Question about Metagaming

[Quertus]

If a player is not enjoying some aspect of the actual play, the meta interactions, or the group dynamic or whatever; and they speak up about it, the group disagreeing with their feelings on the subject should not mean that person needs to sit down and shut up and do what everyone else wants.

Consider very carefully: the poster I was replying to indicated that the group should sacrifice their fun at the whim of one petty tyrant, which you accepted in silence, whereas you choose to take issue with my comment that it is better for the one to accept the fun of the many.

Are you really sure you want to die on that hill, of saying “how dare you be inconsiderate to one person’s fun - you should be inconsiderate to everyone’s fun instead!”?

So as not to have the GM abusing their power to get their Fun at the expense of the group, I strongly encourage GMs to err on the side of listening to their players, and optimizing the fun that the players have.

[kyoryu]

Consider very carefully: the poster I was replying to indicated that the group should sacrifice their fun at the whim of one petty tyrant, which you accepted in silence, whereas you choose to take issue with my comment that it is better for the one to accept the fun of the many.

Are you really sure you want to die on that hill, of saying “how dare you be inconsiderate to one person’s fun - you should be inconsiderate to everyone’s fun instead!”?

So as not to have the GM abusing their power to get their Fun at the expense of the group, I strongly encourage GMs to err on the side of listening to their players, and optimizing the fun that the players have.

There's an excluded middle here.

In this scenario, when possible, the best solution is to find a reasonable accommodation to the player that doesn't unnecessarily impinge the fun of the rest of the group. Like, if a player says "I want more X", but the rest of the group doesn't really want it, it's usually reasonable to add a sprinkle of X here and there without making it the focus of the game.

In some cases that's impossible, and then, yeah, majority wins. But that's not the case most of the time.

[NichG]

The basic structure I tend to like is that everyone has a certain limited 'sphere of agency' where their decisions by default are unexamined with respect to the overall table enjoyment, with a shared interface space in which decisions made at the interface are expected to take table enjoyment into account. The hybrid model helps prevent meta-politicking (e.g. two players teaming up to browbeat a third into making a certain build decision) and also creates a decision space for each participant which can be as uncomplex as they'd like (so that people don't feel like they always have to do theory-of-mind sorts of considerations when making every single choice in the game).

I think its also useful to do the same thing with regards to concerns, such that there are things which are shared concerns that everyone is permitted to care about, but there are protected 'spheres of interest' such that a player cannot say for example 'I will only be happy if his character is dumber than my character' or 'I will only be happy if his character obeys my character'.

The actual shape of those spheres of agency and interest and the shared spaces are a per-table matter, and don't usually need to be formalized. So this is more of a framework for thinking about 'what is reasonable?' when conflicts arise that can't be simply resolved or when metagame manipulation starts to occur.

One example of a set of boundaries could be something like:

- Each player has authority-without-responsibility for their build decisions and choices about character personality (Player's role, acting within their sphere of agency)
- Each player has authority-without-responsibility for their own mental state at the game (Player's role, acting within their sphere of agency). So e.g. if they want to read Monster Manual entries in their spare time, or play NWN and learn about D&D that way, etc then this set of boundaries would say that its unreasonable for the DM or another player to try to forbid that.
- However, each player has authority-with-responsibility for their choice as to what their character does and how their character behaves in any given situation (Player's role, acting in shared space)
- And similarly, each player has responsibility in their OOC interactions with other players (civility, not spoiling someone who doesn't want to be spoiled, etc).
- The DM has authority-without-responsibility for the decisions of NPCs in and out of combat (DM's role, acting within their sphere of agency)
- The DM has authority-with-responsibility for the design of those NPCs and the overall campaign scenario (DM's role, but acting in shared space)
- The DM has authority-with-responsibility for mediating table dynamics (DM's role, but acting in shared space)
- Each participant at the table solely owns interest in their character's attitudes and opinions about elements of the game, as well as out-of-character attitudes and opinions. E.g. someone is not allowed to say 'I want your character to feel this way' or 'you have to like my naming sense' or things like that.
- Participants at the table have shared interest about the themes and elements of the campaign ('lets not have PvP, lets play villains, etc')

[Quertus]

There's an excluded middle here.

In this scenario, when possible, the best solution is to find a reasonable accommodation to the player that doesn't unnecessarily impinge the fun of the rest of the group. Like, if a player says "I want more X", but the rest of the group doesn't really want it, it's usually reasonable to add a sprinkle of X here and there without making it the focus of the game.

In some cases that's impossible, and then, yeah, majority wins. But that's not the case most of the time.

Sure. In fact, that “excluded” middle is what I was advocating, with talk of, y’know, talking.

In making my point, I just parroted back a comment from one end of the spectrum, changing two key things: whose behaviors were being changed (players -> GM), and actually giving a reason for the change (—- -> “we find this fun”).

[gbaji]

Let me re-quote this, for reference.

Now, you’ve got a false… something. A false premise? Let’s go with that. You’ve got a false premise that “other players need to start fudging too if they want to continue being effective”. And that’s so wrong, I struggle to imagine why you believe that. So let’s poke at this a bit.

Imagine you ran a cheating BDF at the same table as me running Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named. You cheat and roll a natural 20 on your (untrained) Spellcraft check, getting (with your -4 Intelligence penalty) a 16. Meanwhile, I just stare at the GM for asking for a roll, as my bonus is an order of magnitude higher than the DC. I try to find some excuse to take a 100-point penalty, and still succeed on a 1. I didn’t have to do anything to still have Quertus be effective, even with you cheating.

“But Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard.” Ok, fine. You play a cheating Wizard at the same table as… a gestalt between two Fighter characters that aren’t mine (and thus I have no clue whether their tech is compatible without this “gestalt”). You cheat and get a natural 20 on initiative… which still has you going after this Fighter… and after his free surprise round. He kills literally hundreds of foes before your Wizard gets a turn. Yet he didn’t have to cheat to still be effective.

So then you bring a cheating 2WF UMD Rogue with Acorn of Far Travel permanence on their buffs, who casts all the spells and does all the damage with all the stealth. And who never misses, or falls a saving throw. Ok, cool, the Fighter still kills more cannon fodder per round, and Quertus still teleports the party for free. Oh, you use Astral Projection shenanigans to “cast” all your spells “for free”, even more “for free” than Quertus? And you summon enough monsters to kill more than the Fighter? And you cast Chain Heal and Chain Harm at will as a free action? Cool. Maybe at some point you’ll violate “Balance to the Table”; until then, Quertus is stoked about traveling with such a competent companion (although he may warn you about the vulnerability to Silver Swords of Astral Projection, just in case you were unaware).

Thank you for noticing? “When there’s strong niche protection, or even strong differentiation between characters, cheating really doesn’t do much” was kinda the point.

Except that's such an absurd condition as to be a meaningless point. Most of the time, in most games, the characters (and the opponents they have to deal with) are/should be somewhat in balance. You have presented cases where the balance is so incredibly out of whack that it's essentially an unplayable table (well, for the gimped PC), then arguing that it's ok for that person to cheat in that situation.

Let's also not forget that you raised these examples in direct response to someone claiming that cheating by one player will tend to result in the cheating spreading to other players as a way of keeping up and/or balancing things out. You declared this a "false premise", but then proceeded to list a set of examples to counter that premise that are so utterly absurd as to strain the mind to even take them seriously. Most of the time, people are cheating to give themselves an edge in some way and to be more capable than others, not because they are so incredibly outmatched by everyone around them that they feel they have to cheat just to be semi-relevant (and you even dismiss that in your examples too).

Me: "because the wizard will still totally out spell him,"

Um… that never happened. I mean, yes, the Wizard will cast more spells than the muggle, and every other obvious “person who does X will do more X than person who doesn’t do X” combination you care to list, which was kinda my point, but this specific situation never occurred in my examples.

You literally said that you wouldn't care if the other guy cheated to roll a 20 on his spellcraft check because "my bonus is an order of magnitude higher than the DC. I try to find some excuse to take a 100-point penalty, and still succeed on a 1. I didn’t have to do anything to still have Quertus be effective, even with you cheating".

That's *not* you saying it doesn't matter that he cheats because your wizard will "still totally out spell him"?

