin Award".

 

[kafka47]

Warning players? If the players are dumb enough to get into a situation then they should not expect a Ref to bail them out. One thing that I have always emphasized in my Traveller games that it has to be realistic. You act dumb, nasty things happen. Too many years of playing Call of the Cthulhu, I suppose...

 

[JAFARR]

Our party of 6 PCs engaged in some ground combat resulting in totally routing the opposition. During that exercise my character was knocked unconscious twice at which point the GM ruled that I was out of it for the time being. My character was the one with space combat expertise. The PC who had so masterfully directed the dismantaling of the GM's ground forces tried to do the same thing in space, (the group dragged me along to our ship.)after we managed to escape from the trap we were in on the world. His groundside tactics gave us the chance to flee, but he was as badly out classed in space combat as he had outclassed the GM's ground forces. The other PC's were able to operate the ship, but did not know anything about space combat tactics. I silently watched them get creamed. The last laser hit came as we managed to enter jump. My character finally regained her senses with the ship threatening to disintergrate in jump space. Our ship went through 5 disturbences like that before stablizing. What we were able to discover during jump was not encouraging. Power plant barely functioning, maneuver drives fried with no way to repair them. We were afraid to do anything with the jump drives while they were still operating. We jumped from within 6 hexes of Regina and came out of jump some where in the Solamanti Rim FIVE years later! On top of that, we were heading into the ocean with no maneuver drives to stop our crash. GM called a halt to the session by putting us in a freeze until the next session. When play resumed we crashed into the ocean and managed to escape to an inflateable life raft with what we were wearing and carrying. We just happened to be in something like the Gulf Stream which carried us close enough to the coastline that we could see land and paddle to it. Moral of the story: We should have died in the crash, but this gave the GM an opportunity to transport us to a new set of adventures once he figured out a semi-logical escape from our almost certain demise. Basicly we started a new campaign with the clothes on our back and what was in our hands, but without having to re-generate new characters.