Cheating and D&D

[Jeff Wilder]

As far as I know, nobody at our table cheats. (Almost all of us use 24mm dice, which can be read from 10 feet away anyway.)

We do have one player who gets so flustered at trying to add modifiers on the fly that he'll kinda just keep nudging his announced number higher until it "sounds good." He's not cheating, though ... it's just what I said: he gets so nervous about the amount of time he's taking that he blows the addition. He's a tactical idiot, though, so we mostly just shrug. He is getting better.

I remember cheating being an issue when I was younger, playing 1E back in the '80s, but even then it wasn't a matter of cheating at die rolls at the table; not that I noticed, anyway. It was more in character generation. As I look back on it I think it's funny how readily we accepted that every character would have at least one 18, possibly two ... although of course it's natural that we accepted it, since we wanted people to accept ours. No fighter ever had less than 18/75 Strength. And at least 30 percent of characters ended up psionic.

We outgrew it. I fondly remember playing a module in which we were all 0-level PCs, expected to discover our classes during the course of the adventure, and my (eventual) magic-user's highest stat was a 13. Nobody else was quite so dramatically mediocre, but I'm confident everyone else's stats were as genuine.

I personally don't see how adding Hero Points or Action Points or whatever will diminish cheating at the table. If people are doing it infrequently enough that a reasonable Hero Point system would end it, I just don't see that it's a big deal in the first place. My experience with cheaters in non-RPGs is that they don't really do it to gain an advantage ... cheaters will still cheat if they're way out in front in a game of Monopoly, for example. There's something driving it that goes beyond simple success.

 

[delericho]

People cheat for different reasons.

Some people cheat 'for the game' - they'll cheat to prevent a character from dying, or if they feel they're not being effective enough, or whatever.

Some people cheat because they don't know any better - they've always cheated, or they've played with a particularly vicious DM who almost required cheating to stay alive (you know the guy - every challenge is too tough, every wish is perverted as far as possible, every paladin will fall, for no other reason than because the DM wants to see it happen. I hate that guy).

Some cheat because they play D&D as a kind of superhero wish-fulfilment thing - they want to play the invincible hero they can't (or daren't) be in real life.

Some don't even realise they're cheating - perhaps they don't know the rules, perhaps they suck at maths, or perhaps they don't realise that you have to actually roll the dice, not merely pick it up and throw it back down again (if that makes sense - I saw one player using the 4d6-drop-lowest technique roll a 17 (6-6-5-2) followed by an 18 (6-6-5-6) followed by an 18 (6-6-3-6), without even realising he wasn't rolling correctly - I wasn't DM of that one, but now use point-buy in all my campaigns).

The truth is, cheating doesn't bother me too much. I try very hard, as DM and also as player, not to cheat (at all, ever), but sometimes the temptation gets the better of me. I also try very hard to not take the game too seriously. I play with friends, and if they want to unwind by being an invincible superhero for a while, so be it. I'm certainly not going to boot them from the game (and consequently lose a friend) over such a little thing.

 

[Grazzt]

OK,
A while ago I played two games at a Con where two different players were clearly cheating.

In one, the character never bothered to memorize spells, he simply cast spells from his spell list until he ran out (so he cast like a sorc. when he wasn't one and had the class spell list to choose from).

In another, the game was going _really_ long (and slow) and one player called a number of die rolls differently than he actually rolled them. I didn't mind as it *was* running long and slow, but.....

What do people do in situations like this?

Havent personally had any cheaters at my table in a long time (probably not since the days of 1E). Last one I remember was doing what you referred to in the second game above...calling dice rolls differently than he actually rolled. When we (one of the other players called him out) caught him, we simply said "Uh no, that's a [insert number]". No stink, no big issues raised. But his character paid for it a bit later...I made sure of that.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I think some of it breaks along the Wargamer/Storyteller line of distinction. Some people see the 'game' as sacrosanct and the whole fun comes in letting the dice fall where they may and the vagaries of fate spin weal or woe. Some people see the story the same way, and the vagaries of fate are there for fun and should be helped along where needed. I'm firmly in the storyteller camp, I guess.

In our SWRPG game, one of the characters out and out died by the dice. The fight was much harder than I had anticipated, much harder than I intended, and the players made a few mistakes. Story-wise, integrating another Jedi character was going to be a pain. So I handwaved it. They were fighting by a dark-side-tainted pool and I demanded a Force Point, gave him a Dark Side Point for each negative HP beyond death he had (I think 5, total), and had the character lose an arm. On the whole, no-where within the 'rules' of the game, blatantly against them, but more fun for the people at the table.

