I was not trying to pass judgment, but rather, I was trying to say that finding the "right" outcome for an encounter is inherently subjective in a way that does not lend itself to a shared experience, whereas letting a situation unfold as it does lends itself to subjective experiences that are relatable. The way you used "fair" is not how I would use it, as it appears to mean, "According to my preferences," whereas I would tend to use it to mean, "As we agreed."
I think we're largely in agreement here, save for maybe how we're using "fair"; I think our definitions are closer, but that any differences are products of a group's different social contracts. One of the things I enjoy about my group is a heavily compatible aesthetic, which means that, for instance, if the dice dictate something that doesn't feel "right" to me, I have a good feeling of whether it would feel "right" to the entire group. So, for instance, a purely correct mechanical call might lead to the group all sitting about with that puzzled/irritated "really?" look on their faces. They've been ripped out of the game, or rather forced to look at the "game" part instead of the in-character situation.
Now admittedly these are very group-specialized skills, things I wouldn't want to rely on at all with a group of people I don't know as well. House rules, as it were, much like knowing not to ever use the word "psionics" in-character in a D&D game if I don't want my wife to get very irritated and disconnected from the setting.
Using fudging to make pitch corrections is, in my view, sacrificing too much of the imaginary world in service to a desired outcome.
Here I think that heavily depends on just how the players are perceiving the imaginary world in the first place. To use the example of the players acting on bad info, it actually sacrifices something of the imaginary world when a fluke in the ruleset dictates that the knowledge they successfully gained in-character is invalid, for reasons that don't exist in the game world, but that do exist in a mathematical quirk. So, it can vary.
As a player or GM, I would prefer if the GM simply said, "I made a mistake," or introduced some new element, rather than fudging. It also speaks well for the GM to own up to their misjudgement. Should the die rolls become too irrelevant, it becomes exceedingly difficult for a player to discern what is likely or unlikely in a given situation, as the answer strongly depends on the inclination of the GM. Rather than a weighing of risks, it becomes, "What is Ethan likely to think is acceptable?"
I agree to some extent. At the same time, though, I personally think that a game system has to earn your trust as much as a GM does, and that not all instances of trusting your GM more than a system are misplaced. I say this as a player as well, mind; I trust my buddy Jeff to provide a better estimation of his world and the risks we take in that world than I trust whichever edition of D&D he's using at the time, and I trust him to be fair about it.
Another good example might be the common GM advice of "if failure would not present any interesting results, don't call for a roll in the first place." That's absolutely a rule that requires trust in your GM's definition of interesting, but I think it produces better games. Not for everyone, of course; I do understand that "sometimes the only consequence is that something interesting happens on success and nothing interesting happens on failure" is a verisimilitude issue that's interesting to some players. I like the other approach, though.
All that to say... you are not infantilizing your group, if you are in agreement, and I was not trying to say that. But to apply those preferences generally would be, IMO, to treat players as more dependent than they need be. I would probably not run the sort of game that hinges on good die rolls to move forward, except in the sense that death could be lurking around every corner. I can nonetheless appreciate the impulse to run more dramatically-oriented games. My preference would be for a player-controlled resource, but I can live with fiat and (if need be) the occasional willful fudge.
Sure. Part of the willingness to trust the system (and thence the dice) implicitly is finding the right system for us: for me running, that's something where I'm comfortable with things like my threat assessment capacity, and something where I think the system is focusing on the right things. Good die rolls might not just be the key to the game moving forward, it might be the key to whether you're doing anything tonight or not, even as the rest of the group moves forward. I'm not quite as against the practice as is my
esteemed coworker, but I do agree with him on a basic level. We all have bad memories of friends sitting on the couch disgusted after a long workday, missing out on the ability to participate giant climactic fights because of two stinky d20 rolls in a row. It wasn't our bag.
The problem arises, in my mind, when someone applies fiat and die-roll fudging to generate "correct" results which are not necessary, for instance, all five members of a party emerging from the Deadly Dungeon of Death, alive, when four, or as few as one, could return and call it something of a victory. Fudging without necessity is futility. While I don't have a reason to believe that is your style, I have seen ample evidence, here and elsewhere, that such games are fairly common.
No doubt they are. They make good cautionary tales. But I've also seen cautionary tales from when a GM trusted a ruleset too much and got bad results, or even from people falling out of the hobby because they ran into a game that took the game more seriously than the players. Ultimately, I figure I work well allowing myself a little wiggle room if necessary, and trusting myself to do a decent job of defining "necessary." If I screw up a session, my wife
will let me know.
