"Power gamer" hate?

[Guizonde]

Character growth and not needing to know everything go hand in hand. Because you can start a game with a basic idea (the 1000' view of the setting) and iteratively expand your knowledge in play, unless you're tied to a very specific, inflexible character. I usually only have broad brush-strokes of a character when I begin--the rest comes out in play. Not even that it's changing, but that I'm discovering how this person was all along as they talk to me through play.

i re-learned that lesson with my inquisitor. my knowledge of pathfinder (and golarion) extended to the slums of riddle-port, and i'm being a bit generous here. my dm asked for an all-divine caster party, so i rolled up the inquisitor in the most stereotypical riddle-port "borderline scumbag" style i could. hell, the team only figured out after 3 sessions i wasn't a duellist or a rogue but a full-blown inquisitor used to going undercover.

the dm and i worked things out to center the beginning of the campaign in riddle-port, and off we went. let's just say that a half-drow riddle-porter is seen slightly worse than the plague outside. i had fun roleplaying that, and i learned enough about golarion to roll up a credible new character on my own after a year. the inquisitor, meanwhile, is becoming less of a cocky scumbag (to fit in better. he's still cocky) and is starting to learn that the world outside his city is both nicer and much worse than he could ever imagine.

for my rogue trader character, it was a bit easier. i'm a massive 40k nerd, so i'm willingly separating what i know to what an ex-stormtrooper would. poor raymond is finding out the hard way why you don't screw around with chaos and psykers. (40 corruption points gained in 4 sessions. i'm a bit miffed about that, but it's raymond's fault he's buddy with a very powerful psyker).

[PhoenixPhyre]

i re-learned that lesson with my inquisitor. my knowledge of pathfinder (and golarion) extended to the slums of riddle-port, and i'm being a bit generous here. my dm asked for an all-divine caster party, so i rolled up the inquisitor in the most stereotypical riddle-port "borderline scumbag" style i could. hell, the team only figured out after 3 sessions i wasn't a duellist or a rogue but a full-blown inquisitor used to going undercover.

the dm and i worked things out to center the beginning of the campaign in riddle-port, and off we went. let's just say that a half-drow riddle-porter is seen slightly worse than the plague outside. i had fun roleplaying that, and i learned enough about golarion to roll up a credible new character on my own after a year. the inquisitor, meanwhile, is becoming less of a cocky scumbag (to fit in better. he's still cocky) and is starting to learn that the world outside his city is both nicer and much worse than he could ever imagine.

for my rogue trader character, it was a bit easier. i'm a massive 40k nerd, so i'm willingly separating what i know to what an ex-stormtrooper would. poor raymond is finding out the hard way why you don't screw around with chaos and psykers. (40 corruption points gained in 4 sessions. i'm a bit miffed about that, but it's raymond's fault he's buddy with a very powerful psyker).

Honestly, I dropped my longest-running group into my world with the following introduction--

"Make characters from <race/class list>. You'll all start in prison in a highly traditional nation; one that believes that they're the only light left in the darkness. All I want to know at session 1 is why you're in jail. Could be a frame-job, could be for real, I don't care."

At that point, all I knew about the world was a rough map (now superseded multiple times over), a starting point (being given a choice between death and becoming an Expendable/Adventurer) and a first couple missions for them. After that, I built the world around them as they went. What was intended as a job-board campaign turned into an epic "gather the surviving nations and forge an alliance against a Demon Prince" campaign, then turned into "go where gods cannot, end an Age, begin a new one, and punch a Demon Prince really hard in his ugly, tentacled face a bunch of times at the center of the Astral Plane" campaign. I mean, one of the central players in the campaign was an NPC that was only supposed to exist for one session (to fill in for players who couldn't make it) but ended up becoming the mascot of the party and then sacrificing her existence (under the players' control) to make a world-reshaping Wish of incredible proportions. And that Wish wasn't at all what I had been thinking it would be, but was instead much better and more fitting.

No one had a doctorate in my setting at the start. Because most of it didn't exist when we sat down to play. It was entirely "and where do we go from here? What are they going to grab a hold of? What will I have to expand, what can fall by the way-side?" They ended up going zig when I was expecting zag enough that I got really really good at on-the-spot improv. I ended up making an entire micro-civilization of Symps (ape-human hybrids) when they decided the hole with the scary undead thing in it wasn't where they wanted to go right there.

[LudicSavant]

That's incredible. I don't think I have ever seen a single group, or even a single player, who didn't do that sometimes. Its also incredible that you have had the opportunity to play with dozens upon dozens of groups over the years, you are a very lucky gamer.

To clarify though, when you say "the most powerful option," do you mean the most powerful option in the given situation, or do you mean "THE MOST POWERFUL OPTION PERIOD," Like Pun-Pun or something? Because if its the latter I can see that a lot easier.



When I say most powerful option, I mean exactly that. Ergo, Pun-Pun would qualify. Doing 100 damage in a round would not.



For example, if I am a perfectly skilled optimizer and the group has decided that we are all going to play characters with a power level of six out of ten (just making up numbers here) but the character concept I had in mind is only a 4 out of 10 I am going to be torn between taking the more powerful option to better fit with the party or the less powerful option to stay true to my character concept.

If you are aiming for 6 out of 10 on the power scale instead of 10 out of 10, you are not in fact choosing the most powerful mechanical option the system makes available to you, now are you?


Personally i share the experience of the savant here. People with near perfect system mastery know very well how imbalanced the system is and how to break it effortlessly and that it would be utterly pointless to do they. They tend to use their skill to get exactly the power level for their character they want.

They don't have to impress anyone with system mastery. The whole table knows their system mastery level anyway. They don't get any feeling of accomplishment from winning through optimization because that is trivial. They might get it from making something subpar that is universally shunned into a powerful option. Because that is a challenge. But building a strong, even OP character alone is no challenge for them.

Pretty much.

[Satinavian]

These words make no sense.

I mean, sure, not every D&D city, town, village, cave, and plane has an established library of research materials, thousands of gold worth of supplies for him to purchase, etc. But, as I said, as the issue is rarely pressing, Quertus can simply wait until he goes home. Or, in 3e, until he levels, and learns spells automatically. :smalltongue:

The "couldn't have even in his backstory" is completely incomprehensible. It's like saying the USA couldn't have been a British colony, even in its backstory. :smallconfused:If you are actually playing standard D&D with standard D&D wizard rules.

But you want to import Quertus into pretty much all games. Including non-D&D ones. If you insert him into some Call of Cthuluh game he won't be able to just develop new spells or get them by levelling up.
Even in pretty much all fantasy systems it is not possible for PCs to just create new spells. (Because then the rules would have to provide guidelines about all possible spells). And in nearly all fantasy systems spells are recognized as a source of power and can only be learned by permanently burning huge amounts of build point/ex or level ups. Even if you only want to get new existing spells. Most of those systems have wizards, but playing a wizard there does not mean you get to research completely new spells or that you ever get a huge number of spells you could theoretically cast.
And this can happen even if D&D dervates are used. It is not exactly uncommon to e.g. have Spheres of Power or something like that replace regular magic.

And yes, if the world has "There does not exist standard D&D Vancian wizard magic. Wizards can't just research new spells, that is not how magic works. It never did so. And those rules don't change if you step into some portal to get into some linked world." and you import Quertus, he won't have been able to have researched those spells in the past either.

[Quertus]

@PP - thank you for the explanation. While the style you describe sounds awesome, I have been conditioned to consider that disruptive behavior, and would feel awful about "messing up the game" that way. It'd take some careful (or bludgeoningly forceful) explanation to have any chance of acclimating my expectations to such a game.


But you want to import Quertus into pretty much all games. Including non-D&D ones.

Ah. I understand the confusion now. Although this may be a technically true statement, it has nothing to do with anything I've stated in this thread.

I was only talking about how, say, a 12th level D&D character (who happens to be a perfect fit for the group and adventure, no less) would be rejected for play in a 12th level D&D game simply because he's been played at another table. :smallannoyed:

Come to think of it, how did I get off on this tangent? :smallconfused:

[Rhedyn]

Players can create spells in Savage Worlds. What you do is learn a new trapping for a power that you have. Powers are unlocked via leveling, but new trappings is basically a new spell.

Zadmar's Fan made Vancian Magic helps with this.

And with the Rifts setting, you can easily justify crossing through a multiverse and ending with roughly balanced characters through the MARS packages.

Otherwise Savage Worlds characters are still easily transferable because you just retrap powers as needed to reflect the setting and having Legendary Characters playing next to Novices can totally work out.

Idk what all this world hoping talk has to do with power gaming though....

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'll try to be more on topic with this--

I think that one environment that gives incentives to find every possible power-boost for a character is organized play (AL, PFS, conventions, etc). These tend to have low group coherence (party composition changes from session to session), inter-table play (same character, multiple tables), and in general lower-strength table norms (DM power, ability to use OOC "dude, just no" conversations, etc). This often breeds a competitive atmosphere--it's every player for themselves, no (legal) holds barred. In that case, it's not only normal to "power game", it's almost required if you want to stay relevant.

And to @LudicSavant--I was thinking more about marginal optimization, while you're discussing absolute optimization. Pun-pun and friends (TO builds) require complicit DMs and were never really designed to show up at a table. So of course you don't see many of them. What you do see are people who evaluate every possible choice through the lens of "how does this make me more powerful", with character considerations or "fluff" considerations second, third, or disregarded entirely. It's how (in 5e), you end up with so many people pushing 1H quarterstaffs and shields for paladins--there's a rules interaction between a paladin feature (smites) and a feat (Polearm Master) that grants that combo significant strength--you get most of the power of a 2H weapon, with the AC of a shield as well. Despite looking real goofy and making little in-universe sense.

[Arbane]

"A 'power gamer' is anyone who optimizes more than I do."

[Quertus]

I think that one environment that gives incentives to find every possible power-boost for a character is organized play (AL, PFS, conventions, etc). These tend to have low group coherence (party composition changes from session to session), inter-table play (same character, multiple tables), and in general lower-strength table norms (DM power, ability to use OOC "dude, just no" conversations, etc). This often breeds a competitive atmosphere--it's every player for themselves, no (legal) holds barred. In that case, it's not only normal to "power game", it's almost required if you want to stay relevant.

Well, this sounds a lot like my home turf, so I'll weigh in.

In the open tables where I learned to play, power gaming was indeed quite common. An analysis of the causes of this behavior could be quite informative to the thread topic. First, let me echo a lot of what you've said about organized play, as a lot of it holds true for my roots, too.

A high supply of tables and GMs, coupled with the fact that a given player may only be there for a session anyway, meant that the threat of getting "kicked out" was fairly meaningless. However, "dude, just no" was not only absolutely a thing, but common practice back in my day.

Players who were egocentric were given lots of positive reinforcement for that behavior - not the least of which was that metagaming was considered the greatest Evil. So, if you weren't looking at the metagame, weren't looking at other players, and only looking at yourself, Power gaming gave only positive reinforcement - you got to contribute more. I'd say that this egocentric attitude is a lot of what fueled my old tables' parallel to what you describe as "competitive".

The measure of group coherence is an interesting one. On the one hand, because groups were fluid, there would seem to be little incentive to form bonds with others. On the other hand, because people had such a huge pool of experience, when they found a group where they just "clicked" there was high incentive to stay, because you knew what other tables were like, and how valuable this table was. Subsequently, I'd argue that long-term tables were actually more cohesive back in the day than modern tables, because they were formed by like-minded individuals from a huge pool, rather than just whatever random group of people you happen to be friends with as is often the case in (some of the best of) modern groups.

