So what is cheating in your game? Is there cheating in your game? How do you and your players deal with it? How does your DM or GM deal with cheating? Have any funny cheating stories to relate? Any good advice?
Just curious.
Too late, Paul my boy. I just shot my wad in the other thread.
I've only had one player in my 20 plus years of gaming blatantly cheat, by which I mean out and out break the character creation rules, and system rules to make his character "better than the others." His goal was to be "better" at combat than all the others. ironically this pushed the rest of us to band together and completely kill his character. He ended up quitting, and we're a lot better for it.
Now a days the possibility of a player cheating isn't even something I consider. My players just don't do it. I wouldn't even suspect them of anything like it.
Now that said we've always, not because of any official rule or decree, rolled our dice in the open. Even I do as the GM-we've just never seen a reason to hide die rolls, not that we'd blink if someone did, or wanted to.
As a DM: I roll in the open too- except on stuff like passive checks, where no one knows what I'm rolling for anyway. And I stick by my results. Full disclosure: I prefer games with conviction points/ bennies whatever, so the player can have a mulligan now and again and still be following the rules.
What's cheating to me? I dunno, I don't think so much about this kind of thing. Maybe I'm getting taken for a ride, but I don't really care that much.
Quote from: Spike;240317Meanwhile, when I GM, I get cheaters out the wazoo. And you know what I learned from having cheaters out the wazoo?
To take my cues from the table. I sat in a game where a guy rolled out of sight, always managed to crit, roll maximum damage, yadda yadda. The rest of the table totally hated that guy and eventually the GM began to find excuses to fuck his character over, make him take ridiculous numbers of insanely hard rolls, just to make it painfully obvious how bad this guy was cheating. Off he went to the 'non-player' pile.
Meanwhile: I had a couple of players who rolled crits with disturbing frequency, got far above average stats on their characters and so on. I still play with one. Because no one cares. We are all, within reasons, ubertwinky munchkins. The GM actually told me he LIKED me at the table because my mastery of character creation/optimization (really, I just like specialists...swear, my had to Dog) made him bring his A-game, despite having a chronic cheater at the table. My perfectly fair, though heavily optimized, characters actually were more challenging to deal with.
The way I start to see it is this: Any given challenge... say spotting an ambush, is going to have half a dozen chances to spot it. No matter how bad the odds of making it on a single roll are, there are still six or so chances to make it. Thus, the odds are generally stacked against the GM in challenges. Ditto with attacks and so on. So what if certain characters regularly beat the odds? The odds were on their side anyway, if less specifically.
Of course, as a GM I could be accused of being sentimental. I am sort of rooting for the PC's most of the time. I mean, if I killed them all in the antechamber to the temple of deadly death, who would face off the immortal lich-dragon-god I whipped up for the climax? I COULD kill them all in the antechamber, an endless mob of thousands upon thousands of Goblins can bring down anyone, you know. And I've got lots and lots of goblins.
You know what? I've figured out how to turn hours of adventure prep into minutes!!! I only need to PRETEND to design an adventure or dungeon. Really, I only need ONE encounter. Since no one will ever survive it (garaunteed!) they'll never learn that after that was nothing at all....
.... ITS GENIUS!
Ha! I do think you have a serious point wrapped up in all that funny though-taking cues from the table, and the players sitting at it is an important skill to learn. Whether you'll be playing with them for one game, or twenty years.
I've never understoon groups that allowed secret rolls for the players. /shrug
Over the past 5 years I can honestly say I've never had to deal with this. It naver came up . My usual players aren't the type to think of "cheating'.
There is/was a level of trust between GM and players in our group where nobody thought that way.
Now, however that recent Fantasy thing I ran at the store - TWO of those guys might think that way ...but they didn't try it during our sessions as far as I could tell.
- Ed C.
