How do you handle campaign cheaters?

[BlackSilver]

Its done

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Bard, your offer is quite generous. Thank you. Not sure I will be in touch outside of ENWorld, but I will place you on my Buddy List.

With regards to what happened to our problem player.

The other Players booted him. Apologies were extended from all the Players save one whom burst into an emotional display that tugged at my better judgment. I spoke on his behalf and the others agreed that if I was willing to forgive and forget so were they. I told them I was not willing to forget and watched the accused- he understood.

His character has been struck mute, lost a level, information he has on his computer was erased by our CS player, he promised to avoid ENWorld threads that had anything to do with WLD, he is storing the vast majority of his books here, so should he screw up he will not be getting any of his characters or books back (he agreed to this).

It seems fair and he agreed- it was fair. As he has done quite well with his promise to not use insults and such in a way that makes anyone feel uncomfortable I feel that his heart is behind this. It is the last time I will allow something like this to go unnoticed- the group seems quite strained with this choice but I feel he will be better for this, but without second chances I would not be who I am today and that is why I am giving him this last chance.

Thank you again and please keep your anger in check and watch your spoilers on modules.

 

[Acid_crash]

Thank you all for your thoughts.

Bard, your offer is quite generous. Thank you. Not sure I will be in touch outside of ENWorld, but I will place you on my Buddy List.

With regards to what happened to our problem player.

The other Players booted him. Apologies were extended from all the Players save one whom burst into an emotional display that tugged at my better judgment. I spoke on his behalf and the others agreed that if I was willing to forgive and forget so were they. I told them I was not willing to forget and watched the accused- he understood.

His character has been struck mute, lost a level, information he has on his computer was erased by our CS player, he promised to avoid ENWorld threads that had anything to do with WLD, he is storing the vast majority of his books here, so should he screw up he will not be getting any of his characters or books back (he agreed to this).

It seems fair and he agreed- it was fair. As he has done quite well with his promise to not use insults and such in a way that makes anyone feel uncomfortable I feel that his heart is behind this. It is the last time I will allow something like this to go unnoticed- the group seems quite strained with this choice but I feel he will be better for this, but without second chances I would not be who I am today and that is why I am giving him this last chance.

Thank you again and please keep your anger in check and watch your spoilers on modules.

Congratulations on resolving the situation, despite the loss of a player it looks like things will get back on track again. Enjoy the game, as DM you are a player yourself... he he... you get to be everybody else, the world is at your fingertips....or beneath your iron boot.

 

[DragonLancer]

You did the right thing.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Congratulations on resolving the situation, despite the loss of a player it looks like things will get back on track again.

He didn't lose a player. The cheating player's PC was struck dumb and lost a level.

 

[diaglo]

Tell him that he can run the bloody dungeon, then. How obnoxious. :\

-The Gneech

ditto.

as a player in campaigns where i knew other players were cheating...

it isn't only the DM who gets the shaft.

 

[Harmon]

Well done, Silver. Not sure I would have stuck up for the guy.

I guess that makes you a better person then I, thanks for listening to us and doing it your own way.

 

[irdeggman]

Have a meeting with all of the players and explain what you consider rules of the game or at least make sure everyone is on the same page.

Our rules include (and everyone knows them):
(1) No opening up of the DMG or any MM at during the session, unless the DM specifically grants permission.
(2) No reading of any adventures we are running. If you have, talk to the DM about it and what to do. (Most of the time a player will recluse himself from the adventure - the preferred method). If not then the player takes a back seat in the adventure and doesn't have his PC offer up any "special" advice or go and check things on his own.


The DM will annonce what adventure he is going to run before hand so people won't read it by accident beforehand.

After the adventure is complete, reading of the published adventure is alright. Many do to figure out what was missed or how they could have played their PC better, etc. Now this is subject to change if a particularly special magic item has been introduced and the DM will warn people about that ahead of time.

 

[JesterPoet]

I have always been a big supporter of not jumping to kicking people out of games for stupid little things they do at the table. I'm sure some of you have seen me take that stance before. I'll be the first to suggest that, too frequently, antisocial gamers will put "the game" before common social decency.

However, I see a serious issue of trust with this situation. I don't care if the module cost $100 or $5 off RPGnow. There is NO WAY that the player didn't know that he or she was cheating by getting the module and reading up to know what is coming. While that is not unforgivable, it would require (at my table, at least) serious proof that it would never happen again, and even that might not get me to continue running something.

As far as rules and standards not being clear goes, again, I consider myself pretty level-headed about table behavior, but I'm pretty sure that "Don't read the module ahead of time" qualifies as an unwritten rule.

 

[JesterPoet]

Our rules include (and everyone knows them):
(1) No opening up of the DMG or any MM at during the session, unless the DM specifically grants permission.

Do you have any Druids in your campaign? I think I'd annoy my DM to no end in his game if I asked him every time I needed to open the MM.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Well I am glad Blacksilver was able to come to a fair and equitable conclusion to this. It was an ugly business but you handled it extremely well Blacksilver. Hats off to you.

Strangely this reminds me of one time when something similar happended to me. I was playing in a campaign where the GM was running Speaker in Dreams. I didn't know that was what he was running (he had photocopied his module and put it in a 3 ring binder - we never saw the module cover or anything) until about the 3rd session in. I figured if I had told him I had read the module once we would have to scrap it and start over. I didn't want that to happen (mainly because I really liked the adventure and I have poor memory retention - I could only remember small snippets, albeit some of it was pretty important) so I ruthlessly repressed any information that my character couldn't know. Even up to the final fight I never used out of character information and, when the campaign was done, I finally told the GM that I had read the module before. He was amazed as I had let the party fall into traps, missed major magic items and did not act like I had any foreknowledge of any encounter he could remember. I took it as a challenge to keep that info to myself but I would never do anything like that again. I still had fun but it could have been a lot better.