How often do you cheat?

[Stormtower]

I voted "Very Rarely or only in Deep Immersion Campaigns." Before a campaign starts, I inform players about the relative lethality of the game... in my games there are only two modes:

1. All dice rolled in the open, fall as they may

2. Deep immersion, where the occasional die is rolled behind the screen.

Personally, I like the "All rolled in the open" option best, but certain play modes lend themselves to the other method better.

 

[lukelightning]

1. All dice rolled in the open...

Which is great for terrifying the players when you roll a "3" and say "it hits."

 

[T. Foster]

I don't consider the DM ignoring or fudging die rolls to be cheating. Frequently I won't even have stats prepared for monsters or NPCs and I almost never look anything up in the books, I just go by feel. That said, dice are usually rolled at least in the semi-open (I don't call out results or roll them in the center of the table for everyone to see, but I don't roll them behind a screen either) and I don't often completely fudge rolls (good roll that I declare to be a miss, or vice versa). If the players get lucky and are able to take out a bad guy more easily than I anticipated, or vice versa, I just consider that part of the game.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Never.

 

[Quasqueton]

D&D is a game. Cheating is cheating, whether by the DM or a Player.

I've had DMs cheat to keep my character alive, and I dislike that. I feel . . . cheated in those situations.

Why roll the dice if are just going to ignore them?

Quasqueton

 

[Himoura]

When i used to GM a star wars game there was always a one kid who was a little too cocky for his own good and could never quiet grasp the idea of team play so i did fudge a few rolls when he though it was a good idea to run off and abandon the party.

do i feel bad about it, sometimes, but he was supposed to be the good aligned jedi of the party running off an abandoning the party to save his own neck when he could have helped in a given situation always annoyed me.

Did I kill him? no but i injured him to the extend where he went willing back to the party begging for healing.

He never could seem to work out why when he ran off a strange sith like jedi seemed to be able to find him.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

You're gonna be in a huge quandry when two of the PCs have a duel to the death!

There's been a couple of cases where a rampaging newbie provoked a regular with a high-power character to the point that Mr Seasoned Borderline Psychotic Cyberpunk Mercenary Gunman blew Mr Rampaging Newbie into a wet red smear. In said cases, the dice aren't exactly being rolled behind the GM's screen; I let things resolve how the dice land.

There's been cases of 'suicide through stupidity' such as walking into the crossfire from a pair of M2 Brownings. When a player does something that spectacularily dumb, I hand them a blank character sheet.

But dieing because some mook with a .32 rolled a critical? That's just lame.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Why roll the dice if are just going to ignore them?

My thoughts.

I'm not opposed to a fudge mechanic built into the system however (Deadlands fate chips for instance). The PC's get resources to alter dice outcomes, and so does the GM.

But to me, HP shouldnt be "until the party is almost dead" and saves shouldnt be "always".

 

[Technik4]

Why roll the dice if are just going to ignore them?

I agree. I hate feeling like me and the members of my party are invincible, especially because of the great pains some of the members take to avoid death. Its D&D, it happens, and usually as a player you learn something. And now you have a tale to spin.

While non-epic, random, mook-related death is lame, I have let people die from it. You are roleplaying heroes, not demigods.

 

[Peni Griffin]

I have so much stuff spread out all over the table and am hopping up and down so much trying to keep track of things, I couldn't possibly hide a die roll; nor do I have the grasp of rules and mechanics necessary to cheat in front of my two game-mechanic players; nor can Itrack of the status of each PC well enough to know when to cheat to save them. They beat the tar out of my bad guys fair and square.

I think I sometimes "cheat" by accident in the heat of the moment - forget to use a skill, for example. And I once ranged them against archers who did not hit once during the entire encounter, and I wondered later if I hadn't grabbed a couple of old-fashioned d-20s, numbered 1-0, 1-0, that the coloring had worn off of. It was too late to investigate, and since the PCs had organized "Born in East L.A." rush of the wall by civilians to cover their own escape from the walled city, I had the logical excuse that these were guards who couldn't get into recreating the Boston Massacre or Kent State. Anyway, that's different.

Since I want my PCs to survive, I give them ready access to healing magic, pace adventures so that they have a chance to swallow a potion or talk to the priest before the next combat encounter, allow my bad guys to make in-character bad judgements when things look really dire and nothing huge is at stake, am not rigid about in-party cross-chatter, and allow the players to at least try out any wild-hair desperate heroics they can come up with. Good PCs will keep each other alive if you let 'em.