Cheating and Munchkins

[Unbeliever]

Shadowknight:  either deploy arguments and expect to defend them or adopt a kumbayah stance.  You can't have both.  If you don't decide, then expect me to ignore what you write from now on.  And, I can live without your smug "take a deep breath" comments. 

This isn't a discussion of your "rights," and frankly deploying that term in this discussion is silly.  You started/branched this thread to present a stance.  When that stance was challenged you have retreated to a stance that makes it clear you aren't actually interested in a discussion.  That makes responding a waste of my time. 

You also have radically misstated my underlying premises, which I also don't appreciate.  Only (B) was really in what I wrote, and it's more of an empirical statement than a normative one.  And, (C) ends the argument one way or another -- it's a conclusion masking as a premise.

EDIT:  What I was trying to say in my earlier post was that a choice in a character creation in any regard, even a choice to be bad at something (and, presumably, to put hose resources in something else) is important and valuable.  If I choose to be the high lord of basketweaving but terrible at sword swinging, then that's a choice that should be honored by those around the table.  Once someone chooses to ignore what's on the character sheet, etc. -- i.e., cheating -- all those choices are emptied of meaning.  At the expense of belaboring a point, that's bad.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Poker has a mechanical math part, but usually get played
with a "lying and cheeeating" part, betting and bluffing.



Mythology has stories where gods are duped by mortals.
Sometimes the duping lasts for a really long time.
But then angry demi-godlings swoop in and smash.

Why not finagle a way to include mechanics for a DM
to function as a Near-Demi-Uber-deity-ling DvR ~20.49.
{ ... insert I probably don't need the PCs to "worship" me, but I sure like the ego-stroking anyway smiley face ... }
You can dupe the DM for a while, but DMpire strikes back.

Similarly, dupe your fellow players, because you had a
4e-style Boon (cheating!) that made a PC better than it
ought to have been.  Oops caught = Boon goes away.
Bad PC suffers penalty and 1 less item ... or worse.

[Concerned Ninja Citizen]

I fail to see how that's a contradiction, since you're making assumptions here (that betraying the rules is by its very nature a harm upon... who? the DM? fellow players? everyone at the table?) that I don't share.

If you don't share that assumption, why did you post this:

The only part of cheating that is bad is betraying the trust that someone else has placed on you (in this case, the trust that you'll play by the rules).

?

This is what I mean about you contradicting yourself.

However, to address what you're saying: What is the point of playing a game with rules if one or more of the players is not going to abide by the rules?

How does that work? Why would you do it over playing a game without hard fast rules?

[Shadowknight12]

Shadowknight:  either deploy arguments and expect to defend them or adopt a kumbayah stance.  You can't have both.  If you don't decide, then expect me to ignore what you write from now on.  And, I can live without your smug "take a deep breath" comments.

I don't really follow. I have made my arguments and I'm defending them normally. That does not preclude me from saying that I think it'd be much better for the gamer community as a whole to be less divisive. I'm sorry, I just don't see what you mean by "you can't have both."

And I can live without your dismissive comments about different playstyles, such as "let's be clear, batshit insane given that combat is such a huge part of this game, seriously, if you don't want combat, play something else" (after all, you never saw me say anything like "If you like combat so much, go play WoW", did you?), so we can both simply agree to stop acting that way for the benefit of the discussion.

This isn't a discussion of your "rights," and frankly deploying that term in this discussion is silly.  You started/branched this thread to present a stance.  When that stance was challenged you have retreated to a stance that makes it clear you aren't actually interested in a discussion.  That makes responding a waste of my time. 

I deployed those terms precisely to avoid sidetracking the conversation. I've been there before, and it gets ugly fast. By nipping the "that's not a valid playstyle" argument in the bud, I can keep the conversation on topic.

You also have radically misstated my underlying premises, which I also don't appreciate.  Only (B) was really in what I wrote, and it's more of an empirical statement than a normative one.  And, (C) ends the argument one way or another -- it's a conclusion masking as a premise.

Most of your premises relied on the previous assumption that my examples given were not valid playstyles, which is factually incorrect. Rather than sidetracking the discussion towards whether X or Y is a valid playstyle (they're all valid playstyles), I skipped to the parts of your post that didn't hinge on such assumptions. Sorry for doing that, but like I said before, been there, it devolves into ugliness.

Actually, you did state (A) when you mentioned that you've had players similar to my given examples and they weren't useless in combat. The underlying assumption was that a certain level of combat proficiency was expected or encouraged, which is what I meant by (A). (D) was more tenuous, it was derived from (A) (where everyone must meet minimal standards) and the general distaste for cheaters. And (C) is not a conclusion, it's a premise. The degree of respect for the rules varies from group to group, making it a variable (therefore a premise) rather than a conclusion.

Poker has a mechanical math part, but usually get played
with a "lying and cheeeating" part, betting and bluffing.

Yup, there are plenty of games based on the concepts of lying and cheating.

Mythology has stories where gods are duped by mortals.
Sometimes the duping lasts for a really long time.
But then angry demi-godlings swoop in and smash.

Why not finagle a way to include mechanics for a DM
to function as a Near-Demi-Uber-deity-ling DvR ~20.49.
{ ... insert I probably don't need the PCs to "worship" me, but I sure like the ego-stroking anyway smiley face ... }
You can dupe the DM for a while, but DMpire strikes back.

LOL, there's already a rule for that, it's called Rule 0. 

If you don't share that assumption, why did you post this: ?

This is what I mean about you contradicting yourself.

However, to address what you're saying: What is the point of playing a game with rules if one or more of the players is not going to abide by the rules?