I should mention a few things, since I asked about it:
Cheating: I'm pretty loose on the rules in my games, I don't mind if a player absolutely disregards certain rules to make a character more complete, or to better serve the story they're (The Players) are trying to tell. I'm not giving away the baby with the bath water here, but if your character is based around a cool concept, why should the rules hinder that? Instead we make the rules serve us.
If die rolling were an issue, or maybe if someone were new to the group, I am pretty stringent in accepting the dice as they fall. If that means a critical every other roll, so be it. If, and this happens pretty often, it means catastrophic failure so be it. Now that said I prefer to torture, maim, rob, or whatever to killing in most cases. (In some cases there is just no plot device that can work, so vio condios pardenr.)
Quote from: CavScout;240326I've never understoon groups that allowed secret rolls for the players. /shrug
Does this really happen?
I had one player who always had a tendency to roll incredibly high (or low, depending on what he was needing) rolls, if I was seated while we played.
As soon as I started walking around, he wound up with shockingly middling rolls.
His amazing luck didn't translate when we played card-based systems like Marvel SAGA...=P
Quote from: Aos;240351Does this really happen?
If it doesn't, there really can't be much cheating going on.
WAIT - one time someone tried to cheat in an RPG session I was running.
She was my girlfriend at the time, tried whispering my ear ...to influence things to work out better for her character.
I whispered back for her to cool it and that she'd better behave.
Game went much better after that. She and the other players had a really good time. Pretty sure it was a game session of GURPS:AUTODUEL in '88 or '89.
*CENSORED* (So that David feels better)
- Ed C.
:combust:
While David spontaneously combusts from Koltar's rather unnecessary and unasked-for tales of not being a virgin, I'll just say that I've seen a lot of cheating in my time, and never really cared. In the end, it all comes down to GM whim, we only let players roll dice as part of their illusion of free will and control over their own destiny.
I just take whatever they said their dice roll was and run with it. If they cheated, fine - so I cheat too, and things go really over the top, they get the twelfth critical hit in a row, so does the villain, they go down together in a storm of fire and glory.
I have not seen cheating in a home game since high school. It was considered pretty horrendous back then. For some people, it was a nasty breech of trust. It was not dice rolls. It was point-builds in Champions when someone would fudge the math to snag an extra 10-20 points or point builds in Car Wars where somebody "accidently" overspent.
I run a lot of convention games so I see cheating once every few years with teenagers. Usually its something like Warhammer or CoC with percentile dice that they always read to their favor. I am not there to be Table Mommy so my solution is to throw a few extra monsters into the works and have them chew on their characters.
On the whole, I find cheating extremely rare.
Well...there was Dribby. He always had chrs that were miles better than anybody else's. Never got caught at it, though. The sole piece of evidence was that somebody saw him through a window rolling up chrs by himself and rerolling the dice.
Another friend of mine used to say that he could control dice with his mind. Then he got upset when I wouldn't tell him what he needed to roll. I argued that if he really could control the dice with his mind (which I didn't believe), it would be cheating to do so.
It fucking pisses me off. I like the dice to mean something if I plan on rolling them at all. Otherwise, I'd play or run a diceless game.
Two of the people in our monday group cheat all of the fucking time and it irritates me.
It's become to the point where I want to see what the GM will do to save my PC and the whole party when I critical fumble at the worst possible time.
I can understand why some GMs feel the need to save a PC from certain death at times, but I appreciate the randomness of dice based systems enough to let PCs and NPCs die at inopportune times.
~~~
Last friday was my first session running D&D 4e. One of the players is a notorious "cheater" and when he decided to use the "roll" option of determining attributes I wanted to see him roll. He asked why and I simply said, why not, I just don't want you fudging dice.
He got pissed off. Like, really pissed. (it's funny now, but it wasn't then...)
I let it go and focused on the other players while he was 'rolling'.
His rolls ended up being: 16, 16, 16, 17, 17, 18.
Why do people do this???
Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;240424Why do people do this???
Because they're lacking something in their lives?
One of my players uses half sized dice that are mottled green and blue with dark red numbering. They are impossible to read from any distance, and roll significantly above average.
