that's the problem. there's practically no other alternative if you want the variety reddit has. Hackernews is a great solid community, however it's only one community.
I actually quite love the Hackernews UI and wish that there was an implementation/self hostable package of it that could be expanded to cover other topics ala Subreddits. But alas, I'm not much of a coder.
It really depends on the mod. The one you describe here I would personally consider cheating if there was a reason for the limitation in the first place. If it saves you multiple dangerous trips for instance.
Cheating is "act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage."
You're not being dishonest or unfair when you mod or (use a) cheat in a single player game, you're free to do as you please, however if other players are involved, there are categories of mods that would fit that description.