So, most tables had primarily or exclusively players with war gamer roots. This led to a competitive attitude (in terms of player vs GM), as well as a cooperative attitude (in terms of players ganging up on the GM (or his monsters)).

But it also led to players treating characters like playing pieces, evaluating and optimizing their capabilities, and, often, carrying little about anything else. While this behavior is generally perfectly fine in a competitive, reasonably balanced war game environment, it does not translate to an RPG setting quite so cleanly.

As strong evidence that I have not been secretly replaced with Folders Crystals, I will, of course, lay much of the blame squarely at the feet of the GMs, as one would expect from someone with my general "it's the GMs fault" bias.

First, I'll put forth the notion that one of the leading causes of power gaming was that the GMs treated the characters like playing pieces. "Oh, you want to play x? Well, just change this and this and this, and it'll be fine." The United States, but not as a former British colony, instead as a thousand year old civilization created by the same aliens that created Egypt? Not the same thing. Most GMs, IME, didn't comprehend role-playing, didn't value the integrity of the character, and fostered the "character as a playing piece" mentality. Which is something I've been fighting against most of my life. If I want taco meat, I want taco meat, dagnabbit, not munitorium-grade taco meat substitute, substitute. It is not the same thing.

Then there's the more obvious faults to be laid at GMs feet: both the Killer GMs, and the meat grinders that were prevalent in ye olden days of yore. Meat grinders really encouraged players to view their characters as playing pieces. There's little point to invest in, get attached to, or go to the trouble of making a personality and backstory for your character if the ink wouldn't be dry when they hit the trash bin. And killer GMs who weren't happy unless at least one character died? Well, IME, the incentive was to optimize enough that that person wasn't you. And why stop there?

-----

Me, I come from war gamer roots. So, yes, I care about the G in RPG. But I'm in it for the RP - if what I primarily cared about were G, I could get that from a war game. But I also care about the enjoyment of the group, which meant carrying that everyone felt that they contributed, that they had a role to play.

I think a lot of players learned a lot, conceptually, by me joining their tables, or by them visiting one I played at. I'd demonstrate a great mastery of the rules... to create a highly suboptimal character - because the contribution to the game I cared about was primarily role-playing, and not overshadowing the other players. Or, when someone new joined one of the tables I played at, and brought something highly overpowered compared to the group metagame, I'd pull out something ridiculously much stronger, and then ask if they'd care to tone it back to the level of the group. I believe that I taught a great many players about the power of friendship the concept that power gaming wasn't the only possible Good in the world.

[Florian]

Funny, how different gaming culture can develop. In Germany, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is a system called DSA, which started as a sorta-kinda oD&D clone, but rapidly developed into something Gurps-like. Right from the beginning, the rules and mechanics were created with only one thing in mind, modeling the setting Aventurien, so it´s next to impossible to divorce mechanics from fluff. So, for example, there is no generic "Wizard" class or package, but there're various academies and teachers and you will have to create your "Wizard" based on one of those, which will influence initial spell and feat selections, cost for upgrading and new ones, so on.

The setting, Aventurien, has an extremely loyal fan base and many groups keep using it, even after switching to systems like SaWo or Fate. This is important, because the local scene doesn't have war-gaming roots of any kind, so unlike D&D, the focus on what's deemed important is the setting over the mechanics/rules and practically all groups will "nope" any character build or attempted action that would break the fluff. As it´s a "shared game world", it´s generally easy to find and join groups/tables and also no big thing to import pre-existing characters, because they will more or less automatically fit in (caveat emptor, assuming that all participants have characters on the same timeline).

DSA is a very rules heavy system, so attaining a high level system mastery is possible and even required. It´s also a ultra fine granular system that at times puts 3E/PF to shame in this regard (ex: Nothing auto-scales. Imagine having to buy each d6 of a Fireball spell separately or breaking Power Attack into Power Attack 1 to 20 as a feat chain, or having a "mercantile" skill, then needing to buy 10 feats to actually do something with it).

As a rules heavy system, you can quite easily power game it, optimize stuff and planning builds using Excel or something. This will garner some "hate" when going against established conventions. You're expected to create a more or less fully functional personality, reflected race, culture, background and previous job experience that should be able to function "in real life". So, for example, while it´s reasonable to only have one character in party with certain skills, like cooking or mending weapons/clothings and specialize on a role, like "face", a character without a broad skill and knowledge base would get rejected as not "fitting the setting".

Edit: As you can guess, this means that the players have to learn the setting before the rules, as the rules only make sense when you know what it is they're actually modeling.

[Talakeal]

When I say most powerful option, I mean exactly that. Ergo, Pun-Pun would qualify. Doing 100 damage in a round would not.



If you are aiming for 6 out of 10 on the power scale instead of 10 out of 10, you are not in fact choosing the most powerful mechanical option the system makes available to you, now are you?



Pretty much.

Its funny, this might be the first time I have ever misinterpreted someone by not taking them literally enough.

I really thought you meant "most powerful" as in the most powerful choice in any given situation or the most powerful of the options presented, not the best option period.

Yes, very few people want to play "Pun-Pun," even fewer DMs would allow it (even if they understood it, allowed all of the required sourcebooks, and went with the overly permissive reading of the rules it requires), and it is pretty much a problem unique to 3.5 D&D. Most other games don't have nearly as high a power ceiling and lack any single "best" option that is always the most powerful regardless of context.

But the divide between the "character first" and "power first" is not normally so binary, most of the time it is a spectrum and not always mutually exclusive, which is where the real conflicts arise.

[LudicSavant]

Its funny, this might be the first time I have ever misinterpreted someone by not taking them literally enough.

I really thought you meant "most powerful" as in the most powerful choice in any given situation or the most powerful of the options presented, not the best option period.

Yes, very few people want to play "Pun-Pun," even fewer DMs would allow it (even if they understood it, allowed all of the required sourcebooks, and went with the overly permissive reading of the rules it requires), and it is pretty much a problem unique to 3.5 D&D. Most other games don't have nearly as high a power ceiling and lack any single "best" option that is always the most powerful regardless of context.

But the divide between the "character first" and "power first" is not normally so binary, most of the time it is a spectrum and not always mutually exclusive, which is where the real conflicts arise.

Here's the thing:

If people actually followed the decisionmaking process that certain haters have ascribed to them in this thread (e.g. "choose character building options only on the basis of what's most powerful, with complete disregard for anything else") then the output of that algorithm would simply be "Pun-Pun." The fact that nobody wants to play Pun-Pun suggests that nobody is actually using that decisionmaking algorithm to construct characters.

Basically, we have people saying that people who drive faster than them are maniacs, and then claiming that the reason anyone drives faster than them is because they only choose cars based on which one is faster with disregard for any other features of the car. But the fact of the matter is that the fastest cars in existence are all left unsold at the dealerships, because there is no market for those cars. This suggests that their theory about car-buying behavior is false.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Here's the thing:

If people actually followed the decisionmaking process that certain haters have ascribed to them in this thread (e.g. "choose character building options only on the basis of what's most powerful, with complete disregard for anything else") then the output of that algorithm would simply be "Pun-Pun." The fact that nobody wants to play Pun-Pun suggests that nobody is actually using that decisionmaking algorithm to construct characters.

Basically, we have people saying that people who drive faster than them are maniacs, and then claiming that the reason anyone drives faster than them is because they only choose cars based on which one is faster with disregard for any other features of the car. But the fact of the matter is that the fastest cars in existence are all left unsold at the dealerships, because there is no market for those cars. This suggests that their theory about car-buying behavior is false.

False dichotomy. You're thinking in absolute terms, rather in marginal ones. On the margins, "power gamers" will choose power over concept where the two are in conflict. Pun-pun and friends are also off-the-table at 99.9 (repeating) percent of tables (since they require the active complicity of a DM and the lack of a real setting), and can only happen in one particular, badly broken game system. Power-gaming happens at real tables. So the only thing disproved is your assertion that only TO tricks count as power-gaming.

[LudicSavant]

False dichotomy.

That's not a false dichotomy at all. You literally either are picking the more powerful option, or you're not. For all A, A=X or !X. That's not a false dichotomy, that's the Law of Excluded Middle and it's one of the first laws of logic.


You're thinking in absolute terms, rather in marginal ones. On the margins, "power gamers" will choose power over concept where the two are in conflict.

Any option that deviates from the most powerful option in the name of concept is a place where the two are in conflict.

You cannot say "These people only care about money and nothing else, and will choose the most profitable option at all times" and then notice that these people are leaving money on the table and still say that they are choosing the most profitable option at all times. That's a contradiction.

If a person is skilled enough to identify a more profitable option, but does not choose it, this is sufficient for a formal deductive proof that they are not choosing options purely on the basis of profitability.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's not a false dichotomy at all. You literally either are picking the more powerful option, or you're not. For all A, A=X or !X. That's not a false dichotomy, that's the Law of Excluded Middle and it's one of the first laws of logic.



Any option that deviates from the most powerful option in the name of concept is a place where the two are in conflict.

So everything is either pun-pun or unoptimized. Good to know.

Picking the most powerful option that's on the table is very different than picking the most powerful option globally. But both are power-gaming. Pun-pun (and other TO tricks) aren't on the table. They're not a valid option. For anyone. Even most PO tricks aren't on the table for most people. And lots of people play games other than 3e (which is one of the few that has such tricks to begin with). They're still power-gaming if they look at an unflavorful +1 as being more important to them than a more flavorful +0. Even if, in some other game, there's a +INF. All that matters is relative value. X is more powerful than Y, but Y fits the concept better. A power-gamer will choose X all the time, even if there's something else out there that's even better than X.

It's about competing priorities, and what you're willing to sacrifice.

And your edit is a pure strawman--no one says they only care about power, just that they care about power more than about concept in general. That's what I mean--you're taking everything as all-or-nothing. And that's not what's being argued here at all.

[LudicSavant]

pure strawman

So everything is either pun-pun or unoptimized. Good to know.

That is neither what I said nor what I meant. :smallannoyed:

Talk about "pure strawman."


no one says they only care about power

You wanna check again before you say that?

[JNAProductions]

Has anyone ever met this mythical powergamer who exclusively picks what's most powerful, even following the strictures of the table?

Because, again, I'm a mechanics first kind of guy. I'll often play a DFA in 3.5, which is FAR from the most powerful class available, but I just love the idea of being a fire breathing mofo.

[Lord Raziere]

well of course, they don't need to go for the most powerful option, they just need to be powerful enough to screw everyone else over. after all, the most powerful one is too obvious and they never want to be caught.

[LudicSavant]

Has anyone ever met this mythical powergamer who exclusively picks what's most powerful, even following the strictures of the table?

Because, again, I'm a mechanics first kind of guy. I'll often play a DFA in 3.5, which is FAR from the most powerful class available, but I just love the idea of being a fire breathing mofo.

Yeah, I've never seen this among players who were good enough at math to actually choose the best of two options in the first place.

I've seen a few forum posts to the effect of "I wanna break the game at my next session" but these always seem to be the sort of people who say weird things like "Vow of Poverty Monks are OP." :smallconfused:

I mean, it could theoretically exist. It probably does somewhere. But I haven't seen it. I have, however, seen an awful lot of people crying wolf.

"Anybody driving slower than me is an idiot, anyone driving faster than me is a maniac" seems to sum up a lot of the instances I've seen.

