Audacious Cheating

[Talakeal]

Well, Talakeal has a new gaming horror story for you all. And by new, I am mean one that I haven't really had to deal with before.

TLDR: How do you deal with a player who is blatantly lying about their dice rolls?


Longer Version:

My group is always pretty laid back and on your honor about dice. I trust my players to correctly report their own dice rolls. Occasionally this causes a problem; we have had new players join our group who are convinced everyone else is cheating*. Mostly these are people who are pretty paranoid to begin with and don't last long. I have also had a bit of a culture shock when playing at other tables and people suspect me of cheating by reporting my own dice rolls rather than rolling in the center of the table and waiting for everyone else to see it before picking it up.


We have a new player in our group for the past few months, and she is pretty obviously cheating on her rolls. It could, theoretically, just be a lucky streak, but each week she gets more blatant about it. She (almost) never fails a roll, and she crits more often than the rest of the party hits.

What she does is she constantly rolls the dice (she claims it's a nervous tick that she can't control) and then picks them up really quickly. If she isn't so quick about picking them up, she gets a really paranoid look on her face and quickly glances around the table to make sure nobody else saw the dice. Then whenever it's her turn, she proclaims she succeeded on her action. Even if there is some massive penalty she forgot about, she will then claim she still rolled well enough to pass (my system has exploding dice, so she will frequently claim results that are impossible on a single dice).

But further than that, she plays like she is cheating. She takes outrageous risks that are, statistically, foolish. For example, always going for fancy trick shots and such. To use a D&D example, she always does a maximum power attack because she knows she will always roll a natural 20. Each session, it gets more and more blatant.

We started a new campaign to weeks ago. This last session, I found out that she didn't even bother to take proficiency in her weapon. Now, this makes sense from the perspective of someone who knows that the numbers don't matter because they are cheating, but at this point it feels like she isn't even trying to hide it.

I have tried to be polite about it and several times asked her if she was sure she was counting right or if her dice might not be weighted improperly (to which she claimed she rolled them a thousand times and found they were perfectly balanced) and one of the other players flat out accused her of cheating once (to which she pouted for the rest of the session but then went right back to cheating the next time) but at this point I feel like something more drastic needs to be done.

I know the the obvious answer is to kick her out, but she seems otherwise passionate about the game and I just hate to turn a new player away like that. Anyone got any advice about how to handle this tactfully?


*:One particularly dramatic example. A player got up after his turn to use the bathroom. We continued playing, and a monster rolled a 20/19 on an attack roll and critically hit him. When the player returned from the table I told him about this, and he said that was impossible, the monsters needed a natural 18 to hit him, and I replied yes, it rolled a 20 followed by a 19 to confirm. He demanded I reroll, and the entire table vouched for me and said they saw the numbers. He then retorted "The odds of that are 1/200; the odds that you are all lying to make me look bad are a hell of a lot higher than that! No either reroll the attack where I can see it or I am leaving! Long story short, he made good on his threat and we never gamed with him again.

[Rynjin]

Tell her to stop cheating or get the **** out. Don't phrase it as a question, or a suggestion. A simple ultimatum consisting of two parts: 1.) I know you're cheating 2.) you're gonna stop one way or another.

Once a decision has been made, perhaps the underlying issues (why would you be so insecure as to feel the need to cheat in a cooperative game?) can be sorted out, but the poor behavior needs to cease first before action can be taken to make the player feel better about the game.

Alternate suggestion: move to a new state or something, I'm not sure why you continue to game in Mos Eisley or wherever it is you live.

[MoiMagnus]

I don't have a total answer, but there are a few points that come to my mind.

First, if her character is unplayable without cheating, or even just frustrating to play because it would fail at tasks it is supposed to succeed, it will clearly encourage her to continue cheating. Any resolution of the problem would including her rebuilding her character (or a new one in case of death).

Second, if you're ready to play therapist, you might want to understand why she cheats. Obviously "not having enough fairplay" is one of the reason, but there is likely more than one reason:
Is it because she can't accept failure?
Is it because the game is way under the low level she wishes and she get bored if she doesn't take part in actions that look absurdly dangerous?
Is it because she want to take all the spotlight?
Is it because past "trauma" making her convinced that everyone cheats? (Including potential parents having for moto "if you don't cheat, you're not really trying". Yes those peoples exists.)
Is it because she is very bad at building characters and playing the game, but is either ashamed of it or not wanting to walk the long path of failure to progress?

