I cheat only to aid players when I DM. I either hide it, or if appropriate, and the entire group seems leaning toward the decision I say so openly. I absolutely hate being railroaded and DMs who dick around with people's characters for no reason.
I had a friend who I was reluctantly playing under. He's a nice enough guy regularly but when he DMs he insists on it being a "story telling experience". I often tell him that it shouldn't be "his" story that he's telling but he often does things that have made me quit playing when he's running.
Example: I'm playing 7th Sea for the 2nd time. I'm playing a slowly reforming Montaigne gentleman. I tell him, my character is not meant to fight, hates to fight, and will actively avoid fighting should it break out. He has a bodyguard (bought with creation points, and statted him up myself). As soon as introductions are over and I'm transporting two other players to the plot, some something attacks us. Without dice hitting the table my bodyguard is killed. And of course I immediately protest about how my bodyguard could have been killed so fast. I'm told to just go with it. I end up killing the guy who killed my body guard through lucky tens. I make it so my bodyguard can live but he's effectively taken out of the game. This would not have been so bad had I not continued to play and been ushered into 3 fights afterward, made into a public enemy, and given a mission that would take us away from my homeland. So in light of the fact that the plot has rendered my character absolutely useless I mention that I want to change my character to which I am passive aggressively told that I can't. So I quit.
When a DM wants to cheat
Moderator: Moderators
I had a body guard for fighting. I had an option for participating in fights known as "the bodyguard. I discussed this character before we even started playing with this DM. I was very clear as to what he was aiming towards doing and not doing. If he was just going to force us to fight, and then not allow me to change my character, that's pretty much a dick move. Its not like I wasn't reasonable. I offered to change him to suit the playing style.
I didn't just pop in and lay a completely random, self-centered character down. I wasn't unwilling to adjust. My criticism was completely valid for the situation considering how it rolled out. You would be right if you didn't consider some of the facts I laid down about the situation.
I didn't just pop in and lay a completely random, self-centered character down. I wasn't unwilling to adjust. My criticism was completely valid for the situation considering how it rolled out. You would be right if you didn't consider some of the facts I laid down about the situation.
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Count Arioch the 28th
- King
- Posts: 6172
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
I cheated session before last. The party fighter had already received 2 critical hits that combat, and I confirmed a 3rd critical hit. I decided to pretend the third didn't confirm and did normal damage.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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...You Lost Me
- Duke
- Posts: 1854
- Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:21 am
he was a fighter. You should have let him die.
DSMatticus wrote:Again, look at this fucking map you moron. Take your finger and trace each country's coast, then trace its claim line. Even you - and I say that as someone who could not think less of your intelligence - should be able to tell that one of these things is not like the other.
Kaelik wrote:I invented saying mean things about Tussock.
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Psychic Robot
- Prince
- Posts: 4607
- Joined: Sat May 03, 2008 10:47 pm
When running WFRP, I had to fudge rolls constantly, but I feel no particularly strong guilt over it for two reasons. First, it was my first time DMing. Second, the game is terrible. Throughout the game, I was consistently fudging the following.
1. Monster HP: tough monsters needed more HP because they otherwise died in a round. Other times, I would have weak monsters die automatically because the way death in the game worked resulted in them surviving for an additional three rounds after they were supposed to die.
2. Monster hits: even really powerful monsters that I statted out would consistently whiff against players, even when they were sporting huge modifiers on attack rolls. Had to fudge a few times just make the encounters challenging.
3. Player hits: players would often hit and then a monster would negate the hit by dodging or parrying. I had to throw a few bones to the players at times and pretend that the monster failed to negate the attack just so they didn't die horribly.
4. Player skill checks: given how everything is terrible in that game and you suck forever, player routinely failed skill checks. However, I hadn't anticipated them failing so badly that they couldn't do anything. There were a few times when I made tasks easier than they should have been just so they could feel like they weren't horrible.