In some cases I've seen it's not even about the guy driving faster, but just having a flashier car. For example, (in my experience) a player is more likely to get called a dirty powergamer if they play a character using Heavy Weapon Master and occasionally getting big damage rolls with their greatsword than if they play a character using Bless that actually contributes more DPR to the party (seriously, try to find threads about people being "powergamers" for using Heavy Weapon Master, then try to find threads about people being "powergamers" for using the often-more-powerful Bless). This has held true in my experience even if the guy using Heavy Weapon Master is taking the -5/+10 option in situations where it would be mathematically better to not use the feat at all. That's right, I've seen people get called powergamers for spending a feat to lower their overall damage output, just because it occasionally produces flashy lucky rolls.

I think the most egregious case of crying wolf I've seen at a table I personally played at was a game where one of the players at the table was more experienced than the others, so he intentionally nerfed his character in pretty extreme ways. He played a Psion fluffed as a civilian scholar being escorted by the mercenary PCs to study dungeon ruins. Pretty much all his powers were noncombat information gathering divinations and he played a purely support role. His damage output maxed out at about 1d3. He didn't even carry weapons, unless you count carrying the torch to provide light for the party and occasionally swiping at something with that. This player drew continous complaints of being a powergamer/munchkin from another player, just because "psionics is OP." :smallsigh:

[JNAProductions]

well of course, they don't need to go for the most powerful option, they just need to be powerful enough to screw everyone else over. after all, the most powerful one is too obvious and they never want to be caught.

Lord Raziere, if my Dragonfire Adept is overshadowing your character, you built a very bad character, or the DM is intentionally screwing you over/favoring me.

Again, I'm a mechanics first gamer. I can be called a powergamer, and I won't object to the label, because it's accurate. But I still stick to a theme.

Moreover, when I do want to go balls to the wall OP, I tend to optimize for SUPPORT. Being a buffmaster Wizard or something. So yes, if you bother to break down technical contributions, I might overshadow everyone because they all got my buffs. But in play, they have a great time, because they're kicking ass and taking names, and they don't mind that they're receiving help from their buddy.

[kyoryu]

Basically, we have people saying that people who drive faster than them are maniacs

I think this is super relevant.

Because the full statement is really "anyone driving faster than me is a maniac, and anyone driving slower than me is a moron."

We all think we're doing it "right". I mean, kinda by definition, because if we didn't think so we'd do something else.

And just like with driving, it's not the absolute speed that matters, but relative speed. What matters is that you fairly closely match the speed of the other drivers. If, on a given stretch of road everyone is doing about 50mph, then you should do about 50mph. 55? Sure. 60? Maybe. 80? No.

But if everyone else is doing 70 on that same stretch of road, then 50 mph is the wrong speed, and 60 is borderline too slow. Outside of extremes, as long as the overall speed is generally safe, neither speed is "right". But deviating too much from what everyone is doing is dangerous, for one reason or another.

Same with optimization.

[Lord Raziere]

Lord Raziere, if my Dragonfire Adept is overshadowing your character, you built a very bad character, or the DM is intentionally screwing you over/favoring me.

Again, I'm a mechanics first gamer. I can be called a powergamer, and I won't object to the label, because it's accurate. But I still stick to a theme.

Moreover, when I do want to go balls to the wall OP, I tend to optimize for SUPPORT. Being a buffmaster Wizard or something. So yes, if you bother to break down technical contributions, I might overshadow everyone because they all got my buffs. But in play, they have a great time, because they're kicking ass and taking names, and they don't mind that they're receiving help from their buddy.

ah yes, the common protest "but I don't do that! its your or the GMs fault!"

how unbiased.

but lets assume that you don't as you say. I can't assume your representative of them. the munchkin stereotype has to come from SOMEWHERE. and I've had my experiences with people who were munchkins and powergamers, given the opportunity they make invincible characters that cannot die, ridiculous overlords who stomp on everything just so they can have their own kingdom where they can say kills anyone who steps into it, gods who can kill people then resurrect them seconds later constant play and counterplay, all the while filled with OOC arguments about this and that, that only bog everything down. regardless of the mechanics, its a poisonous toxic mindset that makes it difficult to near impossible to arbitrate anything and makes everyone involved angry at each other. without anyone or anything to hold them back, they turn good settings into ridiculous fluff-killing experiments and turn good adventures into a test to see how much they can sequence break and render someone else's work utterly pointless. all the while no empathy for the people of the things they ruin, and no respect for the fluff they break by trying to extrapolate into something completely different that destroys the entire rest of the setting as a result. make no mistake: to do such extrapolations and exploitations IS to destroy the fluff, as the setting is meant to be as it is: unextrapolated, unexploited.

It is not my fault when someone tries to turn an action/adventure fantasy into a pseudo-sci-fi game out of nowhere, nor is it my fault when all tensions drains out of a game, or when the game descends into ridiculous endless counterplays only possible if both beings were paranoid hyper-geniuses who do nothing but set up traps and counter traps all day for highly specific scenarios. the more power and optimization, the harder it is to have the things I value. especially because I like playing at high levels of power- but not OPTIMIZED ones. I am the Anime Nonsense Player, not the Super-Logical Mastermind Player- And I'm proud of it.

[JNAProductions]

Why does the stereotype have to come from factual events? Is that true of all stereotypes, then?

[Lord Raziere]

Why does the stereotype have to come from factual events? Is that true of all stereotypes, then?

No, but why does have to be completely untrue? why are you so dead set on trying to make me think how powergamers do things is not true, when I know it is. because I experienced it, its toxic, it only made things worse, and it isn't worth the trouble. I've never experienced a GM being unfair or incompetent, but I've experienced players being powergaming jerks, and I can tell which one ruined my enjoyment more.

[JNAProductions]

No, but why does have to be completely untrue? why are you so dead set on trying to make me think how powergamers do things is not true, when I know it is. because I experienced it, its toxic, it only made things worse, and it isn't worth the trouble. I've never experienced a GM being unfair or incompetent, but I've experienced players being powergaming jerks, and I can tell which one ruined my enjoyment more.

The point is, it's not POWERGAMING that's bad. It's being a toxic player. You're effectively saying "Anyone who optimizes their character is a horrible toxic gamer," which is not a fair stance to hold.

I'm not going to say your experiences are wrong, but I am going to say that they don't tell the whole truth. Does that make sense?

[Talakeal]

Here's the thing:

If people actually followed the decisionmaking process that certain haters have ascribed to them in this thread (e.g. "choose character building options only on the basis of what's most powerful, with complete disregard for anything else") then the output of that algorithm would simply be "Pun-Pun." The fact that nobody wants to play Pun-Pun suggests that nobody is actually using that decisionmaking algorithm to construct characters.

Basically, we have people saying that people who drive faster than them are maniacs, and then claiming that the reason anyone drives faster than them is because they only choose cars based on which one is faster with disregard for any other features of the car. But the fact of the matter is that the fastest cars in existence are all left unsold at the dealerships, because there is no market for those cars. This suggests that their theory about car-buying behavior is false.

Agreed.

However I think there are plenty of people who have the mind set of playing the most powerful character that they can get away with or the most powerful character of a certain type.

[JNAProductions]

Agreed.

However I think there are plenty of people who have the mind set of playing the most powerful character that they can get away with or the most powerful character of a certain type.

The first bit is not good, in general. The second bit is fine.

If the thought is "How far can I push the boundaries of power without the DM/other players calling me out?" that's no good.
If the thought is "How powerful can I make my Samurai/Monk/whatever?" that's fine, assuming you still pay attention to relative power in the table.

[Lord Raziere]

The point is, it's not POWERGAMING that's bad. It's being a toxic player. You're effectively saying "Anyone who optimizes their character is a horrible toxic gamer," which is not a fair stance to hold.

I'm not going to say your experiences are wrong, but I am going to say that they don't tell the whole truth. Does that make sense?

Ok, but I haven't seen any toxic gamer that didn't try to optimize their character beyond all reason. doesn't change the fact that when I want to play a setting, the last thing I want is someone finding some inevitable flaw or exploit and using it to turn the setting into something else that I didn't come in to play. and I must remark: the "roleplay-heavy toxic gamers" you speak of (which I have never seen myself) are probably far easier spotted because they don't have a ruleset supporting their abuses/bad gaming. such people are easily spotted by making these incompetent characters you speak of, anyone could probably spot that, but the toxic ones who DO optimize.....well, you'd have to be another optimizer to spot it, how convenient that only someone else with the same level of skill can spot the exploit and judge whether its appropriate or not, and everyone just has to trust them both. see what I mean?

[JNAProductions]

I didn't say anything about toxic roleplayers. They exist, but they're not really what's at hand here.

And it's pretty simple to see someone who optimized too far. Ask them "Hey, what does your character do? And can you be specific?" And if your Fighter has three attacks at +8, for 2d6+5 damage each, while standing still, while their Fighter/Ranger/Barbarian has five attacks at +34 for 4d8+20 damage each on the move... They're too powerful. Likewise, if they're playing Angel Summoner and you're playing BMX Bandit, it should be pretty easy to spot the discrepancy.

[Talakeal]

The first bit is not good, in general. The second bit is fine.

If the thought is "How far can I push the boundaries of power without the DM/other players calling me out?" that's no good.
If the thought is "How powerful can I make my Samurai/Monk/whatever?" that's fine, assuming you still pay attention to relative power in the table.


Note that "get away with" and "overshadow the rest of the party" are not necessarily the same thing.

Also, making a character the most powerful within a role may not be appropriate to the game for thematic reasons or because it trivializes the content, and it still might overshadow the rest of the party.


I have also had problems where someone would make a character so focused in one area that it turns the game into a binary; they sit their bored when out of their area, and they can handle areas within their domain so well the rest of the party can't really contribute and just sits there bored.

We had this a lot when we first moved from D&D to point buy games, people would make a warrior who maxed out all of their physical stats and combat skills and left everything else at the minimum value, making a sort of Lenny from Of Mice and Men who was really tough but normally did nothing while his handler did all the talking and investigating, not exactly stimulating gameplay.

[JNAProductions]

Note that "get away with" and "overshadow the rest of the party" are not necessarily the same thing.

Also, making a character the most powerful within a role may not be appropriate to the game for thematic reasons or because it trivializes the content, and it still might overshadow the rest of the party.

I have also had problems where someone would make a character so focused in one area that it turns the game into a binary; they sit their bored when out of their area, and they can handle areas within their domain so well the rest of the party can't really contribute and just sits there bored.

We had this a lot when we first moved from D&D to point buy games, people would make a warrior who maxed out all of their physical stats and combat skills and left everything else at the minimum value, making a sort of Lenny from Of Mice and Men who was really tough but normally did nothing while his handler did all the talking and investigating, not exactly stimulating gameplay.

Yeah, that's fair. There is a reason I added the "assuming you still pay attention to the relative power in the table," though.

But I'll definitely agree that binary characters are bad. While specializing is fine, you should be able to do SOMETHING at most points in a game.

[Guizonde]

Has anyone ever met this mythical powergamer who exclusively picks what's most powerful, even following the strictures of the table?

Because, again, I'm a mechanics first kind of guy. I'll often play a DFA in 3.5, which is FAR from the most powerful class available, but I just love the idea of being a fire breathing mofo.

i play with one at my pf table, actually. the guy is... special to hang around with, to put it mildly, but he's friendly enough. when he rolls characters, he finds a concept, optimizes it to its fullest, and finally struggles to make sure the fluff is coherent so he's not called out for power-gaming. once his character is done, he moves on to fully optimize the group so that the group can have fun. he's kind of the unseen team support if you just look at the table without playing at the table. i say x, he takes it into account, and optimizes the other member to y so that we balance each other out. that said, once it becomes truly game-breaking (such as my secondary pf campaign), he goes whole hog and is currently playing a construct that breaks the sound barrier on a charge (and hits for a ludicrous amount of damage, like 6d12+40 or some such nonsense). in the main table, he's playing an oracle/witch multiclass and his build is coming online in the next few levels. so far, his weakness has been supported by the group. by level 10 iirc (i've seen his build. broken) he'll carry the table alone if we let him.

i don't mind it one bit. he's a team player first, a power gamer second, and a rules-lawyer third. he's gruff, brash, and uncouth but what he lacks in social graces he makes up in the fun we have at the table so long as we all sing from the same book. i guess you could call him the "this guy" of power-gaming.