[Mastikator]

As a GM/DM you can always introduce a rule that says every dice roll needs a witness or it doesn't count. It won't single her out as a rule, but it will force her to not cheat. If and when she comes up with excuses like "I can't see my dice if I don't pick them up" then offer her easily legible dice.

Or you can kick her out, that is actually a good option. By cheating she's disrespectful to the whole group, it's incredibly rude and mean to everyone at the table to cheat. These people are supposed to be her friends and she lies to their face about the pettiest thing. It doesn't speak well of someone that they cheat, in fact I'd venture forth and say if you cheat at TTRPG you are a bad person

[Xervous]

She is 100% actively poisoning the table experience with her presence if other players are willing to call her out on it.

Without the rest of the players present, give her the “no cheating or no playing” ultimatum. If she can’t own up to it she goes.

With your table history I fully expect she’s going to keep lying to your face.

[Cygnia]

Make everyone use Roll20?

[BRC]

It's probably being far too generous, but I'd start by chipping away at one of the behaviors, this specifically:

What she does is she constantly rolls the dice (she claims it's a nervous tick that she can't control) and then picks them up really quickly. If she isn't so quick about picking them up, she gets a really paranoid look on her face and quickly glances around the table to make sure nobody else saw the dice. Then whenever it's her turn, she proclaims she succeeded on her action. Even if there is some massive penalty she forgot about, she will then claim she still rolled well enough to pass (my system has exploding dice, so she will frequently claim results that are impossible on a single dice).

Basically, as a point of rule do not accept this "oh, I already rolled the dice" approach. Cheating reasons aside, it makes no sense, since the situation won't be settled until your turn, you shouldn't be locking in on what your action is going to be until it's your turn anyway. If you don't want to go through the drama of calling on her to roll every die in the open where others can see and confirm the result, at the very least you can enforce "Dice rolls made when the DM doesn't request them don't count for anything", and insist she re-roll.

To get extra spicy, wait until AFTER she announces her "Pre-Rolled" result to say "Dice rolls only count when I ask for them. Please roll your check". Even if she's just flagrantly cheating, hopefully the sheer improbability of claiming she pre-rolled an 18 on 2d6 (or whatever), then claiming that her Actual roll was similarly massive will give her enough pause.

[gbaji]

*:One particularly dramatic example. A player got up after his turn to use the bathroom. We continued playing, and a monster rolled a 20/19 on an attack roll and critically hit him. When the player returned from the table I told him about this, and he said that was impossible, the monsters needed a natural 18 to hit him, and I replied yes, it rolled a 20 followed by a 19 to confirm. He demanded I reroll, and the entire table vouched for me and said they saw the numbers. He then retorted "The odds of that are 1/200; the odds that you are all lying to make me look bad are a hell of a lot higher than that! No either reroll the attack where I can see it or I am leaving! Long story short, he made good on his threat and we never gamed with him again.

This is where you point out how many attack rolls you make for your monsters per session, then per adventure, and point out that a 1 in 200 chance is gong to happen, statistically, once out of every 200 attacks.

On the flip side, I think it's good table ettiquete to wait until a player is at the table before rolling attacks on their character though. Nothing more game whiplashy than taking a bathroom run, then coming back to "oh. While you were gone, <insert horrible thing that happened to your character here>". Even though there was nothing presumably the player could do about it, it's still feels better as the player if you are at least at the table when such things happen to your character.

Basically, as a point of rule do not accept this "oh, I already rolled the dice" approach. Cheating reasons aside, it makes no sense, since the situation won't be settled until your turn, you shouldn't be locking in on what your action is going to be until it's your turn anyway. If you don't want to go through the drama of calling on her to roll every die in the open where others can see and confirm the result, at the very least you can enforce "Dice rolls made when the DM doesn't request them don't count for anything", and insist she re-roll.

