Do you Trust Your Players?

[Pbartender]

This...

Trust, but verify.

I trust my players as much as I trust anyone... But mistakes do happen.

And this...

A DM I have has a rule that anything we use, he can and will use on us. That does wonders for us policing ourselves.

I have one or two who enjoy powergaming. Fortunately, I too am a talented powergamer and tactician. The simple fear of the possibility of me using it against them often keeps them away from excessively over-powered rules.

 

[Asmor]

I trust my players as much as I trust anyone... But mistakes do happen.

Thirded.

I don't expect my players to cheat, and I don't audit their things intentionally. When the CB was released, I redid everyone's character in it and found a few discrepancies (many cases where the players were actually missing things they should have had). I attribute any problems to ignorance or incompetence, rather than malice.

That said, if I ever did suspect someone of cheating, I'd watch them like a hawk and kick them out of the game if my suspicions turned out to be correct.

 

[Lanefan]

I trust my players. They're mature enough to know that if they cheat, they're really only screwing themselves out of a better game.

Fortunately, I'm running 1e, so it's less likely they'll bungle or miss anything mechanical - there's no feats, etc. to worry about. And dice rolls are out in the open. Which means, I don't audit sheets very often, if at all.

That said, it's a known fact that all of them will some point or other forget how basic arithmetic works; I've been guilty of this myself on occasion. This is not intentional, and the resulting errors can go either way. The most common places for this to manifest are in character finances and ExP totals....one guy I played with for ages, for example, normally very intelligent and a whiz with numbers, every so often calculated his ExP in some strange way (I forget the specifics) that shortchanged him some. One session, when he wasn't there, I happened to check his ExP while adding on the latest batch; it took me hours to clean up the mess, and when I was done he was up by about 1/3 of a level.

Also, it hasn't always been so pleasant. We've had some interesting instances in the past where the numbers *were* cooked, either at char-gen or later - but players have a way of dealing with such things...usually involving nasty things of the party's creation happening to cheaters' characters while the DM quietly switches off the alignment auditor...

Lanefan

 

[delericho]

I trust my players to not intentionally cheat. I know, however, that they don't have a perfect grasp of the rules. (One player in particular has a nasty habit of always reading rules in the manner that is most beneficial to his character, or of missing out key limitations or drawbacks. However, with him it's not so much cheating as him simply having a blind spot in this area - I've seen him do the same thing in real life with unfortunate consequences.)

So, I try to keep on top of the rules of the game, without being too obsessive about it.

Also, regarding character sheets: for almost all the games I run, I maintain electronic copies of the character sheets. The players therefore get a fresh character sheet each level. When updating the sheets, I do take the opportunity to check for mistakes, and quietly correct them as we go. Typically, there's a skill point or two missed, but not much more than that.

 

[avin]

I am a cheater and not to be trusted at the game table.

My character sheet always seems to be wrong although with the CB that may be over

CB was a killjoy for two of my players \o/

 

[Hussar]

Now, to be fair, when I said trust, I wasn't thinking of outright cheating. I've been lucky that I've rarely seen outright cheating by players. Mistakes a plenty (and I'm probably as guilty as any) but, I don't recall any outright cheating off hand.

I was thinking more along the lines of trusting your players to make sure that everyone enjoys the game, rather than focusing on their own backyard.

 

[Leatherhead]

I don't have to trust my players so long as I have fun.

Otherwise I know they can cheat, but then again, they know I don't have to.

 

[CharlesRyan]

My players are also my friends. I trust them, and I trust that they're in the game to have fun as a group, not for personal aggrandizement.

I also trust the game to have a certain degree of balance, so that should a character be getting more than he or she deserves, it will call suspicion on itself. If no suspicion is being aroused, it's unlikely that any transgressions, accidental or deliberate, are significant enough to matter.

(Frankly, my players might be a bit too trustworthy, or at least a bit too trusting. Sometimes I have trouble getting them to dig or look beyond the obvious in my game, because they're happy to go where the plot leads them. Once, they found their path blocked unexpectedly by a castle. "Can we go around?" asked one player. "No," said another. "Go to the castle--it's where the story is!" Makes railroading easy, but any clue or event that might be stuck in an unexpected place generally goes overlooked by players who seem happy with the thought that I'll bring the story to them no matter what they do (or don't do).)

 

[Rel]

I do trust my players (I even married one of them).

I'm not so sure they should trust me. My Rat Bastard tendencies are strong. So very, very strong.

 

[Jack99]

I do trust my players (I even married one of them).

I'm not so sure they should trust me. My Rat Bastard tendencies are strong. So very, very strong.

I trust my players. But they do not trust me.