I tend to be very open about when I fudged, and when I didn't. For example, when a cannibal was about to kill a level 1 player character, I had the cannibal try and drag his unconscious body into the jungle instead. This gave the party the opportunity to catch up with the cannibal, and save their unconscious friend.
Did you roll a die to determine something, and then ignore it for determining that thing? Did you present information to the players, intending for it to be taken a particular way, only to later decide that you wanted it to be taken a completely different way?
It doesn't sound like you did--and so I wouldn't call this fudging. I would call this successful DM risk management. You foresaw that an unacceptable problem could arise IF you engaged the randomness system, so you instead chose to follow a thematically appropriate alternative. Not fudging.
I explained why I did it (I thought it as more interesting story-wise), and my players agreed with my decision. I also discussed with them how one of our fellow players had a tendency for suicidal behavior, which I tried to discourage. This sometimes meant I had to fudge a little, to prevent an outright death of his character (which has happened about 4 times in the campaign now). But I also explained to them that this did not mean that I would prevent all deaths, just the ones that felt unfair, or due to a player's clumsiness. I often try to offer an opportunity for the players to recover from a mistake, but if they mess that up too, then it really is game over.
This would bother me for a different kind of reason than most fudging. If you treat "suicidal" characters with kid gloves, you're giving them a meaningful advantage over non-suicidal players. Unless you consequently apply some other, serious but not lethal, penalty to taking such actions, you will in fact be
incentivizing suicidal behavior, rather than discouraging it. I'm curious to know more details here (but as I read further it seems you've provided them).
For example, the very same player had a random encounter with 4 Aswang (vampire-like bat creatures with a stun ability). Instead of just running, he decided to fight them, which he was sure to lose. A poor decision on his part, but I can't blame him entirely for overestimating his own abilities. So I made a secret roll to see if there was a chance the local guards would be able to hear his plight. I made a listen check fair and square, and had a paladin of the local church come to his aid who succeeded on his Listen check.
It still was a pretty close battle, and both him and the paladin almost bit the dust. But they were victorious in the end, and heavily wounded. I was being pretty lenient by having the paladin show up. While it made sense story-wise, and considering how close he was to a church, it still was a case where I fudged things a bit more in his favor. I figured this was also an excellent opportunity for me to introduce a new npc, which would shine a more positive light on an organization that the players disliked.
...that's...not fudging, nor is it just making things fail to kill someone behaving suicidally. You managed risk, and quite wisely, I'd say. You saw that the situation, if not altered in any way, would result in an undesirable consequence. So you looked for a logical, thematically appropriate modification. In this case, whether or not allies would join the fight. You used random rolling to determine it, and did so "fair and square" (meaning, I presume, that you didn't fudge it). You then ran the combat as normal, but with an NPC ally helping the PC. I don't see where you ignored dice after employing them, nor where you gave or implied (partial) information and then contradicted it later.
In fact, literally everything you've done her sounds, to me, like
exceptionally good DMing, without even the faintest trace of "fudging."
I discussed this and the other example with my players a few weeks ago, and we talked at great length about when it was alright to fudge, and when it wasn't. I explained how I always fudged in their favor, to maximize fun, and never in the favor of the villains.
So...since I seem to be not at all thinking "fudging" means the same thing you do, how do
you define it?
I define it as rolling for something, and then deciding after the roll that no, you won't use the roll, because the rolled result isn't what you want; or, alternatively, as providing information (whole or incomplete) that the players can and should act on if they're playing intelligently, and then later contradicting that information without giving the players any opportunity to correct their now-mistaken understanding.