To get extra spicy, wait until AFTER she announces her "Pre-Rolled" result to say "Dice rolls only count when I ask for them. Please roll your check". Even if she's just flagrantly cheating, hopefully the sheer improbability of claiming she pre-rolled an 18 on 2d6 (or whatever), then claiming that her Actual roll was similarly massive will give her enough pause.

Yeah. I think that as a social mechanism, directly accusing someone of cheating just never ends well. The person will immediately put up defenses to that. No one will acknowledge that they cheated in the past, so that approach isn't going to work well. Adjusting the "rules for rolling dice at my table", as you suggest, is a much better approach. You can pass it off as just rules that apply to everyone, so you're not actually singling out this one player. And it sends a message to the entire table that "I don't want to throw players out, but I also don't want cheating at my table", so it should be better recieved.

And yeah. I also agree with the "no pre-rolling" bit. I've seen players who will just kinda habitually roll their dice, almost as a nervous thing in between actual actions. But then, sometimes, those same players, if the die just happens to roll well, will leave it up, and then claim that as "my roll" on the next roll. I've also seen players switch the order of the die rolls when resolution requires multiple rolls, and "just happen" to use the better die roll for the more difficult thing, and then roll again for the easier one. An example from my game system is that casting a spell requires a check to succeed in casting (usually pretty easy to make), followed by a check to see if your spell affected the target (often much more difficult). A player might roll really well on the die, and declare "I overcame the target with my spell", then "remember" that they also needed to roll to successfully cast, and then roll the second die attempt for that.

Appying table rules also avoids creating a bit of concern about such things. Some people do just get a lucky streak of dice rolls. Those players don't want to be worried that they might be accused of cheating as well, so just making die rolling more transparent will alleviate that concern.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I don't have a total answer, but there are a few points that come to my mind.

First, if her character is unplayable without cheating, or even just frustrating to play because it would fail at tasks it is supposed to succeed, it will clearly encourage her to continue cheating. Any resolution of the problem would including her rebuilding her character (or a new one in case of death).

Second, if you're ready to play therapist, you might want to understand why she cheats. Obviously "not having enough fairplay" is one of the reason, but there is likely more than one reason:
Is it because she can't accept failure?
Is it because the game is way under the low level she wishes and she get bored if she doesn't take part in actions that look absurdly dangerous?
Is it because she want to take all the spotlight?
Is it because past "trauma" making her convinced that everyone cheats? (Including potential parents having for moto "if you don't cheat, you're not really trying". Yes those peoples exists.)
Is it because she is very bad at building characters and playing the game, but is either ashamed of it or not wanting to walk the long path of failure to progress?

I very much support this kind of approach. Assuming you're gaming with reasonable people*, your player isn't trying to ruin anyone's fun or "win D&D" (especially if she's enthusiastic otherwise). Behavior like this means that there's a mismatch between her vision of her character/the game and the rest of the table's, and a respectful private conversation between sessions will do more good than a thousand ultimatums.




*Which, given that this is in Talakeal's upside-down realm of madness, might be optimistic

[KorvinStarmast]

Well, Talakeal has a new gaming horror story for you all. And by new, I am mean one that I haven't really had to deal with before.

TLDR: How do you deal with a player who is blatantly lying about their dice rolls?

1. You call them out on it. you can, if you are trying to be nice, call them out on it in private.
But your table may appreciate it if when you notice (for sure they will notice) you don't let it slide.
Have been through this situation a few times.
2. If the player will not mend their ways, you as a table need to decide if you'll put up with it or not.
Everyone at the table needs to chime in: how do we feel about cheating in a TTRPG?
Some tables care and some don't. Depends on your small group dynamics.

Rather than kvetching about this on GitP I will suggest that you discuss this with the entire group.
That's whose fun is impacted.

[Anonymouswizard]

She is 100% actively poisoning the table experience with her presence if other players are willing to call her out on it.

I think this is the key thing. I've played in games with benign cheating before, nobody was taking it that seriously, the cheating wasn't that ridiculous, and the end result actually legitimately fit the game most players wanted. There's one player where I'd like to go back in time and tell them to switch out those d10s for another pair, but honestly nobody else in the group cared.