How does that work? Why would you do it over playing a game without hard fast rules?

You think it's a contradiction because you assume that every instance of cheating includes a betrayal of trust. If I expect or accept cheating, my trust isn't betrayed, therefore I'm not harmed.

Well, firstly, I highly doubt that munchkins break all of the rules all of the time. For what I've seen, munchkins break some of the rules some of the time. That means that rules in general are being respected, but there are exceptions that vary individually. That doesn't invalidate the purpose of rules, it merely makes the entire framework a flexible thing that exists to serve the players and the DM and not the other way around.

As for "how do you play a game with flexible rules" then easily, you stop focusing on the rules. You play the game for reasons other than the rules. You play for the story, the character interactions, the world exploration or development, the social interaction with other people, and so on and so forth. In those cases, the rules are very much secondary and making them flexible is no big deal.

[Unbeliever]

Yup, there are plenty of games based on the concepts of lying and cheating.

No.  There are lots of games about lying.  There are no games based on cheating.  There are games where you can "cheat" and get away with it unless you're called on the carpet about it.  Scrabble(?) is one I think.  I've only played it like once.  But, at that point it's not "cheating."  It's "playing the game." 

As for "how do you play a game with flexible rules" then easily, you stop focusing on the rules. You play the game for reasons other than the rules. You play for the story, the character interactions, the world exploration or development, the social interaction with other people, and so on and so forth. In those cases, the rules are very much secondary and making them flexible is no big deal.

Let's not conflate "flexible rules" with "breaking the rules."  The first is playing a game with flexible rules, something that no one I think has a principled stance against.  The latter is called cheating. 

You can play a perfectly lovely game with extremely flexible, open-ended rules.  That's different than playing a game that supposedly has rules and then ignoring them.  You can also informally shift one type of game (e.g., D&D) more towards the other through implicit houserules.  In practice, that probably happens all the time, managing it is part of the DM's job, classically.  But, again, there's going to be some implicit appreciation and agreement to do so at the table.  It happens in full view of everyone.  The cheating examples don't. 


I apologize for the harshness of my earlier comments (reply #13).  Read back to me they were harsher than I meant and also I think ShadowKnight has previously alluded to having had kind of vicious fights over the "right" way to play D&D, which should have let me to pick my words more carefully.  Reading them again, I could see how they would make someone defensive.  I do hold to a "right tool for the right job" type of approach to gaming.  So, I think someone who has nothing to contribute to combat in a D&D game is probably going to be unhappy, and if a group is looking for a game to do less combat things with (intrigue, mystery, etc.) I think they would be better suited with a different game system.  But, those are comments pitched at the "I think you'll be happier using needlenose pliers to do that" rather than a value judgment. 

As I stated in an earlier EDIT, the problem with cheating is that it invalidates choices: the choices people make at character creation and advancement (do I want to be good at X, crappy at Y) and choices within the game (do I want to use risky tactic X, or safe tactic Y).  These are choices made in and out of combat -- there tends to just be an emphasis on the latter b/c it's such a big rules-laden part of most game systems.  But, that's coincidental. 

[Demelain]

I think you have a great point about how cheating renders system mastery invalid, and I can sympathise with that, but it still supports my earlier assertion about the competitive environment. After all, it's like someone who cheats their way through college. You could argue it's unfair for those who do study and take the tests fairly, but what reason is there to feel upset if it isn't because of an implicit competition in regards to academic performance?

Please don't use this analogy.  As an engineering student, my worries about fellow students has little to do with them "beating" me. It has more to do with the fact that a person with an engineering degree (and in many other fields) who cheated does not actually know his job, and people who don't know their job (especially in engineering and medical fields) kill people, potentially on a large scale.

[Yirrare]

This is a very good summary of my opinion aswell. It is similar on so many levels.

As for the damage caused, the in-game effect might be small. But me knowing that a fellow player will break rules as he sees fit is the bigger damage. It's damage to my trust for my fellow players. And without trust, I will not enjoy playing with them.
Again, the example from Demelain works here aswell. I would probably have lent my friend $20 (and even if he stole it, $20 is just $20 in the long run), but that he takes them without asking would likely damage my trust for him.

Best Regards
Yirrare

Yes, but A) cheating on a game isn't the same as taking money from your wallet. The spirit of the betrayal might be the same, but the damages caused are completely different. And B) don't you think that having scorn/distaste for someone you'd never play with further fractures our subculture? After all, if you know you'd never play with someone like that, so what's the point in preemptively holding them in a negative view? I know there are a lot of types of players I'd personally would never play with, but that doesn't mean I hold them in a negative light, precisely because I know they'll never adversely affect my own games.

A: Taking my money is a betrayal of my trust, and potentially a theft of my funds.
Cheating in a game I put as much time into as D&D is breaking my trust and, since it will likely cause a group to fall apart, a theft of my time. Usually quite a lot of my time.
The latter will also likely affect not only me, but rest of the members of my group (seeing how if the responses in this thread is representative for people in general, a lot of people would feel like me).

B: I'm not quite sure I get your question. I will likely not know someone is going to cheat before it happens. Heck, if they tell me and I don't mind it's not cheating. And I will not scorn the cheaters, I will genuinely hope they find a group of people with the same mindset as them. A group where everyone thinks cheating is fun and OK. (This might be an oxymoron though.  ) I'm not like that though, so I will steer clear of them and try to find a group that share my point of view/style of play.


