Years ago, I GMed a Rolemaster fantasy campaign. We had a player who was a major cheater. In RM, if you roll 96-100, you roll again and add. So if you're lucky you can get some spectacular results. Of course, if you're more than four feet from the GM, the GM may not be able to read your dice. Roll, stare blankly for a moment, "er... 98! I roll again!"

He had a paladin called Judas. Judas was mortally wounded, gloriously fighting a lich. The player was unhappy that his character was lying there dying, and no-one could do anything to save him. He called upon his god to save him. This required a roll of 300+. Of course he made that roll easily, so his god appeared.

"No," said the god, "you have been such an excellent servant to me, I want you with me in the afterworld."

"I call on another god to save me!" said the player, rolling 300+ again. Yes, the paladin Judas called on another god in the physical presence of his own god. Guess what happened?

As a joke, I started describing, "so, you find yourself by a great river, the boatman asks you for a penny..." He was taken across the river Styx. There he explained to the waiting demons that there'd been a terrible mistake, he should be alive. "What do I do to appeal this? I shouldn't be dead." The demons pointed to the queue of people waiting to appeal their deaths.

So Judas swam back across the river Styx, losing most of his mental stats along the way. He returned to the world as a ghost. In the presence of his old party, draining their life levels, he wondered why he was unwelcome. He demanded they resurrect him. In response, they burned his remains, soaked the ashes in holy water and scattered them.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever meet a player who just wouldn't accept that their character had died. Stories?

I'm just a mite confused by this.  If you weren't certain he was cheating, this kind of reaction on your part seems fairly crappy (and I would think the first priority would be to confirm that he was indeed cheating).

On the other hand if you WERE certain he was cheating, why were you even gaming this out? Why weren't you confronting him about it?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI'm just a mite confused by this.  If you weren't certain he was cheating, this kind of reaction on your part seems fairly crappy

I was certain he was cheating, because he always did it, in every game, whoever was GMing, and many times I saw him do it when I was a player, sitting right next to him. Plus, when he has four triple-high-open-enders in a row, that'll happen one time in 20x20x20 x 20x20x20 x 20x20x20 x 20x20x20 - not very fucking likely.

Quote from: rpgpunditOn the other hand if you WERE certain he was cheating, why were you even gaming this out? Why weren't you confronting him about it?

Because a "confonting" would have gone like this.

Me: "Stop cheating."
Him: "I'm not cheating."
Me: "Yes you are."
Him: "Am not."

And round and round. So the game stops while we argue. This is a good thing because...?

Of course, tempers could have flared, threats been made - and the session breaks up in anger and hostility. The cheater storms out, the mood is ruined, the game stops, at least for that session. This is a good thing because...?

My way, everyone had fun - even the cheater. The game kept moving, things kept moving, everyone laughed.

As GM, the number one priority is like the theatre: the show must go on. If I stop the game to argue with him about his cheating, then everyone else suffers for it - they can't game while we're arguing. If I just game it out, cheating twice as much as him, then his character dies, and the player does one of two things:

1) Goes away, or,
2) Makes a new character, and has learned that cheating gains him nothing.

You know how lots of people say, "you can't use in-game stuff to resolve out-of-game problems"? That's bullshit. I do it all the time. It's very effective. Not for every problem, but for many.

The next character this guy made, he never cheated at all - or cheated so little no-one noticed, so who cares? That character never got killed off, the campaign fizzled for some other reason I've forgotten (this was ten years ago).

Dealing with troublesome players in such a way that everyone, even the troublemaker, has fun - how can that be a bad thing?

Quote from: JimBobOzDealing with troublesome players in such a way that everyone, even the troublemaker, has fun - how can that be a bad thing?

Didn't high school teach you anything?  (Maybe it's different  in Australia.)  Everyone else is supposed to have fun at the expense of the troublemaker, who eventually leaves, either crying, ranting, or stone faced.  If the last, have a careful look around before you exit the building.

More often than not, I've found cheaters to also be people who have a lot of trouble taking "hints", even hints that to other people would seem like being bashed over the head with a blunt instrument.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditMore often than not, I've found cheaters to also be people who have a lot of trouble taking "hints", even hints that to other people would seem like being bashed over the head with a blunt instrument.

RPGPundit

Are you thinking on the Blacksand campaign???
You should post the story, it's quite funny actually.

Quote from: UmaSamaAre you thinking on the Blacksand campaign???
You should post the story, it's quite funny actually.

The blacksand campaign is only one of various stories where I've run into gaming cheaters (the others were all in Canada thus far, though).  If you want to, go ahead and tell them about the Blacksand story.

The point I was making is that I've never yet run into a cheater who can take a subtle hint; or usually any kind of "hint" at all with less bluntness than "you're cheating". I think this is in part because they will create a kind of psychological barrier for themselves to try to deny, even to themselves, what they are doing.  So when someone else is trying to drop hints to them that everyone in the fucking group knows they're blatantly cheating, they'll do the psychological equivalent of screaming "nah nah nah I can't hear you!!", and simply refuse to process the subtext of the hint, or imagine that the guy accusing him must be talking about someone else, etc.

RPGPundit

I once bought a nerf pistol for this purpose when it got really bad. I told the player anytime he tried to "pull stuff out of his ass" I was going to shoot him. I then laid it down on the table beside me at the ready.

[Sadly] I only had to draw and shoot twice.

EDIT: Part of why this worked well because he was sitting opposite me at the far end of the table, AKA in the Cheater Zone where it's harder to read the dice and character sheet. So I got a nice full profile to aim at, and he couldn't hide behind anyone when I drew.  :kickback: :liar:

I can't recall an instance where I had a player who refused to let a character die, but I did have some GMs once who refused to let my PC die.  

It is in a Vampire LARP some years ago.  Since everyone around me seemed to be a bunch of amoral fuckwits, I decided to make my character the one truly decent guy in the city, and as a result, wound up being a big hit.

To the extent that the GMs resurrected my character in one fashion or another more times than I can count.  At lest 4 or 5 IIRC.  It eventually got to where I basically was going out of my way to find a way to just let the poor fucker die.  I had to refuse to play the character any further.