Peregrine’s Nest: A Cheater’s Guide to Dice Rolls

We know GMs fudge dice rolls sometimes, but what happens when players do it?

We know GMs fudge dice rolls sometimes, but what happens when players do it?

colynary-media--YN14ikhgVw-unsplash.jpg

Picture courtesy of Unsplash.

In my opinion, it’s not okay for a player to cheat. It effectively gives a player’s character more advantages than any of the others and probably more spotlight as they just do better all the time. Calling out players who cheat is tough, though. Before you make such a call, you need to be able to spot it. So, in the spirit of Penn and Teller explaining their magic tricks, here is a quick guide to some of the techniques of dice cheats to help the GM spot them. I should add that not all of these mean the player is absolutely cheating, and hopefully any behaviour like this precipitates an adult discussion about how dice rolls are handled in your game.

The Hidden Roller​

If no one else can read your dice, they’ll have to take your word for it, or be really obvious about checking on you. While rolling under your hand is a little obvious, there are many ways to make it harder to see what your dice are reading while in the open.

The first is the player who always sits a little further away. This might be on the furthest armchair in the living room or at the end of the table. Usually it will be as far from the GM as possible.

Recent dice technology has offered another option, that of using really tiny dice. There are some adorably small sets out there, and they are often hard enough to read even if you are next to them.

The Roll-and-Grabber​

The player rolls the dice then sweeps them off the table the moment they stop. Then they usually hold them in their hand and stare into space as if calculating a series of modifiers before announcing they have succeeded. It’s rarely premeditated, usually they see they have rolled badly, scoop up the dice and then try a quick pantomime.

If you are playing D&D where there are a few modifiers its less easy to spot, although more modifiers is even more reason to leave the dice on the table so you can calculate again if you lose track. If you are playing Call of Cthulhu where a result is either under a skill or not, it’s a dead giveaway.

Loaded and Fake Dice​

These are quite commonplace and some are hard to spot, but they are pretty simple for any gamer to detect. They feel wrong, and we all know how dice should feel and how they should roll. They also keep rolling the exact same number each time, so they are pretty obvious.

I’ve seen cheat dice that were very subtle in that they had 2 of the highest results and none of the lowest. So the D6 had two 6s and no 1s. You got two D20s in the set, one with two 1s and one with two 20s. Unless you gave them a proper look you’d never have spotted them. Players using this won’t always succeed, but they will crit more often than they should.

You might also keep an eye out for novelty D6s with a picture on the 6 or the 1. I have so many of these I never use them now as I can’t remember which dice has the picture of the 1 and which use the 6. If those with a picture on the 1 are used in a group with other dice the player can just count all pictures as 6s (and obviously all 6s as 6s!).

There are plenty of other dice in this spectrum of “changing the odds” that aren’t straight cheating but are not impartial dice either. We all know many dice are imperfect, but there’s a difference between having a die that doesn’t roll right and purchasing a die for the express purpose of giving you an advantage.

The Knock-and-Roller​

There are a couple of variants here when rolling multiple dice. This might be when dealing fireball damage or rolling with advantage/disadvantage. Most people roll the dice together, but if you roll them one at a time (when you have more than one) you might “accidentally” knock a bad one onto a better number, or off the table and have to roll again. The more spherical the dice in question the easier this is to do. In another variant you might put one die on the table on the number you need, roll and sweep another and then point at the previously set dice as your result. That takes a little more sleight of hand though and works better if all your dice look the same.

Never a Critter​

One of my players realised that rolling maximum was a little obvious when it happened time and time again. But they also realised that a high but not maximum result was more convincing and always succeeded. In this case, they forgot that a run of 5s was just as suspicious as a run of 6s. So keep an eye out for players who never fail, and rarely crit, but never seem to roll less that the top 25% of potential results.

These are just a few examples. Cheating can be a spectrum, and what’s tolerated at your table has as much to do with the rules, the players, and the kind of behaviour you model. If you’re against fudging dice in every instance, it’s important to say so. Conversely, if you fudge dice sometimes, be clear on what’s okay and what isn’t, both as a GM and as a player.

YOUR TURN: What do you do when you find out someone at your table has been cheating with their dice rolls?
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Andrew Peregrine

Andrew Peregrine

Von Ether

Legend
I'll say something controversial that I read online about cheating that I think I agree with at this point, though. Why does someone cheat? I think it's because they likely have something going on in their life that's rough, and they need some extra success in a game to make them feel better. I'm at the point where I'm playing with friends I've known for a long time. I hope that they would tell me what's going on (and they do a lot of the time). I just think that people tend to be struggling with issues that I don't know about enough, so maybe I should give them some more grace. Does it really matter if they crit three times in a row? (Of course, VTTs cut this all out...)

I know that will likely not be a popular opinion as it's not fair to the other players. And I get that. I just think that, at my point in life, if cheating at an elf game keeps you a little more sane, I can live with that. Of course, that's a "your mileage may vary" situation, and it likely does.

I just saw this recently when I was running an open table at a game store. I had one fellow who become a regular but had to constantly cheat. This was a grittier fantasy game so were also lots of choices the group had to make between who was on watch, who got to sleep, etc. He always tried to use RL logic to cancel out the "dumb" travel/exploration rules.

