[Woofles]

My friend used to play games on Tabletop Simulator. It's a good way to play with friends who don't live near you, but beyond that it's definitely a worse experience than playing board games in person. I don't have any experience playing with people that aren't friends, so I can't speak to the cheating aspect of it.

[eterm]

I too play with friends but it's not outright cheating that's an issue, it's usually more innocent than that, just edge cases or forgetting about less common rules, especially in more complex games like Eclipse or through the ages. It's easy to forget a rule that only applies in selective situations but which can have far reaching consequences.

It's nice to relax and have the engine take care of it, and by pushing things you can actually learn odd interactions you wouldn't have discovered through reading the rule-book.

[Woofles]

I totally understand where you're coming from. I don't think I've played any games where it's made a large enough difference (in person or online).

I also love the idea that it will resolve things correctly right away instead of having to look at the rulebook every time you run into some crazy edge case or wording confusion.

[reificator]

Games on TTS can absolutely come with the rules built in via the exposed Lua interpreter. Mods can automate as much as they'd like.