How I dealt with cheating at the table

0:05 for the fun.

0:12 Hey everybody. Uh I don't know what prompted me to do this video. I was just thinking about a few things and something just popped into my brain. Uh and this is more of as you yes you know like you're playing role playing games and the aspect of people cheating and and how do you do with that you know how do you handle uh you know somebody maybe fibbing a dice roll or whatever you know there's a lot of and I'm I'm not I don't want to dive too deep into this uh I don't want this to be another like half hour long video I want this to be relatively quick I do remember um a little bit of a story time uh I remember when me and my friends would get together and we play poker a lot and we did this like before the big poker boom.

1:00 I can actually remember way back in the day we used to play with the really cheap plastic uh poker chips. We used to like cash in and cash out at the end of the night. Uh, and I remember it was always like dealer's choice as far as um what we played. And so it was like is you going to play Hannah Stud? And then the person that that dealt got to pick the game and then you just played it. And and I think that's pretty normal. I think that was pretty normal. Uh I remember um a few times people would say uh play hold or whatever. And we always were like h you know I don't really like this. Uh, and it was before, you know, the real poker boom happened, you know, with Chris Money Maker and stuff like that. But after that happened, uh, you know, and we kind of saw just how, um, pure like Texas Holdm was. I mean, there's a reason why it's it's the most popular uh, uh, type of poker that's out there.

1:59 Um, so I I got it right. I and and we started playing a lot of it. And when we were playing, we would say, "Okay, every race starts with, you know, a hundred bucks in chips or whatever and pay five bucks and then that's and then we play like a tournament and, you know, like eight people sit down and and like that's $40, you know, and and the first place person would get 30 bucks and the second place person we get 10." And the nice thing about it was is that those tournaments never really lasted a long time. we could get through one in a half hour to 45 minutes. So, it was pretty regular having people over to the pl my my apartment was kind of the place where we did this. I had a really really big one-bedroom apartment uh that I didn't really use the living room for anything uh because I you know I did everything in my bedroom as far as like that was like where my my TV was that I normally watch TV. That was where my computer was where I would play World of Warcraft. I mean this is you know whatever how many years ago this is. This is well I mean it be before I met my wife so more than 20 years ago. Uh anyway the whole point is is that um so there was other things to do. So the game would be done uh and I had a balcony so people would go out there and and if if they were a smoker or something they go out there and have a cigarette. Um, also the whole thing was is that that we'd go out there for, you know, you go out there and you if it was nice out, you could sit out there and drink a beer and and and chill and and talk about like waiting for that game to be done so you could play another game. The whole point is that

3:32 uh why I'm telling you this is that after we had been playing poker pretty regularly like once or twice a week for a couple of months uh my friend Shad as we sat down said out loud he said we all can agree right that if we ever catch because we were all friends right I mean it was like five to eight of us sitting down to play and like good friends people that we we went out to the bar and did things and and whatever. Um, we're on a softball team together, we're on a fantasy football league together, all those stuff. And and he said, "We're all in agreement, right, that if we ever catch anybody cheating that we'll kill that person and and bury them out in a field somewhere." And it was like, haha.

4:19 But there was also a a hint of truth to it. Like, we're getting together as friends to play this game. And like if you were going to try to cheat us and it wasn't a lot of money, right? But if you're still going to try to cheat us out of that money, then you know what kind of [ __ ] [ __ ] are you? Pardon my French. And for the most part, you know, we play poker all the time. There was some questionable behavior a couple of times, but there was one time where somebody out and out totally cheated. And I'm not going to go into that story, you know, but um and then we just we didn't kill the person and leave them in the field somewhere. Uh but they were never invited back to poker again. Uh that was like was just one of those things and um yeah, and I think they denied it that that they didn't do it, but I mean it was like one of those things where everybody at the table saw it.

5:18 We all agreed it happened. And so that's a situation where cheating happened that was like serious cuz there's money on the line and there's you're trusting everybody to, you know, just be in that situation and and be honest and and be there for the fun, right? I mean, you can play poker for fun, but you got to have just a little bit of money on it for it to actually be fun. It's just my experience. Um, so how does that like reflect now? is the a lot of the same people that would play poker are the same people that play D and D. And I have talked about a lot of these different things like aspects before and in in previous videos and and I don't know where they are or you can even track them down. Um, but you know, the biggest part of cheating that I've ever really experienced or I've ever really known is is one when somebody always has that perfect spell prepared and memorized uh and and is ready to go, you know, like just for, you know, whatever reason like uh you you you took dispel snake charm and uh you happen to be ambushed by uh followers of of the serpent god set who have a bunch of boa constrictors that they leash and oh I've got snake charm I'm going to Nobody takes snake charm