Might I ask what you mean when you say "cheat" shadowknight?
To me, cheating is breaking the rules. So if the game you were referring to earlier was poker, how is cheating a part of that game? (Maybe you play another type of poker than I've played though.) In a game like Munchkin the rules state that "cheating is ok, as long as you're not caught". Here, cheating is a part of the game and hence not cheating.
All your reasoning makes me feel like we have different definitions of cheating.

Best Regards
Yirrare

[ImperatorK]

Well, for what I've read, there's a general "cheaters are assholes" and "there are no good munchkins" and an overall sense of anger towards people who do this.

Nowhere did I say that cheaters are assholes. I only said that cheating is bad, obviously in the context of the game (D&D), and that cheating is asshole-ish.
Munchkins are assholes almost by the definition. It is a negative, only sometimes also a derogative term on this boards (and probably a few others). That doesn't mean there's hatered or anger involved (but sometimes there is).

Again, I don't have a problem with it, I'm merely confused as to what's the rationale behind it.

The rationale is common sense. Cheating and being an asshole is bad. I don't know what else can I say. You can argue semantics and provide exceptions, but that's really the meat of it.

[FlaminCows]

Additionally, if there is anger, then the anger is exactly where it should be. Being angry at a person who is disregarding the game and getting in the way of the other players' achievement is appropriate, well-placed anger. People have every right, and indeed are expected, to be angry at a person who is ruining the fun.

A game based on "cheating" is irrelevant to this, as they aren't about cheating at all. They agreed upon that style of game beforehand, they know what they're getting into and everybody plays accordingly. Cheating in D&D is more comparable to playing chess and then switching the pieces around while the other player is distracted. It is a dick move, because a lot of the fun of the game is the challenge and mental exercise of it.

Another comparison is drugging a dog in a race. Or having a turncoat player join the other team in football and sabotage their play. Or cooking a meal and spiking hash into your dessert without the eaters' knowledge. I could go on. None of the examples you've shown even remotely apply. It isn't about the damage: it is about defeating the point of the exercise, making the goal unachievable by destroying the fair comparison that measures it. When people play D&D, they sit down expecting to test their wits against the challenges put against them while simultaneously fantasising about magic and heroics. If a player breaks the rules, then the achievement of the group has become nothing.

Cheating in a game is asshole-ish only because it is a minor offence. An offence, however, it is. Every single time, in fact. There are many valid play styles, and all of them involve agreeing first. There is no such thing as a game based on cheating, as there are always agreed-upon parameters to a game. You can play a game with "flexible" rules, but if you're playing a game with "flexible" rules when the rest of the players are playing with firm rules then you are not even playing their game.

[Shadowknight12]

No.  There are lots of games about lying.  There are no games based on cheating.  There are games where you can "cheat" and get away with it unless you're called on the carpet about it.  Scrabble(?) is one I think.  I've only played it like once.  But, at that point it's not "cheating."  It's "playing the game." 

But that sounds like flipflopping on the issue here. So if I as a DM am like "you can cheat as much as you like, I'll be cool with it" then it's not cheating because now it's "playing the game"? It just sounds terribly confusing to me.

Let's not conflate "flexible rules" with "breaking the rules."  The first is playing a game with flexible rules, something that no one I think has a principled stance against.  The latter is called cheating. 

You can play a perfectly lovely game with extremely flexible, open-ended rules.  That's different than playing a game that supposedly has rules and then ignoring them.  You can also informally shift one type of game (e.g., D&D) more towards the other through implicit houserules.  In practice, that probably happens all the time, managing it is part of the DM's job, classically.  But, again, there's going to be some implicit appreciation and agreement to do so at the table.  It happens in full view of everyone.  The cheating examples don't. 

Um, sorry, I just don't see the distinction you're making. If a group decides that rules don't matter that much and that breaking some of the rules some of the time is fine (even if a player does it secretly), then that's by definition making the rules flexible.

I apologize for the harshness of my earlier comments (reply #13).  Read back to me they were harsher than I meant and also I think ShadowKnight has previously alluded to having had kind of vicious fights over the "right" way to play D&D, which should have let me to pick my words more carefully.  Reading them again, I could see how they would make someone defensive.  I do hold to a "right tool for the right job" type of approach to gaming.  So, I think someone who has nothing to contribute to combat in a D&D game is probably going to be unhappy, and if a group is looking for a game to do less combat things with (intrigue, mystery, etc.) I think they would be better suited with a different game system.  But, those are comments pitched at the "I think you'll be happier using needlenose pliers to do that" rather than a value judgment. 

Thank you, I apologise for any smugness or condescension. Trust me, I've had that discussion before and it always boils down to "You don't play D&D the way I do??? THAT'S WRONG! You must either change the way you play D&D or play something else!" and let me tell you, I usually play with people that aren't very good at optimising, and while I always defend optimisation in our discussions (because I think that optimising is perfectly fine), every single one of them tell me that they stay out of D&D boards precisely because they encounter the "you're doing it wrong" mentality all the time.

So yeah, I don't disagree that there's probably a better tool for the job, but a lot of people like D&D for various reasons (it was the first RPG they came across, they like the flavour, they like the general mechanics, so on and so forth) and even though they aren't rules fans, they still have fun playing the game.

As I stated in an earlier EDIT, the problem with cheating is that it invalidates choices: the choices people make at character creation and advancement (do I want to be good at X, crappy at Y) and choices within the game (do I want to use risky tactic X, or safe tactic Y).  These are choices made in and out of combat -- there tends to just be an emphasis on the latter b/c it's such a big rules-laden part of most game systems.  But, that's coincidental.

That might happen, yes, but I'm sure you can agree that it's entirely possible to invalidate someone else's choices without cheating, right? I mean, if you have a newcomer to D&D playing a fighter and a high-op player playing a god wizard, there's no cheating involved there but the god-wizard will invalidate everything the fighter does, both in and out of combat. The way I see it, choice invalidation has nothing to do with cheating.

