Some simple rules we always abide by, even though to my knowledge no-one has ever cheated - Roll when it's your time to roll, not before - Roll on the table, if it rolls off, roll it again, if it ends up cocked, roll it again - When using percentile dice, nominate which dice is the tens at the start of the session, this remains until the session is over - A wierd little in group ritual that we allow when the tension is high and a particular outcome hangs on a single dice roll; you can nominate a number of practise rolls with the dice. Specify how many you are doing, do it, then clearly say when you are making the roll that counts. Switching dice before the actual roll is allowed and indeed sometimes several dice do nothing but practise rolls before the desired dice is 'found'. Then you roll it. As normally everyone at the table is watching all these rolls and hanging on the outcome, it's impossible to cheat. It's just one of those group specific perculiarities that arise sometimes.

Fun time last night:
My rolls haven't been great, DM asks for a Will check. My saves are all blisteringly high (I'm a paladin - bard gestalt, so...).

I roll a 1. I'm already on death's door...

DM: 'Ok, you are Afraid and...'
Me: "Uh. Paladin. Immune to fear."
DM: 'Oh! Ok, well, Seth's roll of 22 is too low and he's...'
Me: "10' of me, so he gets a +4 on fear saves!"
DM: '... Ok, nobody is affected.'

Yay class features!

(On topic: Reminding the DM of class features is like legal cheating! Heh)

Most RPGers I've met have poor gaming skills.  They gravitate towards RPGs because of the lie "everyone wins."  Of course, they interpret it as "my guy always wins."  That's an important distinction.

Most of the RPGers with the worst gaming skills end up in the role of the GM.  They get off on the "godlike power" of the position.  They regularly change rules to "promote roleplay" and "prevent rule abuses."  They penalize any player for playing by the rules or using them to their advantage.  They hate "metagaming."  Really, the only rule to these kind of people is "I'm GM, I always win."  They are the authorized cheaters, and they hide behind the GM screen to indulge themselves.

Player Cheaters are just another aspect of the same poorly game educated population of players.  Most aren't game mechanically inclined.  If they were, they'd probably just learn to manipulate the system better rather than just approaching the "more points, higher rolls" theory they pursue.  Then again, when combined with the very common GM type above, there's no inclination to actually learn to play the game.  Might as well just pretend you don't know how to add except when it's your hit roll.

Just thought of another fun variation of the topic...

'You've been seeing other gaming groups!'
"But I was thinking of our group the whole time!"

Quote from: Gabriel2;241072Most RPGers I've met have poor gaming skills.

I'm Brian Gleichman and I approve this message.

Quote from: Gabriel2;241072Most RPGers I've met have poor gaming skills.

Wow that sucks. I feel sorry for people like you, who have such bad experiences. It makes me glad that my own have been overwhelmingly just the opposite.

QuoteMost of the RPGers with the worst gaming skills end up in the role of the GM.  They get off on the "godlike power" of the position.  They regularly change rules to "promote roleplay" and "prevent rule abuses."

Wow, your experiences really suck. I'm glad that most of my own experiences don't match yours. We've met a few cats like this-we just end up playing with different, and better people.

I have to say your post is pretty negative in it's tone, and you sound pretty bitter. I hope that changes-the game is supposed to be fun, and not as bitter sad as you make it sound.

I've had the opposite experience really, the people with the good gaming skills naturally assume the role of gamemaster because they usually got the last problems running a game.
But then I never met someone who was totally hopeless at gaming. I think the "worst" member of my gaming group took 2 month of weekly gaming to "get" the old vampire. Everything else was faster.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;240865I'm pretty sure that I've played with GMs who fudged in one way or another. In one case that always stands out in my mind, it was basically a matter of making a dice roll against (IIRC) a Streetwise skill, not being told of any modifiers beforehand, and then the GM eyeballed it and said I'd succeeded even though I was over the percentage. Essentially this was a homebrew (in the mid-80's) where, in my opinion, some of the math hadn't really been thought out very well. It was a bit irksome but over time informal understandings developed.

That's not cheating, that's illusionism.  I do that all the time.  Illusionism isn't cheating.

Player: "Can I do [something cool but not in the rules]?"
Gamemaster: "I don't know, roll a d20 and add [appropriate modifier]."
Player: ::rolls:: "I rolled an X, for a total of X+[modifier]."
Gamemaster: "Wow, that was cutting it close man, that was right on the DC.  You succeed at attempting X...this time."

