Cheating - who cares?

[rgard]

Before the Boards crashed, there was an ongoing topic about cheating in a game.

Many of the typical responses to the OP current situation were given, including:

"Talk to her privately about it"

"Make a joke about fudging during the game"

"Walk out"

"Kick her out"

Now, my response was simply:

"who cares" and "does her cheating really matter?"


Now, I don't want to go into the OP's circumstances, cause it really isn't germane to the issue IMO. I'll just qualify my initial comment (something I wasn't able to do because the boards crashed ) and let the flames take over.

So:

When I said "does her cheating really matter" I was responding from my own experience. In my groups we are friends first and gamers second. I tend to assume that this is true for most of us as well (I might be very wrong here though). IMO, introducing friction into a friendship by accusing somebody of cheating at something that isn't really that important (IMO) isn't worth the potential hassle. If someone feels the need to cheat in order to enjoy spending time with their friends, I really don't care.

This poll is about a particular situation: minor fudging in a group composed of friends.

I've actually known people who, whether they know it or not, lived by this:

"If it isn't worth cheating for, it's not worth having."

That said. Cheating is wrong in my book. There is no valid or moral reason to cheat. This goes for character generation through all levels of play.

For your particular situation, do what you and your group are comfortable with doing. The only time this can be a problem is when a player leaves the 'minor fudging is ok' group and joins a group where 'minor fudging' is defined as cheating.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Piratecat]

We'll reiterate for the last time:

No more hostility, veiled or otherwise. Free EN World vacations (er... I mean EN World-free vacations!) will result for those who choose to do otherwise.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Friendship is not a contract between people and should not be treated like one. Everyone lies, everyone cheats. If it doesn't hurt the relationship then let it go. And if you need a set of rules to be friends with someone maybe you need to look at your own relationships.

A social contract isn't a set of written rules among friends. It's the social mores and accepted behavior that is present in all forms of social interaction. The social contract will change depending on who you're with, and it is important to be able to know what is and is not acceptable intuitively. However, there is obviously room for disagreement, and thus this thread.

 

[Jim Hague]

Origanally posted by Jim H
It's one person violating social contract for their own benefit...

Friendship is not a contract between people and should not be treated like one. Everyone lies, everyone cheats. If it doesn't hurt the relationship then let it go. And if you need a set of rules to be friends with someone maybe you need to look at your own relationships.

I'd rather not have this thread locked down - even though iWatt and I disagree, and swrushing and I disagree, we're still having at least a somewhat civil conversation about things, with good points being brought up on both sides.

That said - you're playing a game. When you sit down at the table, there's a defined set of rules you're following for that game, and there's the social contract of expected behavior. Neither has to do with friendship, which is more a group-specific, comfort zone issue, and everything to do with the acceptable behavior within a gaming group. This may shock you, but there are gaming groups of people who aren't friends, who just get together for gaming - more common at conventions, but there are regular groups like this as well.

And to help out on the social contract side, I dug this up - there's quite a bit in there I wasn't familiar with, so perhaps it'll help steer things back onto an even keel:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/soc-cont.htm

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

For the record, as far as I'm concerned, that was a horrible thing to do. It's patronizing. You're giving him his victories. If he found out about it and put 2 and 2 together, he might start wondering why you feel the need to cheat in order for him to have his moment. That's a lack of respect.

No, its recognition of facts.
fact.. i have been doing this for decades longer than he.
Fact... i am better at it than he, both tactically and rulesically.
Fact.. that shows by dint of my chanacter being better built and getting more effective use out of the more i got to boot.
Fact... he isn't going to overcome any of this any time soon, certainly not within the scope of this campaign which meets three hours a night three times a month.
Fact... the Gm is only moderately competent and cannot adequately make up for this in scripting circumstances for him to get his "fair share of kills" limelight.

respect is earned, not a entitlement.

I am not doing this fellow player any favors by giving him faux respect and allowing him to not "be the man" as often as he deserves, which BTW, IMO he deserves to be the man" as often as i do or as any other player does.

And secondly it makes the victory not really his. It was given to him. It was a hand out.