I'm pointing out that your cases are absurd because they rest on the assumption that a) if someone cheats it's ok if they are totally gimped relative to the other characters and b) that this is somehow a "normal" situation in the first place. The answer to both is "no" btw. Yet, somehow, you're refusing to even acknowledge that this is what you actually said.

Maybe I totally misunderstood. But if that's the case, then by all means clarify your statement. Don't just say "I didn't say that". Because... um... you did.

Me: "I mean. I guess we could pretend that this just isn't a factor and that every player is perfect happy that their characters were basically just a spectator while, once again, the party powerhouse saved the day."

Where are you getting these from? They have nothing to do with what I wrote.

I'm getting it from your own post. I was specifically pointing out that even in your examples, the character who is cheating is *still* motivated to do so out of a need to compete with the other player characters. He's cheating because he's so weak compared to the other characters, that he has to do so just to be relevant. In that quote, I was examining the possible thought process that might have to occur for that not to be the case, and finding it wanting.

You aren't claiming that your examples were *not* ones in which the cheating character was outmatched in the situation at hand, right? I mean, you have a fighter going first (despite the cheating wizard guy rolling a 20 on initiative) and then "kills literally hundreds of foes before your Wizard gets a turn". Great. You turned the example around to show a gimped wizard. But, again, your example is absurd. And it still doesn't actually counter the starting position that players do this to compete with other players. if anything, your examples reinforce that claim.

I'm speculating that the motivation here is that a player doesn't just want to be a spectator while everyone else gets to do stuff, and that might be what motivates them to cheat. So while *you* the super powerful character may not be bothered, it's still not a good/happy thing for the table to manage. If there's that much of a power imbalance, maybe address that. Allowing cheating and just looking the other way is a terrible way to do things.

And you're still ignoring the other 99.999999999% of cases where the cheating isn't in response to such ridiculous PC power imbalances, but the more basic "I just want my character to be more effective and stand out among a party of otherwise relatively equal power". Or just "I want to *win*".

Not IME. “We just kinda took pity on the poor player who couldn’t seem to comprehend how to have fun without cheating” was the most common response (Iirc - darn senility).

Well, that's mighty nice of you. Taking "pity" on a player who's character is so completely powerless in your game that you just, what? Pat him on the head and say "you do you", or something? How about addressing the actual problem at hand instead of just letting a player like that stew in his own juices, cheat to feel relevant, and then you just kinda laugh at him because he's still not terribly capable?

You're describing about the most toxic table environment I've ever heard of, and claiming that's "normal".

Sorry. I would *never* allow that to go on at my table. Ever. I get that you're being hyperbolic here, but the examples and cases you are reaching for, far from making a valid counterargument, are actually presenting even worse cases then we were originally talking about. I mean, sure, I think cheating on dice rolls is also minor compared to having a serial killer at the table, who's literally taking out players one by one or something ("Man. John's been in the bathroom a long time. And Susie never came back from that snack run to the kitchen. Oh well, let's keep paying..."). Clearly, we can all imagine scenarios where cheating at a game isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. But how about we imagine scenarios where there aren't these insane other conditions going on that make cheating seem minor? You know, like most gaming tables are going to actually be like.

Consider very carefully: the poster I was replying to indicated that the group should sacrifice their fun at the whim of one petty tyrant, which you accepted in silence, whereas you choose to take issue with my comment that it is better for the one to accept the fun of the many.

Are you really sure you want to die on that hill, of saying “how dare you be inconsiderate to one person’s fun - you should be inconsiderate to everyone’s fun instead!”?

So as not to have the GM abusing their power to get their Fun at the expense of the group, I strongly encourage GMs to err on the side of listening to their players, and optimizing the fun that the players have.

It's not an abuse of GM powers to enforce the basic rules of the game that everyone is playing. And it certainly doesn't make the GM a "Tyrant" (even setting aside the correct definition of that term versus the popular misunderstanding of it which you seem to be using).

And yes. In your examples, do you think the player you are taking pity on is actually having fun? I doubt it seriously.

[Quertus]

@NichG - I kept reading your list, and not understanding why it wasn’t making me feel I finally figured it out:

- The DM has authority-with-responsibility for mediating table dynamics (DM's role, but acting in shared space)

The GM isn’t always the best person at the table to mediate conflicts, and they shouldn’t need to be.

Particularly in light of the growing trend of comments like this:

we have such a horrendous ratio of "Players"(people who always play and never run) to GMs, and why the few who do GM are often "Permanent GM" and never get to be players.

I’d like to make the barrier for entry for new GM’s as low as possible. One way to achieve that is to decouple “conflict resolution” from “content provider”.

Of course, given that you said things like,

a per-table matter,

One example of a set of boundaries

I guess I shouldn’t worry too much.

[Anymage]

I find it ironic that Quertus' response to my comment on cheating involves a ridiculously optimized/minmaxed party. Since that's another thing where one player doing so can force the rest of the team to follow suit or face obsolescence, regardless of the personal tastes of the rest of the table.

I’d like to make the barrier for entry for new GM’s as low as possible. One way to achieve that is to decouple “conflict resolution” from “content provider”.

The DM runs the whole world that isn't the PCs. This includes, among other things, directing spotlight though whose strengths are being catered to and who the NPCs are interacting with. And also preparing encounters. The latter is difficult to offload without giving away massive chunks of the plot, while the former is basically the DM's job. As much as I support making the DM's job easier and encouraging them to offload some of the mental load onto other players, expecting Tanya with her bard to control the table dynamic is more than a touch unrealistic.

[gbaji]

I find it ironic that Quertus' response to my comment on cheating involves a ridiculously optimized/minmaxed party. Since that's another thing where one player doing so can force the rest of the team to follow suit or face obsolescence, regardless of the personal tastes of the rest of the table.

I hadn't even considered that aspect. But yeah. Min/max play, when taken too far, does also tend to force the other players to follow suit just to "keep up". And yeah. Allowing players who are less capable of doing this to cheat on their rolls as a balance is a really strange way to justify things. I guess the broader point here is to recognize that players do compete amongst each other to some degree. They do all want to have relevance in a game and not just be a spectator. And as a GM it's important to recognize this need and manage both the game rules and expectations of the players to ensure that the table isn't forcing some players to maybe play in a way they are not happy or comfortable with.

Hey. If you've got a table full of folks who just love to min/max, then that's great. But be sure that's actually the case, and not one or two who love to do so, and the rest feeling that if they don't they wont be able to contribute. I've honestly never gotten the need some players have to "be the best", but I can recognize that it is actually a thing and account for it.

The DM runs the whole world that isn't the PCs. This includes, among other things, directing spotlight though whose strengths are being catered to and who the NPCs are interacting with. And also preparing encounters. The latter is difficult to offload without giving away massive chunks of the plot, while the former is basically the DM's job. As much as I support making the DM's job easier and encouraging them to offload some of the mental load onto other players, expecting Tanya with her bard to control the table dynamic is more than a touch unrealistic.

I think it also depends on what we mean by "resolving conflicts". If we're talking about player conflicts, there may be someone other than the GM who can handle that. That's about personality conflicts, personal issues, out of game stuff, whatever. Having someone else play peacemaker in those situations is fine.

But resolving in game character conflicts is 100% the job of the GM. The players can't do it, because they're the ones involved in the conflict. If character A wants to do one thing and character B wants to do another, and they disagree on which method is best, or will work, or whatever, the GM can absolutely step in and tell them (based perhaps on skill roll checks) which one will actually work best based on the actual in-game situation at hand. Or, even if they decide to do different things, the GM will be the one determining the outcomes and effects that occur. Not the players. Cause player A in that case will be biased to make character B's choice fail or at least be less successful than character A's choice and vice versa. Again, never underestimate the need for players "to win".


You cannot allow the players to arbitrate things that occur between those player's characters. Just doesn't work. it's why the GM exists in the first place. There's a reason why many game systems called GMs "referees" back in the day. I'm sure there are some game systems where player based refereeing happens, but that's always going to be extremely dependent on the players being fair and reasonable and caring more about gameplay and fun than "making sure I win". I'm reasonably certain you're not going to see that work at a table where any of the players are involved in min/max behavior though, since those are antithetical concepts.

Same issue with resolving conflicts between PCs and the game environment/NPCs/whatever. That's the GM's job.

But sure. It's not necessarily the GMs job to arbitrate who should bring snacks to the game, and what sort of snacks they should be. Not sure anyone was thinking in that direction, but yeah.

