This is kinda true and also one reason why I personally don't like to fudge.
But it is also a bit misleading. In a game where the GM is basically in charge of everything outside the characters, ultimately everything happens because GM lets it to happen. Even if you don't fudge the dice, you could have always have an ally to come to the characters' aid, have the enemy decide to not kill the character, etc. Ultimately there really is not escaping of that responsibility.
That's what I've been advocating though! Take responsibility without fudging. You can, just as you say, always achieve the desired end
without fudging because, y'know, phenomenal
cosmic DM powers.
Which is exactly why I told my players that
permanent, irrevocable, random character deaths won't happen in my game. There might be PC deaths (none so far, but nothing is guaranteed!), but they will either be temporary, reversible, or the result of an agreement between the player and me. No player needs fear totally losing the character they're invested in. That does not mean there are no stakes. I have made my players agonize over choices multiple times, or fear for the places and people they love, or consider (and occasionally take) risks where they KNOW they don't know the full story and are possibly playing into a wicked NPC's hands. And as a result of my choosing to do this, my players are more relaxed. They can try some zany things, knowing that they won't lose the character and story they have been exploring. They're still overall very gunshy, treating risk as something to either mitigate to oblivion or simply avoid completely, but I am slowly persuading them to consider more flashy means.
I'm sorry you feel my example is contrived. I had hoped a simple example would be more illustrative of my point that a more fleshed-out example would be, but apparently not.
Stepping away from the example, do you always communicate intel to your players accurately, and do they always take away from it what you intended them to? If not, how do you personally prefer to address such errors and miscommunications when they arise?
My issue (which I think is the same as Iserith's) is that I don't make errors of the kind you describe. Like...that is just completely orthogonal to the ways players gain information about threats they might face. Let me give an example from my actual game.
Recently, the players went on an expedition to investigate an ancient genie-rajah city, once lost to the desert, now uncovered: Al-Shafadir, the City of Fire and Water, located in a dormant caldera (think a small city built inside something like Yellowstone crossed with Crater Lake, just with less lake.) This was something of a more casual, palate cleanser adventure, as we'd had a lot of high drama, high plot stories prior. Since they knew it would be a volcanic caldera, they did some preparation for the plausible threats, and investigated what they could, but records are limited when the city has been lost for two millennia. But they learned what they could, getting some idea of the kind of threats they'd likely face: fire spirits, maybe basilisks, maybe flying creatures who could reach the caldera from the air, curses and traps left behind by the former occupants, bandits or rivals trying to strip the most valuable stuff right away, etc.
None of that required any amount of "this threat is definitely easy" or "you're going to struggle to fight this." It instead is heavily qualitative: these are some
likely creatures or entities, and these are the characteristics your research indicates these things possess. But research is rarely so accurate or precise that it gives a comprehensive and objective threat assessment, so the players planned for possible problems, buying antidotes, fire resistance potions, and tools, supplies, and equipment for a moderately long stay should it prove necessary.
So I'm just kind of at a loss about your question. This type of error just...isn't one that occurs in my game. Not because I am incapable of error (I assure you, that is emphatically NOT true), but because the way player research and investigation work does not produce the kind of result you describe, and I'm frankly not sure how they
could do so. Hence, the example seems contrived.
It isn’t really controversial, happens all the time. The people that object to it, just don’t know it’s happening.
For all your protests, you’ll never know if your DM is doing it. And because you want your players to think you don’t, nothing you can say can convince me that you don’t do it either
Wow. I just...wow. Thank you, Sigmund Freud. So glad to know that my open repudiation (to the point of intentionally stepping back my rhetoric after generic mod admonition to the thread) is simply proof that I'm in denial—or worse, outright lying to everyone.
It's not like I use a system where DMs almost never roll, or like I use a Discord bot for all rolls so it's impossible for me to change the results or conceal them from the players...
- if a DM told you they reserved the right to fudge (modify a die roll that had already been made) during Session Zero, how would you feel?
- if you realized during play that a DM fudged rolls and they didn’t tell you up front, how would you feel?
Former: If it was any kind of serious game (which is 99.9% of my gaming) then I would thank them for telling me and leave the table as politely as possible. I have no interest in playing a relatively serious game where the DM reserves the right to tell me they know better than I do what I will find fun.
Latter: I would tell the DM in private exactly how I feel about such tactics and then leave. If it's a particularly egregious example, I might walk from the table then and there.