I think it's important to know the kind of table one is playing at, more than anything. My table, I presuppose that what's fun about the game is the give and take of it, and that it wouldn't be fun if somebody consistently just gave themselves success all of the time. I don't watch my players. It would become a problem when it began impacting the fun of the people at the table. I suppose my only hard rule is the most fun for the most people. By that same token, if somebody fudged a saving throw to keep his PC alive past a random trap in a random room that I didn't realize would be out-and-out deadly ... and somebody at the table called him on it, threw a fit, and generally demanded that I do X and Y and started to ruin the fun for other people, I'd be more upset with THAT player.

If I were playing at the table of somebody who got a throbby-head-vein just thinking about cheating, I wouldn't think of fudging the dice. If they feel that strongly about it, then that's the kind of fun at that table. Its all about what's fun for the people playing, IMHO.

--fje

 

[Gentlegamer]

As DM: I explain up front and before the campaign starts that I absolutely do not abide cheating. If I caught a Player cheating, I'd dismiss them from the game. End of story.

As a Player: If I suspected someone of cheating, I'd tell the DM. If I knew someone was cheating, I'd tell everyone, including the cheater. If the cheating did not stop, I'd leave the group.

Cheating is an insult to the DM and other Players.

Quasqueton

I completely agree with Quasqueton.

Even when participating as a player character, I let the dice fall where they may.

 

[Wild Gazebo]

I never make an issue of it. If someone has more fun fudging rolls...so be it. If someone tries to fudge resources I gently correct them--I feel that affects the quality of the game more than the occasional 'creative roll'...and the fun for the other players. I have yet to see blatant cheating diminish the experience of the game.

 

[MonsterMash]

I don't like it, but personally as a DM I'll fudge die rolls a little to try and avoid TPK.

Something like Heap Thaumaturgist describes wouldn't bother me too much if I noticed it and the player didn't do things like that generally. If it seems to be lack of rules understanding I would take the player aside and explain it and give them a couple of chances to 'get it' before I started to take umbrage.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Cheating

"One person cheating doesn't necessarily detract from the enjoyment of anyone else."

Nesessarily, perhaps. The one cheater I had at my table for as long as I can remember serioulsy affected the other's enjoyment. Once the cheating was noticed, it made the others really whizzed that one person could do it to save their bacon or make the big hit. One night a non cheating PC died legit. Interestingly they weren't mad because their PC died so much as "wow, if I was XXX I could have just adjusted that Saving Throw by a few points and maybe I would have lived." The cheater in question has been removed from my games after warnings and obvious policing. My players and I cannot abide serial cheaters.

-DM Jeff

 

[Zappo]

I don't cheat when I play, and when I DM I keep an eye on people. But I don't go out of my way to prevent cheating, nor do I freak out if I spot someone fudging. IME, it doesn't make your character more likely to survive in the long run, or even in the course of a single combat, unless you're truly blatant about it. I have a serial cheater in my game and his characters don't seem to be any better off than the rest. I just keep an eye on him when he's saving versus disintegration, and I try to keep in mind roughly how many hit points he's got left give or take a dozen, and that's enough.

 

[MonkeyDragon]

Cheaters make me angry. As a DM, I would feel seriously disrespected. I don't look out too heavily for cheating, but I have nothing to worry about in the game I'm running. My players are all honest. If I DID suspect someone I'd probably watch them, but I don't think I'd confront them (I'm very nonconfrontational anyway) unless I KNEW they were cheating and could back it up. There'd be words had, and warnings given, and XP fined. If it got bad enough, I would ask them to either shape up or leave.

As a player, cheaters still make me angry. Because dangit, life isn't fair, so I want my games to be. It isn't fair if my character has to fear death, but whoshishead's doesn't because he fixes his hit points. Or that the blasphemy leaves most of us helpless...except the guy who read the modual at home and was prepared for it...THEN pointed out the full effects of the spell after the DM planned to lighten it up...but that's another story.

Back to a DM, I don't count the occasional fudge as cheating, as long as it serves the players. I've fudged to keep people alive. And I've fudged a couple of times to make sure the bad guy made his concentration check, etc etc etc. A string of good rolls can turn a doable encounter into a tpk...which isn't fun. And a string of bad rolls can turn a good, challenging encounter into a very anticlimactic slaughter. Also not fun.

It's when players cheat so they're better off than the rest of the players that gets to me. Either they get to share all the good stuff but none of the risk, or, if the DM knows something is up, encounters get harder for less reward. Phoo on the cheaters.