What to do with players that fudge there dice rolls?

[MarkusTay]

I\'d have to agree with tzor up to a point, the game should be interesting OUTSIDE of rolling dice. If players are \'living\' just to roll the dice some more then there is something wrong. I\'m a very \"f__k the rules\" type DM. Half the time I\'m not even looking at any charts when I ask for rolls, I just decide in my head what he needs to hit based on the encounter. I try not to make the combat the most important part, or any of the other number crunching. I don\'t go by the rules when doling out EP, rather I go by originality and how the players Roleplayed the various situations. How many monsters they killed doesn\'t mean jack-shit to me, and treasure is it\'s own reward. This is why I make rules lawyers nuts, and cheaters ineffectual. It\'s about having a good time on an adventure, not about keeping track of every little fart that happens during a session.

As far as rules lawyers go, maybe you should pick up a copy of this...

Unfortunately, Mongoose publishing also makes a Slayer\'s Guide to Games Masters. lol

 

[RedDawn]

Originally posted by tzor
As I get older, waiting for my wisdom score to rise by a paultry amount, I have come to the realization that things like cheating and powergaming are really out of game problems and they can only be solved out of game. Any in game solution is just playing the cheater/powergamer\'s own game, and he/she is probably going to be better at it than you.

As for rules lawyers :flame: I much prefer a rules guru. If someone knows the rules, that\'s great, a helpful suggestion is always good as long as it is a suggestion and the guru realizes that it\'s the DM/GM who makes the call, and just like Baseball just because the call is wrong doesn\'t mean much after he\'s called it, because it\'s his or her call. In addition being a guru requires the assumption of the responsibility of impartiality. That is if the guru realizes that there is a rule that hurts the players he/she is just as honor bound to suggest it as if it helped the players.

People cheat for a reason. Find out what that reason is and try to remove that as a reason. I\'ll take a guess and suggest that boredom is the number one reason why people cheat, just as in power gaming, they simply feel their characters are not powerful enough.

Thank goodness we don\'t have any cheaters in our game - we\'re having way too much fun laughing at our suck-ass rolls! (Usually me doing the rolling!)

I do agree with Tzor that people that play this way have \"out of game\" problems, but I disagree that it\'s brought on by boredom. I think most people of this type are simply insecure and want the biggest, baddest-ass player in the game. Inside I think they\'re afraid they don\'t have lots of imagination because, truly, it takes a lot of imagination to work around low stats, etc. to create an interesting character.

The one thing they don\'t realize, that I think should be pointed out to them by the DM/GM, is that the MOST interesting characters are ones with flaws! If you really get \"into\" your character and create one that\'s got bad habits, etc. it\'s a hell of a lot more interesting than one who\'s perfect at everything.

Maybe if you put it that way he\'d be willing to invest in a character that\'s not perfect.

 

[Infidel Castro]

You should really have a long hard look at their roleplaying style and see if it corresponds to their alignment. That\'s one place you can sting people for not being the character they ought to be. Use the XP to hurt them. Anyone with a super-powerful character generally just plays the game for the dice, so make them think (a la Tay!).

Is there any way the DM can force the player to give up a roll and do it on their behalf? Surely that\'s well within the right of the DM. It can really hit home if the roll is taken away from the player. They either buck-up or bugger off!

 

[Drake Farstrider]

@ Markus I played with a GM who did that type of thing and I got to tell you I hated it. One moment he would let you do something then the next he would say that you could not. He was constantly making up his own rules. He said he had a big book of house rules, but did we ever see them NOOOOO. Never. We would fight Monsters that kicked our ass get little to no EP\'s and shitty treasure. We would have sessions were we did little fighting and mostly roleplayed and get no eps. Plus you had to watch out cause monsters would get stronger or just out right change during combat. Just because he could. He was a total control freak.

I think though that you might be a little more stabel then he was though. Needless to say I don\'t roleplay or talk with him anymore.

 

[tzor]

Well I certanly don\'t want to give the impression that there is a single type of person who cheats. It\'s probably not obvious to most role players, because role players have all the necessary traits that make role playing fun, but not everyone has the necessary traits to enjoy roleplaying.

The biggest one is the understanding that a lot of the time the spotlight is not on you nor on the character. The DM has to balance his time among all the players and among the opponents of the players. Likewise encounters will not always make the player\'s character shine as some will make another player\'s character shine.

Some people can\'t stand this. They have little patience. They want to have the attention. (Often this means they want to win; everyone gives the winner attention.) This was my original thought behind the boredom argument. They are either at the center of attention or they are bored.

I\'m going to disagree with the flaws argument. I\'ve had good and fun characters with flaws, but flaws only add flavor. My ideal is that the character is good at something and that something is somehow necessary to produce an enjoyable outcome to the game. (Note enjoyable outcome does not equal winning.) The DM and the characters have to work hard to make sure that flaws and advantages work equally well to advance an enjoyable game along.

 

[Infidel Castro]

The games are so open-ended that you can\'t really put the word \'win\' alongside roleplaying lol

 

[Drake Farstrider]

But there are people that always want to win at what they do.

