frustratedDM's page

...but... it's so fun to have a bunch of zombies to do you're bidding......it's almost addictive... or perhaps i mean it's so corrupting....

Does it make sense for a necromancer specialized wizard to be good? I thought. I couldn't see anything in the PHB, maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I was always under the impression that undead were inherently evil, and even say "command[ing] undead" to do good things is an evil act.

After another session and even more clues that he's cheating, I've decided to talk to my friend about his cheating. I have a list of 8 actions or things he has said which alone would just be a coincidence, but with 8 of them, it can only be cheating.

I thought they would be done with the module by now, but he spent the whole session searching for things that were not there because I've moved/removed them. This is the 3rd or 4th session spent searching. The whole time they've been a rope climb away from fighting the end bad guy.

I know he will deny it, and probably even become upset that I don't believe him. But maybe it will at least get him to stop. We'll see how it goes. Thanks everyone for the advice and suggestions!

Cool, Thanks a lot for the insight everyone. I'll make sure to emphasize to the player that just because he's evil, it doesn't make him adversarial to the rest of the party. And I might have detect evil work as suggested, unless the character goes down a path that leads him to be beyond redemption.

I don't, with out good reason, usually let players create evil characters when playing in my game, as I feel going into the game with an evil character is usually just a sort of social act of rebellion that exists outside the game, among other reason...

I have a player who's character is neutral on the good/evil axis who's recent experiences we both agreed would have a big effect on the character's view points and such. So I left it up to him to decide how his character would interpret things, if he would pick up the cause to fight against evil, or be lured towards evil. He felt his character would drift towards evil, so we went with that.

I'm not sure what I may have gotten myself into, though. A simple detect evil spell would reveal that the character is evil to the rest of the party, and then I'm not sure what the reaction would be.

Basically my main concern is that this plays out in a way that is still fun for everyone, as these kinds of things usually turned into disaster back when we were... less mature.

Am I just setting my campaign up for disaster at this point? If you guys have any experiences, advice, or even links to articles about this, I'd appreciate what ever you'd like to share!

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. It's still a tough call about what to do. I asked another player about the suspected cheaters actions, and he didn't mention that he thought the player was acting out of the ordinary, and then I expressed my concern that our friend may be reading the module. And he said the only way to prove it is to set up a trap.

I know my friend would probably deny it to the grave, not that he's generally a tricky or deceptive person, I just think he doesn't like others to think negatively of him, and generally he's a good guy anyway. So if I talk to him about it, I know he'll deny it, but maybe it will also get him to stop. Or maybe it'll have the reverse effect and just have him be more careful about it.

The module is almost finished anyway, just 2 combats and no more secrets left, so planning any kind of traps for proof won't really work. I think the best thing for now is to let them finish this module. Looking at the next module I'll take them through, Masks of the Living God, it looks like it's very heavy in the roleplaying aspect of things, so cheating might not be so helpful, we'll see... I'll make sure to change around proper nouns and such as well. I'd hate to take credit away from the author, but might try telling them it's my own adventure, so he won't go looking for the module.

I run an online game using voice chat and a game table. I suspect one of my players, a good friend of mine, of cheating. Specifically I think he figured out which module I'm running them through and has downloaded it.

The past few sessions he's made some very specific guesses and discoveries that lead me to believe that he is cheating.

-Wanting to go back to search a room 2 more times after already thoroughly searching it. I decided to cut out the secret panels in that room to avoid the encounter they triggered and I put the magic items in them else where in the module, so they never found the panels because they didn't exist.

-Deciding that the main monster they're hunting is residing down from a ledge they walked out on. By itself it's not a stretch because it's a good clue, but then he correctly decides there must be a secret passage it travels through to get in and out of the lair, since the ledge is high up. Not too much of a stretch either, but until the past few sessions the group has only slowly been putting things together. And then the FIRST place he searches for a secret door is the exact spot that the module has the passage located. I had moved it though, and he seemed pretty confused when he didn't find anything there.

There are a few other things he's picked up on just a little too quickly as well. This kind of thing is hard to prove, but it's to the extent that I would be surprised if he wasn't cheating.

I used to be hesitant about running modules, while we grew up playing 1st and 2nd edition, for this reason, among some others, but we're much older now and I like running modules now because it takes a lot less time to prepare, and you get introduced to some cool things you might not have thought of on your own.

This module is almost done, so there's not much else I can do to thwart this cheating. For the next modules I'm planning I've thought about changing names of NPCs and locations and such, but it might get a little more problematic if player handouts are involved or not, plus I could slip up and read something using original names. Also I thought about altering a lot of things in the module, but this would take time I'm not sure I want to take.

Anyways, I'm open to advice. More specifically about this kind of cheating, and not the kind involving dice fudging and bad math, which is more common. Our online game table takes removes the ability to cheat that way.