What do you do with a cheating player!

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Well, what do you do?

Aside from tarring, feathering and running them out of town?


I'm about to start running a new campaign and one of my players cheats. A lot.

Pretty much makes up the number on any dice they roll. They roll under tables, they get scooped up within nanoseconds of being rolled, and so on. But they always seem to come up with high enough numbers.

Aside from this, he's a really good player. Thinks up interesting character backgrounds, interacts well with NPCs, blah.

He didn't always do this. In fact, it started when a particular DM we used to play with, arbitarily decided to kill off a character he'd spent years playing - he fudged the dice to avoid it. Problem is, he's never quite been able to stop it since. It was like some switch got set to 'cheat mode'.

Worse still, our whole group are good friends outside of the game, known each other for years. I really don't want to upset anyone and I certainly don't want to lose a good friend over a hobby. I suspect if it went to an open confrontation it would all get very personal.

I'd like to stop him doing this, it annoys me when I'm trying to run a game... I like to let the dice fall where they will, but it's rather difficult with this sort of shenanagins going on.

Has anyone got any (sensible) suggestions? Dealt with this before?

 

[Silver Moon]

There is a current thread over on the Dragonsfoot board in the General Discussion forum about this same subject. Here is the link:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4768

 

[S'mon]

You could just tell your group that all dice rolls must be made openly on the tabletop & verified by you to count. This is standard practice in many groups anyway. Rolls that don't comply simply aren't counted. I'd say this was the least harsh way of dealing with it.

 

[Buttercup]

S'mon's idea is a good one. Other possibilities: the DM makes all the rolls, or every player rolls for the player on their right. One game I played in, rolls didn't count if they weren't made in a particular felt lined dish and seen by all. You might try that.

 

[Snoweel]

Hate the game, not the playa.

That said, if he's cheating, you best send him home to his momma's house.

You gots to 'spect yo self, sista.

 

[Deadguy]

I'd also perhaps speak with your player to express your doubts. Try and find out why he does this. Is he afraid that he'll suffer messily if he 'fails'? Is he just attention-seeking?

I game with someone like that, and the simplest appraoch has been to take this tendency into account. His characters always do well, but only other PCs really achieve things. He's happy, and so are we.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

That Dragonsfoot board has quite a few DMs with problem groups! One of the popular solutions seems to be call them on it once/chuck 'em out - can't really do that, in this case.

I would watch all the rolls, but it's a big group - DM + 6 players... tends to be too hectic to be keeping an eye on someone all the time.

The felt dish sounds like an interesting idea. Thinking about it, someone I know used a tupperware box for similar reasons.

I supose I could say I needed to see all the dice rolls for some reason... anyone got any ideas why I'd need to do that?

Deadguy, That's an interesting thought... could just let it slide, let him 'WIN' in combat and resolve it in other ways.

I suspect it's some sort fear of failure thing - can't stand to 'lose' or be seen as inferior. I would speak to him about it, but I'm not sure how to broach the subject. I think a direct approach would end with us falling out.

 

[Particle_Man]

"give" him a cursed artifact of mediocrity, or a permanent curse of mediocrity. If an item, maybe give it enough cool powers that he doesn't want to get rid of it. It would have the effect of having him "take 10" on every d20 roll (and similar "takes" on other dice, so he gets a result of half of the appropriate die type). To be fair, all rolls against him (in combat, say) would also be affected by this aura of mediocrity (so he would neither give nor receive critical hits (except when coup de gracing, I guess). Maybe call it a "normalization aura" so he doesn't feel so bad about being called mediocre.

Basically, he never rolls dice again. But make it with an "in game" reason.

 

[S'mon]

I supose I could say I needed to see all the dice rolls for some reason... anyone got any ideas why I'd need to do that?

Because you're the DM? Personally as I player I'd rather know nobody else was cheating, even if it made the game go slower.

 

[Deadguy]

Deadguy, That's an interesting thought... could just let it slide, let him 'WIN' in combat and resolve it in other ways.

I suspect it's some sort fear of failure thing - can't stand to 'lose' or be seen as inferior. I would speak to him about it, but I'm not sure how to broach the subject. I think a direct approach would end with us falling out.

We did it tangentially, by having someone he trusts say that he'd heard other players muttering about 'cheating'. And that it would perhaps be in his interests to make all rolls very openly, on the table for all to see and read.

Of course, he did chnage for a whiles, and then slipped back into old habits. That was when we decided there were easier ways to handling it.