[LudicSavant]

i play with one at my pf table, actually. the guy is... special to hang around with, to put it mildly, but he's friendly enough. when he rolls characters, he finds a concept, optimizes it to its fullest, and finally struggles to make sure the fluff is coherent so he's not called out for power-gaming. once his character is done, he moves on to fully optimize the group so that the group can have fun. he's kind of the unseen team support if you just look at the table without playing at the table. i say x, he takes it into account, and optimizes the other member to y so that we balance each other out. that said, once it becomes truly game-breaking (such as my secondary pf campaign), he goes whole hog and is currently playing a construct that breaks the sound barrier on a charge (and hits for a ludicrous amount of damage, like 6d12+40 or some such nonsense). in the main table, he's playing an oracle/witch multiclass and his build is coming online in the next few levels. so far, his weakness has been supported by the group. by level 10 iirc (i've seen his build. broken) he'll carry the table alone if we let him.

i don't mind it one bit. he's a team player first, a power gamer second, and a rules-lawyer third. he's gruff, brash, and uncouth but what he lacks in social graces he makes up in the fun we have at the table so long as we all sing from the same book. i guess you could call him the "this guy" of power-gaming.

Despite not expressing anger at the "powergamer" in this case, I think this is actually a good example of how a myth is made.

6d12+40 damage isn't necessarily all that much, especially for a charge, unless we're talking about low levels. But here it's just stated matter of factly to be "broken" and "ludicrous," without even any mention of level, as if 6d12+40 was an unconscionable number for any level. But monsters in the manual do damage in that range at lower mid-levels on a fairly regular basis.

What's clear is that 6d12+40 looks like a car that's driving faster than you. But I wouldn't be surprised if your optimizer friend isn't actually driving as fast as he can. And after all, you noted that he picks a concept and optimizes within the bounds of that concept, struggles to make sure the fluff is coherent, and helps empower other players at the table. That behavior isn't really consistent with the idea of someone trying to make themselves the strongest they can get away with and outshine everyone else.

[Guizonde]

Despite not expressing anger at the "powergamer" in this case, I think this is actually a good example of how a myth is made.

6d12+40 damage isn't necessarily all that much, especially for a charge, unless we're talking about low levels. But here it's just stated matter of factly to be "broken" and "ludicrous," without even any mention of level, as if 6d12+40 was an unconscionable number for any level. But monsters in the manual do damage in that range at lower mid-levels on a fairly regular basis.

What's clear is that 6d12+40 looks like a car that's driving faster than you. But I wouldn't be surprised if your optimizer friend isn't actually driving as fast as he can. And after all, you noted that he picks a concept and optimizes within the bounds of that concept, struggles to make sure the fluff is coherent, and helps empower other players at the table. That behavior isn't really consistent with the idea of someone trying to make themselves the strongest they can get away with and outshine everyone else.

that's for a level 7 without boosts and using a one-handed weapon, i forgot to put everything in context. truly, without that it's banal. most of the hard-hitters of the party hit around the 2d6+8 mark (although they hit 3 times). my character hits at 2d8 once per turn (but i play support). as usual this guy showed me the builds, and he went full-on exponential in his damage dealing. good thing too, since he's meant to hit as hard as he can tank. iirc, his ac's somewhere in the low 60's in defensive fighting, he's got 270hp (rest of the group has low 30's ac and 100 hp for the hitters).

why i consider this guy a "this guy" and not "that guy" is precisely because he doesn't want to outshine anyone outside his role. hell, at that table, i'm abusing the leadership feats and cohort rules (with a whopping 301 followers), another is abusing domination spells (with dd 87 minimum), and one is straight-up a mirror-mage (casts 3 levels above his cl). this time around this guy is the beatstick, and he coached us how to become the most broken team that the dm would allow for this "high-op" campaign. it's a particular example, since the dm wanted us to use broken mechanics (and yes, he veto'd pun-pun. i asked because nothing is funnier than drop-kicking planets). the team composition is like this, all ecl 7:

the tank (ubercharging construct more akin to a locomotive)
the support (alchemist-gunslinger with positive feedback loops for cash, item creation, and non-essentials)
the battlefield control (half-fiend half-snakeman vampire kineticist)
the bait (some kind of crusader that won't die, also the face of the group)
the bait's backup (were-tiger grappler with cmb in the low 60's)
the sneak (werewolf skill-monkey. i forgot the classes)

the usual plan is to throw the tank in melee, the rest circle and destroy hordes, and the support flies around dropping potions and aoo's. in combat, that's straightforward. in social-fu, the bait and control take the lead, the support pays for bribes and collects infinite money for items.

now obviously, this is less "high-op" and more "cheesy", but just playing math, the tank, control and backup have values really above the realm of normal play for level 7's. i mean, what kind of tank has a running speed of 182km/h? or what kind of grappler routinely arm-locks giants before level 5?

the problem with power-gaming is when it's done in inappropriate places. it's a sore eye. here's a musical example of what i'm talking about. just replace the loony chicagoan with a power-gamer. appropriate at a metal show, less so at the dentist's. power-gaming when asked to? fine, awesome. power-gaming when it's not wanted, necessary, or called for? big ol' bag of nope!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v41N5KwJc84

edit for clarity: when i say "broken" i mean "broken", not just "game-breaking", i'm talking "the game is not meant to handle such silliness or such niche examples".

[Cluedrew]

You know, when I was learning to drive there was a highway near where I lived that I was told "Don't drive at the speed limit, it is too slow to be safe." I don't know how wide spread that is, but it turns out that moving at the same speed as everyone else is more important that the legal speed limit, especially on a road where you don't interact with things passing by very often.

So yes, "Faster than the rest of the group is too fast" and "Slower than the rest of the group is too slow", with some variation depending on the group.

[PhoenixPhyre]

You know, when I was learning to drive there was a highway near where I lived that I was told "Don't drive at the speed limit, it is too slow to be safe." I don't know how wide spread that is, but it turns out that moving at the same speed as everyone else is more important that the legal speed limit, especially on a road where you don't interact with things passing by very often.

So yes, "Faster than the rest of the group is too fast" and "Slower than the rest of the group is too slow", with some variation depending on the group.

This exactly. As long as you're in the design limits for the roadway (usually speed limit + 20 mph or so), the thing that causes accidents is differences in speed. Everybody going SL + 10 is fine. Everybody going SL + 10 except for that one moron doing SL - 10 is not fine.

Same goes here. Power isn't bad. Drastic differences in power can be bad (there are exceptions, like with just about everything).

[kyoryu]

So yes, "Faster than the rest of the group is too fast" and "Slower than the rest of the group is too slow", with some variation depending on the group.


This exactly. As long as you're in the design limits for the roadway (usually speed limit + 20 mph or so), the thing that causes accidents is differences in speed. Everybody going SL + 10 is fine. Everybody going SL + 10 except for that one moron doing SL - 10 is not fine.

Same goes here. Power isn't bad. Drastic differences in power can be bad (there are exceptions, like with just about everything).

This is the hardest I’ve ever been Warnocked.

[Thrudd]

Note that "get away with" and "overshadow the rest of the party" are not necessarily the same thing.

Also, making a character the most powerful within a role may not be appropriate to the game for thematic reasons or because it trivializes the content, and it still might overshadow the rest of the party.


I have also had problems where someone would make a character so focused in one area that it turns the game into a binary; they sit their bored when out of their area, and they can handle areas within their domain so well the rest of the party can't really contribute and just sits there bored.

We had this a lot when we first moved from D&D to point buy games, people would make a warrior who maxed out all of their physical stats and combat skills and left everything else at the minimum value, making a sort of Lenny from Of Mice and Men who was really tough but normally did nothing while his handler did all the talking and investigating, not exactly stimulating gameplay.

I think that sort of situation is a problem with the system - it's a flaw in game design. Min-maxing in such a way that it ruins the game simply shouldn't be possible. The GM should fix it before anyone even makes a character.

Maximums and minimums for starting characters need to be in a reasonable range.
Players should also not have to make a choice between investing in frequently- useless-but-character-defining traits and investing in universally applicable ones that are sure to be relevant for all characters a majority of the time.

Power Gaming/Munchkinry is much reduced in its impact when the system is designed right. It shouldn't be possible to launch one character head and shoulder above others that are meant to be at the same level by exploiting the system mechanics.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is the hardest I’ve ever been Warnocked.

Warnocked?


I think that sort of situation is a problem with the system - it's a flaw in game design. Min-maxing in such a way that it ruins the game simply shouldn't be possible. The GM should fix it before anyone even makes a character.

Maximums and minimums for starting characters need to be in a reasonable range.
Players should also not have to make a choice between investing in frequently- useless-but-character-defining traits and investing in universally applicable ones that are sure to be relevant for all characters a majority of the time.

Power Gaming/Munchkinry is much reduced in its impact when the system is designed right. It shouldn't be possible to launch one character head and shoulder above others that are meant to be at the same level by exploiting the system mechanics.

I totally agree. The floor (not counting anti-optimization) should be "competent" and the cap should be "noticeably better, but not overwhelmingly so." Unless you're playing a competitive game, then build skill matters.

[RazorChain]

Agreed.

However I think there are plenty of people who have the mind set of playing the most powerful character that they can get away with or the most powerful character of a certain type.

I once was free forming fantasy with action hero characters, in free form you have pretty loose limits and this guy joins our session. So he's telling us about his charater, he's the strongest guy in his village because he won this strongman competition. Then he says that the region is where his village is located is famous for how strong people there are. In fact the strongest people in the country are in his village.......and the people of the country are strongest in the world. Then suddenly he says "Some of the gods are jelous of my characters strength".

And this is how you become a powerplaying ubermunchkin, you don't respect limits of the game. You bring a character that is punching the gods when the rest of the group is trying to play a game with action heroes. It's like going mountainbiking with your friends but you show up on a helecopter and then you brag about how you were first to the top.

[OldTrees1]

And this is how you become a powerplaying ubermunchkin, you don't respect limits of the game. You bring a character that is punching the gods when the rest of the group is trying to play a game with action heroes. It's like going mountainbiking with your friends but you show up on a helecopter and then you brag about how you were first to the top.

Of course this is while the "Car Diving" analogy is so apt. You see someone driving too much faster than you as a maniac. When they are driving too much faster than the traffic, they are a maniac. In one analogy we can explain why people call others powergamers and also capture the separate issue of when they are causing a problem.

Placing it next to other analogies (like in your post I quoted) draws out how well it simulates the issue and parallels these other analogies as well.

[LudicSavant]

Warnocked?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warnock%27s_dilemma

[MeimuHakurei]

I personally think a big issue here is also a wrong perception in what constitutes a character that is "too powerful" or "too weak" - many people only see one metric (damage dealt) which can fall short if you have, say, an ubercharger who deals thousand (or even millions) of damage against one target and then immediately gets mopped up by the other enemies in the encounter. Tracking locations, bypassing physical obstacles, gathering key information etc. is generally never considered important. This along with bad math is the reason why classes like Fighter and Monk in 3.5 are called overpowered when they're far from that.

This whole discussion also disregards that not all such high/low-powered characters are made with the expectation to over-/underperform - beginners may very well stumble together a build that's extremely solid all around without intent just as much as they can make a useless character without meaning to. Quertus here also highlights that it's not just the character, having both played a powerful character with low performance and a weak character with high performance extensively.

