Some people have a very crappy life, and want to 'win' in their fantasy games no matter what. The people who turn up with a character already 'rolled up' only want to use their 'lucky dice' and read the adventure so they can game it.



I just watched a session Zero with character gen, where the GM let everyone roll off camera. Now it was a system where the odds skew heavily towards low to average results, with the really good stuff being locked behind 80+ on percentiles. Lo and behold this guy happened to roll high on most things, and above average on his 'dump stats.' 

The GM called him on it passive-aggressively by 'joking' about his having loaded dice. I saw the cheater's face, and thought "this guy is so unsubtle, he's going to say his next roll is a 1, to show he's totes not cheating." He 'rolled' a 2.

Yeah, the answer to "Why would a person read the adventure ahead of time and spoil the game for themselves?" is easy.  Haven't you ever met someone that when they know someone is giving them a wrapped present later, will move heaven earth to find out what is in that box, anything short of simply waiting to open it at the expected time? 

It really isn't anything to do with the game, but rather about that person's personality.  And if the question is the broader why on the personality, then well, heck, some people are screwed up, and some people are pretty normal otherwise but just plain contrary at times.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 01:04:16 PM
The GM called him on it passive-aggressively by 'joking' about his having loaded dice. I saw the cheater's face, and thought "this guy is so unsubtle, he's going to say his next roll is a 1, to show he's totes not cheating." He 'rolled' a 2.

Sounds like a total doofus.

I once tilted my webcam to show the second natural 1 I rolled in a row (d20 system) because it was freakin st00pid how bad I was rolling.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 01:04:16 PM
Some people have a very crappy life, and want to 'win' in their fantasy games no matter what. The people who turn up with a character already 'rolled up' only want to use their 'lucky dice' and read the adventure so they can game it.

Sadly true but when you cheat you don't actually win anything.

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 12, 2023, 01:46:13 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 01:04:16 PM
Some people have a very crappy life, and want to 'win' in their fantasy games no matter what. The people who turn up with a character already 'rolled up' only want to use their 'lucky dice' and read the adventure so they can game it.

Sadly true but when you cheat you don't actually win anything.

I often put it as "you're only cheating yourself."

But I gamed with someone for years, that you had to constantly watch for cheating and 'misremembering a rule/forgetting to remove things,' and he used to play single player shooter games on God-Mode, I shit you not.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 01:56:42 PM
I often put it as "you're only cheating yourself."

But I gamed with someone for years, that you had to constantly watch for cheating and 'misremembering a rule/forgetting to remove things,' and he used to play single player shooter games on God-Mode, I shit you not.

While you are absolutely true, if a person cheats I don't want them in my game.  If I am running it I already have enough to keep track of, a cheating player is just one more thing I don't need to deal with.

Quote from: GhostNinja on April 12, 2023, 02:00:56 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 01:56:42 PM
I often put it as "you're only cheating yourself."

But I gamed with someone for years, that you had to constantly watch for cheating and 'misremembering a rule/forgetting to remove things,' and he used to play single player shooter games on God-Mode, I shit you not.

While you are absolutely true, if a person cheats I don't want them in my game.  If I am running it I already have enough to keep track of, a cheating player is just one more thing I don't need to deal with.

I went through many years of 'any warm body to round the group,' and club play. But years ago I made the decision to only game with people I actually enjoyed playing with.

Which has DRASTCIALLY curtailed my gaming, but what I get is higher quality, and I no longer burst blood vessels.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 02:04:23 PM
I went through many years of 'any warm body to round the group,' and club play. But years ago I made the decision to only game with people I actually enjoyed playing with.

Which has DRASTCIALLY curtailed my gaming, but what I get is higher quality, and I no longer burst blood vessels.

I am sure that if I were running something other than 5e I would have that problem as well.  With 5e being so popular and there being more players than DM's, I can replace a problem player quickly.

Luckily I haven't had a problem player since that guy since.

