Cheating - who cares?

[Jim Hague]

Personally, as long as it's not harmful (and it's got to be noticeably harmful to count ) I don't require it to be beneficial.

No such thing. One person cheats, it penalizes the other players at the table who aren't cheating and can seriously screw up the game - again, since it's germaine, witness what it's doing to Don's group. You want a game where fudging isn't a problem, (again) use a system where fudging is built in or one that gives explcit authorial control to the players along with the GM.

Trying to qualify 'noticeably harmful' is, IMO, splitting hairs and is a fairly weak argument, like saying it's only a 'little' wrong to steal or 'kind of bad' if you beat someone up or 'questionable' to lie. It's not kicking puppies or burning someone's house to the ground, but it's wrong - and if you don't buy that, then swim upthread and see the common definition of cheating. The rules are there for a reason (balance and an equitable game on the players' side), and in most games the only person at the table explicitly allowed to break or change those rules if the GM.

 

[iwatt]

No such thing. One person cheats, it penalizes the other players at the table who aren't cheating and can seriously screw up the game - again, since it's germaine, witness what it's doing to Don's group. You want a game where fudging isn't a problem, (again) use a system where fudging is built in or one that gives explcit authorial control to the players along with the GM.

Trying to qualify 'noticeably harmful' is, IMO, splitting hairs and is a fairly weak argument, like saying it's only a 'little' wrong to steal or 'kind of bad' if you beat someone up or 'questionable' to lie. It's not kicking puppies or burning someone's house to the ground, but it's wrong - and if you don't buy that, then swim upthread and see the common definition of cheating. The rules are there for a reason (balance and an equitable game on the players' side), and in most games the only person at the table explicitly allowed to break or change those rules if the GM.

Jim, we're fundamentally at odds. You see cheating as though it will "always" penalize the other players. I just don't buy that. So let's just do the Agree to Disagree dance.

 

[Storyteller01]

Care.

Alot of the games fun is the unexpected. If you're cheating, you're robbing yourself as well as everyone else.

 

[woodelf]

One pet peeve I have is that when players misread a rule, it's almost always in their favor. There's really no way to call someone out on this, but when you're dealing with a rules system as comprehensive as D&D, the excuse 'I thought I was reading it correctly' is a perpetual get out of jail free card. Consequently, I find that I have to do a lot of reading whenever players use new abilities or powers.

Another is simple forgetfulness, which is equally difficult to call someone on. 'I forgot that my buff had run out,' or 'I thought Fly lasted hours per level,' or 'I forgot to write down the damage from the Golem... whoops!,' or 'Oh, I thought I had another potion of cure serious wounds' (when the last one was used weeks ago) seems to be a convenient way of playing for some people. Again, there's no way of confirming whether someone uses this as a survival tactic, but as a DM you start to notice patterns in certain people.

That one really depends on the players. In my previous groups, that was most often the case: when the rules were misread or misremembered, it was to the player's favor. But with my current group, they're at least as likely to screw up to their detriment. Maybe moreso (or maybe those instances just stick in my mind more). Ditto forgetfulness. This week, one of the players who had nearly gotten his butt handed to him the previous week, came in and said "you know, when the giant snake-golem started grappling me, i completely forgot to 'turn off' my power attack when i was making all those grapple checks". As we played it, he just barely managed to survive, and then escape, the grapple. If he'd gotten the numbers right, it would barely have been a challenge (and would've saved him a hundred or two hitpoints of damage). I have another player who routinely forgets to take his full number of iterative attacks. And so on.

So, while i agree that it is more common to "screw up" in your favor, it's by no means universal--and some people really do screw up to their detriment more often.

 

[woodelf]

Is there overlap between the two groups? Maybe, maybe not. Though I find it hard to believe that people who steal books would object to cheating. (People who are okay with a little cheating may still draw the line at actual stealing, I think.)

I don't think it's that clear-cut. It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that there are people who see downloading a PDF copy of an RPG book "that they never would've bought anyway" as a victimless crime, while cheating affects your friends right there in front of you. IOW, depending on your POV, either one could be worse than the other; there's no clear arrow of escalation, here.