Talking to him after a game or two, it became obvious he was going through some things and had made some poor decisions he was still paying for. It was obvious our game was not a fit for him as he was looking for a game where he didn't have to make hard choices and his PC was hyper competent as a respite to a life where he had boxed himself in.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
I think this is a very mature approach to the situation. The "adult conversation" is important. And in a fantasy game, where people are trying to control a thing (when they have so much imaginative control over their fantasy character's appearance, decision-making, etc.), why are they feeling they need to do this? Is the power fantasy that important? A lot of times it's immaturity -- issues like this tended to happen in my group when I was in high school -- but for older gamers this is often worth a discussion because it's a sign someone has other problems going on, to your point.
When you referenced high school, I had to laugh because that and college were the times I ran into the most cheaters. And, at the time, it really upset me. So I get the attitude that most people have about stomping this out.

Maybe it's just that people do things for different reasons at different points in their lives. Thinking back to my high school days, people who cheated seemed to want everyone at the table to think they were awesome. And that was likely because this was the 80s when gaming and nerd interests in general weren't well received. I've written about this before, but I had a friend actually get hung up in their locker by bullies, so I know how tough it was. That approval in your peer group is a very important thing, especially if other things in your life aren't going well.

But I suppose a lot of the people who do this are just jerks. Time in life has made me wonder why that was the case and I suspect it's something a lot more complicated than we can figure out in this discussion. But as an adult, gaming with people I know, I'd like to think that there may be something going on in a player's life that's making this happen. And I'm way past the point where I base my self esteem on leveling up in a game. Now it's all about the reputation points on message boards! ;)
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
The dice roller in VTT has eliminated a lot of these types of behaviors. Though, even when I was rolling physical dice every other Friday night nobody really went for it. I kind of take the mature conversation approach, and if they continue to look for ways to cheat, just avoid playing with them altogether.

That said, I dont mind meta currency, hero point, and PC ability cheats. They should be rare and a resource for the player to manage, but they seem to take the sting out of devastating rolls or runs of bad luck.
 

talien

Community Supporter
The dice roller in VTT has eliminated a lot of these types of behaviors. Though, even when I was rolling physical dice every other Friday night nobody really went for it. I kind of take the mature conversation approach, and if they continue to look for ways to cheat, just avoid playing with them altogether.
On Roll20 specifically I've seen an inordinate amount of crits/fumbles back-to-back. 20/1 rolls and 20/20 rolls, and 1/1 rolls. I think over a distribution it's still technically still an equal distribution if you roll enough, but it sure does feel like I've had players with disadvantage/advantage roll natural 1s twice, or seen two dice rolls be crits in a row (including initiative). It's ended up with some brutally swingy combat where when the PCs do bad, they do REALLY BAD and when they do great, they practically one-crit monsters.

But it may well just be a perception thing. Which is why you have to be careful about calling someone a cheater unless you see very specifically them cheating (altering a die roll, for example). We tend to remember crits/fumbles more than all the other boring "regular" die rolls, so observer bias can make it seem like they happen more often because they're more memorable.
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
On Roll20 specifically I've seen an inordinate amount of crits/fumbles back-to-back. 20/1 rolls and 20/20 rolls, and 1/1 rolls. I think over a distribution it's still technically still an equal distribution if you roll enough, but it sure does feel like I've had players with disadvantage/advantage roll natural 1s twice, or seen two dice rolls be crits in a row (including initiative). It's ended up with some brutally swingy combat where when the PCs do bad, they do REALLY BAD and when they do great, they practically one-crit monsters.

But it may well just be a perception thing. Which is why you have to be careful about calling someone a cheater unless you see very specifically them cheating (altering a die roll, for example). We tend to remember crits/fumbles more than all the other boring "regular" die rolls, so observer bias can make it seem like they happen more often because they're more memorable.
I have seen that too. Its not nearly as bad on Foundry, or at least I dont experience it on my VTT of choice currently. If anything, its incorrectly set up character sheets that are causing some issue where a player has an undue benefit or burden.
 

SteveC

Doing the best imitation of myself
On Roll20 specifically I've seen an inordinate amount of crits/fumbles back-to-back. 20/1 rolls and 20/20 rolls, and 1/1 rolls. I think over a distribution it's still technically still an equal distribution if you roll enough, but it sure does feel like I've had players with disadvantage/advantage roll natural 1s twice, or seen two dice rolls be crits in a row (including initiative). It's ended up with some brutally swingy combat where when the PCs do bad, they do REALLY BAD and when they do great, they practically one-crit mons
It's funny that you mention that. I had one of my players with bad die rolls show me this module for Foundry to adjust die rolls based on "dice karma." I wonder if there's something similar for Roll20 or other VTTs.

I told them I wanted a detailed analysis of their die rolls before I'd consider this. It was interesting to see this even existed.
 

Koloth

Explorer
A lot depends on how VTTs generate their 'random' numbers. Are the die rolls derived from a software pseudo-random number generator or some type of truly random source? Most computer languages suck at creating truly random numbers. Probably worth asking your VTT how the die rolls are generated if you are worried about various die roll oddities.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Every table I've ever ran since I was a kid always has one player that can't resist cheating. And, because they can't actually control themselves, it's really easy to pick up on. I'm pretty sure everyone else at the table knows they are cheating but I've never wanted to call them out on it because it's not worth the drama. Generally I just respond to it by sending a few more attacks their way, or rely on the fact that cheaters never learn to play so always get themselves in over their head.
 

Argyle King

Legend
Years ago, I played with a GM who ruled that a player who had their d20 go onto the floor (off the table) had effectively rolled a zero.

Suddenly, the butterfingers the barbarian seemed to keep his dice on the table.
 


Remove ads

Remove ads

Top