D&D General It's not a video game.

Gah, bad memories.

I remember running "Lost Mines of Phandelver" as a weekend-long miniseries. One of my players...a friend of a friend whom I'd never gamed with before...was going to be joining us. I did my due diligence, asked everyone if they had played or read LMoP before, and everyone said "nope." But after the first couple of encounters, it became pretty clear that the Friend of a Friend had read the adventure beforehand. He seemed to know a little too much about the overall layout of the dungeon, enemy ambushes, etc. So I had to make a few changes on the fly to keep it fresh. No big deal, I can manage, it just would have been nice to know beforehand, ya know?

Anyway. I won't post any spoilers, but there is a pretty well-hidden magic item in that adventure. When FoaF's character got to a certain room, he immediately made a beeline to that hidden item's location and began rolling search checks. When his character repeatedly failed to find anything (I had moved the treasures and monsters around), he accused me of cheating. Threw a tantrum, then ended up sulking for the rest of the gaming session.

He wasn't invited back.

CleverNickName said:

Gah, bad memories.

I remember running "Lost Mines of Phandelver" as a weekend-long miniseries. One of my players...a friend of a friend whom I'd never gamed with before...was going to be joining us. I did my due diligence, asked everyone if they had played or read LMoP before, and everyone said "nope." But after the first couple of encounters, it became pretty clear that the Friend of a Friend had read the adventure beforehand. He seemed to know a little too much about the overall layout of the dungeon, enemy ambushes, etc. So I had to make a few changes on the fly to keep it fresh. No big deal, I can manage, it just would have been nice to know beforehand, ya know?

Anyway. I won't post any spoilers, but there is a pretty well-hidden magic item in that adventure. When FoaF's character got to a certain room, he immediately made a beeline to that hidden item's location and began rolling search checks. When his character repeatedly failed to find anything (I had moved the treasures and monsters around), he accused me of cheating. Threw a tantrum, then ended up sulking for the rest of the gaming session.

He wasn't invited back.

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I was also accused of cheating, as a DM, because I changed things around just to make sure no one could use prior knowledge.

iserith said:

You are applying your table rules and play goals to everyone else then anyone who deviates from that is a "cheater" or "unethical." Do you see the issue with that?

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So now basic ethical behavior is being defined as a "table rule" and "play goal" ?

How do you not see the issue with that?

Never mind, I see that you clarified your position:

iserith said:

Notably, an undergrad likely agreed to a Code of Conduct that prohibited certain things when registering for the university. People should be held to their agreements. In the context of a D&D game, this would be a table rule since it exists outside the rules of the game.

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So basic ethical behavior is now something that exists outside the rules of the game.

Unless explicitly spelled out in the rulebook.

Got it.

Straight up chilling.

Jaeger said:

So now basic ethical behavior is being defined as a "table rule" and "play goal" ?

How do you not see the issue with that?

Never mind, I see that you clarified your position:

So basic ethical behavior is now something that exists outside the rules of the game.

Unless explicitly spelled out in the rulebook.

Got it.

Straight up chilling.

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The game (D&D 5e at least) makes no judgment as to the matter of sharing information that a character "wouldn't" know. It leaves it to the individual group how to deal with that. This is the chapter covering Table Rules which are distinct from the actual rules of the game.

Thus, for a group that thinks you shouldn't do that, doing it would be out of bounds. For a group that doesn't care if you do that, it's fine. What you consider "basic ethical behavior" might not be as universal as you think.

jmartkdr2 said:

Only the second type (those who run the module as written as much as possible) reward this kind of play. But here where people learn it: video games always run the module exactly as written.

The first type (those who use the module as a rough framework and source of ideas) don't really need to worry about it.

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I agree on the second type but feel like it's a gm "style" that gm facing tools & advice in things like the DMG should do more towards offering a hand up to help them find their wings. It's one thing to roll in with a one shot because the usual GM is busy with whatever & can't make it, but the shift from short isolated modules to full campaign sized hardcover adventures makes it easy for an overwhelmed feeling gm to get stuck in that rut & never have a push that makes them leave it like when people had to stitch together different modules in the past.