 

[woodelf]

I honestly do not think people cheat for group benefit, or as a means of improving the game for others very often. Maybe there are a few people out there who do it (and are posting in this thread to provide a devil's advocate point of view), but I would suspect that most people who cheat in RPGs do so because they feel they can achieve some sort of "win" condition, to ensure their own character survives, or for some reason that is more harmful than helpful.

Well, let's put it this way: i've never personally witnessed cheating to the player's own benefit. So i'm either not very observant, or i've just not played with people who would do that. I have seen cheating to the group's benefit. But no, not very often--maybe a dozen or couple dozen times in over two decades of gaming. So i don't think we disagree on the frequency of "beneficial cheating" to any great degree: it's a rare occurrence, IME. The difference of opinion (or maybe just experience) is about detrimental cheating. IME, it's even rarer than the other kind [maybe because if you're caught at it, you're just plain caught, while if it was non-selfish you at least can make a case for it?]. So if my experiences are representative, cheating of any kind in a non-competitive game is pretty rare, but the majority of that cheating is good-intensioned. Obviously, that's just my experience--but i don't think we have any way of knowing which of our experiences is more representative of the gaming world at large. I suspect this is also a sort of Rorshach test: we probably all come into this discussion with a fundamental view of human nature that colors this, and/or project our own motivations.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

that cheating is good-intensioned.

A player in the game I currently play in is the greatest D&D cheater I've ever known. He plays a cleric, and always has the right spell. When he casts a "healing spell" (he never specifies,) he always heals himself up to just a couple points below max. He never runs out of spells. He rolls an 18 for initiative at least 90% of the time. The other 10% he rolls a 17. He has taken massive damage (more than the fighter/barbarian's max hp) and somehow had "just a few hp left." Speaking of max hp, for a while when were were 8th-9th level, he had more hit points than were actually possible for his class and constitution, even had he rolled max every time. His armor class fluctuates, always being a point or two higher than the monster rolled (the DM's usual style is to roll on his computer, then ask the player, "Is your AC better than X?" He stopped doing that with this player, because X could be 100 and the guy would always answer yes.)

Now, having said all that, it is the firm belief of everyone in the game (including myself) that he is 100% good-intentioned. He isn't out to make people have less fun. He very much wants everyone to have a good time. He just doesn't understand that his cheating detracts from the others' fun. And thus-far, we haven't been willing to call him on it, because let's be honest, when you tell a guy you know he's cheating, there is bound to be a confrontation with possibly serious repercussions.

And the point of all of this? Just because cheating is good-intentioned does not make it any more acceptable.

 

[jasper]

Jokamachi Sorry no perpetual get out of jail free card I reply “well Bob this the tenth time I had to correct you since you can’t figure the rules out bring a new character class next week and you banned from playing class x.” I did this 3 times to immature players. One was adult the other two were kids of some adults playing. In fact once I did this to one kid his father banned him from the same class when Dad DMed. But most of time this is corrected by stopping the game, reading the rule, correcting the cheater, and then the group peer pressure brings them around.

As to spell duration, hit pts, extra magic. I had dm cheat sheet, it holds 12 pcs, has hit pts, level, class, alignment, the various acs, race, sex. On the bottom it has 12 slots for pc name his magic items. So they may get away with not marking off hit pts off their sheet but between my cheat sheet and scratch sheet I will generally catch it. The scratch gets a lot of use. Ex monsters 1 -6 their hit pts a round number. So fly cast in round three I marked Bob Fly ends round 9.

Metagaming is the hardest generally no harm no foul but I will force people to step on the land mine. We have house rule which players roll for all their saves, checks etc. And to save time checking for traps the sop is both thieves are checking for traps every square and players switch out rolling and I only call for a roll if something there. So the group knows something going to happen but the pcs don’t. When you have the husband and most the group telling the wife ,’You fumbled you know you did but your thief does not. Step into the trap” the major metagaming ends.

