Honor System

Why my cards were dual-sided. And the primary reason for this was to try to eliminate cheating. The numbers on the resource side are large enough to read from the opposite side of the table.

But do you know how "HARD" it is to get players to show their "points"?!

I think one (1) player even cheated saying she had 14 points to win the game - and then she did not reveal the points scored by her hand.

My guess: she didn't have 14 points to win. It's highly unlikely that the three (3) cards, that can score at most 5 points each, means she would have had to have two 5 point cards and one 4 point card to win...

So you better believe people DO cheat when they play.

Anything that is HIDDEN should only lead to partial information. Otherwise it could (and will) lead to abuse.

My opinion would be to openly roll all dice and take actions from the pool.

Can you explain WHY you would want the results of the rolls to hidden from the other players?

Update: The other possibility instead of "rolling" for actions, just let players choose what actions they want to take on their turn.

In one way this is more realistic than force randomness decide what you can and cannot do on your turn. People may be turned off that luck plays a part in deciding what you can do - as opposed to choice and strategy...

One thing for certain - you won't be able to blame LUCK as the reason why you lost ("All I needed was one 'X' roll ...") From what I understand, from the various designers here, they all dislike those type of outcomes/mechanics.

I don't think that hiding all dice would be the way to go since it does seem ripe for abuse and may lead to a lot of argueing instead of playing the game.

I think these kind of mechanics that allow lying work better when putting cards or chips face down. Maybe this could be one of the elements. With a board, chips might be better even.

One of the actions a player can do in their turn could be a choice of actions, each choice having a chip tied to the choice that you can put down on the table. After the chip is used it returns to your hand the next turn to be used again.

I don't know what kind of game you are designing it for, but let's say its a conquest game with all players having their own faction.
Green player needs help to not lose a territory to Blue player, so asks Red Player for support.

Red player puts a chip down in the mentioned Green territory and pledges their support. It is Red player's decision when to turn the chip around, but they MUST turn it around at the start of their next turn.

The chip's other side could be empty, meaning it was a lie.
But it can also show +1 soldier, +3 soldiers, +1 tank or whatever units the game uses that players can play from their pool thats ready for deployment.

However if the chip has a blue sky background it could mean support, while a burning flames background could mean treason, that you use the "reinforcements" to capture the territory for yourself.

If Red player pledges +3 soldiers support but only has 1 available, just 1 would be send. If he has nothing, nothing would be send.
It could be possible that Red Player did have 3 soldiers available when he made the promise but lost it due to other events. Wether Green player still trusts Red player after that is up to them.

And these chips could also be used to pledge resources to other players. Like gold, stone or whatever the game uses. Might even allow for some trade between players.

Blue player could have lots of gold available and thus able to buy lots of soldiers while Yellow player could have lots of food and stone but not much gold.
They could make an agreement where Yellow player pledges food or stone every turn to Blue player, while Blue player in turn sends soldiers to protect Yellow player from attacks, or may supply Yellow player with gold so he can train his own soldiers.
Which would also be a neat strategy choice for Blue: Keeping Yellow safe with his own blue soldiers would make Blue player the dominant force in their alliance. While giving him gold to train his own troops would make it more of an equal alliance. Both options have benefits and risks.

Anyways, I really think tokens like this could help a lot. Would probably need player screens though where they can keep their tokens and resources behind. Does not need to be a big screen, could be something like Cyclades uses.

Just a quick idea:

-If the values on the dice are weighted such as (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3), there could be some favorable odds instead of equally likely results.

What you could do is have the player rolling the dice (his turn) and wait until all the OTHER players select their die. Making the player get the last dice to select from.

This could be quirky, fun idea. It would add a lot of tension, since people will no doubt be messing with your plans on your turn.

The other idea I had, is that you could vary the probabilities on each die such that some are more likely for one thing, others another thing, etc. Like the RED die has a lot of 3s (3x) and the GREEN die has a lot of 1s (3x), etc.

The problem is what happens when you catch someone? Does the game end? Because you can't be certain how many times a "habitual" cheater has actually cheated during a game.

And what if they reply: "I only cheated on this turn, and you caught me."

Do you believe them? In my opinion the whole game experience gets ruined and most likely you will not want to play another game (any game) with them.

@Soulfinger: Please don't tell me you married her?! Just a joke! LOL :P

Out of all of my female friends, I only married one, whom I generally refer to as my wife. I'm not cagey in that way. This is a mutual friend of my wife and me, and the wife of one of my best friends.

We had a good laugh about it, expressed our attitudes about how a friendly game works, and that was that. I don't care how much people cheat, because I always win. Everyone teams up against me just to have a chance. It's just a game though, so I still trust her with my life and that of my children. Your equation of shrewdness and amorality is way off-base. This obviously isn't the place for me to psychoanalyze my friend, but to keep it simple, you jumped to a lot of conclusions based on what equates to cultural differences. Cheating at a board game isn't a byproduct of being a sociopath.

Back when I used to run a 100+ player LARP, it worked out that about 10% of the players cheated. Many, like you, considered themselves not religious but moral. In most cases, the players didn't have an adequate sense of control or authority in their everyday lives. A couple were predatory narcissists. Sometimes, they were just flat out dumb or immature and gave in to childish impulses. The more transparent the attempt, the more likely it was that the player felt very clever. In almost every case, the objective was validation. Winning gave a sense of self, something we called "Prince of the City, Fry Cook at McDonalds." In-game accomplishments easily dwarfed some players' real lives. It was a problem straight out of a Jack Chick pamphlet.

Yeah, that's why I am a fan of non-disclosure agreements and such. They feel unnecessary until you get blindsided. It's not as though you or I are actually going to pursue legal action, but it creates a gentleman's agreement that lends a certain sense of gravity to what they are doing. Really, the people most likely to steal IP respect legality since they rarely understand how any of it actually works in practice. I feel I can rely on that.

Just last week, I found a few chapters of one of my unpublished manuscripts on Scribd. Turns out a friend I'd asked to review it had accidentally posted it (or one of his kids did, I imagine, since it's a quid pro quo site and several of his files were unexpectedly up there). I'm shopping that novel to agents soon, so the last thing I want is for it to be online. Frankly, my biggest concern is just that somebody is going to beat me to the title, because I can't believe it isn't already in use. I'd hate to find someone using it for their Twilight fan fiction. I've had a business name stolen out from under me by no less than Electronic Arts, or rather a legal contractor hired by them, so I take this stuff more seriously than most.

It's hard to protect things nowadays. One article that I wrote was copied verbatim on someone's website without any attribution, and this was from a print magazine, so it wasn't a simple cut-and-paste. I'd sold all rights, so it was more flattering, I suppose, but it would have been less so if there had been a single penny left for me to wring from it. I have kids to feed!

Still, having playtesters cheat is a bonus in my eyes. They are there to break the game, after all.

Squinshee,

Several games use this mechanic including Dark Moon in which one (or more members of your ship's crew is infected) while the others are not. During the course of the game, those infected are trying to destroy the ship while those unaffected are doing their best to keep everything up-and-running. You keep your rolls secret, so you don't know who's really sabotaging your efforts and who is simply suffering from bad rolls.

Cheers,
Joe

Forgive me for my limited knowledge of english. Exploiting is indeed the better word. Although some would still consider it cheating in spirit of the game. I also love it to combine it with bluffing.