Do you trust the people you game with?

[Sephraem]

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.

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?

You could insist that everyone uses the exact same format of character sheet and they submit you a copy every time there's a significant change (i.e. they level up). That way he won't feel like it's personal.

 

[pogre]

I trust my group completely, but then we're older. I really think it tends to be younger gamers who cheat - broad sweeping generalization of course.

I don't keep track of their hit points, their levels, their spells, or any other matter on their character sheet. At the end of the gaming session I figure out the group's relative power level and go off and figure out the next adventure.

If someone is/was cheating in my campaign - I would be disappointed. I think a lot of drama in D&D is derived from the drop of the dice and the unexpected results poor dice rolls can bring.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

You know, the player I have been posting about is 32 years old - and he's the worst cheater. The rest of us are in our early to late 20s, and don't cheat... or, if we do, are good enough at it not to be caught (I don't cheat, anyway - if my PC screws up a skill check, hey, they're having a bad day).

... for some reason I seem to be having the opposite problem from most people....

Thanks for the ideas, I will most likely institute a 'use this format' rule, and require a copy of it... and maybe institute a 'DM roles skill checks' rule. Thanks for the link to the other thread and websites.....

 

[Hellefire]

Most I pretty much trust. Recently I've been playing with a woman and her children, and one of her kids is ALWAYS honest about his rolls, even in terrible circumstances. I've known some people to fudge here and there. One person was just...impossible to play with. I think we were playing Shadowrun, which uses d6's and a target number for those that don't know, and if you get a 6 you can re-roll and add it to the 6, for hitting target numbers higher than 6. If you roll another 6, roll again and add 12, and so on. The highest I have seen rolled was like a 27. I can see how you might get 5 or 6 of them in a row if you were lucky, now and then. But this guy, we would say 'Target number 44' and he would cup his hands around his dice and roll for a while on his book and say 'Woohoo, 2 successes.' If it was a target number 215 he would somehow still get a success. I don't know that he ever failed a roll. We stopped inviting him.


Aaron

 

[fusangite]

I chose option #1 not because I have absolute faith that my players never "cheat" but because I have faith that if they do so, it is for a good reason.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I trust my group completely, but then we're older. I really think it tends to be younger gamers who cheat - broad sweeping generalization of course.

The cheater in my game is 40+. His 12 year old son? Straight as an arrow.

 

[Ry]

PRetty much everybody in my group was an usher, best man, or served some other vital function at my wedding - If I can trust them to plan and run my wedding, I think I can trust them with the dice. What's even better is I can trust them not to mess around with each other or be jerks - we all go way back. Too bad I don't have a car, because now they live quite a while away (1 hour car ride, but about 4 hours between various buses). When I get a car again, it's back into gaming utopia.

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

Just make sure your players aren't using these.... http://www.advancinghordes.com/product_info.php/cPath/2_19/products_id/680

 

[HellHound]

Near absolute trust on their truthfulness, but not on their math skills - so I still check their results on occasion.

I also occasionally check really good rolls, but that's a leftover from gaming with a liar and a cheater (and a thief, I might add) for a year or so. He rolled perfectly for initiative for encounter after encounter... and then walked off with my Ambient / Trance CDs.

 

[Hodgie]

I have a player that almost always adds 1 to all rolls. I have another player who probably cheats, but not that much. That said, if a die roll is off by one from time to time or a miss becomes a hit, it doesn't really impact the game all that much.

It would do a lot more harm to call out a cheater before the group than it would to just bite your tongue, let them hit, and then 'handle' it later. After all, as the DM you can equalize the playing field if you think it has gone too far.