Also, getting him to give me a legible and readable copy of his character is like pulling teeth from a hen.
It gets on my nerves. A lot.
I've thought about giving my player the benefit of the doubt, but it's eating away at my fun, so we'll see.
I just don't see why it's so hard to accept that your character performed poorly once in a while... Are they afraid of being teased for that '1' they would have rolled on a sneak attack?
Sometimes failing is ok...
(Yeah, I'm bitter...)
Maybe my experience is a bit atypical but I can't remember a group I've GM'd for that didn't have at least one or two players who cheated on their dice rolls. A few examples being:
The Guy who had a white d20 with none of the numbers inked in so you couldn't see the number rolled if you were more than 2 feet from the die.
The Guy who could roll the dice and snatch them up the instant they seemed to be stopping rolling and then call out what number he'd got, no one else had time to see they'd stopped, let alone add them up.
The Guy who had a bag of weighted dice, pretty obvious in the way they wobbled all over the place before rolling maximum most of the time.
The Guy who rolled his dice, left them openly on the table and called out what number he'd got while the players on either side of him made comments like 'Another 20?! Strange how that looks like a 4 from here', etc.
And finally my favourite the guy who would deliberately fumble in low risk situations and then balance it out by critting during any major showdowns, he felt that somehow he was balancing his characters karma!
There have been others, but these were some of the more extreme one.
How did I handle it? Just got on with the game, made allowances for it, and made sure any random badstuff that happened to the party landed mostly on the cheats! Live by the dodgy die, die by the dodgy die!
Vadrus
Quote from: Vadrus;240441The Guy who had a white d20 with none of the numbers inked in so you couldn't see the number rolled if you were more than 2 feet from the die.
Check.
Quote from: Vadrus;240441The Guy who could roll the dice and snatch them up the instant they seemed to be stopping rolling and then call out what number he'd got, no one else had time to see they'd stopped, let alone add them up.
Check.
Quote from: Vadrus;240441The Guy who had a bag of weighted dice, pretty obvious in the way they wobbled all over the place before rolling maximum most of the time.
Haven't noticed that yet so can't confirm it.
Quote from: Vadrus;240441The Guy who rolled his dice, left them openly on the table and called out what number he'd got while the players on either side of him made comments like 'Another 20?! Strange how that looks like a 4 from here', etc.
Check.
Quote from: Vadrus;240441And finally my favourite the guy who would deliberately fumble in low risk situations and then balance it out by critting during any major showdowns, he felt that somehow he was balancing his characters karma!
Haven't seen this one yet... Lol.
Quote from: Vadrus;240441How did I handle it? Just got on with the game, made allowances for it, and made sure any random badstuff that happened to the party landed mostly on the cheats! Live by the dodgy die, die by the dodgy die!
I let it go too, but I feel it's unfair to the other players who are being honest... As a player, it gets to me to see someone next to me roll a one and call out a nineteen.
Thankfully, I wait till I'm outside of the game to vent about it. Next thing I know I'll be using a GM screen and fudging dice myself... tsk, tsk, tsk. *shakes head*
I'm just kidding of course. Instead, I'll use my handy laptop dice roller...
Alright, i'm still kidding... But I'm also running out of ideas.
Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;240424I like the dice to mean something if I plan on rolling them at all. Otherwise, I'd play or run a diceless game.
Speaking of diceless gaming, using specifically coloured glass beads as tokens for miracle point pools renders cheating more or less impossible in
Nobilis anyway. And since in diced games even I as the GM make all the rolls in plain sight (and if the rest of the group doesn't have any idea
why the situation there and then might call for a roll, well, that just serves as a little reminder that something unexpected may be taking place in the background), this problem never really comes up.
I've had two players that cheated. One in D&D who couldn't stand his player not kicking ass. He pushed the rules, creating barely legal prestige classes and sometimes causing at table arguments. Once I saw him quickly reroll when the DM wasn't looking.
