Entweder man spielt old-school, dann ist alles geregelt (Niedrigstüfler sterben, später gibt es raise dead (oder auch nicht... 
).
Oder man spielt dann mit dem understanding, dass die Charaktere zwar temporär scheitern, jedoch nicht so einfach umkommen können.
Genau diesen oft bemühten Gegensatz sehe ich nicht. Nehmen wir doch mal den AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide von 1979 (Seite 110) verfasst von -Ihr wisst es alle - Gary Gygax:
"You do have every right to overrule the dice at any time if there is a
particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making
such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player
character with your actions. "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"
oder
"Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will
have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but
still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you
should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent
with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right
to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is
knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any
reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster
has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player
character when they have played well. When they have done something
stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they
may! Again, if you have available ample means of raising characters from
the dead, even death is not too severe; remember, however, the constitution-
based limit to resurrections. Yet one die roll that you should NEVER
tamper with is the SYSTEM SHOCK ROLL to be raised from the dead. If a
character fails that roll, which he or she should make him or herself, he or
she is FOREVER DEAD. There MUST be some final death or immortality will
take over and again the game will become boring because the player
characters will have 9+ lives each!"
Für mich ist das ein Aufruf zum differenzierten Abwägen in der jeweiligen Situation.
Es gab keine gute alte Zeit in der die Spielleiter alle nur hart nach dem Würfelergebnis gespielt haben. Und Fudging ist auch keine Erfindung der bösen Erzählspieler. Die Frage, ob ich es machen möchte oder nicht gehört quasi zu DNA von Rollenspiel. Aber die Antwort ist eben individuell.