As to dice cheats as I previous said, no tiny dice and no cheater dice for Bob. Bob had 4 sets of dice. Two sets had 4 to 6 twice, the other sets 1 to 3 twice, all regular Vegas red. He was sneaky and only used about 3 or 4 times per session. But one night he could only do less that half damage. Bob start whining and narc himself out. Bob’s cheating dice are allow in the house but they stay in his dice box and someone stop checks him.

As to mistakes which goes both ways (forgot extra damage, forgot bonus so blew save etc), generally if we catch them after the fact it is no harm no foul. And if dead pc well the pc was knocked into next week. This applies to monsters as well.

nore to self steal woodelf players also. I guess I travelled to much my first years of gaming between high school, the army, college and post college I got lot of bad players. So when people say D&D players are smarter, nicer, etc I know they falling to the trap of think their hobby is special or been very lucky, or have forgotten some things.

 

[Frozen DM]

And the point of all of this? Just because cheating is good-intentioned does not make it any more acceptable.

Bingo! This is the point I've wanted to make. Despite their motivations or intentions, I think cheating has a fundamentally negative impact on the game. Someone might be able to justify their reasons for cheating, but there is a fundamental element of deceit that is still attached to the act.

Some players may tolerate it for the sake of friendship, or just to keep the game running. But I think that knowing one player is going out of their way to gain an advantage in a non-competetive game still has a negative impact that should be addressed. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of us will tolerate people who cheat, which leads them to believe that as long as their intentions are good, people must not mind that they cheat.

 

[Frozen DM]

So if my experiences are representative, cheating of any kind in a non-competitive game is pretty rare, but the majority of that cheating is good-intensioned. Obviously, that's just my experience--but i don't think we have any way of knowing which of our experiences is more representative of the gaming world at large. I suspect this is also a sort of Rorshach test: we probably all come into this discussion with a fundamental view of human nature that colors this, and/or project our own motivations.

Well then I would consider you to be lucky. I've been gaming for over a decade now and have had a number of cheaters in my games. Some examples:

1) One guy would fudge his rolls almost as a joke (it wasn't a very serious game) but we ended up tolerating it and introducing a 1 mulligan/night rule. No selfish intent here whatsoever. In fact, in this game it became a running gag in the game for this player to get his one re-roll of the night. In otherwords, it was no longer cheating since we added rules to manage it.

2) One player would keep creative accounts of his character's resources, such as spells, or hit points. Sometimes he did this on purpose, but more oftne than not I think it was a mistake (forgetfullness).

and the worst case:

3) One player would almost always fudge his dice rolls (rolling in secret, using unreadable dice, rolling and picking them up quickly). I believe the average roll he would get on a d20 was something around 16 or 17. He would cheat on ability score generation (most characters, if made using point buy,would cost anywhere from 40 - 50 points), always roll maximum hit points, never track spells or spell-like abilities. People let him get away with this because he's our friend, but at the same time he's always on the edge of being kicked out of the game. He might claim to be cheating for beneficial reasons, but everyone knows he does it just to "win" at the game and be the best.

He's been caught and confronted a number of times, and every time he will stop cheating for a couple of sessions. But then, once the heat has died down, he's back to his old tricks. When I DM I have t track his dice rolls, his spells, his special abilities. It feels like I'm babysitting a 5 year old since we can't trust him not to cheat. I introduced action points so that he would have a "legal" out to cheating, but he never uses them, preferring to cheat instead. And the worst result of this? The few times when he doesn't cheat and does get a particularly good roll, no one believes him and just assumes he's still cheating.

It's players like this that have shaped my impression of cheaters. As much as they might claim to be doing no wrong, they are doing little more than disrupting the game, detracting from the other player's enjoyment, and causing ill-will amongst friends. Maybe it's a minor cheat here and there, maybe they think they're doing it for the greater good. I still say it's selfish and causing more harm than good. All so they can say "THEY" killed the ogre at the end of the dungeon. It's pathetic.

But I will admit that my experiences are just that, my own experiences and are not necessarily representative of the whole.