Please don't use this analogy.  As an engineering student, my worries about fellow students has little to do with them "beating" me. It has more to do with the fact that a person with an engineering degree (and in many other fields) who cheated does not actually know his job, and people who don't know their job (especially in engineering and medical fields) kill people, potentially on a large scale.

I'm a healthcare/biomedical professional who's graduating at the end of the month. 50 to 70% of my classmates cheated their way through most of the tests over the years (and yes, I know this for a fact, not out of hearsay). So yeah, I think I have a right to use that analogy, as it comes from things I've personally observed.

For what it's worth, I've been there like... 3 or 4 years ago. Eventually the outrage just seeps right out of you and you learn to shrug it off.

A: Taking my money is a betrayal of my trust, and potentially a theft of my funds.
Cheating in a game I put as much time into as D&D is breaking my trust and, since it will likely cause a group to fall apart, a theft of my time. Usually quite a lot of my time.
The latter will also likely affect not only me, but rest of the members of my group (seeing how if the responses in this thread is representative for people in general, a lot of people would feel like me).

And I said that IF cheating is a betrayal of trust, then yes, sure, I can see why you'd feel hurt and why you'd have a problem with it. What I don't understand is where the betrayal of trust comes from.

B: I'm not quite sure I get your question. I will likely not know someone is going to cheat before it happens. Heck, if they tell me and I don't mind it's not cheating. And I will not scorn the cheaters, I will genuinely hope they find a group of people with the same mindset as them. A group where everyone thinks cheating is fun and OK. (This might be an oxymoron though.  ) I'm not like that though, so I will steer clear of them and try to find a group that share my point of view/style of play.

Well, see, there's a big discrepancy here, because some people think that if someone cheats and I don't mind, it's no longer cheating, while others say that if someone cheats and I don't mind, it's still cheating. That's part of my confusion.

As for the rest, that's exactly how I feel, but there seems to be a very dim view of cheaters and munchkins here, and it puzzles me as to why it's such a big deal.

Might I ask what you mean when you say "cheat" shadowknight?
To me, cheating is breaking the rules. So if the game you were referring to earlier was poker, how is cheating a part of that game? (Maybe you play another type of poker than I've played though.) In a game like Munchkin the rules state that "cheating is ok, as long as you're not caught". Here, cheating is a part of the game and hence not cheating.
All your reasoning makes me feel like we have different definitions of cheating.

Best Regards
Yirrare

Well yes, to me cheating is breaking the rules. No, the games I was referring to are some I'm sure nobody's heard about. There's one whose main objective is to score points, and it's encouraged to lie about the cards you're holding, confuse everyone else and get away with scoring points through misdirection and breaking the rules (so long as you aren't caught). Then there's one that's very chaotic (and the players are encouraged to play fast and without thinking to encourage the chaotic atmosphere and facilitate deception) where the rules are complicated and arbitrary on purpose so that a player can try and advance her goals by confusing everyone else and outright cheating. Then there are a few more where the rules change but the principles are the same (confuse, misdirect, cheat, avoid getting caught, lie, and so on).

So yes, it'd be similar to what you're saying about Munchkin, but I don't really get what's the difference. If I'm okay with cheating, it's suddenly not cheating anymore? That means that someone at your table might be a cheater, but not at mine. That... does not make sense to me.

I personally never saw the appeal in any of those games (nor am I good at them), but the problem with being a moderate is that you end up picking fights with everyone. I wouldn't cheat or play with people who do, but that doesn't mean I understand the scorn levied at them. To me they're just people like me who like something that I don't. So what if I consider it against my morals? Is that really something worth feeling anything about?

Nowhere did I say that cheaters are assholes. I only said that cheating is bad, obviously in the context of the game (D&D), and that cheating is asshole-ish.
Munchkins are assholes almost by the definition. It is a negative, only sometimes also a derogative term on this boards (and probably a few others). That doesn't mean there's hatered or anger involved (but sometimes there is).

It's possible we may have different concepts of derogatory language. I know that this isn't a widely-shared idea in the population, but several bloggers and authors coincide that derogatory remarks carry implicit hatred even if the speaker isn't feeling hatred when they use the word, because the coiner of the term coined it out of hate. Regardless of whether you use the word "asshole" feeling hatred or not, enough people have used it in anger and hatred to make it carry an implicit load of hatred, and that's what I'm going with to regard the use of the word munchkin. If it's used negatively, it carries an implicit quota of anger or hatred because that's why it was coined (or that's how it came into prominence).

Additionally, if there is anger, then the anger is exactly where it should be. Being angry at a person who is disregarding the game and getting in the way of the other players' achievement is appropriate, well-placed anger. People have every right, and indeed are expected, to be angry at a person who is ruining the fun.

A game based on "cheating" is irrelevant to this, as they aren't about cheating at all. They agreed upon that style of game beforehand, they know what they're getting into and everybody plays accordingly. Cheating in D&D is more comparable to playing chess and then switching the pieces around while the other player is distracted. It is a dick move, because a lot of the fun of the game is the challenge and mental exercise of it.

Another comparison is drugging a dog in a race. Or having a turncoat player join the other team in football and sabotage their play. Or cooking a meal and spiking hash into your dessert without the eaters' knowledge. I could go on. None of the examples you've shown even remotely apply. It isn't about the damage: it is about defeating the point of the exercise, making the goal unachievable by destroying the fair comparison that measures it. When people play D&D, they sit down expecting to test their wits against the challenges put against them while simultaneously fantasising about magic and heroics. If a player breaks the rules, then the achievement of the group has become nothing.

