Do you trust the people you game with?

Ds Da Man · Mar 7, 2003

I may not trust them at the game table 100% of the time, but my group is a collection of about my best friends. They understand when I'm tired and cranky (3rd shift syndrome), and they know all about me. They are great friends who have never let me down, (except for one who dropped out of Purdue, though not a let down, I was dissappointed. I had high hopes!)

Hardhead · Mar 7, 2003

With my group, I'd trust most of 'em with my life.

But, I wouldn't trust a single one to roll up character stats or HP unless I'm watching them do it. So I don't know where that falls.

Viktyr Gehrig · Mar 7, 2003

I play point-buy and average results for all hit die rolls. That's because everyone in my group has truly spectacular luck or some weaker variant of my own abysmal dice luck. In-game, the dice fall where they may.

I have one player who plays very goofy character concepts and can be counted on to cheat at dice. He's not too disruptive, though, as the other players generally keep him in line. The only time his trifling with the dice has seriously harmed a game is when he killed a clone of Palatine with the very first attack roll of what was supposed to be a roleplaying encounter.

With a lightsaber. A thrown lightsaber.

Someone else's lightsaber.

He wasn't playing a Jedi.

I answered 100%, though. I let them give me any character concept they want, and their powergaming more or less fits within that concept and they play their characters. We have fun. And, the more they combat-optimize their characters, the more social encounters I give them, and vice-versa, so we generally end up with a decent balance of abilities.

Darklone · Mar 7, 2003

Uhm... This poll can be easily misunderstood. I trusted all my players till now in respect of the game...

Problems with the players outside of the game are more common here.

Edit: Cheating with dice... Well some did. I knew it and let them roll again (most of them did the stupid rolling a dice all the time, if it's a good number wait till the DM asks for a roll and try to tell him you just rolled it...)

S'mon · Mar 7, 2003

I voted 100% - I trust all my current group not to cheat (this would change if I ever caught them, of course!), and to create reasonable PCs in consultation with me. I don't allow chair PCs in my current game, though.
Generally speaking, I've become more trusting of my players as I and they have got older. Cheating seems more prevalent among younger players - although hopefully cheaters are a minority at all levels.
As for min-maxing, as I don't railroad my group or expect them to win fight X at Level Y for the campaign to survive, this has not been a problem. When Tallarn (Matt) joined the current campaign, with all his powergaming knowledge gained from EN World, his cleric PC proceeded to trash NPCs that were easily defeating the previous, older, higher level but less-min-maxed PCs. The power level of the group went up, they became able to handle threats they previously couldn't have - a young adult red dragon, most notably. Maybe their rate of xp gain increased for a level or two - 3e advancement rules balance this out pretty well though, you rise to your level of incompetence! There's still plenty of stuff in the world they can't handle, and the game has only benefitted - maybe I do have to play my NPCs a bit meaner, but that's plausible also

"Uh oh - it's THEM. Get the scrolls & potions out!"

Maldur · Mar 7, 2003

I trust most of them.

My problem is that I cant trust my players to know the basic rules enough, that I have to pay less attention to them (rules).

Actually, that is my major peeve. So much that it got me in trouble when I spoke about that in a long email. (maybe using the "babysitting"players through a game" comment, was not that smart)

ps trust might not be the right word>

WayneLigon · Mar 7, 2003

One I can trust. One I'm not so sure of, because he just joined the group a few months ago. One will create a character so bizarre in either habits or appearance or both that it's clear he's either never read the background material or doesn't give a &^$%%^&% about it. One will, no matter what he plays, continue with his utter fascination for characters that are so 'practical' as to be completely evil, even though he will swear up and down he's playing a Good character. And he really does beleive this, which scares me. If we ever crash in the Andes, I'm getting to the flare gun first.

It's almost to the point of being depressing, but I'm not GM'ing right now, so it's a little better.

xrpsuzi · Mar 7, 2003

Airwolf said:
I had to vote for #2.
I would have voted 100% trust but there is one player who always wants to play an evil character. He usually sets about trying to kill everything, both monsters and townsfolk.

Same story here.... that we have this one guy who plays a neutral angst-riddening elf like no tomorrow.

After a couple of games though (we are on our 3rd? 4th? campaign now) the guys realised that powering up, though fun, does not mean it will increase the overall fun of the group. This was after the DM had to yell a couple of times, "We could be playing bunnies and burrows and be having fun. It's not the flaming bastard sword." and similar things on that vein.

suzi

Mathew_Freeman · Mar 7, 2003

I play in two groups at the moment.

In the Planescape campaign, run by Simmo on these boards, I trust all the other players, because we've hardly played as a group so far and it's better to start trusting than to start by distrusting them.

In S'mons game, I trust all except one player. I don't think he posts on these boards, but he's a bit of a difficult player to play with, he seems to have very different ideas about the game to the rest of us.

seasong · Mar 7, 2003

My answer was not well represented in the poll, so I went with #1.

My true answer, however is:
A) I trust them 100%
B) I restrict characters heavily, not because I think they can't handle it, but because I usually have a narrative VISION that I want their help in achieving. Within that VISION, I trust them 100% to achieve it beyond my wildest expectations.
C) Where there is no restriction required by the narrative, I don't use restrictions. I don't even bother with poncy ideas of game balance, like points, stat rolls, levels, ECLs, etc.

My story hour is different - the narrative VISION is to take what the system gives us and make it into something special, a kind of random confluence. But most of my campaigns have minimal system restrictions and heavy narrative restrictions.