[Quertus]

expecting Tanya with her bard to control the table dynamic is more than a touch unrealistic.

Geez, my life is a lie, I’m a brain in a jar, I get it already. Alternately, I had thought the days of being told by Playgrounders that what I’ve lived through was unrealistic / impossible were behind me.

It has been my experience that the person who knows the rules best can handle the rules; the person who can handle conflict resolution best can handle interpersonal conflicts, etc. And this is generally true regardless of their game status (or whether they’re even involved in the game to begin with, IME).

Let me re-quote this, for reference.

Oh, there’s probably gonna be lots of quoting.

Let's also not forget that you raised these examples in direct response to someone claiming that cheating by one player will tend to result in the cheating spreading to other players as a way of keeping up and/or balancing things out.

Ah, no. What they actually said was,

Some players prefer being "lucky" such that they never seem to roll below a 10, and always seem to get that natural 20 on important saves. They might say that calling them out reduces their fun, but their mathematical shift vs. a fair player's rolls means that other players need to start fudging too if they want to continue being effective. On player can very much set the tone for a table regardless of what other players might want.

Perfect information tactical runs aren't intrinsically bad. Neither is pseudo-isekai where the characters are clearly player avatars used to engage with canonical D&D lore. We have no reason to believe that these are true for all of Tal's group, so it's okay to call out one player trying to set that tone.

(Bolded for emphasis)

And that difference is important. What I was responding to was literally “cheat or be ineffective”, and my response was “lolwhat?!”, followed by examples of characters not needing to cheat, and <gasp> still being effective.

That’s the bar, don’t move the goalposts.

You declared this a "false premise", but then proceeded to list a set of examples to counter that premise that are so utterly absurd as to strain the mind to even take them seriously. Most of the time, people are cheating to give themselves an edge in some way and to be more capable than others, not because they are so incredibly outmatched by everyone around them that they feel they have to cheat just to be semi-relevant (and you even dismiss that in your examples too).

Me: "because the wizard will still totally out spell him,"

You literally said that you wouldn't care if the other guy cheated to roll a 20 on his spellcraft check because "my bonus is an order of magnitude higher than the DC. I try to find some excuse to take a 100-point penalty, and still succeed on a 1. I didn’t have to do anything to still have Quertus be effective, even with you cheating".

That's *not* you saying it doesn't matter that he cheats because your wizard will "still totally out spell him"?

I'm pointing out that your cases are absurd because they rest on the assumption that a) if someone cheats it's ok if they are totally gimped relative to the other characters and b) that this is somehow a "normal" situation in the first place. The answer to both is "no" btw. Yet, somehow, you're refusing to even acknowledge that this is what you actually said.

Maybe I totally misunderstood. But if that's the case, then by all means clarify your statement. Don't just say "I didn't say that". Because... um... you did.

Me: "I mean. I guess we could pretend that this just isn't a factor and that every player is perfect happy that their characters were basically just a spectator while, once again, the party powerhouse saved the day."

I'm getting it from your own post. I was specifically pointing out that even in your examples, the character who is cheating is *still* motivated to do so out of a need to compete with the other player characters. He's cheating because he's so weak compared to the other characters, that he has to do so just to be relevant. In that quote, I was examining the possible thought process that might have to occur for that not to be the case, and finding it wanting.

You aren't claiming that your examples were *not* ones in which the cheating character was outmatched in the situation at hand, right? I mean, you have a fighter going first (despite the cheating wizard guy rolling a 20 on initiative) and then "kills literally hundreds of foes before your Wizard gets a turn". Great. You turned the example around to show a gimped wizard. But, again, your example is absurd. And it still doesn't actually counter the starting position that players do this to compete with other players. if anything, your examples reinforce that claim.

I would have literally been ROFL at this, had the floor not been too… hazardous to allow such. You… really didn’t get that there were a total of three (and a half) characters in my three examples, did you? That the first two examples needn’t involve any new characters, and could just involve a total of two characters, did you? You really didn’t get that the Fighter from the first example could have been the Fighter in the second and third examples, or that the Wizard could have been the Wizard from the second example (and explicitly was the Wizard in the third example), did you?

And, as if that wasn’t funny enough, listening to you alternately describe different characters as “outmatched” or “totally gimped relative to the other characters” simply because they’re “outmatched in the situation at hand”, and claim that “balance is so incredibly out of whack” that you expect “once again, the party powerhouse saved the day”, when I’ve literally presented the opposite, characters who by their very nature share the spotlight, even if one player is constantly cheating their rolls. Laughing hurt so much! I don’t think I’ve been misunderstood so badly and so hilariously in quite a while.

Then you go and pull a double header. Contrary to the name, “Spellcraft” is not a “Craft” skill, and is generally not used to craft spells. (or to craft correct spellings of words, or whatever other misunderstanding could possibly have you translating making a Spellcraft skill check into “out spelling” someone)

Let me break it down for you, real simple:

There’s two characters: a Fighter, and a Wizard. If you play the Fighter and cheat, my Wizard will still be effective. If you play the Wizard and cheat, not-my Fighter will still be effective.

If you play a super more powerful not balanced Rogue and cheat, my Wizard and not-my Fighter will still be effective. If you play a “better at everything in every way” Rogue and cheat… maybe my Wizard and/or not-my Fighter might no longer be effective. But you’ll probably have encountered “balance to the table” issues long before you get to that point (unless you’re playing at a table so unconcernedd about “balance” that Sentient Potted Plants are all the rage… at which point, I don’t think anybody cares if they’re not effective).

That’s it. And that clears the bar of “one player cheats, yet the other characters are effective without cheating” that I was aiming to clear.

Well, that's mighty nice of you. Taking "pity" on a player who's character is so completely powerless in your game that you just, what? Pat him on the head and say "you do you", or something? How about addressing the actual problem at hand instead of just letting a player like that stew in his own juices, cheat to feel relevant, and then you just kinda laugh at him because he's still not terribly capable?

You're describing about the most toxic table environment I've ever heard of, and claiming that's "normal".

Sorry. I would *never* allow that to go on at my table. Ever. I get that you're being hyperbolic here, but the examples and cases you are reaching for, far from making a valid counterargument, are actually presenting even worse cases then we were originally talking about. I mean, sure, I think cheating on dice rolls is also minor compared to having a serial killer at the table, who's literally taking out players one by one or something ("Man. John's been in the bathroom a long time. And Susie never came back from that snack run to the kitchen. Oh well, let's keep paying..."). Clearly, we can all imagine scenarios where cheating at a game isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. But how about we imagine scenarios where there aren't these insane other conditions going on that make cheating seem minor? You know, like most gaming tables are going to actually be like.




It's not an abuse of GM powers to enforce the basic rules of the game that everyone is playing. And it certainly doesn't make the GM a "Tyrant" (even setting aside the correct definition of that term versus the popular misunderstanding of it which you seem to be using).

And yes. In your examples, do you think the player you are taking pity on is actually having fun? I doubt it seriously.

Look, given how badly you’ve misunderstood my examples, balance, cheating, which PC was(n’t) gimped, and, well, pretty much everything, I was prepared to just write all this off as equally meaningless (but much less funny). However, so as not to throw the baby out with the bath water, I figure I should ask: if you think you actually understand what I’m saying this time around, do you feel that there’s anything worth investigating wrt the cheating players whose PCs were… neither top nor bottom of the “optimization” or “effectiveness” boards… that I was describing, and whose existence did not result in the rest of the table cheating? Or, once you understand what I was actually saying, do you just withdraw these statements, too?

[JNAProductions]

"Cheating isn't an issue if one PC is so vastly more powerful than another that even cheating won't balance the playing field," isn't the slam-dunk argument you think it is, Quertus.

Cheating is an issue because it's a breach of trust. Full stop. Doesn't matter if it's just bringing them up to par or catapulting them past it.
One player character being massively more powerful is ALSO an issue, at least at most tables. It's not inherently a problem like cheating is, but generally speaking, most players want to feel like their characters are equals. Not in every conceivable way, but on the whole, at least.

Edit: Also, communication is a two-way street. If your examples aren't getting the point across, use better examples.

[False God]

Consider very carefully: the poster I was replying to indicated that the group should sacrifice their fun at the whim of one petty tyrant, which you accepted in silence, whereas you choose to take issue with my comment that it is better for the one to accept the fun of the many.