Cheating in a game is asshole-ish only because it is a minor offence. An offence, however, it is. Every single time, in fact. There are many valid play styles, and all of them involve agreeing first. There is no such thing as a game based on cheating, as there are always agreed-upon parameters to a game. You can play a game with "flexible" rules, but if you're playing a game with "flexible" rules when the rest of the players are playing with firm rules then you are not even playing their game.

Well, what you're saying here basically boils down to something I already pointed out before "cheating is generating such anger because it's being done in a competitive environment." Your paragraph about "testing their wits against challenges put against them" leaves me unable to say anything else; you made my case for me.

Since I already said I saw where people were coming from when they complained about cheating in a competitive environment, I don't disagree at all with what you're saying and I have nothing to say about it.

[Unbeliever]

Let's not conflate "flexible rules" with "breaking the rules."  The first is playing a game with flexible rules, something that no one I think has a principled stance against.  The latter is called cheating. 

You can play a perfectly lovely game with extremely flexible, open-ended rules.  That's different than playing a game that supposedly has rules and then ignoring them.  You can also informally shift one type of game (e.g., D&D) more towards the other through implicit houserules.  In practice, that probably happens all the time, managing it is part of the DM's job, classically.  But, again, there's going to be some implicit appreciation and agreement to do so at the table.  It happens in full view of everyone.  The cheating examples don't. 

Um, sorry, I just don't see the distinction you're making. If a group decides that rules don't matter that much and that breaking some of the rules some of the time is fine (even if a player does it secretly), then that's by definition making the rules flexible.

Amber Diceless is game with an extremely flexible ruleset.  It has, if memory serves, like only about 10 pages of mechanics in a 300+ page book.  It happens to also be a bad game, but that's neither here nor there.  FATE is probably a game that is quite flexible from what I hear. 

The real problem, and the reason why you are all alone in your position, is underscored by the quote I bolded above.  There's a world of difference between a DM (or even a player) saying "this isn't what the rules say, but I'll allow it" or "let's just go with that, it sounds cool" and someone writing down on their sheet +10,000 damage.  One happens in the sunshine, one is characterized by the table as a whole deciding to go with it.  And, yes, that can lead to a more porous rules structure, but, once again, that rules are flexible doesn't mean they don't exist.

The other one is terrible, frankly.  Why, b/c it invalidates choices made within the rules.  It makes whatever I have on my character sheet meaningless.  Take an extreme case of cheating, just lying about hitting every DC on every roll.  That makes whatever modifiers I have on my sheet not matter.  Whether my character is awesome or terrible at X-ing, and to whatever extent that defines my character, goes out the window. 

There may be ways within the rules to do that, as you note.  And, there are literally thousands of pages of handwringing on these boards about those concerns (of which I have added no small amount to) b/c it's a bad thing.  You commit a logical fallacy in your response to my point about this.  Not all mammals are foxes does not imply that a fox is not a mammal. 

tl;dr:  you're just trying to redefine cheating.  Cheating does not, by definition, have everyone "be fine with it."  If that's the case, then it's a house rule, perhaps an implicit one.  This is a clear distinction in theory and practice. 


P.S.:  now that I think about, norms against cheating are more important in a non-competitive environment.  In a competitive one, there is a greater likelihood that players will be watching each other and monitoring for cheating. 

[Shadowknight12]

Amber Diceless is game with an extremely flexible ruleset.  It has, if memory serves, like only about 10 pages of mechanics in a 300+ page book.  It happens to also be a bad game, but that's neither here nor there.  FATE is probably a game that is quite flexible from what I hear. 

And? I never said that flexible systems didn't exist.

The real problem, and the reason why you are all alone in your position, is underscored by the quote I bolded above.  There's a world of difference between a DM (or even a player) saying "this isn't what the rules say, but I'll allow it" or "let's just go with that, it sounds cool" and someone writing down on their sheet +10,000 damage.  One happens in the sunshine, one is characterized by the table as a whole deciding to go with it.  And, yes, that can lead to a more porous rules structure, but, once again, that rules are flexible doesn't mean they don't exist.

The other one is terrible, frankly.  Why, b/c it invalidates choices made within the rules.  It makes whatever I have on my character sheet meaningless.  Take an extreme case of cheating, just lying about hitting every DC on every roll.  That makes whatever modifiers I have on my sheet not matter.  Whether my character is awesome or terrible at X-ing, and to whatever extent that defines my character, goes out the window. 

There may be ways within the rules to do that, as you note.  And, there are literally thousands of pages of handwringing on these boards about those concerns (of which I have added no small amount to) b/c it's a bad thing.  You commit a logical fallacy in your response to my point about this.  Not all mammals are foxes does not imply that a fox is not a mammal. 

I know this sounds crazy, but what if it doesn't harm anybody if the player deals +10K damage? What if everyone is cool with it because, as I posited in a previous example, combat is not that big of a deal and it's okay if you have a by-the-rules god wizard or a fighter with God Mode cheat on, because player A wants to solve a mystery, player B wants to roleplay and player C cares about some other non-combat aspect of a game (like the plot or anything else you can think of). In both cases, player D is outshining everyone else in combat, yes, but combat doesn't matter that much. Or maybe I'm using the wrong example. Let's assume that instead of cheating to be better at combat, the player cheats to be better at roleplaying (by fiddling with his Charisma score or Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate skills). If everyone else is into combat and player D cheats to be better at getting NPCs to do what he says, how is that any different from a legit diplomancer or an enchanter/sorcerer/bard with Enchantment spells up the wazoo and legit ways to get around immunity to mind-affecting effects?

