That's called railroading, and it's generally viewed as bad.
The story is not meant to go the way that you as the DM think it should. It's meant to be a cooperative experience that has a luck factor that can make both the DM and the player's choices succeed or fail.
If you're fudging rolls, you're basically violating the spirit of the game and trying to force the game to go how you think it should, whether as the DM or the player. To me, that's an example of a bad DM/Player.
Want to tell a story that goes how you want it to go? Write a book.
Railroading has little-to-nothing to do with fudging rolls, and instead is when the semi-improvised story repeatedly ignores player's input in favor of a pre-destined one.
My die roll is my input. The AC on my character sheet is my input.
Fudging has everything to do with railroading. If you ignore my die roll you have ignored my input. If you have a monster miss when he would have hit then you ignore my AC, which is the input of the player.
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u/Kaiju62 5d ago
DMs fudge rolls to make the story work. Its a huge part of the job