It's a magic trick.  I just never tell them the DC of the check.  If they roll egregiously low on the die and are trying something hard, then I make them roll more dice and just keep piling bad consequences on them until they roll over a 10.

Depends on your definition of rules and cheating.

Personally, I cover it by saying 'as GM I get to bend book rules or make up shit when I think it's fun, k?' Players: "Ok."

There. I've rewritten the rules. It's no longer cheating.

Jackalope, I didn't say it was cheating, but the incident is relevant to the topic because it's something that's on the border of cheating, in the eyes of many. Personally, I don't think my friend was cheating, because, to put it in legal terms, she didn't have a fully-formed "mens rea" (intention to cheat in this case) because the system wasn't really all "there"--either mechanically or in terms of her mastery of it. IIRC the success chances for the class basically progressed like AD&D1e's Thief skills, which is to say, without large situational modifiers or a great deal of discretion in application (when to roll, how to interpret rolls), beginning characters would fail laughably often. I suspect I had around a 10% chance on paper.

However with a more functional mechanical system and guidelines, I'd consider a GM to be cheating if they decided beforehand that X would succeed and then deliberately misled me, throughout the process, that my diceroll would make a difference. In other words, I'd rather not play with a GM who frequently used what you call "illusionism"--or even rarely, when it came to important game moments. GURPS 3e had a GMing sub-section called "When in doubt, roll and shout" which urged exactly what you're talking about, and it's part of what made me think that for a game with otherwise good to excellent rules, it had one of the worst GMing sections I'd ever read.

(Incidentally, I'm not talking about GMs who know beforehand that Joe Schmoe whom you meet in a bar doesn't know anything about the secret entrance to the crypts of the undercity, but who let you go ahead and roll a Persuasion check. People who claim it's "illusionism" if the GM doesn't give you the goodies for passing the check in cases like that are, basically, trying to sell you a bill of goods themselves.)

Quote from: Gabriel2;241072Most RPGers I've met have poor gaming skills.  They gravitate towards RPGs because of the lie "everyone wins."  Of course, they interpret it as "my guy always wins."  That's an important distinction.

Most of the RPGers with the worst gaming skills end up in the role of the GM.  They get off on the "godlike power" of the position.  They regularly change rules to "promote roleplay" and "prevent rule abuses."  They penalize any player for playing by the rules or using them to their advantage.  They hate "metagaming."  Really, the only rule to these kind of people is "I'm GM, I always win."  They are the authorized cheaters, and they hide behind the GM screen to indulge themselves.

Player Cheaters are just another aspect of the same poorly game educated population of players.  Most aren't game mechanically inclined.  If they were, they'd probably just learn to manipulate the system better rather than just approaching the "more points, higher rolls" theory they pursue.  Then again, when combined with the very common GM type above, there's no inclination to actually learn to play the game.  Might as well just pretend you don't know how to add except when it's your hit roll.

my condolences.

Quote from: Jackalope;241804That's not cheating, that's illusionism.  I do that all the time.  Illusionism isn't cheating.

Player: "Can I do [something cool but not in the rules]?"
Gamemaster: "I don't know, roll a d20 and add [appropriate modifier]."
Player: ::rolls:: "I rolled an X, for a total of X+[modifier]."
Gamemaster: "Wow, that was cutting it close man, that was right on the DC.  You succeed at attempting X...this time."

It's a magic trick.  I just never tell them the DC of the check.  If they roll egregiously low on the die and are trying something hard, then I make them roll more dice and just keep piling bad consequences on them until they roll over a 10.

Now honestly. Are your players that dumb?

Quote from: Saphim;242014Now honestly. Are your players that dumb?

Every player I've ever run games for is "that dumb," though I generally prefer to think of it as a case me being "that good."  I simplified it in my comment, but yeah, I handle a lot of things that way.  And obviously I don't say the same thing everytime.

I mostly GM by intuition.  I'm more concerned with everyone having a good time than being totally caught up in rules and dice rolls.

My group used to take the cheater outside and handle him/her that way. It was messy and barbaric, but my group hated cheating more than anything. I actually miss that group and years of good fun.

Quote from: Jackalope;242030Every player I've ever run games for is "that dumb," though I generally prefer to think of it as a case me being "that good."  I simplified it in my comment, but yeah, I handle a lot of things that way.  And obviously I don't say the same thing everytime.

I mostly GM by intuition.  I'm more concerned with everyone having a good time than being totally caught up in rules and dice rolls.

Well, whatever works for you.