The way I see it, cheating doesn't change the goal of the player, it's merely a shortcut to get there faster or more easily. If a player wants to excel above everyone else in combat, getting all NPCs to do as he says or any other achievable goal, you have the legit way to get there (by optimising, usually) and then you can cheat. In both cases, you get to the exact same place, only one of those ways is legal and the other one isn't.

So personally, I don't see why doing something one way merits anger and doing something in another doesn't, since both paths end in the same place.

tl;dr:  you're just trying to redefine cheating.  Cheating does not, by definition, have everyone "be fine with it."  If that's the case, then it's a house rule, perhaps an implicit one.  This is a clear distinction in theory and practice.

You're right, cheating doesn't imply people being fine with it. However, it doesn't imply people not being fine with it either. The definition of cheating doesn't include reactions to the act, whether negative or positive.

P.S.:  now that I think about, norms against cheating are more important in a non-competitive environment.  In a competitive one, there is a greater likelihood that players will be watching each other and monitoring for cheating.

On the contrary, in a non-competitive environment, it's highly likely that people will just not care.

[FlaminCows]

Well, what you're saying here basically boils down to something I already pointed out before "cheating is generating such anger because it's being done in a competitive environment." Your paragraph about "testing their wits against challenges put against them" leaves me unable to say anything else; you made my case for me.

Since I already said I saw where people were coming from when they complained about cheating in a competitive environment, I don't disagree at all with what you're saying and I have nothing to say about it.

That really depends on what you mean by a "competitive environment". It is a loaded word, competition, and I suspect the way people understand you when you're saying it is different from what you mean by it. Any game has an element of challenge, so it can't be challenge alone that makes a game competitive. In D&D, you aren't competing against anybody. The other players are your team-mates, and the DM is certainly not trying to beat you. Calling D&D a competitive environment would thus be inaccurate.

When you say "in a competitive environment", people react because they thing "Why! He's implying I'm trying to win against my fellow players!" which is indeed what the word "compete" actually means. That is not what we're doing. In a co-operative environment, cheating is actually worse than in a competitive one. In a competition, the effort is to try to exceed the other players and thus a cheater, when caught, simply loses and the best non-cheater gets the prise. In a co-operative game, however, the cheater's cheating cheapens the entire group's success.

But, again, it is possible that this is another one of those miscommunications. I don't think you really meant to say that the people who don't want cheating are all striving to outdo another for acknowledgement.

But that sounds like flipflopping on the issue here. So if I as a DM am like "you can cheat as much as you like, I'll be cool with it" then it's not cheating because now it's "playing the game"? It just sounds terribly confusing to me.

You being confused is your issue alone.

Um, sorry, I just don't see the distinction you're making. If a group decides that rules don't matter that much and that breaking some of the rules some of the time is fine (even if a player does it secretly), then that's by definition making the rules flexible.

Yes. And? It isn't those games that the whole munchkin issue is about. In games where the rules don't matter, you can't be a munchkin.

And I said that IF cheating is a betrayal of trust, then yes, sure, I can see why you'd feel hurt and why you'd have a problem with it. What I don't understand is where the betrayal of trust comes from.

The betrayal of trust comes from how many people are playing by the rules, and they agree to play by the rules, and yet the munchkin breaks them anyway, defeating the point of all that effort.

So yes, it'd be similar to what you're saying about Munchkin, but I don't really get what's the difference. If I'm okay with cheating, it's suddenly not cheating anymore? That means that someone at your table might be a cheater, but not at mine. That... does not make sense to me.

It should make sense to you. If his table is playing by a certain set of rules and yours isn't, then you're not playing the same game. In baseball you throw the ball, in hockey that's cheating. Same here. It should be painfully obvious that what flies in a game of Munckin is not the same as what flies in a game of D&D.

I personally never saw the appeal in any of those games (nor am I good at them), but the problem with being a moderate is that you end up picking fights with everyone. I wouldn't cheat or play with people who do, but that doesn't mean I understand the scorn levied at them. To me they're just people like me who like something that I don't. So what if I consider it against my morals? Is that really something worth feeling anything about?

Defending cheaters is not being a moderate. Being a moderate means avoiding extremes of behaviours, and "accept everybody, even if they cheat" is extreme.

The core issue here is that you're intentionally ignoring that people already acknowledge that rules-light, freeform, etc. games exist. The players in those games are not munchkins. It is the players who are in games where people are expecting to play by the rules and they break them anyway. There is nothing related between flexible rulesets and munchkinism. Being a munchkin is breaking the rules that the group is using, not the ones that the group isn't using.

Basically, being a munchin is always a betrayal of trust, because it is that very betrayal of trust that makes one a munchkin.

[Shadowknight12]

That really depends on what you mean by a "competitive environment". It is a loaded word, competition, and I suspect the way people understand you when you're saying it is different from what you mean by it. Any game has an element of challenge, so it can't be challenge alone that makes a game competitive. In D&D, you aren't competing against anybody. The other players are your team-mates, and the DM is certainly not trying to beat you. Calling D&D a competitive environment would thus be inaccurate.

I already explained that there are many types of competition, and one of them (cooperative competition) fits with the way I hear other people play D&D. For the record, I don't use competition in a negative way. I don't think there's anything wrong with people being competitive. It's hardwired in our brains to compete with others for social standing (whether it comes from biology or culture is up for debate), so I don't think competition is a bad thing, I merely think it's something that ought to be acknowledged so that we're all on the same page.

