REMINDER: Dice Cheating

This will be a temporary sticky.


All DMs who elect for players to roll directly in the IC, OOC, and Finding Players forums, instead of the special Dice Rolls forum accept that there is a certain amount of cheating possible, although this can be minimised by taking some steps.

The biggest step you can take should you wish to is requiring that posts with rolls are not edited. This might mean requesting that players do one post with a named roll, and a follow-up post with how that roll affects their actions.

So that players know your expectations regarding editing, remember to explain the restriction if you're implementing one, ideally in the same section where you indicate how they should roll.

Remember, double posting is specifically allowed in the Play-by-Post forums for the purposes of facilitating gameplay.

You can then quote their unedited post to ensure that the rolls aren't forged. You will see all rolls in the form of [rollX], starting with [roll0] (e.g. three rolls will be [roll0], [roll1], [roll2]).

If you are happy to allow editing, then you can't guarantee that the purpose of rolls haven't been changed after rolling, but you can still double check that all rolls are in the correct order (and aren't forged) by quoting the post (as above). One thing you can do here is require that all rolls are named in the roll itself (e.g. [roll=Save vs Madness]).

One thing you cannot directly check, though, is when a player has deleted posts with valid rolls. Though due to the number of active users we have, we do receive a remarkable number of reports from users who witness posts with valid rolls vanishing or threads bouncing up and down the forum view.

The thing is, dice rolls are stored in a completely different system to posts, and rolls aren't deleted when you delete a post. This means that it continues taking up server resources, and admins can directly check when you are deleting posts with valid rolls (including checking the logs for the dates and times this took place). We will take measures and step in to minimise harm to the server and the community.

If you experience any glitches, including double posting by accident, it is usually best to leave both posts in place and apologise to the DM, even if this means that you have three or more posts in a row. Remember, double posting is acceptable in this situation.