The other one was in my PBeM GURPS game. He rolled so well that eventually I added up all his rolls and did some statistics, concluding that the odds of him rolling as he did were something like 1 in 10,000,000. He didn't mind not kicking ass, but he couldn't stand losing.
If all the players want to play that way, there are systems that empower the players to control outcomes. Spirit of the Century is a great solution for that. And it does fit the genre to some degree. Unfortunately, most players like living with risk and won't cheat themselves, so they find it unfun when one other player cheats. That's really the problem.
I just work to make sure that either success or failure of any roll will be interesting.
If you're saying "Oh man, I hugely want to swing over that pit, because falling down into glue-trap and spending the rest of the game trying to get out while other people have fun would suck" then there's a big motivation to cheat if the roll goes bad: It's your potential fun in the rest of the session on the line.
If you're saying "Oh man, I do want to swing over that pit, but if I fall into the unending void and Dragonette has to come flying down to save me while the gnome archers try to ping us with bolts that'd be so cool too" then you're more motivated to roll the dice and see what happens.
But then, it's possible that this means I'm not playing properly ;)
Quote from: TonyLB;240472But then, it's possible that this means I'm not playing properly ;)
That would be true.
On the subject at hand, haven't had a cheater in a very long time. They wouldn't last long. All die rolls including most GM ones are done in the open.
Die rolls, including GM die rolls, are generally done in the open.
Not always though, because nobody in my group cheats (as far as I know anyway). Certainly last Monday the GM couldn't see from where he was sitting what I was rolling, though it was technically in the open, but given I rolled subpar damage every fucking round I doubt he had much concern I was massaging the numbers.
Every round, for Christ's sake. Thankfully, the GM was rolling even worse else it would have got very nasty for us indeed. I doubt he was cheating either.
Personally, I'd be disappointed by someone cheating, after all we could play Buffy or WFRP or SW or any number of games with mechanics to allow players to affect the rolls so it's not as if we couldn't address it if someone wanted some way to avoid boring or adverse outcomes. Cheating is a form of dishonesty, and dishonesty in a gaming context seems pretty uncool to me.
Incidentally, I don't much care if the odd roll results in a boring outcome, a game is more than the sum of its moments, one briefly boring outcome is hardly critical in a three hour session.
I roll everything in the open, so neither GM nor players cheat.
I think the last cheater I had in my group was my little brother 10 years ago or so. Of course he was 12 then so he is excused ^^
I don't fudge, but rolling in the open doesn't necessarily make fudging impossible for the GM, what do they need to roll? What modifiers are they applying? GMs can roll in the open and still fudge should they wish to.
Me, I don't wish to, too much work leaving aside many other quite serious issues.
I announce the roll they need/ play games where it is obvious.
We had a guy completely new to gaming at our table for a long while, playing D&D 3.5.
A few of us were often wondering if he was cheating, but we were either probably wrong or actually wrong every time we asked 'uh, how did you get that result?'
90% of the time, he'd painfully slowly go through his chickenscratch character sheet and list out what he had. All of it checked. Sometimes he was off by one or two, but...
10% of the time, he was off by 3-5, because he didn't realize you only add Str once, you don't multiply energy damage on a crit, or some of his bonuses are situational.
He was a 10th level barbarian-fighter/occult slayer gestalt, so the issue was the numbers just sound utterly bullshit. But aren't. ;)
So here's a question to resolve the cheater issue... Do I bring it up with the player? Do I even bother with it? Do I set a table rule of keeping everyone in check?
It's just annoying the crap out of me. I make my rolls in the open as a GM, why does this player think he doesn't have to for some reason?
At what point do you say, "Alright, it was nice, but I don't think it's fair to the other players that you fudge your dice rolls to suit your preferences... Don't bother coming back..."
Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;240514So here's a question to resolve the cheater issue... Do I bring it up with the player? Do I even bother with it? Do I set a table rule of keeping everyone in check?