When you say "in a competitive environment", people react because they thing "Why! He's implying I'm trying to win against my fellow players!" which is indeed what the word "compete" actually means. That is not what we're doing. In a co-operative environment, cheating is actually worse than in a competitive one. In a competition, the effort is to try to exceed the other players and thus a cheater, when caught, simply loses and the best non-cheater gets the prise. In a co-operative game, however, the cheater's cheating cheapens the entire group's success.

There's such a thing as cooperative competition. When someone has to demonstrate system mastery in a game in order to meet standards while cooperating with others against a challenge, you are seeing a case of cooperative competition. I cited examples before and I'm sure you can think of many games where a group of people get together to face challenges and there's a strong pressure on every member to be up to standard (and therefore, a pressure to be competent, that is, fit to compete). In those cases, you're not competing against but competing along. It's very much like a race where every runner is tied with a rope to someone else. If they all want to achieve their goal (get to the finish within a certain time), everyone must meet certain standards. Those who don't literally drag everyone else with them. This is the same as what happens with a faulty player in an MMO. Entire party wipes can happen because of one person's mistake.

But, again, it is possible that this is another one of those miscommunications. I don't think you really meant to say that the people who don't want cheating are all striving to outdo another for acknowledgement.

No, I never meant that. What I meant was that I personally understood the anger behind people who dislike cheaters if those people are speaking from a competitive environment. That is something I understand perfectly without needing an explanation. After all, sports and competitions take cheating extremely seriously, and it makes sense within those parameters.

Yes. And? It isn't those games that the whole munchkin issue is about. In games where the rules don't matter, you can't be a munchkin.

The betrayal of trust comes from how many people are playing by the rules, and they agree to play by the rules, and yet the munchkin breaks them anyway, defeating the point of all that effort.

It should make sense to you. If his table is playing by a certain set of rules and yours isn't, then you're not playing the same game. In baseball you throw the ball, in hockey that's cheating. Same here. It should be painfully obvious that what flies in a game of Munckin is not the same as what flies in a game of D&D.

Defending cheaters is not being a moderate. Being a moderate means avoiding extremes of behaviours, and "accept everybody, even if they cheat" is extreme.

The core issue here is that you're intentionally ignoring that people already acknowledge that rules-light, freeform, etc. games exist. The players in those games are not munchkins. It is the players who are in games where people are expecting to play by the rules and they break them anyway. There is nothing related between flexible rulesets and munchkinism. Being a munchkin is breaking the rules that the group is using, not the ones that the group isn't using.

Basically, being a munchin is always a betrayal of trust, because it is that very betrayal of trust that makes one a munchkin.

I think I understand. What you say about how "if the rules don't matter, you can't be a munchkin" and "being a munchkin is always a betrayal of trust" really makes it click for me. I had it wrong, I thought they were generic terms to define acts or behaviours within all possible playstyle contexts, while in reality they refer to acts or behaviours within a very specific type of playstyle. The words don't apply when you change the playstyle. That makes sense.

[Demelain]

Please don't use this analogy.  As an engineering student, my worries about fellow students has little to do with them "beating" me. It has more to do with the fact that a person with an engineering degree (and in many other fields) who cheated does not actually know his job, and people who don't know their job (especially in engineering and medical fields) kill people, potentially on a large scale.

I'm a healthcare/biomedical professional who's graduating at the end of the month. 50 to 70% of my classmates cheated their way through most of the tests over the years (and yes, I know this for a fact, not out of hearsay). So yeah, I think I have a right to use that analogy, as it comes from things I've personally observed.

For what it's worth, I've been there like... 3 or 4 years ago. Eventually the outrage just seeps right out of you and you learn to shrug it off.

If you honestly see nothing wrong with that, then you need to realize that you are some kind of extreme corner case. That shows an alarming disregard for ethics, and really terrifies me.
I don't want someone who cheating through school building a skyscraper. I don't want them performing surgery. If you think that it's okay for them to be doing that, something is wrong.
I don't mean to attack you personally, but this really is just NOT OKAY.

[Shadowknight12]

If you honestly see nothing wrong with that, then you need to realize that you are some kind of extreme corner case. That shows an alarming disregard for ethics, and really terrifies me.
I don't want someone who cheating through school building a skyscraper. I don't want them performing surgery. If you think that it's okay for them to be doing that, something is wrong.
I don't mean to attack you personally, but this really is just NOT OKAY.

No, it's not okay, that's why I'm doing my best to leave the country. I just can't really work up any emotion regarding that because there are far worse things I see every day that are also not okay. It's just something you come to accept as a part of life. You have to shrug it off or else you go insane.

And I hope you don't mean that by saying I'm some kind of extreme corner case that my points are somehow invalid, right? I mean, I don't mind acknowledging that my experiences may be wildly different from everyone else's, but I don't particularly like the implications that usually follow.

[Unbeliever]

If it doesn't matter then it doesn't matter.  That's tautological.  If I "cheat" and write down "best soup chef in the Realms" on my character sheet, and I never tell anyone, then it probably won't matter at all.

But, then why bother writing it down?  No, the only reason to have this discussion is that they are cheating on something that matters to at least someone at the table.  If someone cares, then you making their character creation decisions matter less is a harm. 

I spent an entire paragraph on this in my last post, but I'm going to reiterate it b/c it was apparently missed.  Saying that someone can totally make another player useless within the rules in no ways validates cheating.  The fact that god wizard = everyone else sucks, to the extent that is true, is a PROBLEM.  It is, arguably, the worst thing about 3E D&D.  So, saying that the effects of a cheater can be emulated by THE WORST THING IN D&D, THE BIGGEST ACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM, is, to put it mildly, damningly faint praise.

