Do you trust the people you game with?

[Harmon]

With dice rolls- no, but I trust they are rolling to have fun. Hits happen more then they should with some people, and misses at really bad moments do happen, just not as often as they should.

One GM has killed PCs with goons that- goons hitting ACs in the high twentyies. (Question is how many 20s can you roll in a row in one fight?)

Players making that- "need a 20 to hit," three times in a three turn event, I suspect cheating.

Course I have seen Players cheat in the opposite direction too- screwing up their characters chance of success because she's being pressured to make rolls.

Question is did they have fun, did it make their experience more then what it would have been with random die rolls?

I don't like it and attempt to discourage it, but would rather not have the argument with my Players about seeing them cheat, or demanding that they roll only where I can see.

What I have told two of my players is- miss enough so you don't get caught cheating. Otherwise, I will make your character pay later should I suspect cheating.

 

[Neo]

hmm tough question.. and not really any option on the poll that fits exactly my answer.

I trust my players and I dont.. or rather I trust them to be who they are.

When we rolled for statistics many of them used to cheat, I knew but I just made the difficulty of the game that much harder to compensate, allowing them to learn that higher did not necessarily equate to better.. Now however they are older and wiser and we do not use random rolling methods for stat generation and now they are all pretty much true to thier rolls.

Ive always felt thier is a learning curve with roleplayers.. most start out fascinated by bonuses and having every magic item feasible, tougher, bigger, better, richer... but as they mature and they play longer they start to crave the story and the development more than the bonuses and you make for a more productive group storywise.

 

[Sephraem]

Though I DM for a group which is almost completely trustworthy, I've played in other groups where there have been cheats who were so bad that they started to ruin the game for other people. To combat that, when I began DMing, I devised a set of rules that help me to limit cheating. I only use point-buy, and no-one rolls for hit points ever since one of my friends confessed that she would roll for hit points and if it came up low, she'd just take .5 over average. When I informed my group that everyone would get .5 over average for each hit die (whatever that happened to be), I heard some very interesting arguments, such as how it detracted from the individuality of a character to have the same hp total as someone else.

All rolls are made in the open, even mine. It can be fun to watch the players trying to figure out the monsters' attack bonuses. I've never had a screen, and I even tot up the damage the monsters sustain in the open. I also let them watch me calculate XP, but as most of them have no idea what the process involves, it's fairly meaningless.

As a DM, I don't fudge rolls, though I do recall doing it in the first session of the first game I ever ran, when I underestimated the power of a creature that would have killed one of the PCs. After that, however, I was just a lot more careful to balance my challenges. 3rd Ed made that a bit easier.

As a player, I would be mortified to think that my DM didn't trust me. But failing is a part of the game, and can be just as fun as succeeding. If you don't allow your characters to screw up sometimes, how can you truly appreciate it when they accomplish something great?

 

[Ravellion]

My players have told me that they cheat sometimes, mostly on initiative. I'm pretty sure they never cheat on saving throws or crits/fumbles however. I trust them... mostly.

Rav

 

[Angel of Adventure]

As I've killed all my PCs, save one, I am not really concerned about them cheating. (Or, to put it another way, it doesn't seem to be working for them if they do! )

I don't monitor rolls, though for big rolls (strike w/a Vorpal swd, big spell pen roll, etc.) I like to roll on the table and I encourage my players to do so as well. It makes for some very exciting, very tense die rolls. I definately recommended this, as it creates a casino-like atmosphere whereby everyone feels like they are watching a large bet take place on a roulette wheel, or something. . .

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I've never had a problem with my current group, although at one point I asked everyone to use a little easier to read dice as one of the players was suspicious of another player and I didn't want to single out anyone. Of course, it backfired: a different player did take offense to the idea (but pretty much took offense with everything - player moved on from the group, thankfully).

 

[Virel]

I trust 90% of the ~25 players I game with currently.

My best character stat wise was a 1st ed Illusionist with S10, I18, W18, D17, C17, Ch18 and was the first character I ever played. I rolled the numbers but I rolled up hundreds of characters page after page of stat matrixes. Drew matrixes (6x6) with the stats. Then I would search the matrix like a word find. I'm ashamed of that now but that was back when I was 15 years old - 25 years ago almost to the day.

The guy that was the other DM said he'd rolled the following for his magic user before I rolled up mine character, so I didn't feel to bad about it at the time.

S17, I18, W18, D18, C18, Ch17

Of course nearly every character in that very first adventure group was just as bad.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

I was pretty close to answering "yes, absolutely," but then I realized that I do check on one of them, but not because I dispute his integrity--I don't trust his (non-existent) math skills. He forgets bonuses, convolutes modifiers, and generally screws himself out of success. So, occassionally, I'll check his rolls. If I trusted him, he'd be hurting.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

You know, I’m hearing a lot that makes me think that it’s not so much a trust issue as a having fun issue. As I mentioned above, I used to game with an individual who cheated outrageously with the die rolls, and no one ever mentioned it because we found it amusing. In other words, we were having fun, so who cares?

On the other hand, the guy I game with now bugs the heck out of me sometimes with his cheating, because it ‘cheapens’ the other characters. When he sees someone with a higher skill check, for instance, the next game session all of a sudden his ranks in that skill are higher. For a long time, the other player had a maxed-out Hide check – and then all of a sudden, without even leveling up or getting a magic item, this player had a higher skill check. Stuff like that makes us - the other players - feel like, "why should our PCs bother working our a** off to get better, when PC X is just going to end up better than us anyway?"

Same with stats, and he has ‘floating’ class levels - we are using the Gestalt rules from Unearthed Arcana (or is it Arcana Unearthed?...), and we did away with multi-classing penalties & favored classes as a house rule. Although he writes down on his character sheet which classes his character has, he doesn’t write down the level in each class his character is, just the total character level. So when he needs to figure, for instance, save DCs for a spell, he’ll sometimes give different DCs than we think he really has. It ends up bogging the game down, because the DM will sometimes ask how he has that number, and he has to go and look on his computer to find out what class levels he is (he apparently has a Excel worksheet where he tracks stuff like that). Despite requests from the DM, he still doesn’t write everything on his character sheet.

Fortunately, we roleplay most of the time, only getting into a fight every 2nd game session or so, so it doesn’t come into play often – which makes it bearable, and most of the time, we don't care that he cheats.

However, since we’re on the topic, maybe someone could answer a question for me (if it can without hijacking the thread – otherwise tell me to take this question elsewhere)

The group wants me to DM a game. I wouldn’t mind doing so, but this cheating thing with this individual would irritate me a lot more if I was DM than it does as a player. I see a lot of people saying that it doesn’t bother them – but what would be a good way to talk to this player about this? From a DM-of-a-new-game standpoint, and not as a player-in-current-game standpoint?

 

[The_Universe]

I think your best bet would be to institute a set of group rules for the game you DM/GM. It should help the player understand that, in your game, cheating will simply not be tolerated.