Cheaters. How did you catch them, and deal with their cheating?

[Arch Lich Thoth-Amon]

Cheaters. How did you catch them, and deal with their cheating?

Everyone hates cheaters, myself included. And when you've played as long as i have, you will have crossed paths with a cheater. The two worst kinds of cheaters (probably because i cant grasp the fun-factor) are the ones that either memorize the Monster Manual &/or memorize the module we're currently playing.

So i thought it would be interesting is everyone shared with the rest of us just how you caught a cheater, and how you dealt with said cheater? The more details given, the better.

All rpgs welcome.

What share you?

[Oldgamer]

So far when I've caught them, they've had it set up and play it off like it was a mistake and not cheating ... I had no physical proof but everyone knew. Usually public embarrassment works well enough.

There have been a few on PbP games I've played or run, but the dice roller on the site throws a flag up to anyone reading the post that "These dice have been altered or omitted!" So they get caught pretty quickly and disappear, usually to sign in as a different user because now their reputation is out there.

[Moritz]

She was bi. She told me that she'd been with another woman. I said, "Well, invite her over."

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Oh, yall are talking about cheating at the game table. Heh

[MortonStromgal]

We switch to playing alot of nWOD (specifically vampire) and the problem went away just because "cheating" isnt as strait forward other than cheating on die rolls.

[yukonhorror]

We stare at die rolls. Memorizing MM or something similar was never an issue. Just fudging die rolls.

[Zzarchov]

Figure out why they are cheating.

Is it because they want to be the badass but the game is just full of things that hammer them down and make them feel useless. Everyone likes spending their free time feeling useless after all.

Is it because they don't want to kill off the Party or have the plot derailed and they feel as a GM they need to fudge the dice rolls, A simple conversation that you would prefer to have the dice land where they may and roll with where that takes you might suffice.

People cheat to do something they can't pull off, in the search of fun.



In your case. Make up your own monsters and alter the module in a way that someone who knows the layout will make a deadly mistake by assuming one choice.

[Harwel]

Before it was common to make ten-siders marked 00, 10, 20, 30, etc., I knew a guy who would change which d10 represented the tens place on a d100 roll to suit his needs. Pretty common dice cheat, I just called him out and told him he had to roll a single d10 twice from now on. I watched all his die rolls more closely after that as well.

[Valdar]

Depends on the cheating.

My rule on metagaming is this: "Any knowledge derived from metagaming may turn out to be false, at the whim of the DM."

I did have one player who read the module beforehand- Forge of Fury I think? One of the main series of 3e modules in any case. He stayed right out of reach of the chained creature's 10' tongue. Which turned out to be a 15' tongue and got him. He was like, "Are you sure it's 15 feet?" and I was like, "Yeah, you have some information otherwise?" That shut him up.

Dice cheaters get to play with bigger dice. They make some pretty huge D20s these days. I've always had a brain for probability, so significant statistical variations set off alarms in my head that make me pay pretty close attention to certain players' rolls. Also, I've read "The Munchkin's Guide to Powergaming", so I'm savvy to all the popular dice cheating methods- roll and pick up quick, "tens is high' for percentile rolls, "six is nine" for poorly labeled dice, poor-contrast dice, uninked dice, ambiguous d4, etc etc etc.

Why do people cheat? I've played with some players that seem to have a gaming-related version of kleptomaina- they do it to get caught to feed their need for attention. Or to pick fights.

[Harwel]

Metagaming is an interesting subject, it can be pretty subjective. Take the following:

My wife and I are playing in a D&D 2e Planescape campaign. It's not, to my knowledge, module-based at all. My wife is a relatively inexperienced player. She owns no D&D books and doesn't spend time reading them. She's familiar with basic mythological creatures, but honestly if you said "gorgon" to her, she would think "medusa", not an iron bull that has a breath weapon, because she's familiar with the greek myth reference and not the D&D reference. She's playing a mage with the Academician kit... someone who has spent a lot of time studying and poring over dusty tomes of arcane and world lore.

So we walk into a bar in Sigil. The DM mentions a dancer on a stage wearing a veil and doing a belly dance. He goes on to describe the scene and mentions that the dancer's hair looks like it's moving under the veil. My wife narrows her eyes and conjectures "she's a medusa!" The DM accuses her of metagaming. Agree or disagree?

[Zzarchov]

I would disagree, thats known as logic. Sometimes people evade clever traps, thats the point.

Side note, I play in a system where cheating die rolls (cheating fate) is a mechanic with actual in game penalties for getting caught and no allusions that you are a bad person for trying it.

[RoryN]

I had to deal with a couple of "rules lawyers" in my DMing days. I don't really consider it cheating that they read and memorize rules/stats/etc., but it could be a pain in the butt.

The way I handled the situation was that when they said "The book says this..." I would answer "The book also says these rules are a guideline. Just because something works one way in one place doesn't mean it works exactly the same way in another." I almost always gave my monsters a little tweak here or there to keep things interesting. Usually creatures living in different areas of my campaign world had some different abilities, and sometimes even different alignments. I'll never forget the time the party was hired to rid a small wooded area of it's evil residents and they attacked and killed a small group of goblins on sight, only to find out later that the goblins were the goodguys and a group of elves had fallen under a curse and become evil. Ah, the good old days!

The dice roll cheaters are the ones I usually had to deal with. After a certain point in time, when one guy kept coming up with 15+ on all his rolls for our D&D characters, we started rolling characters with the DM present. That seemed to fix that problem pretty quickly.

[Harwel]

I would disagree, thats known as logic. Sometimes people evade clever traps, thats the point.

Thank you. We both pointed out to him that he made it pretty obvious even to someone with limited D&D knowledge.

Side note, I play in a system where cheating die rolls (cheating fate) is a mechanic with actual in game penalties for getting caught and no allusions that you are a bad person for trying it.

That sounds like it could be pretty amusing.

[templeorder]

Really depends on the reason and result. Some people are compulsively over competitive, some just have to win at any cost. Some are immature and have not developed a taste for defeat and style. I'll leave out the why's and matching of all the ways to deal with specific instances, but here is my top practices for dealing with it - assuming talking fails.

1) Make everyone roll in the open on even surfaces with well marked dice or use an electronic tool everyone can see, and that proper turn taking is observed.

2) Cheat back - make sure the character's opponents get the same advantage and that the player never seems to get ahead because of it. Use this only if you are great friends with the player, you don't want to upset people, and the rest of the group is the same. I only recommend this as a temporary measure until you can figure out why/what to be done.

Oh yea, if the cheating is out of game, like reading materials, change them on the fly and lure the PC's with fake knowledge.

[Parzival]

Stopped using the BRP of Chaosium.

It's amazing how rolling 2d10 tempts otherwise honest people to reverse their rolls when the pressure is on. <shrug> I'd been playing with the same players for quite awhile in other systems, and never had any problems with them cheating. Then started running Coc, and suddenly, it was epidemic. Once we switched to GURPS, I never again had any problems with them cheating.

Odd, but true.

[MortonStromgal]

Depends on the cheating.

Very good point. I've had some players who cant stop metagaming. I just dont play with them anymore.

Cheating by making my character more buff/bend rules, I pick an easier rule system that make it harder for Katana=win. Cheating with dice... well other than make them roll in front of everyone that one is harder, a little die cheating I don't mind but you know you cant roll exceptionally every time dude.