Are you really sure you want to die on that hill, of saying “how dare you be inconsiderate to one person’s fun - you should be inconsiderate to everyone’s fun instead!”?

So as not to have the GM abusing their power to get their Fun at the expense of the group, I strongly encourage GMs to err on the side of listening to their players, and optimizing the fun that the players have.

Please do not assume that I agree with some other post, because I disagreed with your post.

To that end, I am not particularly interested in arguing extremes or about petty tyrants taking over the game. If any single individual's feelings(please keep in mind I am using the word feelings here, not "fun") should not be discarded by the group, that applies equally to every member of the group. Timmy, Jimmy and Barb shouldn't ignore Sue, just as Sue, Barb and Timmy shouldn't ignore Jimmy, just as Timmy, Jimmy and Sue shouldn't ignore Barb. And round and round the circle goes, everyone accounting for everyone else, DM included.

If any individual at the table chooses to prioritize the fun of someone else or even everyone else, that's their decision and how they, at least in this moment, want to enjoy the game. But no individual at the table should be told by the group that their input is invalid.

And I'll add to finish, I am of course talking about reasonable feelings of rational participants at the table. Not extremes, not pettiness, not unreasonable ultimatums. Sue is terrified of spiders, so the DM decides not to include them in the game, and the party decides not to summon them, and maybe avoid drow in general. Jimmy feels uncomfortable when non-con is included, so it is not included. Barb is personally offended by the color blue and becomes unreasonably aggressive when blue things are mentioned, so Sue is respectfully told she cannot be accommodated and the rest of the group suggests she look elsewhere for a game, but she is still NOT told to sit down and shut up.

There is not much sense talking about folks like Sue. The answer is always the same: don't play with them, for all the right reasons. Talking about what is reasonable to accommodate, where the "fun" balance lies between Party & DM, and including and respecting every player, DM included, is absolutely a fine subject of discussion.

[Quertus]

"Cheating isn't an issue if one PC is so vastly more powerful than another that even cheating won't balance the playing field," isn't the slam-dunk argument you think it is, Quertus.

Cheating is an issue because it's a breach of trust. Full stop. Doesn't matter if it's just bringing them up to par or catapulting them past it.
One player character being massively more powerful is ALSO an issue, at least at most tables. It's not inherently a problem like cheating is, but generally speaking, most players want to feel like their characters are equals. Not in every conceivable way, but on the whole, at least.

Edit: Also, communication is a two-way street. If your examples aren't getting the point across, use better examples.

“Et tu Brute?” Which PC is “massively more powerful”, ”so vastly more powerful than another that even cheating won't balance the playing field”, the Fighter who doesn’t have Spellcraft, or the Wizard who can’t act until after the Fighter has wiped the board of fodder? Because those are the two PCs I’m talking about not needing to cheat in order to be effective. Who are, IMO, those “equals” you seem so concerned about.

I fully agree with you… Ah, Dagnabbit, here I go, complicating things again. My… better self… agrees vehemently with you that “breach of trust” is the big issue. But that problem (mostly) goes away in the case where you explicitly allow / actively encourage the behavior. The problem… changes… when you carefully study the cheating and the cheater, then act as a Business Analyst, doing a deep dive into root cause analysis, and offering more socially-acceptable alternatives to achieve the same ends. And, yes, I speak from experience on both - No “But that’s impossible” from the peanut gallery, please.

As for “better examples”? Honestly, I’ve gotten such a laugh out of people’s replies, I doubt it’s possible for me to have made better examples. However, if I foolishly prioritized “clarity” over “fun”, how would you have advised that version of myself to have explained differently the concept that two equals who have different areas of expertise can still be… word (don’t want to accidentally move goalposts here)… “effective”, even if the other person (or a 3rd party) cheats?

Please do not assume that I agree with some other post, because I disagreed with your post.

To that end, I am not particularly interested in arguing extremes or about petty tyrants taking over the game. If any single individual's feelings(please keep in mind I am using the word feelings here, not "fun") should not be discarded by the group, that applies equally to every member of the group. Timmy, Jimmy and Barb shouldn't ignore Sue, just as Sue, Barb and Timmy shouldn't ignore Jimmy, just as Timmy, Jimmy and Sue shouldn't ignore Barb. And round and round the circle goes, everyone accounting for everyone else, DM included.

If any individual at the table chooses to prioritize the fun of someone else or even everyone else, that's their decision and how they, at least in this moment, want to enjoy the game. But no individual at the table should be told by the group that their input is invalid.

And I'll add to finish, I am of course talking about reasonable feelings of rational participants at the table. Not extremes, not pettiness, not unreasonable ultimatums. Sue is terrified of spiders, so the DM decides not to include them in the game, and the party decides not to summon them, and maybe avoid drow in general. Jimmy feels uncomfortable when non-con is included, so it is not included. Barb is personally offended by the color blue and becomes unreasonably aggressive when blue things are mentioned, so Sue is respectfully told she cannot be accommodated and the rest of the group suggests she look elsewhere for a game, but she is still NOT told to sit down and shut up.

There is not much sense talking about folks like Sue. The answer is always the same: don't play with them, for all the right reasons. Talking about what is reasonable to accommodate, where the "fun" balance lies between Party & DM, and including and respecting every player, DM included, is absolutely a fine subject of discussion.

This is… the trickiest post I’ve replied to in this thread. I’ll preemptively admit that I’ll probably mess up my reply (ie, I reserve the right to take back anything I said or (especially) omitted as an oversimplification error).

So… you’ve done a really good job breaking things down. Yes, there’s “reasonable” and “unreasonable”. But that’s where things get truly complicated.

Because people are idiots.

That is, “Bob can’t have fun unless he cheats”. That’s a 100% valid statement… and likely a false one. “Quertus can’t have fun unless people aren’t cheating” is a valid statement… and was a true statement… until Quertus realized that it wasn’t.

Gah, that’s probably don’t make much sense. Let me… try again? Clarify? Ah, give case studies - that sounds effective.

Bob thinks he can’t have fun unless he cheats. Quertus thinks he can’t have fun unless no one cheats. And so we are at an impasse. Quertus doesn’t like false impasses. Quertus is an idiot, but eventually realizes “who cares if Bob cheats?”. Quertus studies Bob’s cheating, and eventually confronts Bob about it. Nonconfrontationally (y’all aren’t buying that, are you?), as a good Business Analyst (much more believable, right?). After discussing with Bob, Quertus susses out that Bob cheats because

1. The system is filled with instant SoD / SoL effects that render Bob unable to participate
2. Bob has an aversion to random losses to fickle Arangee
3. That’s how Bob was raised - it’s the only thing he knows
4. Bob is a compulsive liar

Quertus resolves this issue by

1. Convincing the GM to let people run multiple characters, so that Bob is always an active participant in the game
2. Introducing Bob to the joys of CaW
3. Showing Bob another way
4. Shipping Bob to the planet krypton

Ok, maybe that last one didn’t happen, but you get the idea?

Then, plenty of times, because good programmers are lazy, and Quertus just didn’t care (didn’t see how anyone’s fun was being negatively impacted), Quertus just let the “Bob” keep cheating. Sometimes with the group ribbing Bob about it (“how many 20s are on that die? (Hands Bob homemade stickers) Here’s a few more.”)

GM’s who just shoot down their players fun without doing that root cause analysis, by trampling over other people’s fun, are abusing their power, and don’t deserve to be in a position to make such decisions.

I mean, Wanda Maximov (however her name is spelled) kinda decided that her fun mattered more than other people’s fun, and look where that got her.

Thus, if, as GM, you aren’t going to take the time to safeguard your players’ fun the right way, you have to be willing to sacrifice your own fun by accepting your players’ fun, else it’s an abuse of power.

In short, neither “I need to cheat to have fun”, nor “I need you to not cheat for me to have fun” are valid, reasonable desires, the latter because the cheating happens for a reason, and you’re violating your own ethics regarding discarding another’s feelings by stamping it out without safeguarding and nurturing that fun first.

[False God]

This is… the trickiest post I’ve replied to in this thread. I’ll preemptively admit that I’ll probably mess up my reply (ie, I reserve the right to take back anything I said or (especially) omitted as an oversimplification error).

So… you’ve done a really good job breaking things down. Yes, there’s “reasonable” and “unreasonable”. But that’s where things get truly complicated.