I would say there isn't any scenario where a VTT is worse than a voice chat.  People could absolutely get caught up in fiddly UI bits or trying to figure out how to roll the dice or whatever, but none of those are actually mandatory for VTT use.  While the generally expected scenario is using the VTT with battle maps and tokens and stuff, some people just display a landing page with their campaign details:



Or a world map with notes:



And rather than battle maps, a goodly number of people opt to just display a picture of the scene and some ambient music for mood-setting.

So a longer answer to Pundit: VTT as a rule arbiter and a combat map program can be detrimental if it's a poor fit for the players.  But other functions like being a central spot for note keeping, tracking the party's travels, recording encounters and loot, are pretty universally useful entirely apart from any automation or tracking combat.  And things like being able to display NPC portraits and play ambient music can be valuable for establishing mood.  And in my instance, since I'm self-hosting my VTT, it's online 24/7 so players can log in whenever if they want to check up on campaign notes or update their characters.

Quote from: Valatar on April 12, 2023, 08:12:35 PM
wer to Pundit: VTT as a rule arbiter and a combat map program can be detrimental if it's a poor fit for the players.  But other functions like being a central spot for note keeping, tracking the party's travels, recording encounters and loot, are pretty universally useful entirely apart from any automation or tracking combat.  And things like being able to display NPC portraits and play ambient music can be valuable for establishing mood. 

If all the software does is centralize notes and data recording while allowing the display of images and playing background music, is it still a VTT or something else? I would like to see a tool designed for virtual around the table communication first and whatever goes on the table second. Something that devotes most of the screen space to player video feeds, allows the GM to force push to talk, strongly visually indicates which participant is talking, volume balance the GM over players, and allows the GM to select the principal actor muting all others for the duration of the action declaration. Dice rolling and electronic character sheets could be added later if at all.

Quote from: Wisithir on April 12, 2023, 09:18:00 PMIf all the software does is centralize notes and data recording while allowing the display of images and playing background music, is it still a VTT or something else? I would like to see a tool designed for virtual around the table communication first and whatever goes on the table second. Something that devotes most of the screen space to player video feeds, allows the GM to force push to talk, strongly visually indicates which participant is talking, volume balance the GM over players, and allows the GM to select the principal actor muting all others for the duration of the action declaration. Dice rolling and electronic character sheets could be added later if at all.

I prefer controlled chaos, where everyone can joke and have fun, but I'm sure your orderly and strictly controlled space is a blast too.

A lot of VTTs rely on third-party comms for things like video.  Foundry has a pretty basic voice/video setup that can be enabled, but it's extremely barebones.  Fantasy Grounds has none at all that I recall.  What you describe with video feeds and voice chat controls would generally be done in something like Discord/Google Voice/Skype/etc.

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 09:24:06 PM
I prefer controlled chaos, where everyone can joke and have fun, but I'm sure your orderly and strictly controlled space is a blast too.

Chaos is easy, controlling the chaos is hard. In meat-space I have the spatial awareness to identify who is talking and turn to face the speaker to indicate my attention while knowing if I am speaking loud enough to be heard over any extraneous chatter when responding. Not so much in e-space, where table decorum is often lost. Is having a caller or a mapper in a traditional game also too strictly controlled a space?

Quote from: Wisithir on April 12, 2023, 10:24:39 PM

Quote from: Grognard GM on April 12, 2023, 09:24:06 PM
I prefer controlled chaos, where everyone can joke and have fun, but I'm sure your orderly and strictly controlled space is a blast too.

Chaos is easy, controlling the chaos is hard. In meat-space I have the spatial awareness to identify who is talking and turn to face the speaker to indicate my attention while knowing if I am speaking loud enough to be heard over any extraneous chatter when responding. Not so much in e-space, where table decorum is often lost. Is having a caller or a mapper in a traditional game also too strictly controlled a space?

If you're autistic, I can understand your need for order, and limiting 'superfluous' stimuli. Or maybe you game with people who don't understand boundaries, and need an excessively firm hand?

In chat, letting people speak when they want, we sometimes have people talk over each other by accident, but it's no big deal, and everyone is relatively courteous and polite, with the added benefit of banter and bawdiness.