I'm generally against fudging rolls, but fuck me, that system is terrible.
1. Monster HP: tough monsters needed more HP because they otherwise died in a round. Other times, I would have weak monsters die automatically because the way death in the game worked resulted in them surviving for an additional three rounds after they were supposed to die.
2. Monster hits: even really powerful monsters that I statted out would consistently whiff against players, even when they were sporting huge modifiers on attack rolls. Had to fudge a few times just make the encounters challenging.
3. Player hits: players would often hit and then a monster would negate the hit by dodging or parrying. I had to throw a few bones to the players at times and pretend that the monster failed to negate the attack just so they didn't die horribly.
4. Player skill checks: given how everything is terrible in that game and you suck forever, player routinely failed skill checks. However, I hadn't anticipated them failing so badly that they couldn't do anything. There were a few times when I made tasks easier than they should have been just so they could feel like they weren't horrible.
I'm generally against fudging rolls, but fuck me, that system is terrible.
Count Arioch wrote:I'm not sure how discussions on whether PR is a terrible person or not is on-topic.
Ant wrote:You do not seem to do anything.Chamomile wrote:Ant, what do we do about Psychic Robot?
I don't like to call it cheating. I prefer to think of what I do as creative interpretation of the dice roll. I have done it in the past for a variety of reasons. Not just to help the players, but also to keep an encounter interesting.
General Scott wrote:The only unforgivable mistake is a common one.
Sometimes to fight the darkness, one must walk in shadows.
sabs wrote:DUDE REALLY?
You just skullfucked a zombie post from 2005 just to say Thumbs up?
Hey, I'm trying to find a "bad DM" story to show someone.
I remember it was a 2e game, and a wizard player went berserk because the familiar was killed by the DM just to be a dick or something. THe character single-handedly kicked the ass of shit that he shouldn't have scratched, and kept passing save-or-dies with natural 20's. And the DM was all "It's like he's too angry to die!" I seemed to recall he killed someone by summoning a stone mastodon or such like in the air.
Was that story on the Den? If not, I'll apologize and post Old Man Henderson or something.
I remember it was a 2e game, and a wizard player went berserk because the familiar was killed by the DM just to be a dick or something. THe character single-handedly kicked the ass of shit that he shouldn't have scratched, and kept passing save-or-dies with natural 20's. And the DM was all "It's like he's too angry to die!" I seemed to recall he killed someone by summoning a stone mastodon or such like in the air.
Was that story on the Den? If not, I'll apologize and post Old Man Henderson or something.
Last edited by Maxus on Thu Oct 25, 2012 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
Allright, no answer, the search goes on.
By means of apology, I present the ultimate retaliation against a cheating DM:
The Tale of Old Man Henderson.
Dickbag DM is fucking with players in Call of Cthulhu. One player doesn't like it. Comes back next week looking rough and with Old Man Henderson, who has a 300+ page backstory that was written, by hand, in that week's time.
By means of apology, I present the ultimate retaliation against a cheating DM:
The Tale of Old Man Henderson.
Dickbag DM is fucking with players in Call of Cthulhu. One player doesn't like it. Comes back next week looking rough and with Old Man Henderson, who has a 300+ page backstory that was written, by hand, in that week's time.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Darth Rabbitt
- Overlord
- Posts: 8870
- Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2009 8:31 pm
- Location: In "In The Trenches," mostly.
- Contact:
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Shrapnel
- Prince
- Posts: 3146
- Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2012 4:14 pm
- Location: Burgess Shale, 500 MYA
- Contact:
I've only ever had 2 experiances with a cheating DM. The first was when I played a text-based Lord of the Rings computer RPG that used 2e mechanics. I swear the game engine hated me.
Each time I had a character do something, they died almost immediately from things like goblin attacks, nazgul attacks, or being torn to pieces by a ring-possessed Frodo. I'm thoroughly convinced that the computer was cheating, and nothing to do with the fact that I was five years old when I played the game.