Finally, the rules are at least supposed to be balanced.  They're not, but an attempt is made that when you commit resources in one area you are making decisions that have weight and meaning.  Cheating empties that out.  The Enchanter, et al. you list is not the greatest swordsman in the land (presumably).  Just imagine if the Swordsman suddenly starts charming people with a DC of 85.  That, in the limit, is what cheating does.  It makes the stuff on the character sheet not matte.r 

The best argument you can state in favor of cheating is that it's fine if nobody cares.  If nobody cares, then nobody cares.  If it doesn't matter then it doesn't matter.  So, yeah, I guess if it has literally no effect on anything that anyone else puts any value on then sure, maybe it's not worth moral condemnation. 

That's a bizarrely specific case.  It posits a gaming table where people are sitting aroudn participating in things they care not one bit about for hours on end.  I, personally, have better things to do, and while I know gaming preferences differ I find it hard to imagine there are people who are playing a game where huge portions of it are of literally no interst to them.  Furthermore, there's this DM guy or gal who put some time into the encounter (in the broadest sense of the term), and we have to posit they don't care either. 

At any rate, I think anything that can be said has been said.

[Shadowknight12]

If it doesn't matter then it doesn't matter.  That's tautological.  If I "cheat" and write down "best soup chef in the Realms" on my character sheet, and I never tell anyone, then it probably won't matter at all.

But, then why bother writing it down?  No, the only reason to have this discussion is that they are cheating on something that matters to at least someone at the table. 

I spent an entire paragraph on this last point, with italics and everything, so I'm only going to repeat it once more.  Saying that someone can totally make another player useless within the rules in no ways validates cheating.  The fact that god wizard = everyone else sucks, to the extent that is true, is a PROBLEM.  It is, arguably, the worst thing about 3E D&D.  So, saying that the effects of a cheater can be emulated by THE WORST THING IN D&D, THE BIGGEST ACKNOWLEDGED PROBLEM, is, to put it mildly, damningly faint praise.

Finally, the rules are at least supposed to be balanced.  They're not, but an attempt is made that when you commit resources in one area you are making decisions that have weight and meaning.  Cheating empties that out.  The Enchanter, et al. you list is not the greatest swordsman in the land (presumably).  Just imagine if the Swordsman suddenly starts charming people with a DC of 85.  That, in the limit, is what cheating does.  It makes the stuff on the character sheet not matte.r 

The best argument you can state in favor of cheating is that it's fine if nobody cares.  If nobody cares, then nobody cares.  If it doesn't matter then it doesn't matter.  So, yeah, I guess if it has literally no effect on anything that anyone else puts any value on then sure, maybe it's not worth moral condemnation. 

That's a bizarrely specific case.  It posits a gaming table where people are sitting aroudn participating in things they care not one bit about for hours on end.  I, personally, have better things to do, and while I know gaming preferences differ I find it hard to imagine there are people who are playing a game where huge portions of it are of literally no interst to them.  Furthermore, there's this DM guy or gal who put some time into the encounter (in the broadest sense of the term), and we have to posit they don't care either. 

At any rate, I think anything that can be said has been said.

I acknowledge your points. If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, that's definitely true. As for the rest, if you think that a legit way of achieving what the cheater does is also bad, then that's perfectly rational and makes perfect sense. It is definitely logical and consistent.

Also, "not caring as much" doesn't mean "not caring at all." Just because there are people out there who don't care as much as you about certain issues within the game doesn't mean they don't care about the game at all. And let me assure you, they are not a bizarre case, they exist in quantity. However, for what many of them tell me, they avoid forums like this one because of previous bad experiences or a lack of interest in the things you find interesting. That doesn't mean they don't exist or don't play the same game. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

But like I said before, I think you're right. I can't really argue with anything you're saying here, other than what I mentioned in my previous paragraph.

[Nytemare3701]

Here, let's simplify this:

What game are you playing? D&D
By definition of "playing D&D" you are all agreeing to follow a particular set of rules, otherwise you are NO LONGER PLAYING THE STATED GAME. Houserules are modifications to the written rules. Cheating is OUTRIGHT IGNORING the agreed-upon rules, written or implied.

No matter how you slice it, the definition of CHEATING is the same.

Verb:   
Acting dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, esp. in a game or examination.

Emphasis mine. A player writing down +10k isn't cheating if it's agreed that it's ok to do so. If you catch a player cheating and choose to allow it, he still cheated, but you are choosing to alter the rules to allow it.

[Arturick]

I disagree with the implication that enjoying CharOp is an intrinsically competitive pursuit.  Shadowknight seems to be saying that, if I play an optimized character with other optimized characters, then my enjoyment is contingent on "trumping" the other players.  Generally, if the party is full of optimizers, then we should be focusing on different areas of expertise.  If the party consists of a GOD Wizard and a Druid-zilla before I make my character, then I should be looking at something like a Diplomancer Skillmonkey, Uber-Charger DPR, or other niche that hasn't been covered.  If my goal were to consistently outshine another character at their own area of expertise, then I would be a dick.

To go to a metaphor, because I'm stuck on those lately...

If I hold a pot luck dinner and ask everyone to bring their best dish, I have not initiated a competition.  If one person announces that they will make a homemade pizza, and another person decides to make a better pizza specifically to trump the first person out of some personal grudge, then the "trumper" is probably just a catty bitch.  The equivalent to a "munchkin" (as perceived by the denizens of this board) would be someone who shows up without a dish, orders a pizza, sticks the host of the party with the bill, and mocks the effort that the other guests put into their dishes.