In the Multiverser game I’m running, one of my players is getting bored. He’s worked his way successfully through the main plot arc, and is getting a little tired of the world he’s in. The obvious solution to that is to kill him off, especially since I’m fairly confident that he’s going to enjoy his next world. Unfortunately, no matter what I throw at him, he seems to rise to the challenge and escape unscathed. The dice aren’t doing me any favors either, no matter how much I pray for a botch.

So, I have a couple different options. I can keep trying to find new things for him to do in this world, or I can rig a couple rolls and send him on to his next adventure. This situation got me thinking about when it’s okay for a GM to cheat and what, for that matter, is really “cheating.”

Once, when I was a kid, I discovered that, no matter how many games I played, I couldn’t win at solitaire. Since I was getting bored with losing constantly, I changed the rules, letting myself reshuffle the deck once (and only once) if I needed to. When my baby-sitter saw what I was doing, she threatened to take the cards away from me if I couldn’t play without cheating. In my mind, that was horribly unfair, since I wasn’t hurting anybody. All I did was make up rules for a new game, one I had a chance of winning occasionally. Had I decided to make up new rules in the middle of a game of Monopoly, then she’d be justified in calling me a cheater. I gave this little anecdote to bring up the point that one person’s definition of cheating may differ from another’s. In my opinion, cheating is breaking agreed-upon rules, usually to hurt somebody else or help yourself win the game.

So, when a GM considers whether or not to fudge a die roll or two ignore something listed in the rulebook, the first thing to consider is why you’re doing it. If you’re trying to “beat” the players, then I’d say it is cheating and should be avoided. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to make things more enjoyable for the players, then I’m not sure I’d call it cheating.

The second thing that’s important is the idea of “agreed-upon rules.” In a game that pits the players against the GM, the rules are needed for fairness. If the GM can arbitrarily decide that no, you don’t hit his dragon, even when you did, there’s no way to succeed. Because of that, players expect that a GM won’t tamper with those rolls. However, that’s not the only kind of game there is. If your group is more concerned with telling a good story, the rules might not be so important.

Either way, the important thing is, what do the players expect, what would make the game more enjoyable for them, and are you violating their trust if you break those rules? For those people who love to argue with the GM and say, “But the book says…” I’d like to point out that lots of rulebooks give the GM some liberty to ignore any rules that they don’t like or that get in the way of having a good time. In Hunter: The Reckoning, the Storyteller is told flat-out that they can discard any rules that hurt the game rather than helping it.

Coming back to the problem I’m having in my game, everything I’ve written so far would lead you to believe that yes, I am going to fudge some rolls if necessary to move this player on. However, that’s not the case. He and I have had conversations about gaming where he’s made it pretty clear that he thinks it’s unfair for the GM to fix rolls, no matter what the reasons, and that he wouldn’t want me stacking the odds, even if it were in his favor. So, to be fair to this player, I’m trying to do the next best thing. Instead of guaranteeing his death by fixing the rolls, I’ll keep throwing challenges at him that get progressively more difficult. Okay, fine, you beat the pirates and the sea monster. Here, play with this dragon for a while. Oh, you beat the dragon, too? Okay, that was the *baby* dragon, and mommy and daddy really aren’t happy.

The thing I need to remember is that I’m not doing this to be malicious or to beat him but to give him the opportunity to move on to a situation where he’ll enjoy himself. If I’m doing it to “win,” then it becomes just another way to cheat. The real question, I guess, isn’t whether you fudge the rolls or let the dice fall where they may. It’s whether or not you try to make the game fun for your players and treat them the way you’d want to be treated if you were on that side of the table.