The other time was when one of my brother's insane friends invited me to play a D&D game, also 2e. I can't remember any specifics, but again I'm convinced that she (the DM) was cheating, and again, nothing to do with the fact that I was seven at the time, and knew even less about DnD then than I do now (and trust me, I know shit).
edit:
Having just read the Henderson thing, I can safely say that I, too, could be that derailing if I hated the DM enough.
Each time I had a character do something, they died almost immediately from things like goblin attacks, nazgul attacks, or being torn to pieces by a ring-possessed Frodo. I'm thoroughly convinced that the computer was cheating, and nothing to do with the fact that I was five years old when I played the game.
The other time was when one of my brother's insane friends invited me to play a D&D game, also 2e. I can't remember any specifics, but again I'm convinced that she (the DM) was cheating, and again, nothing to do with the fact that I was seven at the time, and knew even less about DnD then than I do now (and trust me, I know shit).
edit:
Having just read the Henderson thing, I can safely say that I, too, could be that derailing if I hated the DM enough.
Last edited by Shrapnel on Sat Oct 27, 2012 2:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
Is this wretched demi-bee
Half asleep upon my knee
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric, the half a bee
Half asleep upon my knee
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric, the half a bee
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8headeddragon
- Apprentice
- Posts: 55
- Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2009 2:51 am
Most DMs cheat in some form, and whether it bothers me or not has everything to do with the motive. Parties are not going to be very sympathetic of overpowered attention-whoring DMPCs that follow them around bothering them, or a ridiculously large number of high level guards that immediately pop up and have conspicuously high modifiers on their rolls all ending in multiples of 5. But when I know the DM's alright and I notice them trying to steer things away from a particular direction, I try to help them out or in the right mediums flat out ask them about what might help. This includes keeping silent about "mistakes" and even helping them back on the rails, because again, if this is a DM that's decent at what s/he does, the experience is going to most likely be better on the intended roads; all the treasure, detailed descriptions, and surprises are going to be there. "Cooperative storytelling" cuts both ways, and it's not just DMs that lose sight of this.
Curiously the DMs that are cheating for the wrong reasons are the ones that cheat shamelessly and make fools of themselves, while the ones that are more patient and willing to compromise try to cheat more discreetly. At least in my experience.
Curiously the DMs that are cheating for the wrong reasons are the ones that cheat shamelessly and make fools of themselves, while the ones that are more patient and willing to compromise try to cheat more discreetly. At least in my experience.
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squirrelloid
- Master
- Posts: 191
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
The degree to which I 'cheat' as a DM strongly depends on (1) campaign goals, (2) optimization level of characters, (3) whether cheating increases the enjoyment of the players in the game.
By campaign goals i mean 'is the predominant interest (of all participants) of a gamist, simulationist, or narrativist bent'. In narrative mode the rules be fucked if it interferes with the narrative. In a gamist mode, the rules are (almost) everything. (Simulationisms interaction with the rules are kind of schizophrenic, but ultimately the written rules are approximations of the 'real rules', which are whatever we imagine the fantasy physics to actually be, and when the 'real' rules conflict with the written rules, fuck the written rules).
That can happen on a scene basis or a whole campaign basis.
Example: I've been known to run major encounters with just an *order of magnitude* estimate for hp, and once the party reaches that order of magnitude in damage, then it dies at a dramatically appropriate moment. If a save-or-lose save is failed, i frequently have it apply 'hp damage', impose a penalty, or otherwise have a legitimate but not-lose effect. Obviously I don't do this if the predominant interest is gamist, but it usually isn't, and if done well this can be really immersive and compelling for either simulationist or narrativist players. (Seriously, I've never had a player call me on this, they like it. The realization that a monster has taken a pile of damage mostly results in eyes widening as the player grasps how mighty their foe is).
Of course, I let players cheat plenty too in narrativist and simulationist modes. They tell me they want to do something cool, and rules be damned i'll find a way to make it happen and make sense.
