When to Finagle

I love that word, “Finagle.” It’s such a fun euphemism, and so versatile too. I finagled the results. I finagled the set up. I finagled your girlfriend. See… versatile. For DMs it is an especially important word, because sometimes we’ve got to finagle the dice, but the ever important question is exactly when?

The thing about dice is that they hate us. You’ll have this encounter planned where a little old lady will attack a player with a cane. Really just for comedic value, when suddenly your players start rolling dud dice. 1. 2. 1. 1. 3. While the granny is rolling criticals like some wrinkly demi-god. Now, if you can let your players rest after a little old lady beats them within an inch of their lives, you might as well let it happen. However, if your players have to actually *do* anything after the little old lady it might be time to play around with numbers.

There is a flip side to this coin, and much like the dice it tends to land in our favor. Never let an encounter you actually want to be difficult flounder just because you can’t seem to roll anything worth a damn. This is really the reason we don’t let players see our dice rolls. It’s not so they don’t know the actual results, it’s just so they don’t know when we’re lying through our teeth. Remember, at the end of the day you’re still god.

Finagling our own dice is easy, but you may have to employ a trick or two when it’s the players roll, and the method you use really depends on your players. I’m rather lucky and my weekly group has been pruned of its rule shark. Which is a good thing, because if it’s not obvious by now I should admit I take some pretty hefty liberties with the rules sets, and frankly for most systems you should too. For me the easiest method is to look at the die, look at the player, and tell them to their face, “Stop failing and roll again.” If they continue to roll poorly I go with one of two options depending on the specifics.

I’ll say a slight prayer to the random gods, and tell the player, “Eh, good enough.”

Or more likely submit to the will of the random gods, and let things go with the dice.

If you do have a rules lawyer or if anyone causes a fuss simply remind them that you are the GM and whatever you say goes. If they still want to cause a bother remind them that you are the GM *and* you are a wrathful god. At this point you might as well give their character scurvy. (Cause why not?)

The point of this post is pretty basic: You are the GM, and it’s up to you to make sure everyone has fun. Dice are random and don’t care who is having fun or not, so really it’s up to you to act as a fail-safe against probability. If you and your players aren’t enjoying yourself what’s the point? A secondary point is that if a player pisses you off you should destroy them and drink their tears, but mainly I’m talking about the having fun part.