It's just annoying the crap out of me. I make my rolls in the open as a GM, why does this player think he doesn't have to for some reason?
At what point do you say, "Alright, it was nice, but I don't think it's fair to the other players that you fudge your dice rolls to suit your preferences... Don't bother coming back..."
At first you say "geee, stop cheating/snatching the dice/using dice without contrast already -its annoying".
If the player is an average adult he will be ashamed, mumble an apology and shape up.
If not, kick him.
Funny thing is if the cheater rolls the dice out in the open you very very occassionally find they weren't cheating, my brother is an example of this but as he does roll his dice in the open we can see he finds it almost impossible to roll badly!
Most extreme case was a AD&D game many years ago where I as GM misjudged an encounter, turns out 3 Carrion Crawlers was a bit much for a party of second level adventurers. After the first round the only unparalysed character was my brothers, several rounds later he finished off the last Crawler to stunned applause and then his character sat down to wait for the others to recover. All rolled openly on the table in front of us all, I don't think he ever rolled under a 16 for anything, in one round alone he made over a dozen saved versus paralysis, even his damage rolls were damn near maximum.
I've seen people accuse him of cheating a the couple of cons he attended only for the remainder of the people sat round the table to back him up that his rolls were all legit.
Doesn't matter which dice he uses, always the same results.
So always check the rolls before you accuse someone cheating, just in case you're playing with my brother :)
Vadrus
Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;240514So here's a question to resolve the cheater issue... Do I bring it up with the player? Do I even bother with it? Do I set a table rule of keeping everyone in check?
Does it interfere with your fun? If yes, then definitely don't be afraid to start talking with the group. "Look guys this really bugs me so I need to talk about it. I'm not pointing the finger at anyone person, but I've seen [this]. It bugs me, how can we resolve this?"
I'd try putting the ball in their court. If they fumble, then you have some decisions to make. If they agree that it's a significant issue, then perhaps making everyone roll in the open, or some other solution is the best route. Obviously it all comes down to knowing your people, their limits and needs.
I'd make sure that they understand this issue affects your fun.
We were playing SW saga edition last Saturday and we had visting player. He was someone who part of the group a long time before I joined. He was sitting beside me and at one point during the game and I happened to glance over as he was rolling his die. The die rolled a 3 he lifted it then turned the die and read another number off.
This sort tipped me off. We are all 2nd lvl characters and he was supposed to be a 2nd lvl noble. He had least two skill level focuses (I am almost certain there was more) as well as the feats force trained and force sensitivity. He also had 4 stats at 18 and 16 in the rest.
I am currently hosting and emailed the group and let them know he was no longer welcome at my apartment.
Seems like most of these issues would be resolved if all rolls where done in the open and dice weren't removed untill the GM was able to tally the roll.
My one rule regarding dice is that you don't roll them until called to roll them. Period.
Yet you would not BELIEVE the trouble I have getting players to follow that one simple rule, even in the face of punative results. If someone has a bad habit on dice that leads to easier cheating, PARTICULARLY if they use it to cheat from time to time, they won't change easily just because you say so.
Cheating would be, for me, lying about dice rolls or underhandedly trying to gain an advantage over the other players or the "system."
Seanchai
This is a great topic and I always love reading about it when it comes up. I've mentioned my experiences with cheating on other threads before. Suffice to say my view has changed a lot. I have a player who cheats, fairly blatantly. She really is primarily interested in hanging out with the group, not in overcoming obstacles or solving mysteries or any of that stuff. A list of things she would rather do on a Saturday afternoon would go, in order from best to worst:
1 - Game, and her character doesn't really have any significant setbacks or problems
2 - Watch TV
3 - Game, and her character does have significant setbacks or problems
This was a big issue for me and I was dreading trying to address it. How could I be fair to the rest of the group, who did enjoy setbacks and problems? Then I realized I was being an idiot. Of course the rest of the group already knew the player was cheating. It was blatantly obvious. What was equally obvious was that nobody cared. Everyone was enjoying the game, enjoying their setbacks and problems and they didn't see any issue with the fact that her character had none. Ever since I worked that out, I let her cheat. It makes the whole group happy and relaxed.
