I dislike the oft repeated fudge advice. Why not just do a collaborative writing exercise if you don’t want to actually use the rules of the game you’re playing?

As a player, I would be crushed to find out the GM was fudging. It would make all of my decisions pointless.

As a GM, if you fudge, you are effectively removing the players’ agency. You are becoming the sole arbiter of the story to be told, and they are just along for the ride.

If your spectators want that, cool. But I’d much rather be an active player.

Is that the case though? When I have DM’d there’s often a difference between the intended difficulty of an encounter I create versus how it actually works out in play. Chalk that down to inexperience I guess, but a nudge in the direction of what the intended experience was I’ve found helpful, especially when the focus on the campaign is narrative. It can mitigate frustration that arises in situations that aren’t supposed to be difficult, and prevent boss encounters from being underwhelming when your players do a lot more damage than you anticipate.

When I have DM’d there’s often a difference between the intended difficulty of an encounter I create versus how it actually works out in play.

Players are allowed to flee. Enemies are allowed to mock them and walk away.

I’m not sure why basically ever single discussion I ever see about GMing seems to live in this world where the only options in combat is “PCs die or NPCs die”, and the only workaround is to pick and choose when you’re playing a probability game.

I agree that many seem to have a narrow view of combat outcomes. I’ve seen in a couple of threads that Basic Roleplaying, for example, is described as a “lethal” system unless player characters get double the hit points. This is in spite of the game engine document stating that characters can surrender or flee from a fight. Granted, death is mentioned far more often in that document than surrender, and it’s a long document, so I’m not sure I can blame anyone for missing it. Fleeing is mentioned more frequently and there are several pages dedicated to chases.

I wonder how many tables would benefit from the game master simply asking players if they want to run away.