Cheating Bastard!

Meh. I’ve been sick as a dog the last few weeks, so you’ll excuse the lack of posts. Or maybe you won’t. Doesn’t matter, not like you’ve got a pair to come and do anything about it. Huzzah!

Anywho…

I’ve been lurking on various message boards and forums and pondering certain topics. Here’s one I’ve seen come up fairly frequently that I just don’t get:

What the hell is the point of cheating in a roleplaying game?

See, I understand cheating in a poker game or a craps game (don’t agree with it, but I certainly understand it). You’re going up against another person, money is on the line…sure, I could see the logic behind wanting to cheat. A brother needs a new pair of shoes, right?

But a roleplaying game?

WTF man?

A roleplaying game is an entirely different beast. There are no “winners or losers”…well, there may be losers but that’s a different post altogether. But you get my meaning. There is generally no money on the line, no one walks home with a trophy at the end. So why? Why cheat? Especially, since, in the games I’ve been involved with, you are working together with others to not only tell a story but to have a good time and some laughs. What is the desire/need to cheat?

I’ve played with two cheaters I know of around the table in the last few years. One guy we’ll call Baltic J, the other, Black Cat. Both had their own little methods of cheating at the game, yet different.

Black Cat was the most subtle. See, Black Cat would sit there and when it was time to make a skill check would roll, like ten times. Now, the GM was usually involved in a dozen other things…so he would tell Cat to just roll it and let him know what he got when he got back to him. So while other things happened around the table, and other players pursued angles and drama, Cat would simply sit there, quietly rolling his dice, a half dozen times or more until he got a total he liked. When he did he would sit back, smile and wait. When the GM wrapped up with the other gamers, he would ask Cat what he rolled and Cat would proudly gesture at his dice and the GM would nod, describe the success and we would go on with the game, In the rare occasions the GM would catch Cat in the midst of his roll-a-thon, Cat would simply tell him he was “warming up his dice” or “throwing around some practice rolls”. The GM bought it and Cat would make an actual roll.

The thing is, the roll was RARELY that important! It would be one thing if it was some life or death moment and the whole game was hanging in the balance, but it wasn’t! It was some lame, mundane skill check to see if his character could operate a freaking subway token machine or some nonsense. The roll in question rarely affected the outcome of the game in any meaningful way, yet it seemed that he simply did it just to see if he could get away with it.

Baltic J on the other hand did like to pick his spots. Not content to cheat when it meant nothing, Baltic J would try to slide one past the GM when he wanted to do something and simply questioned his character’s ability to pull it off. Baltic J was especially bad when it came to play by posts. He would outright change his D codes when rolling, or would roll using a dice roller and conveniently fail to mention that he rolled a “1” on his wild die (a critical roll in the D6 System). At first when I was running the play by post and I did a lot of the GM’ing from work (and was unable to access my e-mail) I relied on the honor system for players to tell me what they rolled, checking their results when I got home in the evening. Well, after being burned by Baltic J several times I had to end that habit completely.
The fact that Baltic J was an uber-munchkin didn’t help. His characters were downright silly in some cases…he brought munchkin creationism to a whole new level. I attribute the only reason that he didn’t play a ninja to the fact we were playing Star Wars. Still, I can even forgive that, if only he had even remotely pretended to give half a crap about what was going on with the rest of the group. But he didn’t. It was said many times that Baltic J was a solo player in a group RPG game, and the rest of us simply got in his way when it came time to play his game.

But, solo player or not, Baltic J did love to cheat when he could- and when he didn’t he tended to bitch. He especially got upset and angry when someone created house rules for the group to play by. Reason being? Because any time there are questions or grey areas that come up with house rules the responsibility to clarify the fuzzy areas falls to the GM. Baltic J hated that. He hated the fact that he didn’t have a rulebook he could point to that would support his opinion or a set of rules that he could manipulate to do what he wanted.

Case in point?

Baltic J was once playing a Jedi. He and the other Jedi in our group (yeah we had two- don’t get me started on how our group seemed to have a revolving-f*cking door for wayward Jedi. We were like a travelling halfway house or something), anyway, he and the other Jedi had come in possession on a holocron. Being mature adults playing in an RPG game, it was only natural that jealousy and pissyness would rear its ugly head. So what did Baltic J decide to do to make sure no other Jedi surpassed his uber-munchkin Jedi badass? He hid the holocron, preventing any further teachings.

Now…lets clarify something. In our game, Jedi being Jedi it was almost impossible to “lose” a holocron, seeing as long as Baltic J’s Jedi knew where it was his rival would be able to pick his brain and find out the location.

So what did Baltic J decide to do?

Well, see there is this neat little DARKSIDE power that can basically erase a persons memory.

You see where this is going?

So Baltic J decides he’s going to go, dump the holocron on some remote-ass planet, then mind wipe HIMSELF so he couldn’t remember where he stuck the holocron, and by extension, no one could pick his brain and find it either.

Yeah…mature.

So, he uses this power. “But wait!” you cry! Didn’t he get a darkside point for using this DARKSIDE power?

Of course not! Because Baltic J reasoned with the GM that since he was using the power on HIMSELF and not another person he really wasn’t hurting anyone but himself.

Right.

Ignore the fact that the point he used a darkside power to begin with should have landed his lame ass a DSP. Also ignore the fact that he should have AT LEAST gotten one for the action itself- jealousy, greed, fear all of that other crap contributing to the hiding of the holocron and preventing other Jedi from gaining insight and knowledge. Ignore the various reasons the GM should have slapped him down for being a childish munchkin ass…

What happened?

Not a damn thing.

He hid the holocron, mind wiped himself and went on down the road with his silliness.

Now, I think there is a fair amount of blame to be put on the line for this. The GM, for whateverf*ckreason seemed to allow this kind of shit to go on like, ALL the time with Baltic J. I don’t know why, but it was almost like he was scared to piss off this uber-munchkin for fear Baltic J would stop playing (which wound up happening anyway eventually but again-another story). So it wasn’t entirely Baltic J’s fault for getting away with all of his childish crap. The GM was as much at fault in some- hell most-instances.

Personally? In addition to two DSP’s I would have had Baltic J’s Jedi mind wipe work so well he would have pissed himself and forget the last twenty years of his life- reducing him to a drooling moron who couldn’t scratch his ass without help.

But that’s me. That’s how I roll.

Still, between Baltic J and Black Cat, I sat and watched cheating go on, pretty much saying nothing and minding my own business. I still can’t figure out the mentality behind cheating in an RPG, but of the group I gamed with, it really didn’t surprise me that these two players were the ones to do it.

I guess the pathetic this is, that in the end it didn’t even matter. Cat’s character never wound up to being more than background noise in most games while Baltic J burned through several more characters- each one a pale reflection of the last.

In the end, for all the cheating and fudged rolls they spent more time trying to beat the system than just playing the game and having a good time.