What do you do when you catch a player cheating...

[ichabod]

I believe everyone deserves a second chance. Therefore, first offense for cheating in my game is automatic character death. You can keep playing if you want, but second offense is expulsion from the game.

Thankfully no one seems to cheat in my games. However, when I worked at Iron Crown there was one guy who was notorious for cheating. He even used to do it during playtests. So I made the above rules explicit when I began my 3E campaign.

 

[Sixchan]

Is he dead yet?

 

[Neo]

Not had a problem with players cheating for a long time thankfully, though the occasional picking up of the dice the moment it hits the table, or claiming a high number when i wasn;t looking occurs, but my players know it is fruitless as I will just make them reroll regardless.

Worst problem I used to have with cheating was when we rolled for stats amazingly folks used to get at least one 18 on every character. but I broke them of that habit by just making things tougher all round that way the cheaters not only didn't propser but thier actions also caused the honest players too suffer, which quickly made them unpopular and resulted in them not doing it any more. However we have since swapped to the point buy method for numerous reasons (cheating wasn;t one of them) but it has also removed any possibility of cheating as I check all stat purchase totals before play starts now.

 

[megamania]

Throw dice at the person screaming "HIT DICE!"

Seriously, once may be a mistake but more than once then before the next game starts speak to him/her in private. If it keeps up then ask other players about their thoughts then THROW THE BUM OUT! or base final decision on group decision. It is a group game- not just the GM's.

 

[drakhe]

Excelent point !!

Throw dice at the person screaming "HIT DICE!"

Seriously, once may be a mistake but more than once then before the next game starts speak to him/her in private. If it keeps up then ask other players about their thoughts then THROW THE BUM OUT! or base final decision on group decision. It is a group game- not just the GM's.

You have an excelent point there. Even though some DM's regard themselves as God, the players definetly have a say, it's their game also. In my group there's at least 2 players who do as much prepping as I do. They take their RPG seriously and do everything to make it a better game for themselves, the DM and the other players.

 

[Numion]

Pretty harsh ideas in your poll.. I'd just ridicule the cheater in front of other players and move on. Other players would probably laugh at she / he too. Being reminded for his mistake for a couple of sessions would be enough, methinks.

Then again, players in my group tend to be "reminded" for honest mistakes in this way too..

 

[Drawmack]

My players police each other. I told them the ground rules when we started. My rolls are private and some results may be fudged. That is the DMs perogative. Their rolls are public and policed by the other players. If someone cheats but none of the other players mind then I will not mind either. I have had players fudge rolls for the good of the party. Okay so he didn't really pass his save but if he failed the party was dead so he lied and ran to town to find a cleric to resurect the party. Least I didn't have to have a wondering cleric stumble upon the dead party. On the otherhand the one guy was claiming a natural 20 every 5th roll. So I handed him a set of my dice to use (the d20 and 2 1's and no 20s) when he claimed to roll a natural 20 with those very bad things would happen. I rolled a natural 20, wow you hit so hard your sword breaks inflicting no damage and really upsetting the orc. He couldn't firgure it out then at the end of the session I showed him that the die had no 20 so I knew he was lying when he said that. This was enough to get him to stop.

 

[ejja_1]

My players cant cheat.

I make all the rolls for them, attack rolls, listen, search etc.....
That pretty much makes it almost impossible for them to cheat, unless of course they read the adventure. But since most of my stuff is homebrew.......

Ejja

 

[Hand of Evil]

I as a DM I cheat to THAT player for the rest of the game. I then discuss with player off-line after the game. If it continues to happen, he will not be asked to play again.

 

[Arnwyn]

I think that if I ever caught someone cheating, I would immediately stop the game and announce what happened, and then discuss. The player would certainly be punished (I think instant character death would likely be the best punishment).

However, as I noted in a previous related thread, I prefer a proactive approach as opposed to a reactive one. I have created gaming conditions in such a way that cheating will be very difficult to do and not easy to hide. I have also implied to the players (only as a brief aside) that should I catch any "irregularities" they will *all* be punished - so it is necessary for them to police themselves.

It's worked great for us.