Because people are idiots.

That is, “Bob can’t have fun unless he cheats”. That’s a 100% valid statement… and likely a false one. “Quertus can’t have fun unless people aren’t cheating” is a valid statement… and was a true statement… until Quertus realized that it wasn’t.

Bob's position is unreasonable. Cheating is, unless the game says otherwise(which is too rare to warrant discussion), against the rules. Violating not only the rules we have all agreed to follow to collectively enjoy an activity together (be it a TTRG or gambling or sports) but also the social contract. Bob's position is unreasonable. Therefore what do we say to Bob? "Bob, I think you'll need to find another group."

You not being able to have fun if there is any cheating could become problematic, depending on how you react to it. Sue had two problems: the color blue, and her reaction to it. Perhaps the Table could have avoided the color blue, but due to how common The-Color-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named-In-The-Presence-Of-Sue is, probably not, making avoiding blue an unreasonable request. Cheating on the other hand is something that the game itself doesn't want you to do, so it's something the Table can avoid much easier. The second issue is the reaction, Sue's hypothetical reaction was extreme and aggressive, presenting quite possibly an IRL problem for the real people at the table. (I've been there, it's scary.) So, if avoiding cheating is both an intended part of the game and at least assumed to be the default state of things, all that remains is your reaction to cheating when it happens. If you handle it like a reasonable, rational person, even up to the point of removing yourself from the game if the Table chooses to ignore or enable it, then the "problem" is self-solving. If the group responds in kind and handles it reasonably and rationally, the problem is self-solving.

Gah, that’s probably don’t make much sense. Let me… try again? Clarify? Ah, give case studies - that sounds effective.

Bob thinks he can’t have fun unless he cheats. Quertus thinks he can’t have fun unless no one cheats. And so we are at an impasse. Quertus doesn’t like false impasses. Quertus is an idiot, but eventually realizes “who cares if Bob cheats?”. Quertus studies Bob’s cheating, and eventually confronts Bob about it. Nonconfrontationally (y’all aren’t buying that, are you?), as a good Business Analyst (much more believable, right?). After discussing with Bob, Quertus susses out that Bob cheats because

1. The system is filled with instant SoD / SoL effects that render Bob unable to participate
2. Bob has an aversion to random losses to fickle Arangee
3. That’s how Bob was raised - it’s the only thing he knows
4. Bob is a compulsive liar

Quertus resolves this issue by

1. Convincing the GM to let people run multiple characters, so that Bob is always an active participant in the game
2. Introducing Bob to the joys of CaW
3. Showing Bob another way
4. Shipping Bob to the planet krypton

Ok, maybe that last one didn’t happen, but you get the idea?

Then, plenty of times, because good programmers are lazy, and Quertus just didn’t care (didn’t see how anyone’s fun was being negatively impacted), Quertus just let the “Bob” keep cheating. Sometimes with the group ribbing Bob about it (“how many 20s are on that die? (Hands Bob homemade stickers) Here’s a few more.”)

GM’s who just shoot down their players fun without doing that root cause analysis, by trampling over other people’s fun, are abusing their power, and don’t deserve to be in a position to make such decisions.

Like opinions, simply having fun does not make any individual's method of fun equally valid to others. Some people's fun can be actively harmful to others, generally reduce the fun (or worse) of other members of the group. We're not playing Calvinball here where the points don't matter and the rules are made up as we go. We have multi-hundred-page-long rulebooks we're all agreeing to abide by here. If we wanted to just run around in the woods in silly hats we could do that have far fewer concerns overall.

That is to say: Everyone should ensure everyone else is having fun. Everyone can do that by respecting everyone else's reasonable feelings on the matter. If everyone agrees that Bob cheating isn't a big deal and Bob having fun is more important, there's nothing wrong with that answer. Bob is still in the wrong here, but this hypothetical Table has decided it doesn't matter. It's important to distinguish times when an individual IS in the wrong in order to determine the answer. Bob's cheating could be highly problematic for another table, and Bob being excused from being in the wrong at Table A does not mean he's now in the right at Table A, or anywhere else.

I mean, Wanda Maximov (however her name is spelled) kinda decided that her fun mattered more than other people’s fun, and look where that got her.

Petty tyrants, murderers, and cartoonish villainy are probably not great examples.

Thus, if, as GM, you aren’t going to take the time to safeguard your players’ fun the right way, you have to be willing to sacrifice your own fun by accepting your players’ fun, else it’s an abuse of power.

In short, neither “I need to cheat to have fun”, nor “I need you to not cheat for me to have fun” are valid, reasonable desires, the latter because the cheating happens for a reason, and you’re violating your own ethics regarding discarding another’s feelings by stamping it out without safeguarding and nurturing that fun first.

Everything happens for a reason. Something having a reason isn't in-and-of itself good enough of an answer. Sue could have a reason for her reaction to blue that perfectly explains her behavior. That doesn't make the end result acceptable. Understanding Bob has deep-seating childhood trauma that leads him to cheat at dice is not the same as accepting Bob's cheating at dice. Bob's Table and Quertus could still very reasonably answered Bob's cheating with "Sorry Bob, either don't cheat or don't play here. Your call."

Because, and lets not forget this part: everyone's fun at the table is multi-faceted. Some of those facets are larger and more important to any individuals fun at the table. If Bob's cheating is so large and so important that he cannot have fun without it, then Bob is the one with the problem and the table does not need to accommodate him. Bob is quite literally saying "I agreed to play by these rules and with people also playing by the rules, except just kidding I had my fingers crossed!" Which is again, an unreasonable position to take regardless of Bob's rationale for it.

I don't know how you came to the conclusion that Quertus not being able to have fun if anyone was cheating was an unreasonable position to take. It may be somewhat black and white, but it is in-line with the default position of the Rules and with the unless-otherwise-modified Social Contract(The Social Contract is, by default also in-line with the Rules) at any table. Without more details on the specific group, we should always start from the simplest assumption that whatever the group is doing is in-line with the Rules. To assume whatever the group is doing is outside of that leads us into the territory of edge-cases and statistically irrelevant issues. So, assuming the Group is in line with the Rules, Quertus' position is also in-line, while Bob's is not.

As always, your mileage at any table may vary. Ultimately IMO, Bob's cheating habit should be resolved to bring him in line with the Rules. Like Quertus, I would have much less fun if I knew Bob was exempted from one of the most basic elements of the game(fair dice rolling). The novelty and humor of it would wear thin quickly and I'd be looking for the Table to resolve and end it, or for me to leave if Bob's cheating and Bob's fun is more important than mine. And I know that reads selfishly but it finally circles back to my previous point.

If the Table disregards the reasonable feelings or the fun of a player this is a problem, it doesn't matter if this person is a Player or a DM, both of these "groups" are players of the same game with different responsibilities. The Table is not a Democracy nor is it a Monarchy, but is in fact something of the collectivist's dream. Several people sit down to do a thing and work together to ensure they are all accounted for. That reasonable, rational feelings are valued and that unreasonable, petty, tyrannical and violent things are not allowed to dominate. It doesn't always work, but that's the ideal goal. A reasonable accounting between reasonable people.

[Tanarii]

Cheating is an issue because it's a breach of trust. Full stop. Doesn't matter if it's just bringing them up to par or catapulting them past it.

This is the reason I won't play with DMs that fudge dice, even in my characters favor. They've breached trust. You can't know they won't also adjust monster stats on the fly or use quantum ogres / illusionism or any number of other things that boil down to player decisions having meaning.

[kyoryu]

Bob is completely allowed to say that he can't have fun unless he's allowed to cheat.

Everyone else is allowed to say that they aren't willing to play in that game, and that Bob should look elsewhere for a table.

Bob's preferences are valid. That doesn't mean he has the right to force them on the rest of the table.

[Talakeal]

For the record, Quertus’ “Bob” and my “Bob” are different people.

The thing about cheaters is that they usually think nobody else can tell, and will deny it and get mad if called on it, so actually having a conversation about it isn’t likely to happen .

[Tanarii]

The thing about cheaters is that they usually think nobody else can tell, and will deny it and get mad if called on it, so actually having a conversation about it isn’t likely to happen .

I dunno, depends on what exactly is being done. IMX for some things, they're just as likely to claim it's totally normal, or even that the cheating is better than the not cheating.

