Cheating and D&D

[satori01]

I wonder if cheating was more endemic with 1e players for the following reasons:

1: More Save or die circumstances. I would hazard a guess that everyone who played 1e fudged a save or die Saving Throw. I would also guess that any character that made it through Tomb of Horrors benfited from his player "creating his own luck"
2: Age, I suspect age will play some part in the liklihood of people
feeling compeled to cheat.

Another area where I am sure everyone has fudged at one time or another is rolling for Hit Points. As a DM I dont mind a little but of fudging here as long as it is not to obvious. In general I enforce a minium of Half maximum per level to obviate the potential for players to feel the need to cheat.

I suspect alot of "cheating" is the result of lack of organization on players parts. The Magister in the group I DM for is notoriously unorganized and continually late. Often times he joins a session after it has began, and many times I doubt he has remembered how many spells he has left or which spells he has prepared.

I am quite sure some fudging has been done in this regard, but it hasnt been to egregious, and I havnt wanted to stop the action and make all of my seven players wait while I audit his character sheet.

 

[Henry]

I discourage it, but don't go out of my way to scour cheating at the table from existance. If we catch someone at it, we ask them to straighten up, but then, we're all friends, and that rarely happens. One of our players is younger than the rest, and used to be tempted to fudge, but his dad watched out for it, and corrected him if it happened.

 

[TerraDave]

Blatant cheating (like changing rolls): pathetic

Less blatant "oversights" (hey, I didn't know I was carrying 1000lbs of stuff, that spell had a 1000XP casting cost, ohh I didn't actually put ranks in it...): still pathetic.

But it happens...the only thing I really worry about is players doing a little too much research between sessions, primarilly becuase I think they will enjoy the game less. (and as an aside, I only really know of one case of this, which was claimed to be accidental, but it did detract from the session)

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Heh. I was just thinking about a Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game I ran a year or so ago. One of the players decided to play in ANOTHER RttToEE game at the same time, one that had started earlier, so he largely knew what was going on (until the two games firmly departed tracks). He was, personality-wise, almost totally incapable of keeping OOC information out of his thinking ... so I wrote it into the storyline. He got slammed by the vision-inducing-symbol in the moathouse and from there on out if he "accidentally" used OOC information I would boom out that the hand of Tharizdun itself was guiding him, and that the touch of that Unknowable drained him of 1 permanent Con point.

He got real real good at dividing up the Character and OOC stuff after that. But we kept up the story-line methodology and occassionally after that I would feed his PC a little extra data for story purposes and hit him up with Fatigue or something. Everybody had alot of fun, he learned a valuable lesson/skill, and I was able to nix some cheating without hurting anybody's feelings.

--fje

 

[Marchen]

In general, I don't accept cheating. As a player I don't cheat at all, maybe that's why all my PC characters seem to die so quickly.

As a DM, I find that cheating player's quickly ruins my enjoyment of the game. Why do I bother to do the work coming up with a night's session and placing balanced and challenging encounters in it if the player's are just going to cheat their way through it? Do they really want their "I WIN" buttons that bad?

I can understand and forgive a fudged die roll here and there. Drastic destruction of the rules warrants my wrath, however...

 

[Driddle]

When I catch someone cheating, I call 'em on it. Make sure the entire table knows what's up. I simply can't stand to see someone who doesn't care enough about the game be so sloppy and obvious.

That's why I'm always very careful about how I use my double-20 die and special 6-siders. Haven't been caught yet.

 

[billd91]

I generally don't sweat cheating about little stuff. Conveniently forgetting a minor modifier (actually forgetting a modifier isn't cheating because cheating requires intent), switching a prepared spell when the original one is clearly a brain fart decision, things like that don't bother me if they don't detract from the game, or even help save it.
I don't like or allow cheating in character creation and development. Any deviation from the rules must be brought to my attention as the DM to seek permission.

 

[Orius]

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).

Hmm, that's not a huge problem. Many, many pre-3e games i played were like that, the DM didn't bother to take the time policing memorized spells, and the players didn't bother o memorize either, as it was pretty much more advantageous for them. I never really noticed it actually hurting the game much. Now these days it's a bit more of a problem, because a spontaneously casting wizard takes away one of the sorcerer's main advantages.

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.....

It depends on what you mean. If the player simply fumbled the math in his head, improperly adding modifiers and stuff like that, no big deal. I've fumbled the math as a DM plenty of times, both good and bad for the PCs. There's a difference between making a mistake and actually cheating.

 

[KB9JMQ]

I dont think I have players ever cheat. I have fudged a roll now and then as a DM to not kill the game.
I really don't think I would care unless it was causing a problem to the game itself.

 

[fredramsey]

As GM, I can "cheat" as much as I want.

But I rarely do. GM's priviledge.

A cheating player at my table would get exactly one, very stern warning, in front of the other players (and I would only do so if the truth of the accusation was easily verified). Upon the second offense, they would be shown the door.