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The more characters optimize, the more i try to stick to firm rules guidelines, to keep that optimization meaningfully related to actual benchmarks, but the less forgiving i'll be about things like player death.
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I made the mistake of including a not-so-simple chess puzzle in a dungeon which was supposed to be a loss for the side taken up by the players, and the correct solution was to knock the king over in concession. Unfortunately, one of the players was a better chess player than I was, and managed to find a way to get a win out of it, but it took him like an hour, and the group agreed that the spirit of the puzzle was obvious even if the implementation wasn't. (I let him get away with winning to pass the puzzle, but they did ask me what the solution was *supposed to be*, and I told them. Following the session I recall the group spending time fixing the puzzle for me while remaining as complicated and non-obvious).
By campaign goals i mean 'is the predominant interest (of all participants) of a gamist, simulationist, or narrativist bent'. In narrative mode the rules be fucked if it interferes with the narrative. In a gamist mode, the rules are (almost) everything. (Simulationisms interaction with the rules are kind of schizophrenic, but ultimately the written rules are approximations of the 'real rules', which are whatever we imagine the fantasy physics to actually be, and when the 'real' rules conflict with the written rules, fuck the written rules).
That can happen on a scene basis or a whole campaign basis.
Example: I've been known to run major encounters with just an *order of magnitude* estimate for hp, and once the party reaches that order of magnitude in damage, then it dies at a dramatically appropriate moment. If a save-or-lose save is failed, i frequently have it apply 'hp damage', impose a penalty, or otherwise have a legitimate but not-lose effect. Obviously I don't do this if the predominant interest is gamist, but it usually isn't, and if done well this can be really immersive and compelling for either simulationist or narrativist players. (Seriously, I've never had a player call me on this, they like it. The realization that a monster has taken a pile of damage mostly results in eyes widening as the player grasps how mighty their foe is).
Of course, I let players cheat plenty too in narrativist and simulationist modes. They tell me they want to do something cool, and rules be damned i'll find a way to make it happen and make sense.
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The more characters optimize, the more i try to stick to firm rules guidelines, to keep that optimization meaningfully related to actual benchmarks, but the less forgiving i'll be about things like player death.
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I made the mistake of including a not-so-simple chess puzzle in a dungeon which was supposed to be a loss for the side taken up by the players, and the correct solution was to knock the king over in concession. Unfortunately, one of the players was a better chess player than I was, and managed to find a way to get a win out of it, but it took him like an hour, and the group agreed that the spirit of the puzzle was obvious even if the implementation wasn't. (I let him get away with winning to pass the puzzle, but they did ask me what the solution was *supposed to be*, and I told them. Following the session I recall the group spending time fixing the puzzle for me while remaining as complicated and non-obvious).
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TheFlatline
- Prince
- Posts: 2606
- Joined: Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:43 pm
I generally avoid cheating unless it adds to the fun of the session. Which usually means letting characters to survive by the skin of their teeth, allow things that probably shouldn't happen happen in the pursuit of the moment of awesome creativity, etc... The more into the game you are, the more likely I am to say "yes" or "that totally happens".
Dickish DM stories? Oh easy.
Ravenloft. I was rolling a fighter whose family was killed in front of him by a vampire and it... unhinged him. Another PC was playing a paladin, who my fighter "adopted" as a sister and called her his sister. In reality, she was his moral compass. Without her he... drifted. It was a huge aspect of the story, is this character going to be okay or not, and the party was into it and it gave a driving force to continue on with adventuring.
DM got sick of his "brilliant" ideas getting iced immediately. So we got railroaded into this tomb that we were exploring to kill this evil mage or whatever. Note that this was one player's first night ever.
So we're doing okay and finally we get railroaded into the final encounter when we're all tapped out of resources. We're 4th level at this point incidentally. So we are like "let's GTFO and regroup, we can't tackle this dude the way we are" when the whole floor of the room we're in drops from under us as a "giant trap".