Players usually go the deny and get angry route when caught fudging dice, adding or subtracting hit or damage or hit points wrong, forgetting they're out of spell or magic item resources. But they'll defend not doing Ammo or encumbrance right as "it just isn't fun".

Some DMs will try to defend dice fudging, stats altering, and quantum ogring/illusionism as normal or even superior.

I can easily see a situation where players might defend intentionally looking up monster stats before or during a game, or even whole pre-published adventures, as either normal or fun. As opposed to denying and getting angry.

[Talakeal]

I dunno, depends on what exactly is being done. IMX for some things, they're just as likely to claim it's totally normal, or even that the cheating is better than the not cheating.

Players usually go the deny and get angry route when caught fudging dice, adding or subtracting hit or damage or hit points wrong, forgetting they're out of spell or magic item resources. But they'll defend not doing Ammo or encumbrance right as "it just isn't fun".

Some DMs will try to defend dice fudging, stats altering, and quantum ogring/illusionism as normal or even superior.

I can easily see a situation where players might defend intentionally looking up monster stats before or during a game, or even whole pre-published adventures, as either normal or fun. As opposed to denying and getting angry.

In my group its either fudging dice or not marking down resources. Sometimes knowingly making an illegal build choice. Reading the module before hand might be cheating, but I wouldn’t call looking in the monster manual.

[Talakeal]

The discussion of the Guy at the Gym fallacy currently going on in the 5E thread made me think about what Quertus is saying about cheating vs. optimization. The problem is that my system uses something akin to 5E bounded accuracy (although not nearly so binary and random) and the player who has, shall we say statistically impossible good luck, tends to roll a Nat 20 and beat out the specialists even when performing a skill for which she is untrained and they are a specialist.

[gbaji]

Some players prefer being "lucky" such that they never seem to roll below a 10, and always seem to get that natural 20 on important saves. They might say that calling them out reduces their fun, but their mathematical shift vs. a fair player's rolls means that other players need to start fudging too if they want to continue being effective. On player can very much set the tone for a table regardless of what other players might want.

There are two ways to interpret Anymage's position:

1. That when a player cheats every other player must also cheat to "continue being effective", regardless of the context or relative effectiveness of the characters if there was no cheating at all.

2. That when a player cheats in a way that makes another player's character feel less effective, that player may feel they need to cheat in order to "continue being effective".

And that difference is important. What I was responding to was literally “cheat or be ineffective”, and my response was “lolwhat?!”, followed by examples of characters not needing to cheat, and <gasp> still being effective.

That’s the bar, don’t move the goalposts.

You chose option number 1. Yes. You can claim that this is a "literal" interpretation of Anymage's post, but it's a pretty absurd literal interpretation. I think that most people, upon reading that post, assumed a context/condition where the PCs are relatively equal at the task at hand, and one player is cheating such that they are noticeably more effective than the other. The difference in effectiveness is presumably noticeable and entirely due to the cheating.

Option number 2 is the more reasonable assumption/interpretation. It actually assumes some reasonable game balance exists prior to the cheating and thus the cheating is "relevant".

The problem is that you have spun off on this frankly absurd tangent examining cases that fall so far outside the reasonably assumed conditions in the original statement as to render it a useless examination. Yes. Technically, your arguments are sound. They are also meaningless because they don't actually address the conditions everyone else is talking about. You are absolutely correct that in cases where someone's character is so much more capable at a specific task than another that the other player cheating at that task doesn't make any difference and therefore wont make the player of the more powerful character feel a need to cheat.

Great. That's not what anyone is talking about though.

Instead of only examining cases where the cheating didn't matter to the non-cheating player, why not examine the (presumably more relevant) cases where the cheating does matter?

Let's take two rogues. They have identical skills. One player cheats on his die rolls, always making their stealth skills, always evading damage, and always finding traps. The other fails at those things at the "correct" rate based on his actual skill (which is the same as the first player's character, but he's cheating). So the GM gives then a situation where the two of them have to both sneak past some guards, disarm some traps, and then open a gate in order to let the rest of the party in through a back way into the castle or something. Player A is cheating and makes all his rolls (and has since he's started playing the character). He's going to breeze through everything. Player B knows this, and also knows that since only his character will ever fail a die roll, it'll always be his fault if/when he fails. He knows that over time, the party will stop even sending his character on these sorts of missions because when he does it "we get caught, alarms sound, guards attack us, etc", but if they send the other party rogue to do it all alone, he always succeeds without problems.

This will absolutely lead to the second player cheating (or at least push them in that direction). Same deal with any two characters who are otherwise very similar on paper. The player who cheats on their fighters attack rolls and saving throws will be able to fight better and survive in heavy combat with less need for healing/assistance then the fighter of the player who does not cheat. So which fighter is the party going to rely on to stand toe to toe with the big bad?

Considering only cases where the cheating doesn't matter doesn't really help much.

And, as if that wasn’t funny enough, listening to you alternately describe different characters as “outmatched” or “totally gimped relative to the other characters” simply because they’re “outmatched in the situation at hand”, and claim that “balance is so incredibly out of whack” that you expect “once again, the party powerhouse saved the day”, when I’ve literally presented the opposite, characters who by their very nature share the spotlight, even if one player is constantly cheating their rolls. Laughing hurt so much! I don’t think I’ve been misunderstood so badly and so hilariously in quite a while.

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here. You literally presented only cases where one character was so much better at the "task at hand", that it didn't matter to them that the other character's player was cheating. I'm still searching for a case where you "literally presented the opposite". Instead of just claiming you did that, how about actually present that case?

You did present an "opposite" case where the class/action was different. But those were also the same "one character so much better" that the cheating didn't matter.

Again. Examine the cases where cheating matters instead of only those where it doesn't. Examine cases where two characters are on paper equally good at the task at hand, and then think about what happens if one character's player constantly cheats at the die rolls. That's the case that matters.

Let me break it down for you, real simple:[INDENT] There’s two characters: a Fighter, and a Wizard. If you play the Fighter and cheat, my Wizard will still be effective. If you play the Wizard and cheat, not-my Fighter will still be effective.

Great. Compare a case of two fighters where one is cheating. Or two wizards where one is cheating. Or two <any otherwise equally capable at the task at hand characters>. Why is this complicated for you?

That's like arguing that it doesn't matter that the other guy cheated by jumping the start light at the drag strip because he's driving a car so much slower than mine that he can't win anyway, and it's "balanced" because his car with its tiny/weak motor gets better gas mileage or something else unrelated to the "task at hand". No one cares about that.

That’s it. And that clears the bar of “one player cheats, yet the other characters are effective without cheating” that I was aiming to clear.

So you cleared a case that no one was talking about or even considering as relevant. Congratulations.

How about we discuss cases where one player cheats and it makes the other player's characters "less effective" as a result? Cause that would seem to be more relevant to the discussion at hand.

Look, given how badly you’ve misunderstood my examples, balance, cheating, which PC was(n’t) gimped, and, well, pretty much everything, I was prepared to just write all this off as equally meaningless (but much less funny). However, so as not to throw the baby out with the bath water, I figure I should ask: if you think you actually understand what I’m saying this time around, do you feel that there’s anything worth investigating wrt the cheating players whose PCs were… neither top nor bottom of the “optimization” or “effectiveness” boards… that I was describing, and whose existence did not result in the rest of the table cheating? Or, once you understand what I was actually saying, do you just withdraw these statements, too?

Again. The presumed point of the exercise was to assume cases where cheating does affect relative PC power/outcome balance. Explicitly ignoring those and examining only cases where it does not somewhat misses the point. Yes. Congratulations. You've come to the conclusion that when something is done that doesn't affect you, you tend not to be bothered by it or take any action to correct/adjust for it. Um... Ok. Could have saved you a lot of time since that's somewhat assumed by everyone. Hence why we assume that when we talk about things like this, we're discussing cases where someone else's actions *do* affect you in some way. Right?

[Tanarii]

The discussion of the Guy at the Gym fallacy currently going on in the 5E thread made me think about what Quertus is saying about cheating vs. optimization. The problem is that my system uses something akin to 5E bounded accuracy (although not nearly so binary and random) and the player who has, shall we say statistically impossible good luck, tends to roll a Nat 20 and beat out the specialists even when performing a skill for which she is untrained and they are a specialist.