PS: I like the MMO version of that analogy more - "everyone with a lower level is a noob, everyone with a higher level has no life"

[Knaight]

Its kind of a weird one-way thing.

Sort of like how the Marvel movies are canon to the TV series, but the TV series are not canon to the movies.

If I am playing Planescape I can travel to Toril because it exists in the setting. If I am playing Forgotten Realms I cannot travel to Sigil.

The cosmologies and metaphysics of the settings are just incompatible as written. For example The Great Wheel does not exist in Forgotten Realms or Eberron, and those planes contain the realms of setting specific deities who, in Planescape, have been moved to the Great Wheel.
It's really not that weird - I brought up the actual planet Earth earlier as an example of this, where this happens all the time. In the actual planet Earth, there is no portal to Narnia. Bringing a Narnian character for a game set on Earth would be completely ridiculous - and the same thing applies to every other portal fantasy involving Earth. Bringing in one of those portal fantasy settings also doesn't bring in all of them - you can set a campaign in Narnia without making Jon-Tom and friends (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellsinger) viable character concepts.

Settings work on their own internal rules. These don't get somehow overwritten just because somebody else writes a different setting such that it would include an extant setting. Planescape doesn't have any bearing on what's possible in Forgotten Realms. Dresden Files doesn't have any bearing on what's possible in fiction set in the actual city of Chicago.

As for the status of these settings which have the temerity to not be overridden by the first hack fantasy author to come up with the idea of a setting which is primarily links between other settings, they're just normal settings. They certainly aren't "special snowflake settings".


To be very honest, Quertus as described seems to me to be an utterly toxic character. The worst combination of the Load (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheLoad) and the Mary Sue DMPC. You're either useless (since you've described him as utterly tactically inept and non-participatory) or overpowering (when you have the right spell). That concept would get an instant, peremptory ban at any table I'm DMing, and I would rebel as a player. Depending on how its played, it likely comes across as patronizing. You sit back, do next to nothing while everyone else is risking their lives, and then solve everything with a wave of your wand.
I've been dancing around this point all thread, but as it's out there already: This is pretty much where I stand as well. I don't think I've ever banned a character before in any game I've run, but I'd make an exception for any character which doubles as a Trojan horse for completely killing my setting by handing it off to some implicit super setting that nobody else at the table agreed to play in. Quertus, the character, is merely a particularly obnoxious example of the form.

Given that I also recognize that name by now, said ban would be quickly followed by one of Quertus, the player. I've also never banned a player before, but then, I've never had a player try to hijack a game everyone else is enjoying to explore their ill fitting character, then complain about the GM's snowflake setting getting in the way with its existence.

[Guizonde]

I once was free forming fantasy with action hero characters, in free form you have pretty loose limits and this guy joins our session. So he's telling us about his charater, he's the strongest guy in his village because he won this strongman competition. Then he says that the region is where his village is located is famous for how strong people there are. In fact the strongest people in the country are in his village.......and the people of the country are strongest in the world. Then suddenly he says "Some of the gods are jelous of my characters strength".

And this is how you become a powerplaying ubermunchkin, you don't respect limits of the game. You bring a character that is punching the gods when the rest of the group is trying to play a game with action heroes. It's like going mountainbiking with your friends but you show up on a helecopter and then you brag about how you were first to the top.

i kinda want to create a character that's the strongest in the village now... iirc, 8 is the human average, so a character with 16 str is near-olympic levels, right? could be funny for a one-shot boisterous bruiser prone to the worf effect. but your analogy is really spot on now.

i remember a munchkin that (unbeknownst to the dm) had "roleplayed one-on-one with the dm" and all of a sudden had stats near the 90% mark for his dump stats. in a near-freeform pokemon rpg. i got the story by the dm, even if i know the munchkin personnally. like, you're straight out of pallet town and your background places you training the elite 4 at age 6?! superiority complex, much?!

worst thing is? that's not the munchkin's most overt munchkinnery ever. but according to him, "being the dm's boyfriend has its perks". the dm shot down her bf harder than a health inspector in a burger joint with an e. coli infestation.

one funny example i remember seeing of his character sheet for a halfling rogue was (dex 18 = 4 + bab 4 = to hit 44 "due to sneak attack") now, i'm no rogue player, but i'm pretty sure sneak attack doesn't confer a +40 to hit for any reason whatsoever. the dm at the time wondered how a 6th level rogue could hit an ac 35 creature by rolling a 2. it wasn't bad math, either. dude regularly "added" a zero when rolling 2's as well. as of writing this, i know that guy has been banned from play by 2 roleplaying associations, and 3/4 of my university roleplaying community, the last quarter being 1st year newbies.

[Pelle]

I've been dancing around this point all thread, but as it's out there already: This is pretty much where I stand as well. I don't think I've ever banned a character before in any game I've run, but I'd make an exception for any character which doubles as a Trojan horse for completely killing my setting by handing it off to some implicit super setting that nobody else at the table agreed to play in. Quertus, the character, is merely a particularly obnoxious example of the form.

Given that I also recognize that name by now, said ban would be quickly followed by one of Quertus, the player. I've also never banned a player before, but then, I've never had a player try to hijack a game everyone else is enjoying to explore their ill fitting character, then complain about the GM's snowflake setting getting in the way with its existence.

Although I share the feeling, a bit harsh perhaps? My impression is that Quertus the player wouldn't want to play in these settings either way, and would politely bow out. If so, no problem to have different preferences. If instead the player accepts the premise of a game, but secretly inserts his extradimensional character into a closed setting (say Game of Thrones, Star Wars or whatever homebrew) then that would be playing in bad faith and akin to illusionism.

I mean, his attitude is completely alien to me, and I would hazard a guess a bad fit for most tables, but seems to be a natural result of his legitimate preferences (exploring worlds under different GMs, not having connections to the world, wanting to play the same character for a long time etc). As long as that isn't expected of others, fine.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Although I share the feeling, a bit harsh perhaps? My impression is that Quertus the player wouldn't want to play in these settings either way, and would politely bow out. If so, no problem to have different preferences. If instead the player accepts the premise of a game, but secretly inserts his extradimensional character into a closed setting (say Game of Thrones, Star Wars or whatever homebrew) then that would be playing in bad faith and akin to illusionism.

I mean, his attitude is completely alien to me, and I would hazard a guess a bad fit for most tables, but seems to be a natural result of his legitimate preferences (exploring worlds under different GMs, not having connections to the world, wanting to play the same character for a long time etc). As long as that isn't expected of others, fine.

The problem is that it smuggles in a lot of assumptions and sets the game up for acrimony between players as expectations no longer match. Things can be a natural result of legitimate preferences and still be bad for the game.

[Pelle]

The problem is that it smuggles in a lot of assumptions and sets the game up for acrimony between players as expectations no longer match. Things can be a natural result of legitimate preferences and still be bad for the game.

Not if you play with people with same expectations as you, or don't expect others to share/accomodate your niche preferences...

[PhoenixPhyre]

Not if you play with people with same expectations as you, or don't expect others to share/accomodate your niche preferences...

If you play with like-minded people, sure. But that's a strong limiter for someone that out-there.

The second part of that is irrelevant--by playing a non-fitting character you're requiring others to accommodate your preferences. You're saying that your preferences are more important than the established meta-rules of the particular table. And that's anti-social behavior, just like "my guy"-ism, munchkinism, etc.

[Pelle]

The second part of that is irrelevant--by playing a non-fitting character you're requiring others to accommodate your preferences. You're saying that your preferences are more important than the established meta-rules of the particular table. And that's anti-social behavior, just like "my guy"-ism, munchkinism, etc.

Depends on the group what is non-fitting. Quertus wouldn't be fitting at my table. Has he said that he imposes him on tables where he don't fit, though? I don't mind Quertus stating his preferences, as long as he doesn't berate us for not sharing them.

[Cosi]

And it's pretty simple to see someone who optimized too far. Ask them "Hey, what does your character do? And can you be specific?" And if your Fighter has three attacks at +8, for 2d6+5 damage each, while standing still, while their Fighter/Ranger/Barbarian has five attacks at +34 for 4d8+20 damage each on the move... They're too powerful. Likewise, if they're playing Angel Summoner and you're playing BMX Bandit, it should be pretty easy to spot the discrepancy.

This is an attitude that I think is deeply problematic. How do we know they optimized too far, rather than you not optimizing enough? What if someone else shows up with a Fighter that gets two attacks at +6 for 1d8+4 damage each? Do you retroactively start having optimized too far? What if the other guy got four attacks a +12 for 3d6+10 while moving half speed? In order to do this kind of comparison, you have to establish an expected power level, and in my experience that power level almost always seems to be "the less optimized character". There certainly doesn't ever seem to be any introspection about whether or not its reasonable to claim ownership of the concept of "melee combatant" in the party, which is what claims like this basically do.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is an attitude that I think is deeply problematic. How do we know they optimized too far, rather than you not optimizing enough? What if someone else shows up with a Fighter that gets two attacks at +6 for 1d8+4 damage each? Do you retroactively start having optimized too far? What if the other guy got four attacks a +12 for 3d6+10 while moving half speed? In order to do this kind of comparison, you have to establish an expected power level, and in my experience that power level almost always seems to be "the less optimized character". There certainly doesn't ever seem to be any introspection about whether or not its reasonable to claim ownership of the concept of "melee combatant" in the party, which is what claims like this basically do.

That goes to the need to establish both an expectations floor (a minimum speed, so to speak) and a ceiling (a speed limit). This can either happen at the system level, at the table level, or (best way) both. There isn't a universally-right answer, but they need to get set.

One thing to examine is not just pairwise comparisons but looking at the whole group and looking for outliers. If 4/5 aren't using early-entry tricks, are mostly single-classed and choosing sub-optimal builds, and 1 is pulling all the standard PO tricks, that one is out-of-band.

If on the other hand, the numbers are reversed (4/5 doing PO and 1/5 at low/mid-op levels), then it's the low-op person who needs to step up or move along (IMO). Consensus is all that matters--absolute values aren't important.

[OldTrees1]

Depends on the group what is non-fitting. Quertus wouldn't be fitting at my table. Has he said that he imposes him on tables where he don't fit, though? I don't mind Quertus stating his preferences, as long as he doesn't berate us for not sharing them.

Quertus' language did not imply they would impose on tables where Quertus does not fit BUT their language did imply you were "doing it objectively wrong" if you could not accommodate Quertus at your table.

[Mokèlé-mbèmbé]

People play RPGs differently and with different goals in mind. I tend to enjoy the "role playing" and collaborative fiction aspects of it. To that end I actually build flaws into my character in order to facilitate potentially exciting conflict. To me, the way "power gamers" play is anathema to what I want out of a game. No one's correct, and each variation of play is equally valid whether you are into the fiction, the gameplay or just a flimsy excuse to drink beer and eat pizza with friends. The key is communication. I feel like "What do you want out of a campaign?" should be a mandatory question going in, to avoid unpleasant experiences and the subsequent unfair stereotyping.

[Rhedyn]

This whole issue of "relative optimization" only comes up in poorly designed games.

Ways and means to play 3.5 successfully does not set a general standard for how RPGs as a whole should be played.

[CantigThimble]

This whole issue of "relative optimization" only comes up in poorly designed games.

Ways and means to play 3.5 successfully does not set a general standard for how RPGs as a whole should be played.

I have yet to encounter a single RPG of any kind where a player who set their mind to becoming more powerful could not significantly overshadow someone who didn't have that as a goal.

