I 100% do not care if the GM fudges. Because while the board game is fun and all... it is so low down on my totem pole of reasons I play D&D that I could just be handed a card by the DM that said "You guys won the fight" and I'd say "Great! Now we'll get back to the roleplaying!"
I also am of the opinion that one of the most overrated things that many of the folks here think is the end-all-and-be-all of D&D is "player agency". That someone's actions and PC are so sacrosanct that they and they alone must decide everything and anything about their character-- who it is, what they do, how they feel-- that anything that steps on that "agency" even the tiniest bit destroys any vestige of the reason to play the game and makes the entire exercise pointless.
To me, that just seems so completely overblown that I just have to shrug my shoulders when people say that's one of the most important parts of playing. I literally can't grasp clinging that tightly to ANYTHING in D&D that would bring about those feelings. I have no doubt that it happens, and I do not discount others feelings of this in any way, shape, or form... but I just do not have any of those same types of feeling for this silly game for it to matter that much. So for instance if the DM tells me how I (or more to the point my PC) feels when some big monster shows up... like the creature is so alien and C'Thulu-like that it's meant to drive almost everyone insane who looks at it... then I'll go with it. I'll go with the description! And not get bothered in the least that the DM nudged me in that direction by suggesting my PC is scared. If the scene is meant to invoke a certain type of drama... then I lean into it as far as I can. Because for me THAT'S the juice of playing, all of us building drama and story together as a group-- not the idea that I figured out the proper way to move my miniature around the grid and use all my special game mechanic powers to knock the enemy miniature out without getting knocked out myself. That I "solved" and "won" this puzzle by using my agency and player choices.
I fully agree that the obsession with player agency is a bit ridiculous. We're all grown-ups here (I mean, at least in the games I'm in), and there's something inherently childish to me about playing RPGs as an adversarial or vaguely competitive activity--let's see what the mean GM throws at us, and how we can beat them!
But I also really dislike when the pendulum swings too far the other way, and GM so clearly wants something to happen that they treat dice rolls as nothing more than stagecraft or flavor. The random element is truly the only thing that separates RPGs from improv exercises. There's nothing else. If a given storyline is so important, the GM could just set themselves up as the narrator in the improv exercise, and keep nudging the scenes back to their preferred narrative.
To me, if the dice are coming out, why not lean into whatever they come up with, good or bad? Sure, the story might not have that season finale pacing or tidy plot thread resolution you imagined, but it'll be it's own weird, unique, not-TV, not-a-novel, not-a-movie thing.
So when I say that I lose respect for a dice-fudging GM, it's not because it takes away my agency in the competitive sport of "beating" the adventure. I think it takes away what makes RPGs unique as narratives, which is that in certain key moments,
no one knows what's going to happen, including the person who's usually in the creator or narrator role. There's electricity in those moments, that, in my experience, disappears when the GM doesn't like the numbers and we all hear the click as we're directed back onto the correct railroad track.