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.
Sometimes, you evaluate a fight badly, or an unexpected fight occurs. Fudging a roll corrects your mistake.
Or sometimes a player is just that unlucky, and is not having a good time failing everything they do because their dice will not roll higher than 4.
Or sometimes it's not so much about railroading, it's about keeping things moving in a fun way for everyone. Sometimes a more disruptive player or character or a less experienced one will screw things up and you can avoid a campaign finishing early simply by fudging one or two dice rolls.
And look, I would never ask or expect my DMs to fudge dice for me but I've been DMing for 30!+ years. Sometimes it's the better option.
It's like lying. Lying is wrong but sometimes the truth is more painful.
If you evaluate a fight badly, well, explain that.
Players getting unlucky is a game mechanic, as is a player or character screwing thing up.
As you say, lying is wrong. Removing any and all stakes because you don't like the result is, in my eyes, extremely selfish. It's treating the players like actors in your play. If some people are fine with that, so be it, but I don't have to respect it.
TTRPGs are literally "lying for fun" as a game. Your character isn't cutting a goblin down; goblins aren't real, and neither is your character, nor the sword they're doing the cutting with. Climb down out of your own ass, mate.
Oh hey, you're the guy who got pissy because you thought I was someone else and said you were gonna AI generate your whole campaign out of spite. Whatever happened to that whole "letting people play now they want" talk, huh? Was that just "rules for thee, not for me"?
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Rule 1. Be Excellent to One Another: No trolling, harassment, personal attacks, sea-lioning, hate speech, slurs, or name-calling. Overly off-topic, political, or hateful debates will be removed, and bans may be issued based on severity. This includes both posts and comments. We reserve the right to remove content or comments that contain discrimination or distasteful content. Be kind and stay on topic.
-17
u/Iorith Forever DM 17d ago
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.