An important lesson I learned about myself as a #DungeonMaster:
I can't fudge my dice rolls. If I do, I find myself fudging them all, all the time, forever. At that point there's not much point to rolling in the first place, right?
So I roll everything in the open. It holds me accountable and prevents me from feeding my dice-fudge addiction.
I get it, but also, I've wrecked too many games doing this.
Sometime's you gotta hold back a little. But always, but all the way, but maybe the giant does 14 and not 34. Maybe the dragon didn't nat20 that save. Maybe the horrible monster from beyond space and time didn't make all 5 rolls to tear through the portal into this realm and destroy all reality on the first 5 turns, maybe it only made 2 or 3.
As long as you cheat to better the experience, you are, in my opinion, doing it right.
@arcticfox Totally! It's the part where throwing the dice is part of the fun that I get tripped up -- I always fudge with the intent of making a better experience for the player.
It's just that I wind up always thinking I know better than the dice do what would be awesome, so I fudge everything and rolling the dice becomes perfunctory.
EvilSqueegee
Arcticfox