6:50 you didn't you didn't memorize snake charm this is like this is an ambush you didn't know you were you know stuff like that um things where they they always seem to have that extra healing potion when they definitely need it. Oh, yeah. No, I got a potion of levitation. No, I got a Where did you get that? Where did you get that? And and then the the one that that's the most prevalent of all things is in my experience is is dice rolling, right? And it's it's when somebody rolls a dieice and they consistently hit like that number 17. 17. The most perfect number to show that I did well enough to succeed, but uh not so good that you assume that I am fabricating my results in some way. And and it's always been like, oh, you know, cuz I'm I'm rolling a die that Yeah. And I and I I'm mentioning this because there's there's one fella that I game with still who like always seems to have like the guy that when he's rolling up his stats when he's making a new character like he's always you know got an 18, a 17, a 15, a 14, and a 12, you know, and it's just like, you know, like oh my gosh, you know, it's like yet another avatar has descended from the heavens to to be your character. Um, you know, always seems to roll max hit points. Uh, always seems to uh uh like I said, you know, like you

8:21 know, you'll he'll roll poorly for like things that don't really matter. Like, oh, I'll try to like, you know, see if like I can open the back door of the tavern to see if I can get in that way. Oh, you can't. Oh, how unfortunate for me. But when it comes down to, oh, you know, it's like they cast, you know, they cast whole person on your character. Go ahead and make a saving throw. And then they roll and and and they they purposely have gone out to buy like a dark purple dice set with a with a dark blue numbers on it. So like there's no way anybody can read it from afar. And he like rolls and oh 18 woo you know like you know like thank goodness you know just one of those things. And I remember this particular player, I remember um a friend of mine actually like showed me at the same table like he decided to keep track of all of their uh dice rolls for like two or three sessions in a row. And man oh man, I mean the guy had an average dice roll on a 20-sided of like 14, you know, over like three sessions. I mean, basically a statistical possibility, but a statistical impossibility, if you will.

9:33 And so, how do you deal with that? I don't know. I don't know what the best way to deal with that is. I can tell you how I dealt with it. Uh, and I felt this is pretty ingenious. So, the way I dealt with it is this.

9:49 You probably seen this. I apologize. You probably seen this in the back background a few times. This is an ice tower I got. Uh I bought this I think it was at uh BGGcon. Uh there was a there was a booth that they had this and uh you know it's 3D printed and they painted it and it's cool. But here's the point. It's got this big giant top on the bottom right here. And I bought one of these and like you can kind of see in the background uh right there. There's another dice tower there. But I bought two of these and the guy that that we I have the problem with like I basically have this and it's set up to roll right into a dice tray the way that I I've made it. So like on the table there's a dice tray that this rolls straight into uh and so that like the dice don't go flying and I put it between myself him and uh another player. And what happens is every time he rolls a dieice, it rolls in here and it spits out into the tray. And my buddy, who isn't the one that always seems to get that, you know, 17 when he needs it, uh, is like a straight shooter and he will always look at the dice and he'll always just look to see what he rolled. And wouldn't you know it, as soon as I got this dice tower and as soon as I set this up, so both of them roll in the same spot into the same into the same

11:21 tray and they're looking at those dice, uh, wouldn't you know it, uh, man, his averages, uh, just went down. So, that's the way I solved it. I was able to do that in a way that like wouldn't make it so I was, you know, calling him out in front of everybody. Uh, and I did it in a way that uh allowed like him to like I don't know I guess not save face but just basically avoid us because these are guys I've been playing games with for decades and but that cured it uh because he always knew there was going to be an eye looking at his role. And the nice thing is is that he changed as a player. He used to be a player that he needed to succeed. Like that was the way that he had fun. He had to succeed for his character for him to have a good time. If he didn't do the most damage, he felt he didn't have a good time. If he didn't find the trap, he didn't have a good time. If he didn't get the most treasure, he didn't have a good time.

12:25 But what happened was is because he had to start embracing the bad, like embracing bad luck, embracing poor roles, acting out bad things that happened to his characters. Um, he really really started to shine, especially also we started playing a lot of Call Cthulhu as well, which is is much more of a RO playing game instead of an RL playing game. And so when that happened, all of a sudden he started really having fun with his failures and his successes, too. And now I'm almost sure I could get rid of that dice tower and let him roll his own dice in his own little tray and and everything would be fine because he's he's he's grown to that. But um I don't know. The dice tower looks cool, so I'm going to keep it. Anyway, that's how I did it. That's how I cured somebody cheating. if you had somebody you knew that was like and and again I don't really consider it cheating. I I guess as I should say I mean I've always been the mindset of like if you need to do X Y and Z to have fun playing this you should do it as long as it isn't ruining somebody else's fun. And this walks that line, right? If you have that one character who's always winning, always succeeding, always doing the best. Um and that's something maybe I should touch on. If you have that one character out of all the characters that are playing that's just noticeably better than all the rest of them, you start getting that kind of mentality of like, well, why am I even here? Why am I

13:55 even bothering? Just let let the avatar, you know, take care of everything and I'll just pick up the scraps. And that's obviously not the situation you want to have. So having one player always succeed and never really having any kind of failures walks the line of like you know hey you're actually making other people not have fun but it isn't like a blatant like stealing the fun rather some off somebody else's plate and putting it on yours. So but anyway that's how I solved it. If you had issues with people maybe not being completely truthful when it comes to uh playing the game um let me know let me know how that worked in the comments. below. How did you fix it? Love to hear it. Uh anyway, that was it. I'm going to try to do a a review of a book here later this week that I just finished reading. I got to put my thoughts together on that one. So, maybe you'll get two videos this week. All right, take care of yourself. Uh we'll talk soon.