D&D General If they thought they could get away with it...

[EzekielRaiden]

Rate the accuracy of the following statement for games you have participated in (whether as player or DM/GM/etc.):

"If the players thought they could get away with it, they would cheat and/or exploit the rules."

Should you have participated in many games, consider it a sort of average across all the games you've played/run: in general, which rating would describe the groups you'd been in?

If you simply cannot choose just one answer, I've allowed up to 3, for example if you find that the answer is totally game and/or group dependent (e.g. players are more willing to do these things in D&D but less willing to do them in 13th Age, or whatever.)

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've played with players who would bold facedly cheat unless constantly monitored (generally this would be the player sitting next to them).

I've played with players who would happily exploit the rules, but who (to the best of my knowledge) would never cheat.

And I've played with plenty of players who (again, to the best of my knowledge) had no desire to do either.

It really depends upon the player, and even sometimes the player's circumstances. I've known players who (from my pov) exploited the rules when they were younger, but gave it up as they matured.

 

[Oofta]

I have absolutely caught people explicitly cheating. Others I strongly felt were cheating but couldn't prove it. Fortunately, it's fairly rare. But there are people who honestly misunderstand some rules and interpret them to their best benefit. Are they cheating if they make an honest mistake? Because I did that with my first 5E PC, giving them an option that was reserved for a different subclass. A lot of people do the math in their head wrong now and then.

Other people just stretch things a bit now and then. If the group and DM are okay with that, is it really cheating? If the DM supports or even encourages using abilities in a way that's far outside of what the rules say, what then?

 

[schneeland]

If I look back to gaming while I was at university, there were some suspiciously good attribute scores rolled at home, but I'm not aware of any intentional cheating directly at the table. And there were often one or two players definitely open to exploiting any loopholes in the rules or bringing completely off-the-charts homebrew classes they found online.
(Voted "Might do either" here)

These days, I have the feeling that cheating is not a thing anymore. If it happens (cannot tell because we are only playing online), then the effects disappear in the statistical noise of dice rolls. And we are all much too lazy to look for exploits
(Voted "might cheat, would not exploit" here, because I cannot be sure about the first one)

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

How are you defining "exploiting the rules"?

 

[Oofta]

One other note - there is no way I can answer this poll because I'd have to check pretty much every box. It's a spectrum. On the one end you have the guy who just made up what their powers did in 4E. Another that had one of those clear dice that he had to pick up and squint at to see the number, who may or may not have been cheating but no one could tell. The person that would never cheat or push the limits of what they can do even if it would fit the style of the game. A lot of people have favorite D20s that seem to roll better than average.

There are all sorts of people. Some would cheat as much as they can get away with, others would feel terrible at the tiniest mistake. It's a spectrum.

 

[MarkB]

We had one player awhile ago who would roll natural 20s a suspiciously high proportion of the time, but aside from that I can't think of any player who's outright cheated.

But "exploiting the rules"? Sure, that happens, and at some tables it's the legitimate way to play.

 

[jgsugden]

Generally speaking, when you take a large group of people and give them a label, like "players", and then assume a negative characteristic about them, like cheating, you need to rethink your approach. Even if you just ask whether the group is something negative.

Players are different. Period. Each one brings a different set of characteristics to the game, and part of the fun as a DM is to recognize what makes them different and adjust for it accordingly. That applies to any tendency to 'bend the rules' as much as it does to their style of play.

 

[Shiroiken]

It depends on the group and maturity is a pretty big factor. In high school, I didn't trust my players as far as I could throw them, since I'd caught them cheating/exploiting rules every chance they got (tbf, I did it too). In college, cheating seemed less rampant, but exploitation was very, very common. Now with more middle aged players, cheating is basically non-existent (although they never do seem to care about container capacity) and exploits are pretty rare (we as a group decide if something is too OP, but it's rare).

 

[BookTenTiger]

I think, in my gaming life, my players and I have built up a healthy enough gaming environment that it just doesn't make sense to cheat or exploit the rules. Maybe it's because we have conversations about what we want out of the game, the challenge level we are seeking, if death is on the table or not...

It feels to me that a player cheating is trying to "win" in a way that doesn't match the goals of everyone else at the table. So it's a kind of failure of the gaming environment. Either they need to find a new group, or the table expectations need to be adjusted.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Well, we caught one player googling the answer to a riddle on their phone. But that's only one player, it doesn't tell us anything about players in general.

 

[Oofta]

Generally speaking, when you take a large group of people and give them a label, like "players", and then assume a negative characteristic about them, like cheating, you need to rethink your approach. Even if you just ask whether the group is something negative.