I have yet to encounter a single game of ANY kind where that wasn't the case.

Chess has varying levels of optimization and is only fun when people are near the same level of optimization.

So what games (besides, our lord and savior, Savage Worlds of course) are actually 'well designed'?

[JNAProductions]

I have yet to encounter a single RPG of any kind where a player who set their mind to becoming more powerful could not significantly overshadow someone who didn't have that as a goal.

I have yet to encounter a single game of ANY kind where that wasn't the case.

Chess has varying levels of optimization and is only fun when people are near the same level of optimization.

So what games (besides, our lord and savior, Savage Worlds of course) are actually 'well designed'?

5E. Now, it is POSSIBLE to have such a large gap that players will feel overshadowed, but that typically requires one player to be optimizing and the other player to anti-optimize.

A Berserker Barbarian with just ASIs won't be as good as a BearBarian with GWM, but they can both play in the same party without issue. Now, a Four Elements Monk with the statline of 13 12 8 15 8 15 will NOT play well with them, but you'd have to be intentionally gimping yourself to have a statline like that as a Monk.

[kyoryu]

Of course this is while the "Car Diving" analogy is so apt. You see someone driving too much faster than you as a maniac. When they are driving too much faster than the traffic, they are a maniac. In one analogy we can explain why people call others powergamers and also capture the separate issue of when they are causing a problem.

Placing it next to other analogies (like in your post I quoted) draws out how well it simulates the issue and parallels these other analogies as well.

Someone driving too slow is just as much of a problem, much as is someone who under-optimizes at a high-op table.

The fact that this keeps getting repeatedly left off is probably indicative of prevailing attitudes.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Someone driving too slow is just as much of a problem, much as is someone who under-optimizes at a high-op table.

The fact that this keeps getting repeatedly left off is probably indicative of prevailing attitudes.

That may indicate something about the distribution of players. If the left tail (low op) is small but the right one is large, you'd expect to see more complaints about high op than low op. Both are an issue, to be sure.

[Thrudd]

I have yet to encounter a single RPG of any kind where a player who set their mind to becoming more powerful could not significantly overshadow someone who didn't have that as a goal.

I have yet to encounter a single game of ANY kind where that wasn't the case.

Chess has varying levels of optimization and is only fun when people are near the same level of optimization.

So what games (besides, our lord and savior, Savage Worlds of course) are actually 'well designed'?

There is no optimizing in chess. Everyone has exactly the same resources and starting position. Being a better player isn't the same as optimizing. Better players will and should have better results when playing the game.

An RPG in which "being better at the game" means being better at choosing the universally best options before play even starts, is a badly designed game. Actually playing the game should be where the skill comes online, that's sort of what a game is about- actually playing it. Not winning because you know the rules better than everyone else.

[Rhedyn]

I have yet to encounter a single RPG of any kind where a player who set their mind to becoming more powerful could not significantly overshadow someone who didn't have that as a goal.

I have yet to encounter a single game of ANY kind where that wasn't the case.

Chess has varying levels of optimization and is only fun when people are near the same level of optimization.

So what games (besides, our lord and savior, Savage Worlds of course) are actually 'well designed'?

Your premise must be flawed if you think Chess has degrees of optimization in terms of character building. It's a skill based game.

Likewise, I've yet to even meet an anti-munchkin that gets mad at things like taking a flanking position, or using the right item/spell in your possession. They might complain how you got those things or at you having them, but using them correctly is generally not a source for going on a long rant about how everyone needs to be worse than them.

Back to your question, 3.5 D&D and it's derivatives is unique in terms of how grossly different in powers fellow players can be, how much the difference matters (no mitigating mechanics nor is it designed to accommodate players of different power levels), and how easy it is to bumble into a vast power disparity.

BECMI/RC D&D, 2e AD&D, 4e, 5e, Maid RPG, DCC, and yes Savage Worlds all do a better job addressing this to the point that it's far less likely to be a disruptive element of the game. It doesn't matter that you can eek out a bit more power in these games, they avoid 3.5's problem of it being a problem or the difference doesn't make characters useless like it does in 3.X (including Pathfinder).

[Nifft]

There is no optimizing in chess. Everyone has exactly the same resources and starting position. Being a better player isn't the same as optimizing. Better players will and should have better results when playing the game.

An RPG in which "being better at the game" means being better at choosing the universally best options before play even starts, is a badly designed game. Actually playing the game should be where the skill comes online, that's sort of what a game is about- actually playing it. Not winning because you know the rules better than everyone else.

Hmm.

Wizards of the Coast also sold a game called Magic: the Gathering. It was a game where you designed a deck, and then you played that deck against someone else.

Playing the game was part of the game.

Designing your deck was another part of the game.


Chess is a lot more like M:tG than Chess is like D&D. Chess and M:tG are both competitive two-player games, unlike D&D which has an arbitrary number of players and is usually cooperative rather than competitive.

The analogue to character optimization is pretty obvious in M:tG, so maybe that'a a better example to use than chess.

[CantigThimble]

There is no optimizing in chess. Everyone has exactly the same resources and starting position. Being a better player isn't the same as optimizing. Better players will and should have better results when playing the game.

An RPG in which "being better at the game" means being better at choosing the universally best options before play even starts, is a badly designed game. Actually playing the game should be where the skill comes online, that's sort of what a game is about- actually playing it. Not winning because you know the rules better than everyone else.

I don't think that building a character and playing the game are fundamentally different. Both of those things are part of the game.

Knowing the rules and being a skilled player are highly correlated. What does being a skilled player even mean if not knowing the most effective ways that the rules allow you to do things? (which, of course, requires knowing the rules) It may be possible to know the rules without understanding how to apply them effectively but you sure as hell can't know how to apply them without knowing them.

'Skill' divorced from rules knowledge is just the ability to figure out the rules during play as quickly as possible.

I think the chess analogy actually works well because mastering chess actually requires a great deal of memorizing sequences of moves that accomplish specific goals and principles that guide effective play. The knowledge you have of those sequences and accumulated strategic principles are what determine the difference in skill between everyone except novices and grandmasters.

Edit: Rhedyn, if by "the issue of relative optimization" you exclusively meant "the ability to render some players completely and utterly irrelevant" then you should have said that. If that's what you mean, than I agree with you.

[kyoryu]

Hmm.

Wizards of the Coast also sold a game called Magic: the Gathering. It was a game where you designed a deck, and then you played that deck against someone else.

Playing the game was part of the game.

Designing your deck was another part of the game.

Sure, and having different preferences for the importance of the "deck-building" vs. "playing the game" parts is totally valid.

Especially in an RPG, where I may spend dozens of hours "playing the game", I prefer for the majority of the impactful decisions to be made at-the-table, not before the game.

[Thrudd]

Sure, and having different preferences for the importance of the "deck-building" vs. "playing the game" parts is totally valid.

Especially in an RPG, where I may spend dozens of hours "playing the game", I prefer for the majority of the impactful decisions to be made at-the-table, not before the game.

That's what I mean. I quickly became disenchanted with MtG, because so much of the play revolved around how many cards a person has managed to purchase- unless you have access to four copies of almost every card in each set, you can't be competitive in play. The deck building is fine as part of the skill for MtG, because it's a CCG and that's how those games work. RPGs are a different animal altogether- playing is about making choices in the fictional world as the character, not pitting your character against someone else's character in one-off battles, comparing the player's ability to combine splat-book powers into unbeatable combos. That's what I see as "optimizing".

[Chaosticket]

For what it's worth the conservatives that dont like power gaming also dont like to accept different settings, classes, races, and so on. They want what they believe s the one true setting and make their games very narrow. Some make human-only games even.

Personally I like Dungeons and Dragons, but not the players. I think I should give up and look for more open games like Shadowrun.

[kyoryu]

For what it's worth the conservatives that dont like power gaming also dont like to accept different settings, classes, races, and so on. They want what they believe s the one true setting and make their games very narrow. Some make human-only games even.

Personally I like Dungeons and Dragons, but not the players. I think I should give up and look for more open games like Shadowrun.

I think it's generally useful to understand differing playstyles and other differences of opinion without resorting to insulting or belittling those that hold them.

[Nifft]

Sure, and having different preferences for the importance of the "deck-building" vs. "playing the game" parts is totally valid.

Especially in an RPG, where I may spend dozens of hours "playing the game", I prefer for the majority of the impactful decisions to be made at-the-table, not before the game.

Might I interest you in a Session Zero with collaborative character building at-the-table for your next RPG?

It works with every system, I think.

You get everyone together before they make characters, and build the party together.

Really great DMs may also do collaborative setting building, so the game is responsive to player input right from the get-go.

[kyoryu]

Might I interest you in a Session Zero with collaborative character building at-the-table for your next RPG?

It works with every system, I think.

You get everyone together before they make characters, and build the party together.

Really great DMs may also do collaborative setting building, so the game is responsive to player input right from the get-go.

Dude, my main game is Fate. Collaborative character creation during Session Zero is, ya know, the default.

That doesn't change the fact that I want "game-time" decisions to be more important than "build decisions". I've played a ton of systems. I know what I like.

[Thrudd]

For what it's worth the conservatives that dont like power gaming also dont like to accept different settings, classes, races, and so on. They want what they believe s the one true setting and make their games very narrow. Some make human-only games even.

Personally I like Dungeons and Dragons, but not the players. I think I should give up and look for more open games like Shadowrun.

I don't think that's a true statement. Liking or not liking power gaming is not connected to how many different games or settings a person likes to play in. It's about what sort of game experience results from power gaming- it's a symptom of poorly designed game systems that often reduces the fun for a group.

If everyone is on the same page with embracing a game's brokenness, that's fine. But it is not in general a good sign if optimizing a character during creation makes a significant difference in the play experience. It's not the same thing as knowing how to make best tactical use of your character's abilities or knowing chess move sequences. It's like chess where one player knows queens are the best and chooses all queens for his pieces. A chess variant where you could do this would be a bad game.

[lperkins2]

5E. Now, it is POSSIBLE to have such a large gap that players will feel overshadowed, but that typically requires one player to be optimizing and the other player to anti-optimize.

A Berserker Barbarian with just ASIs won't be as good as a BearBarian with GWM, but they can both play in the same party without issue. Now, a Four Elements Monk with the statline of 13 12 8 15 8 15 will NOT play well with them, but you'd have to be intentionally gimping yourself to have a statline like that as a Monk.

Really? The barbarian with just ASIs won't feel overshadowed by the sorlock who's familiar emanates portable darkness? Or the hoardbreaker ranger tossing out 4 attacks a round at 120' ignoring cover at d20+3 for 1d4+14 damage a hit? How well will his DR stack up against just having AC20 at level 1? Sure, in a laid back group, where someone just happens to stumble across one of these power builds, it won't be a problem, but that's true in any system, if the players don't actually care about the mechanics of it. And that's before you consider the power disparity between 2 optimized characters designed to compliment each other, and two unoptimized characters, even if the unoptimized characters ostensibly plan to fight together. The last campaign I was in was casual, so nobody really cared about who was doing the damage in combat, and combat was a fairly small portion of the campaign, but out of curiosity I tracked damage dealt and taken. There were 2 well designed characters out of a party of 6. Those two characters accounted for about half the damage output, maybe 1/4 of the healing needed, despite being in the front, and almost all the focusing down of important targets. Meanwhile, the other 4 are sitting back plinking away with acid splash or crossbows since they have nothing more to contribute to combat. Heck, one of them had AC 9, and keep in mind, they weren't trying to build bad characters, they just had no idea about system mastery and put an 8 in dex as a wizard who never bothered to learn mage armour.