We're dumped into a room roughly the size of the astrodome. Seriously that's the comparison he used. Someone pops detect magic and realizes that the entire room was filled with spheres of silence. Thousands of them. Made permanent. Which costs XP. And here comes a mage, we worked out he was 9th level I believe minimum by the spells he cast. Which were *all* silenced. Not that he needed more than mirror image and fly, which he used before hand and was 200 feet off the ground to use his twin-maximized wand of fireballs on us. Every wall was glass smooth and there was no actual way out of the room without climbing said smooth glass wall.
My character sat down to die. After TPKing the party in a few rounds, the DM retconned part of the combat and wondered why we were pissed. My character promptly committed suicide because I didn't want to be part of the game any more. I did the math later and it was like EL 30-something... for 4th level PCs. The DM to this day says that railroading us into that fight wasn't that big of a deal, and just because *he* couldn't think of a way out doesn't mean that there wasn't a way out.
The game fell apart immediately after that session.
Dickish DM stories? Oh easy.
Ravenloft. I was rolling a fighter whose family was killed in front of him by a vampire and it... unhinged him. Another PC was playing a paladin, who my fighter "adopted" as a sister and called her his sister. In reality, she was his moral compass. Without her he... drifted. It was a huge aspect of the story, is this character going to be okay or not, and the party was into it and it gave a driving force to continue on with adventuring.
DM got sick of his "brilliant" ideas getting iced immediately. So we got railroaded into this tomb that we were exploring to kill this evil mage or whatever. Note that this was one player's first night ever.
So we're doing okay and finally we get railroaded into the final encounter when we're all tapped out of resources. We're 4th level at this point incidentally. So we are like "let's GTFO and regroup, we can't tackle this dude the way we are" when the whole floor of the room we're in drops from under us as a "giant trap".
We're dumped into a room roughly the size of the astrodome. Seriously that's the comparison he used. Someone pops detect magic and realizes that the entire room was filled with spheres of silence. Thousands of them. Made permanent. Which costs XP. And here comes a mage, we worked out he was 9th level I believe minimum by the spells he cast. Which were *all* silenced. Not that he needed more than mirror image and fly, which he used before hand and was 200 feet off the ground to use his twin-maximized wand of fireballs on us. Every wall was glass smooth and there was no actual way out of the room without climbing said smooth glass wall.
My character sat down to die. After TPKing the party in a few rounds, the DM retconned part of the combat and wondered why we were pissed. My character promptly committed suicide because I didn't want to be part of the game any more. I did the math later and it was like EL 30-something... for 4th level PCs. The DM to this day says that railroading us into that fight wasn't that big of a deal, and just because *he* couldn't think of a way out doesn't mean that there wasn't a way out.
The game fell apart immediately after that session.
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Ancient History
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 12708
- Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:57 pm
There was a point where the Crypts of Chaos almost fell apart. Avor's dread mummy character had been playing around with earthquakes in a dungeon and gotten stuck (pinned) beneath some rubble. Thing's weren't looking really great for his character, so "when you can't go to the story, the story comes to you" - I sent some NPC minions to dig him out. Unfortunately - in hindsight I might have been a little weird and dickish with the NPCs - Avor was really insistent about his character digging himself out. Even though I'd made it pretty clear that if he kept trying while pinned under the rubble it wasn't going to go well.
Anyway, he kept moving, and a big rock slid and crushed his pelvis and spine, rendering the character just an upper torso. Not fatal, but he was pissed and almost quit over it, and I regretted I hadn't come up with a better solution than halving his character, or just let him dig himself out of the rubble.
Anyway, he kept moving, and a big rock slid and crushed his pelvis and spine, rendering the character just an upper torso. Not fatal, but he was pissed and almost quit over it, and I regretted I hadn't come up with a better solution than halving his character, or just let him dig himself out of the rubble.