[UA] Powergamer != Munchkin

[Tim Toner]

Rayburn, Russell E. wrote:

>Well said!
>
>The idea that improving one's character to be competent is somehow wrong seems... off.
>
>this line from Tim:
>"They find a way to make a character so effin' dreadful that 
>the minute he steps on the field of combat, it's already resolved. "
>
>Struck me as particularly off.  That sentiment is in 'The Art of War'... but there's no negative connotation.  Getting others to surrender without a fight is seen as a good thing, and while reason and intellect can change hearts and minds they can only go so far.  Sometimes you need a solution to the gordian knot.
>
>Yes, the story the GM is trying to tell is important... but I hope the players are more than NPC's, acting only at the GM's whim.  For the players to be, well, players they have to be able to take their own actions.  
>
>That's not possible if the players skills are maxed out on 'write angsty poetry'.  
>  
>
Methinks the powergamers doth protest too much. 

There is indeed a difference between munchkins and powergamers, but I 
don't agree that it's the winning vs. not winning dialectic that's 
espoused.  Munchkins will go to absurd lengths to win, and a bad 
powergamer will bend the rules to such a degree that, while it's legal, 
it sucks the fun right out of the setting.

Thanks for missing the point, which was not, "The GM's ideas are good, 
and the players' ideas suck," but rather, "Everyone has an equal stake 
at the table", and someone who engineers a character who automagically 
solves every problem, even those 'nut and bolt' problems that really 
aren't fixed with a 'hammer' solution is taking more than his fair 
share.  A bad powergamer will apply the 'hammer', over and over, because 
that's what he's built his character around, and he never really lets 
the other players try out their wrench sets, and even whines when all 
the problems seem to be 'nut and bolt' (when, in fact, there's a good 
balance, but since everything isn't catered to the whims of the 
powergamer, something must be wrong with the game).

There's nothing inherently wrong with someone who employs careful 
strategies in creating a character, but when every one of your fighters 
takes 'longsword' because that's the flavor of most magical swords, when 
he always seems to have stats at a certain level to maximize benefits 
and minimize disadvantages without ever varying, when he always takes 
the same bennies (eidetic memory being a powergamer favorite) and flaws 
(something that would NEVER come up in a standard game session, unless 
the GM wanted to screw the players, at which point "it's all about 
screwing the players!"), that's a problem.  In fact, it doesn't have to 
happen every time--just often enough for someone to say, "Why would you 
have a Meats of 15?  At 14 you get the wound point bump, and at 16 you 
get the Fortitude add--15 gets you nada."  Actually, that exact 
conversation occured during the prelim of a Champions game, with the 
conversation resolving with, "I don't know why ANYONE would have that 
stat at that level."  Which intrigued me.  I pulled out my various books 
and modules that had pregenerated characters, and started flipping, and 
discovered, indeed, NO ONE EVER had THAT stat at THAT level.  I sat back 
and considered the implications of that in the game universe, that 
everyone seemed clumped along certain advantageous points, and that 
there was no true bell curve there.  It was a little unsettling.  Now an 
apologist will say, "Well, that's a quirk of the game mechanics," but I 
don't think that's a terribly valid rationale.

I'll give you another example, one that never saw the light of day.  I 
had a rather novel game concept where characters were built around the 
idea of the theory of multiple intelligences, that a 'character sheet' 
was in fact a government assessment of your capabilities according to 
this metric.  While the idea that you can quantify intelligences at 
specific levels is a little daft, the idea that human beings possess 
these discrete types of intelligence is widely accepted (though not 
necessarily definitive).  The problem with the system is the problem 
with our society, specifically our school system--it highly values two 
of the seven types of intelligence, and some of the others to a lesser 
degree, and one or two not at all.  One of them, Rhythmic Intelligence, 
was the hardest sell.  It was the Comeliness of the system, a place 
where everyone could steal points during character generation to 
compensate other areas.  The only people who would indulge it were 
people who wanted to play musicians, and, given that it was a 
superheroes game, that wasn't terribly likely.  I found myself staring 
at that stat, imagining a world where all the super-powered people had 
tin ears and bad dance moves.  I considered placing a minimum threshhold 
on RI (as I came to call it), but then suddenly everyone would have 
EXACTLY that minimum, and no more.  The sad thing was that in our world, 
people have quite high RI that is either never sufficiently explored or 
goes ignored in the buzz of life.  It's useful for little things, like 
remembering (it's why everyone who watched SchoolHouse Rock can recite 
the Preamble to the Constitution at will), that end up being essential 
things.  But in a roleplaying game, it was useless.  And pretty much for 
that reason, and that reason alone, I abandoned the idea.  I wanted to 
make something that mimicked the real world, and no player would create 
a character that mimicked a real world person.

And really, I understand Powergamers, because I'm playing one right now 
in a campaign that Greg and I are in.  I took the perfect storm of 
Class, Race, and Heroic Type to max out my feats and hit points.  I took 
a weapon that does hella damage, and a shitload of skill points 
scattered here and there so that I'm pretty much the Leatherman Deluxe 
of 'nut and bolt' vs. 'nail' problems.  Why did I do that?  Because when 
the characters were created, I couldn't attend.  They needed something 
that filled a niche--the Whuppa, as Greg has coined.  And if they needed 
a Whuppa, then by gum, I was going to be the best damn Whuppa on earth.  
And pretty much when I close in hand to hand, the other players are 
taken aback by my farm-combine-like actions against foes.  But that 
being said, once he was generated, the Powergamer stuff was left at the 
starting line.  There are times when the group goes foraging (because 
basic survival in the game is fairly critical), and it's become clear 
that, skill-point-wise, I'm the best hunter in the group, but I don't go 
all the time, because sometimes it doesn't make sense for me to go.  
There are times in combat where it would be more advantageous for me to 
be in one square over another, but since I'm the closest to a fallen 
comrade, I'm occupying the space right next to him so that I can aid him 
the first chance I get.  He started out his existence as a min-max 
machine, but he's played as a human being, warts and all.  If you're 
playing this sort of Powergamer, then I'm really not berating you.  If, 
instead, you dress down a fellow player for commiting an action that is 
totally within his character, but doesn't maximize the benefits that the 
rules allow (such as not carefully plotting the area of effect of a 
blast-type spell, even though the idea of stopping in combat, and 
whipping out a surveyor kit to guarantee the exact correct ranging is a 
little daft), then you're probably not letting everyone have their equal 
share of fun.



And, yeah, I'm 5/6th of an engineer, so I know of what I speak in that 
regard.

tt

>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ua-bounces at lists.unknown-armies.com
>[mailto:ua-bounces at lists.unknown-armies.com]On Behalf Of Donald
>Sent: Friday, July 22, 2005 5:32 PM
>To: ua at lists.unknown-armies.com
>Subject: [UA] Powergamer != Munchkin
>
><snip>
>Anyway, just trying to get you to go easier on those of with engineering backgrounds.
></snip>
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