[JNAProductions]

And the Sorlock is both behind on spell levels, neutering the rest of the party (unless they ALL dipped Warlock 2), and loses that the moment anyone thinks to drop an AoE in the darkness. Or even just lands a single good hit on the familiar.

Hordebreaker only allows for three attacks total, not four, targets a minimum of two enemies, and requires you to have two people standing right next to each other. And you say +3 like that's good.

And considering the only people who can get AC 20 at level 1 are Clerics in chain with a shield and Shield of Faith up... Does it matter that much how he fares against a friendly player with an AC of 20?

[OldTrees1]

Someone driving too slow is just as much of a problem, much as is someone who under-optimizes at a high-op table.

The fact that this keeps getting repeatedly left off is probably indicative of prevailing attitudes.

Fair enough.

I did distinguish between the 1 slow person calling someone a maniac vs the group consensus calling them a maniac. Obviously this also applies to calling someone too slow vs them actual being too slow.

It also applies in more directions than just one overgeneralized +/- power scale (as I detailed in post 16 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23075657&postcount=16)).

[Knaight]

Someone driving too slow is just as much of a problem, much as is someone who under-optimizes at a high-op table.

The fact that this keeps getting repeatedly left off is probably indicative of prevailing attitudes.
It's probably indicative of that problem being more theoretical, particularly on this forum - high optimization is standard, incredibly low basically non-existent. It's the same way that on local highways there's always complaints about the people from warmer states thinking that going the speed limit in a blizzard is a good idea, and basically no complaints about people going too slowly for the weather. The latter could be a problem, but it just doesn't come up.


Sure, and having different preferences for the importance of the "deck-building" vs. "playing the game" parts is totally valid.

Especially in an RPG, where I may spend dozens of hours "playing the game", I prefer for the majority of the impactful decisions to be made at-the-table, not before the game.
Friendly games of MtG also routinely restrict what you do in the deck building phase to keep the playing the game phase more interesting, because a game won in deck building is just a frustration to play. That same dynamic applies to a much greater degree to a cooperative RPG, particularly given that the time balance between deck/character building and play is drastically shifted towards the play direction.


For what it's worth the conservatives that dont like power gaming also dont like to accept different settings, classes, races, and so on. They want what they believe s the one true setting and make their games very narrow. Some make human-only games even.
There are plenty of people who dislike power gaming who are also on board with all sorts of bizarre and even gonzo settings, to the point where calling them "conservatives" is hilarious in its wrongness. For instance, I generally dislike power gaming. The last few games I've run have included, in order from most to least recent:

A magical girl setting where the PCs are sorority members pulled to a fantasy realm.
A deliberately bleak setting involving the warriors of a small village turning to banditry to avoid the starvation of their village.
Ace pilots of a technologically backwards space government flying cutting edge prototype fighters they stole from their most advanced rival.
Official explorers of a space federation trying to get their ship back in order after crash landing on a large asteroid space pirate base.
A bunch of pulp heroes who happened to be on the same zeppelin, only to get pulled into saving the world from a Nazi doomsday plot which would hypnotize the world with a synthetic Aurora Borealis powered by a volcano.
Nomad mages on a quest to commune with remote nature spirits, gain their power, and implement a magitech society in their formerly bronze age world with no controlled magic.
Members of a destroyed alchemist guild seeking revenge on the noble who destroyed them.
The crew of the starship Shrodinger's Hummingbird going on all sorts of ridiculous missions.


You'll notice the absence of one true setting. None of these used class based systems, but you'll also notice the absence of a consistent set of heroic archetypes. As for the horror of the human only game, while this list is all human the idea that all settings allow for a variety of sentient races is itself a very conservative attitude to take towards RPGs, where D&D expectations are exported where they don't belong. Plus, if I make the list a bit longer I can add in a bunch of robots, some driftwood golems (and one person with enough magic prosthetics to be half driftwood golem), a lizardman, insectoid mage, pottery golem, and living tree (those last four were all from the same game), and a handful of biological experiments that were basically intelligent slime creatures able to rapidly develop into different forms.

[Quertus]

Quertus' language did not imply they would impose on tables where Quertus does not fit BUT their language did imply you were "doing it objectively wrong" if you could not accommodate Quertus at your table.

This is fair.

Quertus is among my most successful multi-table-friendly characters, and, if I'm not mistaken, is the character that has been most requested (by both players and GMs) for me to play. The hate leveled at the concept is as more baffling to me than hating on Santa as a creepy stalker. :smallconfused: Still, if he's legitimately not wanted / not a fit somewhere, I've got a whole folder of characters to choose from.

In all my years, I've never met anyone who claimed that, by cannon and RAW, the published settings are disconnected from one another. In fact, in another thread, someone posted how, by cannon, some of the big names from different worlds have met each other (in fact, one GM spoke of a module where such was the case. I never read it, so this may or may not be real), and I know that they have cannon connections to this world. IIRC, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape all connect to most of not all those worlds. And almost everyone's world has, say, Evard's Black Tentacles or Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which kinda says that they are all connected, too. Seriously, has anyone - other than me - ever actually banned all of Rary's / Mordenkainen's / Bigby's / etc spells in their "closed" worlds? So, that doesn't leave much that isn't connected by cannon, or in actual games. So, yes, I tend to think that those who believe that D&D worlds that are divorced from the larger D&D universe is somehow normal, and not "special snowflakes", are wrong. However, having now been introduced to the concept, it's at least a question in my mind, rather than an "of course it's this way".

Now, normally, I'd be all for special snowflake worlds, as it's a good opportunity for Exploration. But playing throwaway characters at closed tables seems a waste of my time. No single GM will ever provide as rich and diverse of content as 20 GMs can. So why would I bother?


Quertus here also highlights that it's not just the character, having both played a powerful character with low performance and a weak character with high performance extensively.

I'm glad I contributed something useful and on topic. :smallwink:


I don't think I've ever banned a character before in any game I've run, but I'd make an exception for any character which doubles as a Trojan horse for completely killing my setting by handing it off to some implicit super setting that nobody else at the table agreed to play in. Quertus, the character, is merely a particularly obnoxious example of the form.

Did you agree to play D&D? Does your world have Mordenkainen's Disjunction, and the rest of the named spells? If so, then you're already in the larger universe, you're just in denial.


Given that I also recognize that name by now, said ban would be quickly followed by one of Quertus, the player. I've also never banned a player before, but then, I've never had a player try to hijack a game everyone else is enjoying to explore their ill fitting character, then complain about the GM's snowflake setting getting in the way with its existence.


Although I share the feeling, a bit harsh perhaps? My impression is that Quertus the player wouldn't want to play in these settings either way, and would politely bow out. If so, no problem to have different preferences. If instead the player accepts the premise of a game, but secretly inserts his extradimensional character into a closed setting (say Game of Thrones, Star Wars or whatever homebrew) then that would be playing in bad faith and akin to illusionism.

I mean, his attitude is completely alien to me, and I would hazard a guess a bad fit for most tables, but seems to be a natural result of his legitimate preferences (exploring worlds under different GMs, not having connections to the world, wanting to play the same character for a long time etc). As long as that isn't expected of others, fine.


Not if you play with people with same expectations as you, or don't expect others to share/accomodate your niche preferences...


If you play with like-minded people, sure. But that's a strong limiter for someone that out-there.

Out there? Sure. But it's odd to hear this particular aspect described as a niche preference. It's just... the way that the game has always been.

I tend to work well in groups that are good at open, honest, direct communication. Tell me your expectations, and work with me to achieve them. Or groups that aren't in a hurry to make a horrible campaign - that will do a number of one-shots, and discuss what everyone likes and dislikes before starting anything big (this (and people who have played with him before) is where people usually ask me to play Quertus - like I said, he's been rather popular).

Still, it's possible that the metagame has changed, and if Quertus were low enough level to be appropriate to most campaigns, he might not receive as warm a welcome.


The second part of that is irrelevant--by playing a non-fitting character you're requiring others to accommodate your preferences. You're saying that your preferences are more important than the established meta-rules of the particular table. And that's anti-social behavior, just like "my guy"-ism, munchkinism, etc.

And the GM who insists on ignoring the established meta-rules of the game? Who insists on special snowflake closed worlds?

It's like GMs who use White lists, rather than caring about the balance of the final character. You're throwing away things that would work - why? If you can't provide a reasonable answer to that simple question, you doubtless won't have a world worth Exploring, which is fine, but, more importantly, it's a strong sign that you'll fail at other descriptions and explanations, including the all important one of being the eyes and ears of the character, their interface to the game world.

If you fail at this, there's little hope for the game.

Also, my experience is, most GMs who change things are worse that TSR/WotC. Most GMs just make things worse. This is my experience, my bias. This is why I'll poke at any changes like this, to see if there's any chance the GM is worth playing with.

Obviously, and GM who can't handle being questioned will consider me toxic - but I wouldn't want to be in their games, either.


Hmm.

Wizards of the Coast also sold a game called Magic: the Gathering. It was a game where you designed a deck, and then you played that deck against someone else.

Playing the game was part of the game.

Designing your deck was another part of the game.


Chess is a lot more like M:tG than Chess is like D&D. Chess and M:tG are both competitive two-player games, unlike D&D which has an arbitrary number of players and is usually cooperative rather than competitive.

The analogue to character optimization is pretty obvious in M:tG, so maybe that'a a better example to use than chess.

Hmmm... I agree with this assessment, yet I feel like I treat the two games differently somehow. I'll ponder this.

[OldTrees1]

This is fair.

Quertus is among my most successful multi-table-friendly characters, and, if I'm not mistaken, is the character that has been most requested (by both players and GMs) for me to play. The hate leveled at the concept is as more baffling to me than hating on Santa as a creepy stalker. :smallconfused: Still, if he's legitimately not wanted / not a fit somewhere, I've got a whole folder of characters to choose from.

It is more the "all other ways are objectively wrong" attitude that got you so much flak. Insisting that a DM is playing D&D wrong because they don't want to have every campaign of every DM be part of the same canon is way too close to calling every DM wrong. Of course you are going to get lots of hate for that.

If you change your mind and express it strictly as a personal preference rather than saying DMs are objectively wrong for not be willing to accommodate other campaigns into their canon, then most/all of that flak disappears.

Until then you will get flak from DM's that recognize the merit in having their Sunday's campaign Toril not being connected to their Friday's campaign Toril or their Uncle's Wednesday's campaign Toril (Especially once you realize there are campaigns that would destroy every other campaign if they were in the same canon). You can even including a Mordenkainen without having it be canonically linked with the Mordenkainen PC that was played in one of Gygax's campaigns. Even from the odd DM's that do play with technically connected campaigns (like Adventure League kinda requires).

[Nifft]

Dude, my main game (...) I've played a ton of systems. I know what I like. Ooooooooo-kay. *backs away slowly*


Hmmm... I agree with this assessment, yet I feel like I treat the two games differently somehow. I'll ponder this. One very major difference between D&D and M:tG is that M:tG is intentionally competitive. Players are trying to win against each other. Competitive play is intended and expected.

That sort of competitive behavior between players (including between player & DM) can happen in D&D, but it's usually NOT expected, nor intended by the majority of players.

You can have competitive play in D&D -- IIRC, there were tournaments which were run in a moderately competitive way -- but that's highly divergent from how the game is played at most tables.

D&D is usually more of a cooperative game.


That said, if everyone involved agrees with it, there's nothing wrong with playing D&D as a competitive game.

It's only wrong when the other people at the table expected the game to be cooperative -- and mostly, I think they do.