 

[Infidel Castro]

Too true lol

 

[sniffles]

Originally posted by Drake Farstrider
But there are people that always want to win at what they do.

I don\'t think it\'s necessarily \"win\", as tzor has pointed out (I think). One of the fun parts of roleplaying is getting to pretend to be someone unlike yourself, who may be superior at things you are poor at or can\'t do at all. So the \"cheater\" may not be trying to \"win\", just to be really cool. His own imagination of what roleplaying is all about may be \"I get to do whatever I want, get all the treasure and the glory, and never die\". Thus the game is not much fun for him if he has to miss his attacks sometimes, or not get all the best treasure, or just not be in the limelight in general. I have a friend who\'s sort of like that, although he doesn\'t fudge his dice rolls.

 

[Drake Farstrider]

It may not be all about winning but I think it is a part of it. I know that he does like it when his characters are the center of attention.

 

[Naukhel]

Yeah, the thread\'s been dead for a year, but I\'m replying, anyway.

What I\'ve done to deal with these stats-min/maxers and cheaters....

Don\'t give them character sheets. Encourage proper role play, instead of roll play.

Player X is a fighter: The info he gets --
You are a large, strong man, wearing a suit of chain mail, wielding a battle axe, with three daggers, a short bow, and a quiver of twenty arrows. Your friends often tease you that you are not the brightest colour in the spectrum, and frequently make fun of your inability to get along well with women. Etc. Etc.

A generic list of skills he\'s good at or not so good at comes next, but never once does a number appear on the player\'s information sheet.
The DM keeps all of that.

This role play encouraging method got rid of my stats/rules lawyer so quickly that the elevator door closed before the apartment door did.

The rest of us had a great time.

 

[Drake Farstrider]

Ehh?

What do you mean threads been dead for a year?

I have found that most players do not like to play pre-gens. While that may work great for on-offs and cons, it does not work all that well for ongoing campaigns. This group has been playing for a little under 2 years and they like their characters.

To some extent rules lawyers can be handy, you just got to make sure that the door swings both ways, when they are lawyering.

I think I may have the problem solved, but we will have to see.

 

[Infidel Castro]

Nail him Drake, nail him lol!

And I think Naukhel hasn\'t realised that this is the shiniest new forum on the CMON market

 

[Drake Farstrider]

Originally posted by reverend
Nail him Drake, nail him lol!

lol Well I don\'t think he is really my type. I don\'t go for boys, I like girls.

Originally posted by reverend And I think Naukhel hasn\'t realised that this is the shiniest new forum on the CMON market

And a fine new forum it is!

 

[Infidel Castro]

Nail carries several meanings I take it lol

 

[Naukhel]

I may have looked at a registration/join date instead of the date of the post.

Yes, you now have proof that I make mistakes.

Sue me.

It\'ll be like trying to get blood from a stone.

lol

 

[Drake Farstrider]

I may have looked at a registration/join date instead of the date of the post.

Yes, you now have proof that I make mistakes.

Sue me.

It\'ll be like trying to get blood from a stone.

lol

Hey no problem dude. I guess it happens to even the best of us.

As for suing I will get my lawyer right on it.

 

[tzor]

When I started playing the game, (1980) roll play had a completely different meaning. There was a big push to push role playing tables in character creation. Arduim Grimore (which we used frequently to steal houserules for AD&D) was one example of a system with a dozen tables for describing your character. You could determine your traits, your family history, your level of nobility, all though rolls of the dice.

A number of sci-fi systems also used random number generation to create backgrounds and pre-game character history. In some infamous ones, your character could be killed off before you even started the game.

 

[NecroN]

Little slow getting into this one.

Sorry about the delay.

Cheaters - I have a couple. Generally harmless, everyone knows and we just gear the story towards it. We all know that X character could take on a whole army so we have him guard the entire right flank himself. It has made for some very memorable Baron Munchousan (sp) type characters.

Two things I do to stop it when needed: one point out that you think that some people may be fudging roles, and well we don\'t want the dice to get in the way so now we are going to focus more on the story so the DM is going to make all rolls. (or go diceless) most powergamers cheaters would rather die then play a game where they don\'t get to roll so this usually only lasts a little while before you \'hand back the dice\'

Second method - swap the odds. I never tell my characters if they need a high roll or a low roll on a specific test and will invert the numbers. To keep this fair on my part I will flip a coin (roll D2 whatever) about 15 times before the sesssion and make a note of Hi or Low, each roll I check the chart to see if it should be a hi low. I just ask the players what they rolled and then tell them if they succeeded. Some tense moments I will let the players know what they need just for that \'dice tension\'.

 

[Drake Farstrider]

There is a place in RPG\'s for stuff like Arduim Grimoire. They add some nice elements to the game that you don\'t always get. Hope often do you see the archtype fighter character, studied to be a blacksmith, parents killed by goblinoids...?

@ NecroN How do you handle DC\'s and AC\'s with the reversed numbers?