Players are different. Period. Each one brings a different set of characteristics to the game, and part of the fun as a DM is to recognize what makes them different and adjust for it accordingly. That applies to any tendency to 'bend the rules' as much as it does to their style of play.

I would say that someone that claims a PC that has a power that is not at related all to the power they were actually granted is cheating. For example in a 4E public game the player "copied" the rules from the book instead of bringing the book. When questioned, they had one of those small spiral wring notebooks that he had written in the tiniest letters possible that one of his encounter powers let them negate enemy action surges*. When they finally brought in the book after being asked multiple times the power did nothing of the sort. It was not even close, there was no way it was just a misinterpretation of the power.

I see no way that this was a mistake. It was not just "another way to play", it was not bending the rules. It was cheating, period.

*or whatever the extra action the monsters could declare ... it's been a while.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Generally speaking, when you take a large group of people and give them a label, like "players", and then assume a negative characteristic about them, like cheating, you need to rethink your approach. Even if you just ask whether the group is something negative.

Players are different. Period. Each one brings a different set of characteristics to the game, and part of the fun as a DM is to recognize what makes them different and adjust for it accordingly. That applies to any tendency to 'bend the rules' as much as it does to their style of play.

Hence why I asked about groups you have actually participated in, whether as DM or as player. I am not talking about whether you think the entire abstract collection of "all players of all TTRPGs ever" would do any given thing. I'm asking about where the ones you have actually done TTRPGing with would fall, in your estimation.

 

[MarkB]

Hence why I asked about groups you have actually participated in, whether as DM or as player. I am not talking about whether you think the entire abstract collection of "all players of all TTRPGs ever" would do any given thing. I'm asking about where the ones you have actually done TTRPGing with would fall, in your estimation.

And then aggregating our responses as a representative sample, which makes the distinction meaningless.

 

[Oofta]

And then aggregating our responses as a representative sample, which makes the distinction meaningless.

Which is my point as well. I've played with people that cheated and exploited loopholes. I've played with people who would never cheat or ever consider an exploit and even ignore obvious exploits because they feel too cheesy. I'd say that probably 90-95% of the people I've played with over the past decade never use extreme exploits or cheat, I don't believe anyone in my current home group have.

There's no way to answer this poll accurately or that it's representative of people I've actually played with.

 

[Aurel Guthrie]

How are you defining "exploiting the rules"?

Ever heard of the coffee-lock?

 

[J.Quondam]

"would never cheat, might exploit rules."
I haven't seen anyone overtly cheat (or had any reason to suspect cheating) in decades, so I voted "no" on that. Otoh, I have played with a number of optimization-minded gamers over the years who gravitated to imbalances or exploits in their character builds. That wasn't always necessarily a bad thing, depending on the game and table, but it could cause problems on occasion. It was never a difficult thing to "fix" or tone down as needed, either; most players I've known have been pretty reasonable and respectful of the table's wishes.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Ever heard of the coffee-lock?

Yes, but do you regard that as an actual exploit or just playing by what the rules say? I suspect most people draw that line in different places.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I almost exclusively play with friends and maybe some Of our kids.

There is zero cheating.

Other groups? Like. Game store group? Sure some people cheat. Most of us roll right in the open. My friend’s wife punishes dice for bad rolls! I curse and people laugh.

Tragedy and triumph are inextricably linked for me. So while I might bemoan bad rolls, I also parade around like a professional wrestler when I roll a 20 on a smite for my blade boon warlock (at least throw my hands up in triumph).

I would never ever play with cheaters. I played a boardgame (fortress America) with a guy that cheated, once. Never again.

Why would you even do it? The trill is the risk, rhe unexpected triumph the oh crap! Moments.

I liken cheating to playing gears of war against my dad or something

 

[Clint_L]

This question is so broad that it is really hard to answer because, you know, humans. Complicated.

It really depends on context. Some new players will definitely cheat, especially young ones. I have access to their character sheets on DDB, and I absolutely check them because once players figure out that they can add any item they want, some of them will. I had a level 1 player hit a goblin for something like 15 points of damage with a single longsword blow, non-critical, and on checking their sheet saw that they were equipped with a holy avenger...and had a strength of 24 (I noted that they had also given themselves both a fly speed and a burrowing speed).

So every session 0 we have a talk about honesty and what it means for a cooperative game, that the game is not about "winning" in the conventional sense, etc. Students are less inclined to fudge dice rolls but most of them roll on DDB anyway, so it's not an option.

Cheating simply doesn't happen at home games, though. There everyone has played enough that they understand there is no point to it - a failed roll is just as interesting as a successful one. Often more so.