@Talakeal, if other players are speaking up it's definitely a problem, and one it sounds like you've tried to solve reasonably. If that's true it pretty much leaves you with three options if you wish to escalate, from most to least reasonable.

1. Kick her out of the group. She's been called out on it, asked to change, and refused. The great thing about the honour system is that it tends to select for the honest.
2. Enforce a 'the die must be left on the table until your next roll' rule or similar. This is less reasonable than the former because you'll be punishing everybody else for her transgressions. If she complains about it interfering with her nervous tick or whatever the mature response is to offer her the choice of this or option 1, the immature response is to buy her a stimming aid (I miss my fidget cube).
3. Switch systems to one where her cheating is harder or outright impossible. This has all the issues of #2, but now everybody has to work out how Nobilis or whatever actually works.

Now I can only comment from outside, but it's ultimately your choice if you want to try to fix this problem or stop it. I don't think anybody will judge you if you don't want to spend your time playing therapist*, but at the same time you can make the call that you don't want to escalate and you just want to help her stop. It's your call, but honestly it might have been something you decided on before anybody outright accused her (which tends to make people more defensive).

And honestly some of it could have legitimate other reasons. Constantly rolling dice to calm yourself or stim isn't a problem, using it to try to cheat via pre-rolling checks is.

* With the exception of anybody actively employing you as a therapist.

[icefractal]

I do often fiddle with dice, but it doesn't need to be the same ones you're actually rolling. Like in D&D, I might use d6s or d12s, but not d20s, so there's no confusion about the actual roll. So that may be a counter-point you can use if she brings up "I can't leave the dice on the table, I need to fiddle with them"

While normally forcing a dice-policy on the whole table because of one cheating player is kind of obnoxious to the other players, it sounds like the other players are already aware of her cheating and sick of it. So they may not mind a fairly strict one like "official rolls must be in this box and left lying there, else it doesn't count" as at least a temporary measure. You could moot this to the other players in advance - which is rude, yes, but egregious cheating is pretty damn rude too.

And given the extreme extent of the cheating, you probably wouldn't need to keep the measures for very long before the player either got pissed off and left, or changed her mind about needing to cheat.

[Lord Torath]

I think starting the next session with an announcement of a new rule that "For a roll to count, you must declare what you're rolling for immediately prior to the roll, and all rolls must be witnessed by the DM or another player" will go a long way to fixing the problem without making the problem player feel called out. That way she can fiddle with her dice as much as she wants. You can also say if you as the DM didn't witness the roll, the player who did needs to say "Witnessed" or something.

You can also take her aside privately and ask her about it. But I'd only do that if the new table rule doesn't work.

I would highly recommend against challenging her publicly about her cheating!!! Assuming you want to keep her as a player, anyway. As gbaji said, publicly calling them out will never end well. They will get defensive and deny deny deny, and nothing gets solved.

[Anonymouswizard]

I would highly recommend against challenging her publicly about her cheating!!! Assuming you want to keep her as a player, anyway. As gbaji said, publicly calling them out will never end well. They will get defensive and deny deny deny, and nothing gets solved.

Sadly that ship's apparently already sailed, thanks to another member of his group. Which is a shame, because any kind of witnessed rolls rule is now more likely to make her feel singled out.

I mean, assuming he wants to keep her as part of the group and curb her cheating his options are pretty much a witnessed rolls rule or moving to a system like Cortex Prime where pre rolling is nearly impossible.

It's possibly also worth Talakael meeting her partway by reducing the difficulty of checks to let her be moar awesome with legitimate rolls. It's not necessarily going to help, but it does sound like she wants Exalted levels when the rest are playing closer to GURPS.

[Cygnia]

If you don't want to keep her, don't see her as a friend, then call her out publicly. The ship has sailed, lay down the hammer.

[Slipjig]

If she's new to the hobby, maybe she just needs to see that a train wreck can be a GREAT session.

A lot of video games train us that we're always going for an S-rating, or whatever that game's equivalent is. Some players just don't realize until it happens that it can actually be a lot more fun when the plan falls apart right after initiative is rolled.

[Jay R]

I have also had a bit of a culture shock when playing at other tables and people suspect me of cheating by reporting my own dice rolls rather than rolling in the center of the table and waiting for everyone else to see it before picking it up.