ALL THE VICTORIES ARE HAND OUTS!!!

The game is scripted so that usually the players will succeed, sometimes better than others but its not like every encounter or most encounters are 50/50 maybe you live maybe you die. The GMs plan is "the players have a tough fight but win in the end" in the general, if not the specific encounter level.

What I did was to hand the player a moment of limelight, a moment of spotlight, that was dramatically appropriate and that he deserved as a player to get. i made up for the fact that he comes to the table wanting to have as much fun as anyone else, deserving to have as much fun as anyone else, but that the combo of his inexperience and the Gms competence level means that wont happen.

before someone decides" hey, no one has stated the painfully obvious, so lets have at it..." i had previously spoken to the Gm about this, tried to give him some pointers and such... to no avail.

If the DM had fudged so that the same thing happened, I would consider that bad form as well. Does no one want to actually succeed on their own merits anymore?

So if I am a much better player with lots more experience and the Gm is moderately so-so and the other players are, in this case for instance, varying between novice to mediocre, the RIGHT THING TO HAPPEN is for me to dominate play, get most of the glory scenes and let them all be my sidekicks cuz they not holding their own means they shouldn't be seeing as much of the glory and limelight?

Man, we aren't there on mondays playing this to be a cutthroat competiton darwinian top dog gets the bone thing... we are there to play our characters and have fun.

they show up to play and to "be the man" too and if good darwinian theory of RPGs means they should pay for their inexperience by being obviously second tier characters behind mine, then a pox on the good darwinian theory.

That's even worse. Now you're making other players cheat?

huh? My guy pour a potion down their unconscious character's throat and they survive, never knowing it wasn't on my inventory and somehow they are cheaters?

At least keep your cheating to yourself. If someone cheated to save my character I'd ask the DM to give my character an immediate heart attack or, barring that, have the PC leave to do something else. That is seriously not cool and I would be pretty upset.

thats likely why i wouldn't tell you.
Somethings are better left unsaid, like Gm fudging and cheating.

 

[Piratecat]

Swrushing, check your email, please.

 

[rgard]

So, out of curiousity, when *i* cheated by having my PC Defender's successful roll to hit be called a "miss" so that the PC ranger character next in line got the kill on the dragon, which seemed more dramatically appropriate, how exactly was i stealing the "moment to shine" from someone else?

How would "hey, my defender killed the dragon" (ire not cheating, following the rules, obeying the dice) be considered giving others their share of the limelight, exactly?

How would "hey, i have one healing potion left" when i didn't and pouring that potion down an "about to be dead, really dead" PC's throat be robbing him of his chance to shine? Sure, I am robbing him of his chance to be dead, to be gone, to be "end of story" and the player of his to need to dig up a replacement character when next the opportunity to meet up with one comes up. But, thats not what I generally refer to as his "chance to shine". its more the exact opposite, in fact, the "anti-shine" moment.

Alternatively (as hindsight is 20/20) you could have just held the attack action and told the Ranger "You have glory of the kill."

No 'fudging' needed.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[ThirdWizard]

But, what you're doing is ignoring the dice when you deem thematically innapropriate without consulting the people who those dice rolls are actually affecting.

I'm confused about your respect earned thing. This is theoretically (in the context of this thread) a friend of yours. I would assume that one would respect the feelings of one's friends. Why is okay to cheat on their behalf if you know they wouldn't want it (since you aren't going to tell them)? Why is it okay to take power normally associated with the DM onto yourself without first having any approval of the group?

I am not doing this fellow player any favors by giving him faux respect and allowing him to not "be the man" as often as he deserves, which BTW, IMO he deserves to be the man" as often as i do or as any other player does.

In this case, he doesn't deserve to "be the man." Why? Because the dice say he doesn't. It's why we use dice. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. Eventually it evens out. By taking matters into your own hands, suddenly the curve is skewed. This is still a game, after all.

