In Catan, how to ensure nobody lies when monopoly card is played?

Question

I don't like that the rules assume players are honest. One time, we had a player that lied about not having the requested resource, but was caught in the next turn when he tried to buy a road with that resource. However, a cunning opponent can lie and get away with it.

What's the most practical way to handle this situation? How do you deal with it? I don't really like any of the solutions I can think of. Forcing everyone to show all of their cards, having a judge/game master who checks everyone's cards, relying on everyone's honesty, ... all of them are either impractical or unfair.

Answer 1

Count the cards in the supply

In Settlers of Catan you are always allowed to count the number of resources left in the supply decks. It is a perfectly legal move to count the deck before using the monopoly on a resource.

This also means that after you got the resources you can just check how many you have in your hand, and how many are left in the deck. If you are missing one, then someone is cheating.

In the 4th edition of the game there are 19 of each resource card.

Even if you think that counting the deck is out of the spirit of the game, having someone do it after a monopoly reveals no new information, and just controls for cheating.

Answer 2

In my group we always employ the 'Shenanigans' rule.

I have a couple of 'creative' players and though they may swear they are not cheating, they may be doing it inadvertently or from sheer ignorance (or they may be untruthful). Thus the birth of the 'Shenanigans' house rule set.

We add one rule to cover all cheating that is detrimental enough that if caught, the player would be at a severe disadvantage but not out of the game. For example: our shenanigan rule for cheating in Catan is as follows:

You start by discarding your entire hand, If you have no cards in hand you must remove a city, or a settlement, or a road and finally a development card. If you have none of these things to remove then you are simply removed from the game. Zero tolerance. If you are caught cheating three times you are removed from the game.

The way you call 'Shenanigans' is a lot like the classic card game of 'I Doubt it'. After a player takes an action, anyone can call 'Shenanigans'. If the accusation is accurate then the player who was accused is given the penalty as described above, if it is in-accurate, each player has three strikes; the first three times a player wrongly calls 'Shenanigans', there is no penalty. If they are wrong a fourth time however it is considered harassment and they are instead given the penalty.

This has proven to be equitable for all involved in our group because we agree to it at the outset.

In your case above, I would have called 'Shenanigans' when the player tried to build the road and they would have had to discard their entire hand.

If you have more creative players, you simply need to get more creative with your penalties. The important part here is that everyone understands at the outset how it works and that you make sure everyone can still have fun playing this way. Otherwise you may find yourself lacking a group of individuals to play with.

Answer 3

The way I handled this - as we played with a player who subscribes to the philosophy that "it's up to the other players to enforce the rules, and he is only 'using his resources' (the unknown being one)" - is we added writing down our resource transactions on paper face down (we use small notepads like you'd use in clue or yatzee)

like this:

Jim - roll - transactions(s)

7 - robber lost 1 brick

9 - 2 wheat, 1 sheep

3 - 1 brick, built house

5 - 1 ore, 1 wood

4 - monopoly played - 3 wood gain

Lisa

7 - discard 3, stole 1 brick

9 - 1 sheep, 1 brick

3 - 1 wood

5 - 1 wheat, 1 wood

4 - monopoly 0 wood lost

You get the idea. - Going with the examples above: If Jim 'challenges' Lisa (on wood) he would see she SHOULD have 2 wood. The "challenge" - he gets to look at the 'resource record' and compare her hand to the record. If he is correct Lisa must discard her entire hand and cannot draw any resources on her next turn. If Jim is incorrect (in this case he is not) he must discard his entire hand - right then - and may not draw resources on his next turn. (The reason we added the second part is to discourage the use of challenges as a method of seeing other player's hands. )

We explain "The Challenge and Resource Log" at the beginning of every game. It adds a little bit of time, but hardly any and it really adds another layer to the game. It doesn't necessarily STOP someone from cheating, but it does make the penalty a bit ickier than just a tsk-tsk from other players.

Answer 4

It could be possible in two ways:

1. Involve house rule of checking hand - each player is checked by the player on his right. Disadvantage of this method is then each player would have knowledge about one of his opponents hand.
2. After playing monopol, note down every usage of that resource - trade, drawing and spending. Then you will easily find a cheating behaviour in a few next turns.

Both these methods should then give the cheater some penalty, discouraging that player to cheat again.

Anyway, cheating is just killing such gaming - hope that you won't face many cheating players, arguing and giving penalty isn't a nice thing for the game and friendship atmosphere.

Answer 5

Things like "lying" and "bluffing" are really the rightful subject of house rules.

The rules of the original games don't encourage lying, but they don't always go out of their way to prevent it either, given their designers' knowledge that different players have different "standards."

In order to prevent such lying in home games, the players should agree on house rules to prevent/penalize it. One such rule could be that if someone is caught in a lie, s/he automatically loses the game, which is a bit harsh. A lesser measure is that if the person lied about not having the card, s/he should not be allowed to play because someone else actually should have that privilege.

Answer 6

In games I play with my friends, we just play with our resource cards revealed. (Development cards are still kept hidden, though.)

We're not exactly tournament-level players. Counting cards is something we're bad at, and we don't tend to find particularly fun, either - so just having everyone display the resources they have at all times effectively mimics everyone at the table having a perfect memory of what cards everyone gains and loses. This does mean that cards stolen via the robber are public knowledge, but honestly we've never noticed it making enough of a difference to matter.

I once played in a game where some players played with open hands while others insisted on playing with their cards hidden - and the winner was one of the open-information players; Secrecy just wasn't enough of an advantage to make a difference.

Answer 7

There's really no need for all these complicated solutions and rule-sets.

Unless, you are participating in an organized tournament -- in which case, you should notify the judges, because cheating would likely result in disqualification -- you do not need to put up with cheating. When playing a friendly game, there's no reason for anyone to lie and cheat. It throws off the balance of the game and makes it no fun for everyone. Isn't that why we play games to begin with?

I've played hundreds of hours of Catan (and other games) with my friends and if we ever discovered someone was cheating, we'd probably do our best to fairly penalize them for their misdeeds. If they continued to cheat then we'd simply refuse to play with that person and not invite them to future games.

Speaking for myself, if I discovered a cheater, depending on the circumstances, I would probably refuse to play as long as that person was playing.

If that's not an option, then yes, make up some house-rules to deal with the situation. If it is an ongoing problem then implement an immediate-lose rule which forces them out of the game.