Yup. When playing with strangers, don't pick up your die until the action has been processed and accepted. The only purpose to picking up your die before that piece of table is needed for something else is to keep people from seeing what you rolled.

Most especially, when playing with strangers, and you get a high roll, make a point of getting somebody ese to see it. Don't say it defensively; do it as part of your excitement. "Ha! Look, Rob, I rolled a 20!"

The die laying on the table is your show of good faith that you are not cheating.

We have a new player in our group for the past few months, and she is pretty obviously cheating on her rolls. It could, theoretically, just be a lucky streak, but each week she gets more blatant about it. She (almost) never fails a roll, and she crits more often than the rest of the party hits.

What she does is she constantly rolls the dice (she claims it's a nervous tick that she can't control) and then picks them up really quickly. If she isn't so quick about picking them up, she gets a really paranoid look on her face and quickly glances around the table to make sure nobody else saw the dice. Then whenever it's her turn, she proclaims she succeeded on her action. Even if there is some massive penalty she forgot about, she will then claim she still rolled well enough to pass (my system has exploding dice, so she will frequently claim results that are impossible on a single dice).

A tic that she cannot control is not a problem. The problem is her choosing which roll matters, and then not showing it to anybody. At my table, I roll meaningless dice all the time. This is partially using it as a fidget toy and partially so I can make a secret DM die roll occasionally without revealing that I'm making it. But unless it's a secret die roll, I announce that this is the roll for the NPC's attack, or Spellcraft check, before I roll.

All my players announce what they're rolling for, too.

When I'm a player, I announce my die rolls in advance, always, and make sure somebody sees them. At one table, the DM actively encourages us to roll our attacks in advance of our initiative, to speed up the game. In that game, I point out my roll to the player beside me, and leave them on the table until after my turn.

I have tried to be polite about it and several times asked her if she was sure she was counting right or if her dice might not be weighted improperly (to which she claimed she rolled them a thousand times and found they were perfectly balanced) ...

They probably are. There are (at least) four ways to cheat on a die roll, and only one of them is having weighted dice. The other three are:
a. roll several times, and when you get a 20, claim it was the real one, or
b. announce a number you didn't roll, and don't let people see your dice,or
c mismarked dice. There's a die out there with 2 20s and 19s, and no 1 or 2, for instance.
By your description, she's doing one or both of the first two. [If she had a die that was really rolling all those 20s, she wouldn't pick it up quickly.]

[By the way, that wouldn't have felt like being polite about it to her; that was still an accusation, even if a more subtle one. Being polite about it is solving it without any implied accusation. See below.]

... and one of the other players flat out accused her of cheating once (to which she pouted for the rest of the session but then went right back to cheating the next time) but at this point I feel like something more drastic needs to be done.

Yup. Accusations of cheating cause bad feelings and don't solve anything beyond that one session. You need to change the system. [See below.]

I know the the obvious answer is to kick her out, but she seems otherwise passionate about the game and I just hate to turn a new player away like that. Anyone got any advice about how to handle this tactfully?

My recommendation is to introduce a new rule, without any accusation of cheating, and without it even being about her.

When a different player rolls a die without announcing what it's for, then you should say, "I'm sorry, but I'm having trouble following all the die rolls. From now on, I need each person to tell me what the roll is for before you roll, and then leave it on the table so I can see the result. I'm just not able to follow the action right now, and it's my job to know what happens. So that roll doesn't count. Please tell me what you're rolling for, and roll it again." [Depending on how your players think, you might choose the player and tell him or her in advance, so that player can make a point of accepting the new ruling.]

In the ideal setup, the player you're concerned about isn't the first or second to roll under the new rule, and you've already made at least one player re-roll and show you the new result before the first time the problem player rolls. The more people who have already accepted the rule by the time the one you're worried about rolls, the better.

Except for secret rolls, you have to follow the new rule too, and be obvious about doing so. In fact, once (on purpose), roll the die, then say, "Oops. I forgot to tell you what I was rolling for. That roll doesn't count. I'm rolling for this ogre attacking this PC." In a perfect world, you will be throwing out a successful attack roll for the ogre. This is part of applying the rule fairly and consistently.

