JustinAlexander
First Post
No, not *any* objective viewpoint*.
I suppose we could go through all the the definitions of the word "cheat" and you'd say something like, "Ah ha! If we're talking about cheating in the sense of sexual fidelity, then clearly fudging dice rolls in an RPG isn't objectively cheating!" or "Ah ha! An RPG has no value, therefore it's not the same as a land swindle!"
But I'm just not interested in that sort of silliness.
More generally, I find arguments like "Mark can't cheat at Monopoly if we all agreed that he can cheat" or "it's not changing the rules on the fly if there's a rule allowing you to change the rules on the fly" to be inherently circular and absurd.
If a player comes to a game with a GM who says "story trumps rules" then leaves the campaign because "the GM cheats" is just bull...
Didn't you kind of lose the ability to say "they knew it was going to be this way" when you said that you don't do this in most of your campaigns and that you didn't tell them you were doing it? Did you expect them to be telepathic about this sort of thing?
(I understand that you're now changing your story to claim that you did tell them that, but I have to admit that this just blows your credibility in general for me.)