[pmulcahy11b]

Fudged: When the event called for either detracts from the story line the GM is trying to present, or contributes nothing to it. It's not a fudging tactic a GM should use too often, but every so often the dice call for an event that will seriously screw up the progress or events of a campaign, without providing any decent or satisfying alternate events or story line. Then, the GM has to fudge. Needless to say, you don't do this very often, or get too heavy-handed with it, or the players will realize they are being led around by their noses, and will begin to think that they have no actual say in what their characters do.

And remember: Just because a campaign isn't going the way the GM intended, because the players decided to go in a different direction, doesn't mean that the campaign suddenly becomes unplayable or unsalvageable. A GM has to be far more flexible than the players. A good tactic for this to to have something akin to what we called in the Army "hip-pocket classes" -- a good NCO always had ready in his head a set of classes that could be taught quickly and with minimal training aids, but carried good training points. A good GM should have a good set "hip-pocket events" and "hip-pocket encounters" to carry his campaign along on the fly until he comes up with something to fit the direction the players want to go. (And meanwhile, there is a lot of panicked, rapid thinking going on in his head that he's trying hard to conceal from the players...)