This rule is not about cheating. This rule is about the DM knowing and having control over what's happening. But it also makes cheating that way impossible.

Note: this rule does not hurt any player who is rolling dice fairly. If somebody spends too much time complaining about the rule, you can be pretty sure you know why. But your defense of the rule cannot be about cheating. Over and over again, say that you are doing this so you can follow all the action. Never mention cheating when discussing this rule.

[Hrugner]

We had a guy like this at our table years ago, complete with the dice fidgeting fake rolls, and we never really came up with anything to deal with it. We did pass around his character sheet to heckle his attempts to hide his math fudging, and openly joked about having him roll for our characters if we needed a win, but I'm pretty sure he didn't understand what was happening and eventually we figured it was kinder to ignore it and let him have whatever fun came from his winning at D&D. He's got issues, blatantly cheating like that shows an unusual lack of social awareness. He'd run games the same way, you could throw out impossible roll results and he'd say "so close, you just missed his AC is 120" without a hint of understanding. Eventually we simply stopped inviting him to game with us, he wasn't fun and it was embarrassing to watch him behave that way, but that's a bad way to leave things.

As someone with annoyingly good luck, using roll20 is nice since everything is above board and I don't have to worry about people thinking I'm cheating, if you give the player the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are honest and lucky, I'd expect them to be pleased at having a roll verification method. Just tell them it looks like they're cheating, but since there's no proof, you'd rather add a verification method so that you don't have to hear people complain about it anymore.

[Segev]

The easiest way to be as non-confrontational as possible would be to require that no roll the DM doesn't see the dice numbers on counts. Provide a section of the table (or a tray for dice) where rolling is easy for you to see. If you can't read it before she picks it up, she re-rolls it. If she is rolling and re-rolling out of your sight or picking up too fast for you to read until she seems to get what she wants, tell her that she isn't allowed to pick them up until you see the results. But make this a blanket rule for everyone.

If you want to call her out on it, then just be prepared for the confrontation.

It is not kind nor friendly and can easily lead to hurt feelings and damaged relations, but one way human groups have controlled such behaviors throughout history has also been mockery. If there is an open voicing of the assumption that every good roll she gets is a result of cheating, her feelings will be hurt (either justly, if she isn't, or unjustly or through misplaced anger over being called out if she is), but she will likely resort to means to try to make it clear she isn't cheating. Such as rolling in the open. But for this ot work, the group has to be ready for her bad attitude in response; the initial response is likely to be her own social attack of acting like everyone's being unfairly mean to her if they call her out. But the end result will be either she finds a way to refute the accusation (e.g. by rolling openly and waiting for people to see), or she leaves in anger and / or grief. I'm not really recommending this option. Just pointing out that this is how groups often DO handle things, and it tends to be effective, but has lots of "toxicity" problems. In fact, avoiding this kind of thing is why people often try to resolve such interpersonal conflicts away from the table.

There is also the option of just letting her do it. Let her win the game with always-successful numbers. Is it interfering with others' fun? If not, this may be the way to go. (The fact another player called her out on it, though, is indicative that it probably is, and thus you need a different solution.)

A passive-aggressive approach would be to just narrate her successes as you see fit, never asking for nor even allowing her to roll.

[Phhase]

If they keep going for absurd things, just....ask them what their total was before saying if they succeeded or failed? Are you making all the DCs public? That might be contributing to the problem if so. They ought to be taught, via high DC or otherwise, that big numbers don't solve every problem, and some things are just not possible without lateral thinking.

Outside of the lesson that failure is inevitable if you use a crutch, I do, as others, recommend a forthright and nonconfrontational private conversation into the nature of their tendencies.

[KillianHawkeye]

Coming from the standpoint of someone's whose group just had to uninvite a problem player (who we honestly gave WAY too many chances to), the answer is that you have to treat unacceptable behavior as unacceptable by not accepting it.

What my group discussed was that the gaming table needs to be a safe space for everyone involved. Gaming is a leisure activity where we all want to be relaxed and have a good time. Pursuant to that goal, there needs to be an implicit trust between all the players and between the players and DM. Despite being an activity for fun, creating characters and running the game session takes a lot of work, and we can't have someone that ruins the game for everyone else or disrespects the large amount of everyone's free time that we all spend.

