Yes, I have zero tolerance for it, because I game with my friends - and if I cannot trust my friends to be honest with each other and myself and accept a level playing field insofar as the rules go, then it's time for them to go elsewhere. Cheating is cheating, period - it's dishonest, it's a lack of trust, it's incredibly disrespectful.
Frankly I smell an agenda here, with the rather lopsided hammering of points based off of personal interpretations of "moral codes" and a guilt-based rhetoric. Basically, so what you're implying is that if you tolerate cheating you don't have any friends? Get real. That's stupid, illogical, and silly. Here's the kicker: If you know someone's "cheating" and you tolerate it, then they're not cheating. A falsehood that you know to be a falsehood is not a lie, it is a fiction. People tolerate fictions.
I'm not sure how you can defend someone deciding their character can do whatever they want while people that follow the agreed upon rules get to suffer the slings and arrows of the oft-cited outrageous fortune.
That's a strawman. You're setting up the dictum, "Cheating is cheating is cheating" ie there is no difference between any sort of falsehood whatsoever and then dancing directly over to "this means people get to do whatever they want while other people suffer" with some sort of implication by association that the other players are suffering
because someone else is cheating. Unless someone's cheating in a directly oppositional role to another player though, that can't be true except in the most epheremal of contexts. If someone advances without falsehoods before me that doesn't diminish me, and soneone advancing
with a falsehood isn't diminishing me unless there is an actual zero-sum competition going on. Since when do you win at roleplaying? You're not penalizing anyone, you're falling into a false logic argument.
You're screwing other people around, and that just isn't cool in any context.
No, I'm not. That's a failed logic too. If my neighbor kicks his dog and I don't report it it might mean I'm ethically at fault for not reporting dog-kicking but it doesn't make me a dog kicker. In failing to make a big deal about cheating, similarly, it doesn't mean I've taken a confrontational "screwing people around" stance at all. You're falling back on this notion that it's a zero-sum game again.
If someone is committing a falsehood upon me and I don't know that it's been done I haven't lost anything, because presumably my lack of awareness means that the consequences didn't warrant scrutiny. If someone commits a fiction upon me, a falsehood I'm aware of, then the scrutiny still needs to be upon "what have I lost", "what do I lose if I announce the fiction", and "what do I lose if I don't announce it"? Last, there's the instance where other people are aware of the falsehood as a fiction but I'm not - this is presumably the most damaging case for an authority figure, because it says something about your general lack of awareness and control.
What I want to know is: If cheating is lying, and lying is completely and always unacceptable in all circumstances, how someone adjusts this iron-clad resolution with NPCs lying to the party, the assumption of roles, the unfair advantage inherent to one person assuming authoritarial rights over a game, hiding maps, etc. I don't see how that's different from any other fiction, like if Bill says he rolled a 16 to hit when he rolled a 14. I don't see the inherent advantage of calling Bill out and ruining a friendship over it, when Bill's already been telling me he's Raxor the Elf and I've been squeaking out funny voices myself as the Bobbits of Lambchopstown. If Bill kills the orc and Bob is still having fun, how has anyone been harmed?
"But! The Trust! The Trust is GONE!"
Sorry, I don't see it. Personally, all of my friends? If they shot me in the guts I'd probably have think a little harder than someone who's throwing a hissy fit over a game and a few dice.
I am not saying cheating is noble... i am saying cheating is sometimes a better choice, just like sometimes lying is a better choice than flat out honesty and not all instances of cheating merit instant dismissal.
Personally I think the instant dismissal folks are a lot less noble. Calling upon your gaming buddies as friends, and then saying you'd ditch them over a die roll sounds creepy to me.I mean, that sounds like the sort of thing you should do for the other sort of cheating that involves your wife - not a hobby.