WotC really could do a much better job of helping that babybird of a gm grow comfortable using their wings. even little things like "the adventures assumes the players will find x&y by level Q, feel free to place that or similar treasure somewhere your players look or as an npc reward of your choice here are some good examples of places but feel free to use what works for you" would go a long way.

I wonder if the people claiming it's not cheating to read a module as a player would have the same opinion of a player reading their DM notes at the table. Modules are basically canned DM notes for an adventure. I suspect the honest answer is yes, DMs would be livid if a player read their notes, but since we're already entrenched in the "must win the argument" phase of this silliness, I doubt we'll get honest answers.

overgeeked said:

I wonder if the people claiming it's not cheating to read a module as a player would have the same opinion of a player reading their DM notes at the table. Modules are basically canned DM notes for an adventure. I suspect the honest answer is yes, DMs would be livid if a player read their notes, but since we're already entrenched in the "must win the argument" phase of this silliness, I doubt we'll get honest answers.

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My honest answer is I wouldn't care. Players replay my one-shots frequently. They already know what's around the next corner as if they've read my notes. I have a great deal of experience with this. It's never been an issue since I started running one-shots back in D&D 4e days.

As well, I include a fair amount of randomly generated content anyway. So sure, go ahead, read the roll tables in my notes. It's not going to help you very much. Even I don't know exactly what the dice will produce in the moment. Read the stat blocks of the monsters if you want, too. You might be able to hone in on the best damage type to deal - if you even have that option - but someone in the group may be able to just figure that out by attempting to recall lore about the monster. We'll likely get to the same answer either way.

Look, I get it that some people consider all this cheating and it's an outright offense to someone's ethics, morality, or identity. You can tell by the obvious annoyance in their objections - "We're not the sort of terrible, unethical people who do this." Sure. But if you strip away all that tradition and habit and look at it from a pragmatic standpoint, you really can design your games in ways that disincentivizes the behavior (since it's unreliable at best) and controls for other aspects that takes away the value of foreknowledge. In the doing, you make your game practically bulletproof without the need for specific table rules to deal with it.

Or, whatever, call people "cheaters." Whatever you think is more effective.

CleverNickName said:

Gah, bad memories.

I remember running "Lost Mines of Phandelver" as a weekend-long miniseries. One of my players...a friend of a friend whom I'd never gamed with before...was going to be joining us. I did my due diligence, asked everyone if they had played or read LMoP before, and everyone said "nope." But after the first couple of encounters, it became pretty clear that the Friend of a Friend had read the adventure beforehand. He seemed to know a little too much about the overall layout of the dungeon, enemy ambushes, etc. So I had to make a few changes on the fly to keep it fresh. No big deal, I can manage, it just would have been nice to know beforehand, ya know?

Anyway. I won't post any spoilers, but there is a pretty well-hidden magic item in that adventure. When FoaF's character got to a certain room, he immediately made a beeline to that hidden item's location and began rolling search checks. When his character repeatedly failed to find anything (I had moved the treasures and monsters around), he accused me of cheating. Threw a tantrum, then ended up sulking for the rest of the gaming session.

He wasn't invited back.

Click to expand...

See, in this case they clearly knew that what they were doing was against a rule, otherwise they wouldn't've lied about it.

overgeeked said:

I wonder if the people claiming it's not cheating to read a module as a player would have the same opinion of a player reading their DM notes at the table. Modules are basically canned DM notes for an adventure. I suspect the honest answer is yes, DMs would be livid if a player read their notes, but since we're already entrenched in the "must win the argument" phase of this silliness, I doubt we'll get honest answers.

Click to expand...

That would be a clearer case, for two reasons:

1. You'd get instant feedback of the dm asking you what you're doing,
2. There's no context where reading the other guy's notes isn't at least weird if not known to be against etiquette.

jmartkdr2 said:

See, in this case they clearly knew that what they were doing was against a rule, otherwise they wouldn't've lied about it.

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Exactly. We can (and apparently will?) argue all day about what is and isn't ethical, or what does/doesn't constitute cheating. But I really didn't mind that one of my players had read the adventure beforehand; the problem was that he lied to me in order to exploit it. That's never okay.