How often under your system do multiple characters get to try the same task one after the other, one chance each even tho there are no consequences for failure, until one succeeds for the entire group?

Or is it everyone rolls all at once, with any one person succeeding for the entire group?

Both of these are handle-able in a variety of ways, you just need to add some explicit assumptions / rules to cover them.

[Talakeal]

How often under your system do multiple characters get to try the same task one after the other, one chance each even tho there are no consequences for failure, until one succeeds for the entire group?

By RAW almost never.

They can either assist one another (which averages their rolls), or retry a previously failed task which either takes significantly longer or imposes a cumulative -5 penalty. The system uses degrees of failure, so doing this enough can potentially invoke consequences.

BUT when when player always rolls a "natural 20" followed by a "natural 17 to confirm the crit*" a -5 penalty or averaging the other persons dice roll is not enough to actually matter.





*Oddly, its always a 17 to confirm, not another natural 20. I guess she doesn't want to be too obvious?

[Quertus]

why not examine the (presumably more relevant) cases where the cheating does matter?

Because that would be stupid of me? And not at all productive to the conversation?

Because, the important part is, as you’ve just admitted, there are cases where the cheating doesn’t matter.

But, for the lols, let’s look at just how contrived the scenario must be for cheating to maybe matter (more on that below):

Let's take two rogues. They have identical skills.

I mean, wow. That’s a really, really niche example. Like, so niche it’d almost have to be intentional to be the case.

But fine. Let’s say you and I sat down at a table, and you convinced me that we’re playing twins, or alternate reality versions of the same character, just so that you can prove your point about cheating. And that you convinced me (me, mr. “I play Wizards”) to do that with us playing Rogues. [Also, you - the real you, not the imagined you who talked the imagined me into this hypothetical scenario - is just gonna have to deal with the fact that I have no clue how or to what level of optimization you prefer your Rogues built, so you’re just gonna have to deal with the fact that this is pretty much a “me” Rogue, at one particular level of Competence, despite the table in question having a broad range for its available balance. Sorry.]

Our mid-level Rogues join a campaign in progress. We start in downtime, with the GM giving us the simple objective “give yourselves a reason to leave town and go adventuring (with these guys)”. You go and raid the king’s treasury, cheating on all your rolls. I roll fair and square, and impregnate the princess. [Feel free to replace “king” with Duke/duchess/noble/high priest(ess)/whatever; I just like saying “princess”.] Curiously, I’m not feeling ineffective.

[Also, the GM warns you that, per the extended errata to the table PvP rules, by the end of the adventure, you won’t end up any richer than anyone else in the party by stealing, even if you don’t share. Gah, except… that’s what most people would infer from their words, which are different, and more like “the party will be equalized - not during, but between adventures”. Yeah, irl, I don’t have the skill to explain it in writing. I don’t know if you have the irl person skills for the imagined you in this scenario to catch how oddly the GM says this, or to infer anything from it, or from the fact that the GM doesn’t say anything to me about my Princess. Or even if you (or the imagined you running the Rogue) would care.]

The heat is on, so we beat a hasty retreat from town (“go on an adventure”), perhaps with pregnant princess in tow. The party decides to explore an ancient ruins (Because that’s what parties with redundant Rogues do, right?).

We’ve watched you cheat your rolls through the game so far, and so we, the party, therefore a) assign you to watch duty during those 15 minutes every 4 hours when the GM rolls for random encounters; b) place you on primary trap duties. It’s clear that, just as nobody at the table cares about your blatant cheating, nobody at the table cares about their blatant metagaming.

During the random encounters on the way there, your character is combat MVP, being a DPS sneak attack build powered by a player cheating all their rolls, and who is also awake and ready at the start of each encounter. One combat, the DMM Persist CoDzilla beat me wrt “effectiveness”; another, the Barbarian did; a third, it was the Mailman. But as a not completely inept Sneak Attack DPS Rogue, I’m consistently in 3rd place for combat effectiveness against the random wolves, Ogres, and giant slugs we encounter, out of our party of 10 (it’s a big table (where else would you play two identical skill Rogues?)). Your Rogue feels more effective (and, since player skills matter, going with, “you know how to play a Rogue better than I do, and can read the GM better for Rogue-related Combat actions”, you would have been anyway, even if you hadn’t been cheating on your rolls), but I don’t feel ineffective. I still feel effective (pretty danged effective, actually), even with my literal “protect the princess” handicap, your skill, and your cheating.

So then we get to the ruins.

We’re both “distraught” to learn that it’s a crypt, filled with traps and undead. Because this group goes meta a lot, the GM assures us that this isn’t that one famous, super-hard, super-deadly crypt, despite our feeling about the right level range for it, but something less deadly of his own devising.

Although you’re still on top against the rare creature living in the crypt, in combat against the undead, you fall to about 5th or 6th (depending on whether you kept or prematurely shared your ill-gotten gains) in effectiveness, despite cheating your rolls, to your chagrin [unless you kept the loot, pawned it for consumables, and wasted them on trivial fights against low-CR undead, I suppose]. I’m not only dead last, but between undead and fear effects, with my Princess to protect, I’m arguably a detriment to the group in some fights. But I still don’t feel ineffective - my presence has an impact on the story. And I’m getting to tell the stories of “the contrast between myself and my incredibly lucky alternate reality twin brother” and “that time I got the princess pregnant”, on top of the group stories of “explore the as-yet unnamed crypt”, and whatever larger story this is all part of (maybe our characters have gathered the full scoop, maybe the party is waiting until after this quest to trust us enough to clue us in. Shrug.).

I don’t know which of us gets “climbing” duties, or if we share them, alternating or both at the same time, or if we leave it to the Wizard to use Flight. Shrug.

Oh, and this crypt also has puzzles. Purely 100% player skill puzzles, no rolling allowed. I don’t know your skill with those, but I love and am usually pretty good at such things. So I’ll arbitrarily say that I’m contributing a lot to such things (even if some, as new players to the group, we lack the background to understand).

Even with a… reasonably well-built Rogue (again, no idea what optimization level you prefer on a Rogue build, so I’m going more with how I would build it, despite this table having a rather broad balance range, sorry) cheating his rolls, the sheer number and complexity of some of the traps, coupled with the near “Tucker’s Kobolds” “encouragement” for the party to rush into unsecured areas, and the ability for some traps to be triggered remotely / inability to disarm the traps without being in range of the effects, the party (your character included) has suffered some pain from the traps. Including some seemingly permanent NSJS effects. (I don’t know if you have the people skills to read me irl, but I recognize one of them as completely “by the books”, and am therefore on the peacekeeping, “has the GM’s back” side of any arguments about this that may or may not occur.)

Perhaps because of those penalties (but definitely (also) because of your cheating), the GM has handed you his custom “all 20s” d20 for a roll or two that the party really wanted you to succeed on.

With the penalties, your failures (much fewer than the GM probably expected), and you running out of consumables (again, just guessing your play style, made my build, sorry), and maybe irritated that, staying in the back, guarding our rear and the Princess, I have fewer curses, and am thus catching up to your combat and climbing performance, and you’re having to increasingly rely on me to open locks, all due to the unfairness of this scenario, you ask for “aid another” help with the traps.

In fairness, it hasn’t been all roses for me, as the princess and I, lacking the immediate support of the strongest Fighters up front with you, have really been putting a hurting on the party’s healing resources due to the party repeatedly getting outflanked. This build wasn’t meant to tank for a Princess and a Mailman.

Curiously, the Mailman joins the Princess and me in moving towards the front. And also rolls Aid Another. This is where we (and I’m going to arbitrarily say that that’s you, as we’re sharing spotlight on the players skills) notice that the Mailman is actually better built for this role than our Rogue (this was a perfectly effective party before we joined, after all.). When you bring this up, that’s when everything changes.

There’s something about the exchange that I miss, but, at this point, suddenly, your character is “in”. You even get handed a little pamphlet that explains a few things (like what this whole “equalization” business entails).

Well, now, that’s something. And I’m stuck with the puzzle of trying to figure out what the rules are, how one gets to be part of the “in” crowd. And whether I’ll be telling the story of “how I joined the in crowd”, or of “the contrast between myself and my incredibly lucky and more popular alternate reality twin brother”.