For the first time (that I know of) in the past 10 years, I have a cheater at my table right now.
She's pretty bad about it. I don't enjoy making accusations without hard evidence when she's sitting across the table, so I'm trying to get my players to help out. Thing is, she sits right next to her friend most of the time.
Her big one is the roll, pick up & pretend to look at it thing. Or check to see if anyone noticed her first roll, and roll again.
-O
Obryn, that is sad. I even feel sorry for JDCorley's player, I can't help but wonder if she's being eaten away by guilt.
Maybe I don't pay attention closely enough but I've never noticed any cheating in games I've played. One friend in college told me that another friend cheated, and in later campaigns, the "cheater" wasn't invited, but I'm sure that was a minor issue compared to personality clashes.
I'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.
If I were running a longterm campaign, I'd look for a system that would more transparently represent player expectations about the abilities of their characters. I'd also be willing to use some kind of hero point system or whatever to give rerolls or bonuses to important rolls, but I'd try to maintain some degree of consistency to ensure that the mechanics really were meaningful.
Oh, yeah. I can't think of any "normal" reason for players to make rolls in secret. There are GM rolls that I think are best done in secret, and I don't object to GMs keeping the target numbers hidden either, e.g. for NPC/monster attacks, although it's also reasonable to expect the GM to give some rough indication of how "well" an enemy is fighting.
One area that I think players ought to be allowed or even encouraged to keep things secret would be mechanics like image/illusion/summon spells in TFT. Each of those spells will "look" exactly the same to an enemy, but they behave differently in terms of how much they cost the caster, whether they can do damage, and how they can be countered. So I'd rather GM the game with people I can trust, and let them surprise me with those things.
Quote from: Serious Paul;240316Have any funny cheating stories to relate?
We had a guy in college who cheated. When playing in a percentile system, he'd never really specify which die was his ten's die and it would always magically be the lowest one. It was almost worth it to see his reaction when he rolled a double zero because he'd see that first zero and get a big smile think it would give him a sub-10 roll so he'd go "Oh!' with anticipation on the first one and then he'd see the second zero and go "Ohhhhhhhh" with a horrified look on his face. It was like the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, one right after the other. It's still a joke quote in my group even though we haven't role-played with him for years.
I think a lot of these problems might be solved by bringing along a shoe box or something, and designating it as the "Roll Zone" you roll in the box- nothing rolled out of the box counts. I think this has some things going for it - it will focus everyone's attention on every roll- which will almost certainly stop the cheating, and as an added bonus all the extra attention will ramp up the dice rolling drama. you can even use the added drama and focus as an excuse for using it in the first place- if'n you want to give the cheater a chance at amnesty, that is. Otherwise you can say, "From now on you roll in here, or you roll on out the door, tool."
Quote from: Aos;240951I think a lot of these problems might be solved by bringing along a shoe box or something, and designating it as the "Roll Zone" you roll in the box- nothing rolled out of the box counts. I think this has some things going for it - it will focus everyone's attention on every roll- which will almost certainly stop the cheating, and as an added bonus all the extra attention will ramp up the dice rolling drama. you can even use the added drama and focus as an excuse for using it in the first place- if'n you want to give the cheater a chance at amnesty, that is. Otherwise you can say, "From now on you roll in here, or you roll on out the door, tool."
Yeah, I could always do that - but honestly, it bothers me less than I thought it would, originally.
The other players and I laugh about it before she shows up, and I've made a few general comments about how cheating in D&D is as pitiful as cheating at solitaire.
I think an easier solution is to make sure she sits next to me, and I think I should be able to arrange that.
She's otherwise a generally decent player, and I wouldn't want to potentially lose 2 players in order to solve a minor problem with 1 (since she and her friend show up together).
-O
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.