[gbaji]

It is not kind nor friendly and can easily lead to hurt feelings and damaged relations, but one way human groups have controlled such behaviors throughout history has also been mockery. If there is an open voicing of the assumption that every good roll she gets is a result of cheating, her feelings will be hurt (either justly, if she isn't, or unjustly or through misplaced anger over being called out if she is), but she will likely resort to means to try to make it clear she isn't cheating. Such as rolling in the open. But for this ot work, the group has to be ready for her bad attitude in response; the initial response is likely to be her own social attack of acting like everyone's being unfairly mean to her if they call her out. But the end result will be either she finds a way to refute the accusation (e.g. by rolling openly and waiting for people to see), or she leaves in anger and / or grief. I'm not really recommending this option. Just pointing out that this is how groups often DO handle things, and it tends to be effective, but has lots of "toxicity" problems. In fact, avoiding this kind of thing is why people often try to resolve such interpersonal conflicts away from the table.

Yeah. Beyond being a somewhat confrontational and toxic method, it's also unlikely to actually work (well, anyway). There's a truism (ish) that I particularly like: "We see most in others that which we know to be in ourselves". Lots of life lessons and concepts encapsulated in that, and applies to a whole heck of a lot of social situations. But when it comes to players who cheat, they often assume that others are cheating as well. So the player will likely not get at all that you are singling her out due to her non-standard behavior (ie: cheating at die rolls), but rather that she is being unfairly singled out for some reason, and that by making her re-roll, and her roll in front of everyone, she's being handicapped, while everyone else (who, of course were cheating just as much as her, and in fact, she was only cheating herself to "keep up") will be able to continue to do so.

So yeah. Not a great approach. People are rarely actually consciously aware that whatever anti-social behavior they are engaged in is not actually "normal" and "everyone does it". So any approach that requires this self awareness is pretty much doomed to fail.

[Jay R]

The easiest way to be as non-confrontational as possible would be to require that no roll the DM doesn't see the dice numbers on counts. Provide a section of the table (or a tray for dice) where rolling is easy for you to see. If you can't read it before she picks it up, she re-rolls it. If she is rolling and re-rolling out of your sight or picking up too fast for you to read until she seems to get what she wants, tell her that she isn't allowed to pick them up until you see the results. But make this a blanket rule for everyone.

Yes. But enforce this rule on somebody else before her. That way, she cannot argue that you are accusing her while the rule is being put in place. By the time she rolls, the rules should have affected two other people first, so it is established.

[Segev]

Yeah. Beyond being a somewhat confrontational and toxic method, it's also unlikely to actually work (well, anyway). There's a truism (ish) that I particularly like: "We see most in others that which we know to be in ourselves". Lots of life lessons and concepts encapsulated in that, and applies to a whole heck of a lot of social situations. But when it comes to players who cheat, they often assume that others are cheating as well. So the player will likely not get at all that you are singling her out due to her non-standard behavior (ie: cheating at die rolls), but rather that she is being unfairly singled out for some reason, and that by making her re-roll, and her roll in front of everyone, she's being handicapped, while everyone else (who, of course were cheating just as much as her, and in fact, she was only cheating herself to "keep up") will be able to continue to do so.

So yeah. Not a great approach. People are rarely actually consciously aware that whatever anti-social behavior they are engaged in is not actually "normal" and "everyone does it". So any approach that requires this self awareness is pretty much doomed to fail.

While I don't recommend either method, you mistake the method I was discussing, which is for the whole group to simply call her out as cheating every time it is remotely suspicious. Not even so much as making her reroll. Just call the legitimacy of her accomplishments base on die roll into question. Let her have them. Just point it out. Again, not recommending it. It quickly turns into bullying. But it us something many human groups do naturally (i.e. not on purpose nor consciously): just letting the perpetrator know that they know and that it is lowering his or her social cachet within the group. One reason it happens less often in gamer groups is the tendency to have been the target of it by other social groups, for things gamers don't think are wrong even if they know they are socially awkward in other settings.

