Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 5879034" data-attributes="member: 32740">First I can remember cheating was in a memorable, long-running campaign.  The method of xp and treasure distribution was such that the rich got much richer and the poor stayed comparatively poorer.  I was a natural-strength Elf fighter competing with higher level dwarves with girdle-gauntlet-dwarven thrower combinations as well as paladins with girdle-gauntlet-holy avenger combinations.  Eventually there was a time when my dice just refused to roll anything decent.  I was not having any fun, was very frustrated so I just started lying about whether or not I hit because nobody was looking at my dice results anyway.  It did not make me feel any better and I began a campaign of wheedling and whining to get the DM to at least institute fairer distribution of rewards. When I first started as DM I cheated a fair amount.  I was running 1E by the seat of my pants and did not yet have anywhere near the experience to gauge how many and what kind of monsters to throw at a dozen PC's to present an interesting or challenging fight.  I was routinely in danger of wiping them all off the table or actually letting them get bored because they were walking all over whatever came at them.  So I would spontaneously toss more monsters in, change armor classes, add to monster hit points (sometimes so eggregiously that they went beyond maximum for their hit dice), simply lie about whether a monster should have hit or missed, alter damage rolls, cheat their saving throws, add to or alter their spell lists on the spot, and more. I don't know how much my players ever suspected though at times they HAD to have known.  But I wasn't having fun doing any of that as DM either.  It took longer to become familiar enough with the system to be able to run combats to MY satisfaction.  Eventually I spent some time and effort considering the ethics of "cheating" as DM and came to an understanding with myself which I relayed to my players: If I cheat dice rolls it will be in the PC's favor, they will NOT know it, and it will be because doing so will make the game more fun and interesting for the players; and if I roll dice in the open it is likely to be for a very deliberate reason. I've known a player or two who have cheated.  It hasn't ever been anything obnoxious enough to warrant making a thing out of it.  I suspect they've cheated a lot more than I've ever noticed - I'm not very observant that way.  If they have I understand the motivations.  I make it clear how I feel about it and why, and rather than cheat I encourage players to voice concerns or complaints about what is motivating them to want to cheat and in the case of die rolls it's generally because the player/PC simply succeeds at things too seldom (attributable to any number of causes).</blockquote>

Verification