The Lantern Hall
Painting: an ancient lexicon open on a carved lectern in a dark chapel of books, glowing runes and symbols lifting off its pages like fireflies.
TermTabletop term

Fudging

When a Game Master secretly alters a die roll or a monster's statistics, usually to spare the party or keep the story on course. Whether it is kindness or cheating is one of the hobby's oldest arguments.

When a Game Master secretly alters a die roll or a monster's statistics, usually to spare the party or keep the story on course. Whether it is kindness or cheating is one of the hobby's oldest arguments.

Quick answers

What does "Fudging" mean?
When a Game Master secretly alters a die roll or a monster's statistics, usually to spare the party or keep the story on course. Whether it is kindness or cheating is one of the hobby's oldest arguments.

Nearby in the archive

GM screen

Tabletop term1979

A folding cardboard screen that hides the Game Master's maps and dice from the players while printing the most-used tables on the inside. It is both a practical tool and a symbol of the referee's secret knowledge.

Railroading

Tabletop term

When a Game Master forces the story down a predetermined track regardless of players' choices, like a train that can only go one way. Usually a criticism, it describes blocked exits, invincible villains and plots that happen no matter what the characters do.

Game Master

Tabletop term

The player who runs the game: describing the world, voicing every Non-player character, adjudicating rules and deciding what the dice mean. Different games give the role different names, such as Dungeon Master in D&D, Storyteller in Vampire: The Masquerade and Keeper in Call of Cthulhu. The role descends from the neutral umpire of refereed wargames.

TPK

Tabletop term

The death of every player character in a single encounter, ending the adventure (and often the campaign). Feared, joked about and occasionally engineered by devious Game Masters, it has an online equivalent in the raid wipe.

Save scumming

Digital term

Reloading a saved game repeatedly to undo bad luck or death, rerolling outcomes until they come up right. The term is especially associated with roguelike players, for whom it defeats the point of Permadeath.