So if I am a much better player with lots more experience and the Gm is moderately so-so and the other players are, in this case for instance, varying between novice to mediocre, the RIGHT THING TO HAPPEN is for me to dominate play, get most of the glory scenes and let them all be my sidekicks cuz they not holding their own means they shouldn't be seeing as much of the glory and limelight?

I'm not sure what this has to do with cheating. If you know the other PCs are weak, then you powergame your PC and dominate play, that's not cheating. It's still bad, so what we can derive from this is that there are more ways to disrupt play than cheating. What we cannot say from this is that cheating is a good way to solve this discrepancy.

Make a weaker PC, make a PC who is more docile, go for a buff/support role instead, do things with your character within the game that allow for this without falling back on cheating to make the other players sucessful. Are they really succeeding if their wins are a result of cheating? How is this a good thing?

huh? My guy pour a potion down their unconscious character's throat and they survive, never knowing it wasn't on my inventory and somehow they are cheaters?

Do you expect the semantics to make them feel better if they found out? Would you want to play a PC knowing that they only reason you're alive is because of lying and deciet toward the DM? That would not only make me feel guilty but it would nullify everything that's happened since then in my eyes.

thats likely why i wouldn't tell you.

Two things: If you know the Player wouldn't want it, why do it? And, you'd know.

I have to wonder if there's a tiny bit of power tripping in this, too. Is it purely alturistic or is there some sense of "he's alive becuase of me" going on, at least with some people who would do this, especially if you know the person wouldn't want it. There's a certian air of "I'm in charge even though nobody knows it" that goes with the manipulativity of cheating. I would guess that many do it not for the benefit of even their character, but instead because they want to see if they can get away with it.

Now, whether or not motive is indication as to whether or not it is good or bad is probably left unanswered. I certainly have mixed feelings on it, and I can't narrow that down. I just thought I'd mention it.

 

[James Heard]

That said - you're playing a game. When you sit down at the table, there's a defined set of rules you're following for that game, and there's the social contract of expected behavior. Neither has to do with friendship, which is more a group-specific, comfort zone issue, and everything to do with the acceptable behavior within a gaming group. This may shock you, but there are gaming groups of people who aren't friends, who just get together for gaming - more common at conventions, but there are regular groups like this as well.

To be clear, I'd probably be MORE offended by minor cheating in a group where I didn't know anyone - because there's less trust involved in the first place and I'm more likely to engage in competitive behaviors with people I wouldn't have a huge problem tossing into a well if it got me 50 XP. With friends though, or even acquaintances that exist more or less constantly because they're gaming buddies, you've got to involve the very real dilemma of "is this worth risking the relationship over" and again, note that it's a game. When the relationship in question isn't just an individual one, but considered as an issue of a group as a whole, I think it becomes even more important to consider that issue.

Most of my regular groups of people who've shown up for my games over the past decade or so can earn a little leeway in their behaviors, especially given the rather gross allowances outside the norm that are occasionally made for individual quirks when someone is a complete social nutjob except when playing a game or are otherwise "broken" friends. It doesn't harm my trust in someone to note that a person is acting as I assume most people to act, but I acknowledge that it would probably harm my development of trust in someone who I've just met. Or to put it another way, if you're already my friend then it's ok to tell me you spent a while in prison but I'm going to watch you more in the first place if that's the first thing I know about you.

 

[sydbar]

In the groups i've been in, the cheating is usually done to keep a character from dying, either by the dm, or by the player themself. As someone who has gone through characters like a hot knife through butter, i know how hard it is to come up with historys, so much that i really don't make character historys anymore since spending hours to make a great history is worthless if the character dies because i fail a save 1 hour after i start playing the game, not to mention making a dm figure out how to get my character into the game when there is no reasonable way to do it, or i get to spend the whole game watching instead of playing since there is no way to introduce my character. In the current games there has been extremely few kills in 16 years of gaming, and the few there has been, has been because of extreme player stupidity, mostly by the 2 kids in the group. It is also a pain to try to help someone make a character while playing, which can cause me to miss details just because i'm the most experienced with the rules. So from what i've seen is that fudging dice rolls can keep the group from being disrupted, but that doesn't mean i endorse it, just that i can understand it.