So, I'm starting to write about the "Skin of Naranpelo" campaign, and I get to a place where I say, "No, wait, I need to talk about this first, SRSLY." (Because LOLCat has macro'd some of my basic linguistic synapses.) I mean, I can't even tell you what "Skin of Naranpelo" is because my brain says, "No, stop, blogger time." ("Can't type this." There are just some MC Hammer references that will stay part of the culture.)
Um. I know, I'm not writing Dr. E and concerned about blathering for wordcount. Focus is important, but apparently, getting this topic out of my head is essential.
See, I'm talking about cheating. Not, "He loves the gamemaster more than me," kind of cheating, but the real in-game cheating.
Shaved dice, pencil'd plus attributes, and just misreporting what the results were by, you know, one or two successes at this far end of the table.
THAT kind of cheating.
Truthfully, you probably should talk to your GM about alternatives before deciding to take matters in your own hands. This isn't intended to be a pro-cheating manifesto you should take to your games. Claiming, "Well, Meera THE FIERCE Barry said it was OK..." (because, you know, name-dropping gives it more impact) might not be the endorsement you were looking for...
I'm going to say right now that in my games I don't really care.
Really. The LintKing and I still laugh at the player at a past ACNW who got back from lunch early to peruse my GMing notes. (And not just because my, "Man, that is SO not going to help you," was so heartfelt when he was caught.)
It's not one of those, "You're only cheating yourself," moralistic Oompah-Loompah intervals, either.
I know what it's like to cheat. I've done it once or twice. I'm not habitual, even when the dice hate me. There's been one or two times it's been a lot better for me to cheat than have to deal with the stupid system consequences of a stupid system if I didn't succeed. (One of those situations, and you know what I mean, where a failure pretty much means our entire night was spent getting, well, nowhere.)
I really give that kind of leeway when I think it's a system fault. These days we like to put the blame in on game masters, too, for not overriding the system, but if system matters it's important to have an acceptable resolution. Whether it's talking about what happens when you fail before drawing the black dot, or explaining that yes, your character can be taken to be resurrected, or just holding the virtual hand of a nervous newb.
And don't forget that misreporting your success is just as much cheating as "gaming the system." Making it almost impossible for your character to fail in a particular situation is generally an acceptable character creation trick, but let's be honest. I might want to run "the world's best sharpshooter," with the idea that she'll never fail a sniper roll. If I fail it better be something more than just a bad roll of the dice.
More and more, "Failure should be interesting," is practically the foundation of the bridge between going from diced-to-diceless-and-back the way I have. Something like Amber DRPG doesn't want you to fail. It even says fairly explicitly that the only time you should fail is if something (or more importantly, someone) is in your way. (It's not just GM's fiat.)
Those are sweet words when you've been fighting for your [character's] life because of a run of chance that gives you bad numbers.
How many times do we ask, "Why play if you're not having fun?"
Now, in fairness, explicit and obvious cheating is still a party foul. Don't be a boor. We're at a social gathering for a cooperative goal. If you're ruining someone else's fun, quit doing it. If you were cheating at, say, backgammon, I'd be the first person to probably bite off your hand. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I'm a GM. I'm kind of expected to cheat for the value of the gameplay. I'm almost asking myself, "Why shouldn't the players get in on the action?" for the same reasons.
In the last game we had a player cheating, I would have much preferred she spent all that effort on cheating on rolls for the Big Things, and not just the kind of minor background quests she took on -- go big or go home, woman!