by Clyde Starr

Created on: April 08, 2009

Ah, cheaters. You see them in every game, from the Monopoly player who steals from the bank, to the card shark who deals from a stacked deck. Cheaters do it for various different reasons, but underlying them all are just a couple:

1. They think that winning games validates them as a person. If they don't win, by any means, or show that they are better than everyone else there, they feel that they are failures.

2. There is money involved, and winning means a financial gain, same thing goes for prizes and notariety. To win is to see a net benefit.

3. The challenge of doing so and not getting caught. Alot of cheaters devise new and interesting ways to cheat just for the self-knowledge that they were smart enough to pull something over on someone else.

The reasons behind cheating aside, there is really only a few things you can do to stop cheating at your table. First, you must identify what kind of cheating is going on:

1. Cribbing numbers: These are the cheats that make random notations on their D&D Character Sheets and Notes in order to gain an advantage when they think the DM is not monitoring the specifics of the game. They do this by several different methods, first, they try to get the DM to use source material that the DM doesn't own and is not familiar with. Second, when they take their characters home, they add extra gold and experience to their characters, along with items that they didn't pay for or find Third, they purposely mis-add their bonuses on their sheet, so that they have much higher modifiers to individual actions that they normally would, giving them an advantage.

Each of these methods can be handled by just a couple of quick "House Rules." First, Don't allow any source material that you don't personally own or think fits well within your game world. My own rule used to be "Just the Core Rules" and currently it's 1. No books can be used that I don't personally own and approve prior to their use. and 2. If a sourcebook in a set comes out to aid a specific character race or class, the entire set of those books must be out, and owned by me before I will even consider allowing them in my game. (ie: If there's a book that enhances Elves out, the books for dwarves, halflings, dragonborn, etc.. have to be out, at least including all the races that are currently allowed in my game) 3. Audit the character sheets. I like to keep a personal copy of their sheets on my laptop, and update it after every adventure. This is especially easy if you have the

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