After this, you join me and the Princess in the back, letting the uncursed Mailman handle traps moving forward. With his higher stats, and his immediate action ability to block LoS, he’s very effective. Meanwhile, you start doing a better job than me at protecting the Princess. Which maybe leads to a great “teamwork” story, or maybe to a “the importance of Family” story (with the possible bittersweet addition that, reflecting upon the importance of family, maybe the Princess decides to move back in with her abusive parent(s) rather than run away with me like we’d planned).

We encounter 3 minibosses (1 living, 2 undead) and a boss. The living one, unsurprisingly, you top the charts; thanks to the curses on the primary Fighters, I actually rank 2nd. If you didn’t waste them earlier, and use some powerful consumables against them, you might rank 2nd or 3rd against one of the minibosses and the boss (and my character 3rd or 2nd, assuming we both act tactically optimally); otherwise, you’re 6th or 7th (and me last, if I don’t see what should be obvious). The last miniboss is more a puzzle monster in a puzzle room; how you rate is almost entirely up to player skill.

Also, there’s a couple pathetic mini mini bosses, that rely on a “X charges of incapacitating living beings”. You always make your save, adding +1 active participant. I brought 2 extra living beings (Princess and unborn son or daughter), adding +2 active beings (even if I’m not one of them) to the encounter.

——-

So, what part of that adventure do you think should have rendered me ineffective? What part of that adventure should have enticed me to cheat?

[icefractal]

Because, the important part is, as you’ve just admitted, there are cases where the cheating doesn’t matter.

Wat? Why would that be the important part?

You know, by the logic of your story, I can say that all kinds of things don't matter.

The tier system - completely pointless and false, because a sufficiently optimized Monk can outperform an entire part of T1 casters (played "WotC intended" style), as we can see from the Elder Evils challenge. QED, no class is any stronger than any other.

Stats mattering - I can come up with a scenario where a character with all stats below 10 contributes more than a different character with all 18s, so I guess there's no reason for point buy or anything to exist, just roll or pick arbitrary numbers, doesn't matter.

Level mattering - Again, there are possible scenarios where a 1st level character accomplishes more than a 20th level one, so it shouldn't matter what level characters people bring or whether it's remotely the same level.

So, hmm, I guess Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit is actually a totally fine and valid party. TBF, that may be true for you, given the positive mentions of "Thor and a potted plant", but for many players, it isn't.

[JNAProductions]

Which is more realistic/likely to happen?

Two or more PCs contributing towards the same task, with both being competent at it.

Or

No PCs ever tread the same path, with them being so specialized in their niche that no amount of cheating can make up for it.

Two identical Rogues isn’t likely, I’ll grant that.
Two PCs both working towards the same goal by similar means, or even disparate means, seems pretty likely. As-in, happens all the time.

[kyoryu]

And ultimately it doesn't matter.

If a table or person isn't okay with cheating, they're not. Full stop. They don't have to prove that preference. Nobody has to prove why they don't care, either.

But they need to figure out what the table is going to do, and excuse themselves if they can't live with it.

[gbaji]

@Quertus. That's an incredible amount of nonsense text to avoid addressing the very simple concept that most of us learned at an early age that "cheating is wrong".

And way to completely miss the point. It's not about "two identical rogues", or two identical anything. It's about relative probabilities affecting relative outcomes. These are the core elements to virtually ever single gaming system ever created (that involve any sort of "by chance" outcome determination methodology). Cheating on the "by chance" determination is always wrong. Period. What part of this is complicated?

If the rolls don't matter then the skills the characters have don't matter. Their spells don't. Their items don't. Because apparently, in your world, no two characters have any even remotely close intersection of skills/abilities/items/whatever such that no one cheating on their die rolls will ever affect anyone else.

Sorry. I think that's just insane. If it doesn't matter, why are we bothering with the dice?

[Quertus]

And ultimately it doesn't matter.

If a table or person isn't okay with cheating, they're not. Full stop. They don't have to prove that preference. Nobody has to prove why they don't care, either.

But they need to figure out what the table is going to do, and excuse themselves if they can't live with it.

Agreed. With the caveat that one will have an easier time finding and remaining in games the larger the range of things that they can accept is.

Which is more realistic/likely to happen?

Two or more PCs contributing towards the same task, with both being competent at it.

Or

No PCs ever tread the same path, with them being so specialized in their niche that no amount of cheating can make up for it.

Two identical Rogues isn’t likely, I’ll grant that.
Two PCs both working towards the same goal by similar means, or even disparate means, seems pretty likely. As-in, happens all the time.

And when the classic Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Thief look at the epic challenge of the locked door, “all the way up there” (say, “retrieve a fragile egg from a nest at the top of a 50’ tall tree”), and “suddenly: blizzard!” (survive an unexpected 3-day blizzard when in the wilderness), they aren’t even remotely equal to one another at approaching that task. Kinda like my first example…

You know, by the logic of your story, I can say that all kinds of things don't matter.

The tier system - completely pointless and false, because a sufficiently optimized Monk can outperform an entire part of T1 casters (played "WotC intended" style), as we can see from the Elder Evils challenge. QED, no class is any stronger than any other.

Yup. Builds vary in effectiveness; classes, only in range and ease of likely potential.

Stats mattering - I can come up with a scenario where a character with all stats below 10 contributes more than a different character with all 18s, so I guess there's no reason for point buy or anything to exist, just roll or pick arbitrary numbers, doesn't matter.

Yes and no. Yes, stats (or the minuscule differences that the die rolls for random stats make in 3e) can be pretty irrelevant at many tables, especially at high level. However, the SAD Mailman having better stats was reason enough for them to beat the MAD Rogue twins. (It wasn’t the only reason, however)

Level mattering - Again, there are possible scenarios where a 1st level character accomplishes more than a 20th level one, so it shouldn't matter what level characters people bring or whether it's remotely the same level.

Well, yes. This isn’t the 3e forum - before 3e, it was pretty common for parties to contain (figuratively, if not literally) 1st level character adventuring alongside their 20th level counterparts. Or for GM’s to put in content (like those “player-skill-only” puzzles I mentioned) where the 1st level character could realistically whoop the butts of their 20th level counterparts.

So, hmm, I guess Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit is actually a totally fine and valid party. TBF, that may be true for you, given the positive mentions of "Thor and a potted plant",

Yup.

but for many players, it isn't.

They should probably look into that.

Wat? Why would that be the important part?

Because most of the game is that part. Maybe all of it.

But, if you have a cheater in your group, and don’t want them unfairly doing better when your identical characters do the same thing? Then - here’s a thought - don’t make identical characters, or don’t do the same thing. Problem solved. It’s not rocket science to make “I have a problem with the effects of cheating” not a problem. The ethical side is another matter. And, there, I completely agree with @kyoryu (above) and @JNAProductions (“Cheating is an issue because it's a breach of trust. Full stop.”).

[Talakeal]

But, if you have a cheater in your group, and don’t want them unfairly doing better when your identical characters do the same thing? Then - here’s a thought - don’t make identical characters, or don’t do the same thing. Problem solved. It’s not rocket science to make “I have a problem with the effects of cheating” not a problem. The ethical side is another matter. And, there, I completely agree with @kyoryu (above) and @JNAProductions (“Cheating is an issue because it's a breach of trust. Full stop.”).

For that to work, you have to intentionally build characters that don’t have any overlap AND expect the cheater to “stay in their lane”.

It also ignores the fact that most scenarios have multiple paths to success and expect the players to work together, combat being the big one.

[kyoryu]

Agreed. With the caveat that one will have an easier time finding and remaining in games the larger the range of things that they can accept is.

And you'll have an easier time finding groups if the things that you insist on are generally accepted by the community.

Throwing dice is generally not accepted. If you insist that you should be able to throw dice when you get mad, you'll have a hard time finding a table. It's not necessarily on the rest of the community to accept people that throw dice when they get mad. But if you find a table that's okay with it, cool.

Most people view cheating in the same category. It's a pretty assumed stance that you "dont' cheat", and I don't think it's an error on those people to not tolerate cheating.

Or, to reverse it, the person that insists on cheating will have a harder time finding and remaining in games if they increase their range of things that they can tolerate to include "not cheating".

For that to work, you have to intentionally build characters that don’t have any overlap AND expect the cheater to “stay in their lane”.

It also ignores the fact that most scenarios have multiple paths to success and expect the players to work together, combat being the big one.

For that to really really work, you basically have to promote "the decker problem" to being a principle of your game's design.