Curbing Cheating

[francisca]

So how do you curb cheating in your game?

Ignore it?

Talk with the player about it?

Have it so that all dice rolls are made in the open and if not, don't count?

Haven't had to deal with it.

My plan, should I discover it:
1st Offense: Offender rolls up a new character, starts 2 levels below lowest group member, or 2 below where he/she was, if he/she had the lowest level PC in the party. Stern warning.
2nd Offense: Pack up your and don't come back.

 

[Pseudonym]

It isn't a problem in my group, as we are all well socialized adults. Fudging die rolls would be hard, as most of us use those over sized d20s for skills and combat, so it's pretty obvious what you rolled. If anything, we tend to be more honest than not, even going so far as to point out things our DM may have missed, even to our character's detriment.

 

[Voadam]

Online game, DM handles all dice rolls.

 

[davidschwartznz]

I've never had anyone cheat in my games (that I know of). I'm of the opinion that if I as DM can fudge rolls, the players can as well - it's their game, too. I would hope that they know that what they get out of the game is what they add, and don't fudge as players, but I'm not going to punish them myself. That's what karma is for... and, well, peer pressure.

 

[was]

We've not had that problem. However, we roll in front of the group.

 

[lukelightning]

I'll 'fess up to having cheated in my distant past (when I was like 12 or 13). Ocassonally I'd roll a 3 and say "17." I think I justified it by telling myself I didn't want my character to die ("oh noes this dungeon is too hard and the DM is too hard blah blah blah"). Then I grew up and realized it was stupid.

If I had been caught, a simple "dude, don't cheat" would have instantly cured me of any cheating (and probably brought forth a flood of mea-culpas, apologies, and self-imposed punishments).

 

[Azul]

Had an issue with a suspected dice cheater a while back. Never actually caught him redhanded but lets say that tiny low-contrast dice (the kind you have to pick up and bring close to your eyes to read in anything but ideal lighting), a habit of rapidly scooping up the dice before anyone else can read them and stupendously lucky dice luck by this player was beyond suspicious. The entire group was convinced cheating was going on.

I solved it by introducing a new rule in my games. All your dice must be easily readable, numbered in high-contrast ink and at least typical sized. If I can't read it from where I sit/stand as the DM, it's not good enough. I explained it away as me preferring to be able to see all player rolls (since I use an open roll policy as the DM, it seems silly for player rolls to be any less open). I even made several sets of my own dice available for player use if they lacked such dice.

The problem kind of corrected itself after that. The player in question also started to have a far more typical amount of luck after that.

To this day, I have kept that policy even though I don't suspect any current players of bogus dicing practices. I find it sets players' minds at ease when it is clearly apparent to them that other players can't get away with cheating. No one has a chance to get suspicious.

 

[DonTadow]

Everyone I play with is at least 20 years old, except for one whose 19. They're old enough to not cheat. If I catch them, warning or not, there gone. Period.

I don't think age is a factor. The only player I've seen cheating was my 39 year old former DM during my second campaign. I asked all the players to roll in the open but he was content rolling the dice beneath the table near him. I thoght, heck this is my former dm he's not going to pull anything. However in three straight sessioins he didn't roll anything below a 15 and for his character even that criticalled (I had yet to know that keen and improved critical did not stack, but he did). Plus I didn't know how unbalanced a githyanki magehand was. IN any case i got suspcious and peeked at hte roll one time. He rolled a 6 and told me rolled a 19. He did it two other times. I asked him to roll in the open from now and and he blew me off claiming it was bad luck for him. I asked him not to come back after he made that statement and I figured out that there was no possibly way he was going to have 3 18s and two 15s on his sheet.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I live in a state where it's still legal to shoot a man for cheating at poker.

I don't think that's a bad policy, in principle.

 

[MarkAHart]

Some players hate losing so badly, and/or hate the idea of muffing a die roll and letting the other party members down that they feel compelled to "creatively re-imagine" the die results. When the person really needs a critical hit, or really needs to save, the result is pretty much foreordained. I think it becomes a bigger problem when other players notice how unusually lucky that person always seems to be, which can lead to hard feelings.