Thus isn't a reason to deliberately start doing it, but it is something to be aware of. And since many gaming groups do not use this social defense, it is all the bore important that they be firm and up front when somebody is violating the group's social contract.

[Rynjin]

Or, instead of using armchair social engineering to perpetuate the stereotypes that nerds have zero idea how to interact with other people, you could just have a normal conversation as if you are interacting with another human being for once.

Person: *does bad thing*
You: "Hey stop"

It's not that complicated lmao.

[Anonymouswizard]

Or, instead of using armchair social engineering to perpetuate the stereotypes that nerds have zero idea how to interact with other people, you could just have a normal conversation as if you are interacting with another human being for once.

Person: *does bad thing*
You: "Hey stop"

It's not that complicated lmao.

Person: *sulks for the rest of the session*

Now we don't know how the initial accusation was framed, but according to Talakael another player has already called her out and the result was a worse session (definitely for her, probably for the rest of the group as well). Now ideally we'd have a solution where everybody is happy, but treating her as a child who needs to be continually reprimanded. If a mature talk hasn't happened then it needs to, but I get the impression this has been attempted.

[Mastikator]

Person: *sulks for the rest of the session*

Now we don't know how the initial accusation was framed, but according to Talakael another player has already called her out and the result was a worse session (definitely for her, probably for the rest of the group as well). Now ideally we'd have a solution where everybody is happy, but treating her as a child who needs to be continually reprimanded. If a mature talk hasn't happened then it needs to, but I get the impression this has been attempted.

If they can't act like an adult when confronted about betraying their friends, and can't have fun without it coming at the expense of everyone else, are they really worth keeping in the group? @Rynjin makes a solid point, just tell them to stop. Either they step it up, apologize and stop cheating, or they are not worth having around.

[Keltest]

Person: *sulks for the rest of the session*

Now we don't know how the initial accusation was framed, but according to Talakael another player has already called her out and the result was a worse session (definitely for her, probably for the rest of the group as well). Now ideally we'd have a solution where everybody is happy, but treating her as a child who needs to be continually reprimanded. If a mature talk hasn't happened then it needs to, but I get the impression this has been attempted.

If a mature talk has happened and hasnt fixed the problem, then the next step is go to "Hey, stop or else."

Well, actually, the real solution is for Talakeal to stop playing with a bunch of toxic crazy people that dont respect him as a DM, player or human being. But since that seems unlikely to happen this time when it hasnt happened the past dozen times something intolerable has come up, this is the next best shot.

[Rynjin]

Person: *sulks for the rest of the session*

Boy that sure does sound like a them problem they need to sort out themselves.

[KorvinStarmast]

Coming from the standpoint of someone's whose group just had to uninvite a problem player (who we honestly gave WAY too many chances to), the answer is that you have to treat unacceptable behavior as unacceptable by not accepting it.

What my group discussed was that the gaming table needs to be a safe space for everyone involved. Gaming is a leisure activity where we all want to be relaxed and have a good time. Pursuant to that goal, there needs to be an implicit trust between all the players and between the players and DM. Despite being an activity for fun, creating characters and running the game session takes a lot of work, and we can't have someone that ruins the game for everyone else or disrespects the large amount of everyone's free time that we all spend.

A social contract well described.

Or, instead of using armchair social engineering to perpetuate the stereotypes that nerds have zero idea how to interact with other people, you could just have a normal conversation as if you are interacting with another human being for once.

Person: *does bad thing*
You: "Hey stop"

It's not that complicated lmao.

Indeed.

Boy that sure does sound like a them problem they need to sort out themselves.

While true, the game session / gaming group does not exist in a vacuum. There is usually a social context beyond the game as a thing in itself. A particular group of people get together to do this activity together, and perhaps other activities. (Hence my observation in my initial response about local small group dynamics).

Since the OP has an infamously dysfunctional social group that he games with, as documented in these very pages, a variety of remedies or suggestions that make sense for a less dysfunctional group can be discarded and your direct, focused messaging suggestion stands out as a far better attempt at a remedy. And if they sulk, that would seem to fit how most of the OPs players seem to react to pretty much anything that doesn't go their way.
Same Day, Different Sulk.