The meaning of "fair" in DnD

Ive seen questions of fairness come up over the years with regard to dnd.  And some people seem to think that a dm can do whatever they want and be fair because the first rule is the dm's word is final

Im going to say thats a "lawful" answer to thr question, and if the dm is bad its going to become "lawful evil".

I want to discuss what thr "good" answer to the question might look like.

Checkers is fair because both players have the same set up and the outcome is determined solely by skill.

The card game called Rummy is fair, because all players have the same chances of their starting condition (7 cards dealt from a shuffled deck) and each player has to make the best of the cards they are dealt. If you are dealt three queens, three kings, and 1 discard, you win that hand immediately, but otherwise if a hand takes a dozen turns to resolve, the skill of the good players can usually handle the randomness and adjust.. The game goes until someone reaches 500 points, forcing the game to consist of many hands, and evening out the randomization over many hands. Luck of the draw may help you on one hand, but usually, more skillful players will win in the end after several hands.

But the games above dont have anything resemblimg a DM. We need to look at games like blackjack to find something close.

Blackjack is not "fair". Players get randomized cards dealt to them. But they are not playing against other players, they are playing against the dealer who works for the house, and anyone who knows anything about gambling, the house always wins. In blackjack, your long term return on your bets is 99.5%. If you go to the casino with 100 dollars, mathematically speaking youre going to leave with 99. The house keeps 50 cents of every 100 dollars wagered.

Now, is that "fair"? Is the long term outcome of the game between player and dealer determined by the choices made by the players? No. The house always wins. 

Card counting can raise your chances so that you can profit at blackjack, but casinos responded by putting 6 or 8 decks into the chute, and reshuffling the chute well before its empty. And if you win too much, all casinos reserve the right to refuse service to you and ban you from the premises. 

So blackjack is not fair.

So why do people keep playing it? Because blackjack, to some, is very entertaining. Some find it tedious and boring. And some immediately focus on the fact that its just a waste of money. And then there are some with gambling addictions who simply can NOT play until they've hopelessly indebted themselves.

Dnd is a lot like blackjack.

Dnd is a group of players faced off against a single dungeon master. The house makes all the rules. When there is a disagreement, the house's word is final. The house can change the rules. The house can refuse service to anyone.

So,  in dnd, is the players outcome based only on their choices and their skill as a player? Is dnd "fair" in the absolute sense? No. The dm can railroad, the dm can throw totally unbalanced encounters at you. The dm presents a world and choices before thr players, and the players can only, best case, make choices within wat the dm presents.

But even though the absolute player experience of dnd is not Fair, it can be Entertaining, if the dm happens to be providing an experience the player is looking for.

This is why its important to know what kind of dm you are, and know what kind of campaign you are running, so you can tell potential players what youre offereing before they join your campaign. Do you run heroic campaigns? Sandbox campaigns? Is the party going to be the good guys? Or bad guys? Is it mostly dungeon crawl or a naval campaign? 

If you know how you dm and what your campaign will look like, potential players can get a better idea of whether they want to join or not. Not every player is going to like your style and your campaign. Dont waste both your time having them join, and then leave a couple levels later.

Im not sure what the standard rules look like but i think in a 20 level campaign, players can probably expect to die at least once and roll a new charavter. 

If you plan on killing characters a lot, let them know that. And let them know they probably dont need to spend a lot of time and energy on backstory and in game goals for their character.  Dont be surprised if the players build only for combat. If you are running a wargaming campaign, players will wargame.

If you are part of a group that always plays together, and you rotate dms, try to keep in mind that you are dm'ing to a captive audience. Conversations like, hey, i would like to run a campaign where the players are bad guys and pvp is a thing, listen to what everyone else is saying, and try to keep you and moat of the players happy. Being a good/fair dm requires conversation, negotiation, and flexibility.

At a more tactical level, there are usually some things that can affect an absolute interpretation of whether a game is "fair".

First of all, treat all players the same. Many players have experienced the situation where the DM's romantic interest is a player and that usually sucks for everyone else. Dont give all the loot, all the attention, all the in game interactions to one player. Throw every player a bone once in a while.  In combat, shoot the monk, attack the tank, include a hoard for the wizards fireball. If a player unlocks a feature that gives them a new class or subclass ability, dont immediately change tactics so encounters usually negate the new feature.

Second, players assume you are playing the standard dnd rules. If you are NOT, and if you want to be fair to your players, write down your rules, your homebrews, etc, and put it somewhere all the players can read them and familiarize themselves with it. A player that takes an action assuming the standard rules, only to be thwarted by the dm homebrewing on the fly overriding standard rules, is going deep into "unfair" territory.

Third learn the rules before you homebrew. I joined a campaign and we all leveled up after a few sessions. All the players were discussing their new abilities, and the dm stopped the conversation, asked a bunch of weird questions, and announced that they didnt know certain features existed, and on-the-spot banned something for  almost every player. They said they didnt know the rules and would just ban things on rhe fly as they became aware of them if they didnt like it. I left. If you can, play under different dm's for a while before you dm. Learn the rules and learn bad dm styles so you know the experience of bad dm'ing so you have incentive not to inflict it on your players.

Learn the rules because they are generally written to be balanced and play with those rules long enough to get abfeel for what its like as a player. Then you can decide to change them because you want to create some different player experience. But if you dont know the rules and your rules are made up on the fly, then its not only not fair (cause blackjack is never fair) but now its also not enjoyable.

  People will gamble away money at a  blackjack table, knowing the house always wins, if they at least can have an enjoyable time doing it. But if its not fair (cause the housr always wins) and its not enjoyable (because the dealer keeps changing the rules in the middle of the game) then most players will walk if they have a choice.

Lastly, until you have been a player with a railroading control freak of a dm, you cannot possibly fully appreciate what its like to spend hours building a charavter and backstory and months or years of playing, only to have your charavter railroaded into an inescapable death you had no choice to get out of in the first place.  As a player i have chosen to sacrifice my charavter to save the party, which can be an enjoyable choice. But ive also seen my party wiped out in a tpk we never saw coming and had no chance to avoid, which just sucks.  

So, as a dm, if you find yourself asking if youre being fair, remember that at the highest level youre a blackjack dealer and the house always wins, you cant be absolutely fair. And because the game is rigged at the highest level, you can at least try to make the game enjouable. And the way to do thay is you can be consistent with the rules and your players, you can treat your players equally, you can inform potential players what kind of world youre running so they can make an informed.decision about joining or not, and so on.  Try to avoid railroads. Give players options. Let them run away from encounters that are above their weight class.  You cant be perfectly fair, in fact to run a campaign you have certain encounters in the book to run and hooks to try to get the players to "choose" to engage the story hook you present. But keep in mind, on some level, that railroading is part of what makes the game unfair. So, if possible, try to at least make the other parts of the game enjoyable.

Some people enjoy paying money to play blackjack knowing blackjack isnt fair.  

Try to make your dnd enjoyable.