James Heard said:
Frankly I smell an agenda here, with the rather lopsided hammering of points based off of personal interpretations of "moral codes" and a guilt-based rhetoric. Basically, so what you're implying is that if you tolerate cheating you don't have any friends? Get real. That's stupid, illogical, and silly. Here's the kicker: If you know someone's "cheating" and you tolerate it, then they're not cheating. A falsehood that you know to be a falsehood is not a lie, it is a fiction. People tolerate fictions.
I'm sorry, but that's not what I said. Here's a good, solid defintion of 'cheating':
cheat
v. cheat·ed, cheat·ing, cheats
v. tr.
1. To deceive by trickery
2. To mislead; fool: illusions that cheat the eye.
v. intr.
1. To act dishonestly; practice fraud.
2.
To violate rules deliberately, as in a game: was accused of cheating at cards.
n.
1. An act of cheating; a fraud or swindle.
It's as clear a definition as we could ask for.
That's a strawman. You're setting up the dictum, "Cheating is cheating is cheating" ie there is no difference between any sort of falsehood whatsoever and then dancing directly over to "this means people get to do whatever they want while other people suffer" with some sort of implication by association that the other players are suffering because someone else is cheating. Unless someone's cheating in a directly oppositional role to another player though, that can't be true except in the most epheremal of contexts. If someone advances without falsehoods before me that doesn't diminish me, and soneone advancing with a falsehood isn't diminishing me unless there is an actual zero-sum competition going on. Since when do you win at roleplaying? You're not penalizing anyone, you're falling into a false logic argument.
See the above. Cheating
is cheating, in this context - a deliberate violation of not only the game rules, but those of the social contract, compounded by lying about the act itself. And I already nicely proved that the other players are penalized by someone cheating - they must deal with the results of their honest efforts, while the cheater simply refuses to deal with the consequences. That's not exactly a level, equitable playing field.
No, I'm not. That's a failed logic too. If my neighbor kicks his dog and I don't report it it might mean I'm ethically at fault for not reporting dog-kicking but it doesn't make me a dog kicker. In failing to make a big deal about cheating, similarly, it doesn't mean I've taken a confrontational "screwing people around" stance at all. You're falling back on this notion that it's a zero-sum game again.
What's the quote? I'll paraphrase - "All a cheat needs to damage a game is for those who notice to do nothing." Proven above - a game that isn't a level field for all players within the social contract and the agreed upon rules isn't an equitable game. If you know there's cheating and say nothing, you're lying by omission, thus violating the commonly-held social contract among peers.
If someone is committing a falsehood upon me and I don't know that it's been done I haven't lost anything, because presumably my lack of awareness means that the consequences didn't warrant scrutiny. If someone commits a fiction upon me, a falsehood I'm aware of, then the scrutiny still needs to be upon "what have I lost", "what do I lose if I announce the fiction", and "what do I lose if I don't announce it"? Last, there's the instance where other people are aware of the falsehood as a fiction but I'm not - this is presumably the most damaging case for an authority figure, because it says something about your general lack of awareness and control.
If you aren't aware of it, then you're simply suffering the fallout without knowing why or possibly even that it's happening. In that case, it is lowering the quality of the game as a whole; you aren't a specific target, most times. You lose the equitable game, the level playing field, regardless. The cheat makes the game unbalanced when they ignore, fudge or otherwise perpetuate falsehood, which lowers the overall quality of the game for those who don't exploit an unfair advantage.
What I want to know is: If cheating is lying, and lying is completely and always unacceptable in all circumstances, how someone adjusts this iron-clad resolution with NPCs lying to the party, the assumption of roles, the unfair advantage inherent to one person assuming authoritarial rights over a game, hiding maps, etc. I don't see how that's different from any other fiction, like if Bill says he rolled a 16 to hit when he rolled a 14. I don't see the inherent advantage of calling Bill out and ruining a friendship over it, when Bill's already been telling me he's Raxor the Elf and I've been squeaking out funny voices myself as the Bobbits of Lambchopstown. If Bill kills the orc and Bob is still having fun, how has anyone been harmed?
The violation of trust is bad enough - and you're assuming a false premise, which is that the friendship will be ruined if you call someone on their shennanigans. As for the rest of the argument, see above.
Edit: Removed some content. You're absolutely right, PC.