[Koo Rehtorb]

In all my years, I've never met anyone who claimed that, by cannon and RAW, the published settings are disconnected from one another. In fact, in another thread, someone posted how, by cannon, some of the big names from different worlds have met each other (in fact, one GM spoke of a module where such was the case. I never read it, so this may or may not be real), and I know that they have cannon connections to this world. IIRC, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape all connect to most of not all those worlds. And almost everyone's world has, say, Evard's Black Tentacles or Mordenkainen's Disjunction, which kinda says that they are all connected, too. Seriously, has anyone - other than me - ever actually banned all of Rary's / Mordenkainen's / Bigby's / etc spells in their "closed" worlds? So, that doesn't leave much that isn't connected by cannon, or in actual games. So, yes, I tend to think that those who believe that D&D worlds that are divorced from the larger D&D universe is somehow normal, and not "special snowflakes", are wrong. However, having now been introduced to the concept, it's at least a question in my mind, rather than an "of course it's this way".

Sure, by canon Elminster has a portal to Earth which he uses to hang out with his good buddy Ed Greenwood. This doesn't make it not a ridiculous and terrible setting point that should only ever be referenced again in a "Look how far we've come from the bad old days" kind of way.

And no, I don't remove the spell line, I just call it Forceful Hand instead of Bigby's Forceful Hand, the same way that 3.5 does their spell lists.


Now, normally, I'd be all for special snowflake worlds,

You need to cut this out.

[Nifft]

Sure, by canon Elminster has a portal to Earth which he uses to hang out with his good buddy Ed Greenwood. This doesn't make it not a ridiculous and terrible setting point that should only ever be referenced again in a "Look how far we've come from the bad old days" kind of way.

Nowadays, that Elminster guy hangs out with Mike Mearls instead.

[Guizonde]

I don't think that's a true statement. Liking or not liking power gaming is not connected to how many different games or settings a person likes to play in. It's about what sort of game experience results from power gaming- it's a symptom of poorly designed game systems that often reduces the fun for a group.

If everyone is on the same page with embracing a game's brokenness, that's fine. But it is not in general a good sign if optimizing a character during creation makes a significant difference in the play experience. It's not the same thing as knowing how to make best tactical use of your character's abilities or knowing chess move sequences. It's like chess where one player knows queens are the best and chooses all queens for his pieces. A chess variant where you could do this would be a bad game.

i think that balance is key: ie, the balance between players. nobody likes a power-gamer. how do you quell this? by making players either balanced, or experts in their fields. in my rogue trader game, i've got at least a +70% margin of error over the others when it comes to shooting. nobody minds because my character is specced into killing things with a gun. aside from being surly, chomping cigars, and being a redneck, my character has no skills whatsoever. that's where the rest of the team comes into its own: the tech-priestess fixes things, the face charms the pants off tyranids, and the pilot threads the needle between a rok and a black star as a routine. my character nails multiple headshots on one target at 150 yards to keep my team alive. that's what i call a "snowflake team": everyone is unique and brings one face-melting thing to the table. in almost all other tables i've played as, everyone was pushing for synergy and redundancy. were i to bring raymond (the above surly crack-shot) to those tables, i'd've been told to go easy. were i to bring inquisitor josé to raymond's table, i'd be cruelly under-powered (him being a force multiplier, but a poor lone-wolf).

granted, i jumped from rt to pf, but my point stands. i played an rsop in a 3.0 game centered around fighting undead. i overshadowed everyone to the point where the dm changed the campaign halfway through (and he insisted i play the rsop in the first place). if one player is soloing the module, either tell them to reign in back or kick the player. i forgot whom on this forum has "the first rule of rpg's is: HAVE FUN", but they're right. you want to go on a power trip? find a group willing to do that. you and you only are responsible for fitting in at a table. don't go saying "they're playing it the badwrongfun way!! waaaaaaaaahhhhh!!!", do something about it by changing how you want to play, be it under-optimizing or finding new players. with that thought, let me go ahead and kick in an open door:

munchkins suck. don't be a munchkin. if you really want to play a game where "press play to win" is the winning condition, go back to playing video games.

[Quertus]

It is more the "all other ways are objectively wrong" attitude that got you so much flak. Insisting that a DM is playing D&D wrong because they don't want to have every campaign of every DM be part of the same canon is way too close to calling every DM wrong. Of course you are going to get lots of hate for that.

If you change your mind and express it strictly as a personal preference rather than saying DMs are objectively wrong for not be willing to accommodate other campaigns into their canon, then most/all of that flak disappears.

Until then you will get flak from DM's that recognize the merit in having their Sunday's campaign Toril not being connected to their Friday's campaign Toril or their Uncle's Wednesday's campaign Toril (Especially once you realize there are campaigns that would destroy every other campaign if they were in the same canon). You can even including a Mordenkainen without having it be canonically linked with the Mordenkainen PC that was played in one of Gygax's campaigns. Even from the odd DM's that do play with technically connected campaigns (like Adventure League kinda requires).

I don't think that it's objectively wrong to build a closed world - heck, if you pay attention, you'll see I've admitted to making one myself! I do, however, believe that it is objectively wrong to say that, by cannon, the default campaign settings are and were closed worlds.

Further, I fully recognize that the many, many copies of Toril are distinct worlds. As I said, Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has pondered the implications of such.

What I'm baffled by is this newfangled proliferation of poorly-thought-through closed worlds, that, from my PoV, seem to provide only a detriment to gameplay, and the general lack of GMs or Playgrounders to have good reasons for making them such.

I've played in a few closed worlds that were actually built by good GMs, who had good reasons for making their works closed. I've not seen such quality in the modern flood.

Either way, it's a detriment to my personal enjoyment of the game, and I want to know why it's happening.


One very major difference between D&D and M:tG is that M:tG is intentionally competitive. Players are trying to win against each other. Competitive play is intended and expected.

D&D is usually more of a cooperative game.

Ok, well, yes, there is that. :smallredface: It's possible that whatever is bugging me is just some logical product of that fact.


You need to cut this out.

Am I using the phrase wrong?

[Nifft]

Am I using the phrase wrong?

If you're trying to insult people who don't conform to your normative standards, then you're using it correctly.

There are a few other ways to use it, but they require some finesse -- like including yourself as a snowflake, for example, removes a lot of the insult potential.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Am I using the phrase wrong?

The phrase is generally used to insult those on the belief that their desire for uniqueness and individuation or bad (with the strong implication it is because it is extreme and unfounded). It is a pejorative so be aware that people may not appreciate insults being thrown around.

As for the main topic: people who willfully increase the power of their characters beyond what the DM/party can handle and refuses to adjust for that is what I call a "power gamer" since power is the most critical aspect of the game for them. Under/overturning happens, especially in larger systems with more options and more opportunity for odd interactions. I've accidentally a powerful character a few times just having fun and a friend near smashed a game wide open with a cutesy combination of a few small things. We fixed our mistakes though, since we did not to ruin other people's fun and still managed to have plenty of our own.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Quertus, I'm going to say something that will shock you. But in 5e, at least, it's absolutely RAW, black-letter law. I don't have the other editions to compare to, but I'm 99% sure it's the same anywhere in D&D.

THERE IS NO SETTING CANON. Every setting element, even in a published setting, exists (or not) at the sole pleasure of the DM. They are the final authority on what exists. Descriptions in novels, adventures, even setting guides notwithstanding, it only exists if the DM says it does.


[After describing some of the published settings]Your DM might set the campaign on one of these worlds or on one that he or she created...Ultimately, the Dungeon Master is the authority on the campaign and its setting, even if the setting is a published world.


Even if you're using an established world such as the Forgotten Realms, your campaign takes place in a sort of mirror universe of the official setting where Forgotten Realms novels, game products, and digital games are assumed to take place. The world is yours to change as you see fit and yours to modify as you explore the consequences of the players' actions.

There is no such thing as binding canon. There are only alternate universe implementations you can import if you want (you being the DM, not a player). No one can (truthfully) say "you're doing the lore wrong." Full authority is given to the DM.

So there is no "meta-setting canon" to violate by not allowing portals from other worlds. Especially from alternate versions of the same world. They're in separate multiverses. Each DM gets a copy of the entire D&D multiverse to do with as they please. And passage between multiverses, well, is a bit much to assume.

[Rhedyn]

Quertus, I'm going to say something that will shock you. But in 5e, at least, it's absolutely RAW, black-letter law. I don't have the other editions to compare to, but I'm 99% sure it's the same anywhere in D&D.

THERE IS NO SETTING CANON. Every setting element, even in a published setting, exists (or not) at the sole pleasure of the DM. They are the final authority on what exists. Descriptions in novels, adventures, even setting guides notwithstanding, it only exists if the DM says it does.





There is no such thing as binding canon. There are only alternate universe implementations you can import if you want (you being the DM, not a player). No one can (truthfully) say "you're doing the lore wrong." Full authority is given to the DM.

So there is no "meta-setting canon" to violate by not allowing portals from other worlds. Especially from alternate versions of the same world. They're in separate multiverses. Each DM gets a copy of the entire D&D multiverse to do with as they please. And passage between multiverses, well, is a bit much to assume.
That's not fair. The DM can change any rule too that does not mean there are no rules.


Normally our group does not play in a published setting. I'm currently running a Savage Worlds game in the Starfinder setting, but man is my version of the Pact Worlds a whole lot more messed up than anything Paizo will put out. But that is my interpretation of any alliance that includes an Undead planet, a drow moon, crime rats of not-mars, a Cthulhu planet, and emotionless robots

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's not fair. The DM can change any rule too that does not mean there are no rules.


There's a distinction in my mind between "you can house-rule anything" (Rule 0) and "Ask the DM, he's in charge of that." That is, the fixed rule is that the DM decides, and what the DM says goes (unless the players revolt and leave him without a game). He's not house-ruling, he's not changing a rule--setting facts aren't rules. They're left entirely at his whim.

[Florian]

@Power Gaming and Pun-Pun:

Personally, I feel that the RAW ÜBER ALLES! culture of this forum distorts what people at more regular tables understand as power gaming, as showcased by using Pun-Pun in arguments, or making overinflated use of calling things "trap options", but also by treating the fluff as secondary concerns, like the mentality to disregard any existing fluff and use pure mechanics any way you like.

Anecdotally, I'm playing a pretty powerful build in a Kingmaker campaign right now, a calling/summoning/binding specialist Tiefling Wizard/Blackfire Adept/Infernalist (yes, the old version, with the full Imp) and the group loves it, while another player, playing a more bog-standard Sorcadin build of Sorcerer/Paladin/Eldritch Knight gets the flak as power gamer for a) ignoring the fluff of both, the chosen bloodline and the Paladin class and b) for daring to infringe on the niches of the parties Fighter, Magus and, well, me (I'm not complaining, tho, it´s how the others see it).

I also "cheat" in more than one way. This group consists of PF/RPG newbies and the gm has asked me along because I'm pretty experienced and have gm´ed that campaign twice already, to cover her mistakes and also so that she doesn't have to pull any punches, so far, no one has cried "foul" at my ability to bind a squadron of Bearded Devils when the mass combat rules came to use the first time or having the right buffs prepared when facing a certain Lich. Again, much of it is about perception. I helped build our Fighter (Viking archetype, Iron Caster) and Magus (Black Blade Kensai, shocking grasp crit seeker) and helped round-out the Life Oracle, with them all performing very well in their respective niche and enjoying that, but, again, it´s the Sorcadin player that gets the flak, not because his character can outperform any of the others, he can´t, but because of constantly trying to infringe on their chosen niches.

[BreaktheStatue]

There's a distinction in my mind between "you can house-rule anything" (Rule 0) and "Ask the DM, he's in charge of that." That is, the fixed rule is that the DM decides, and what the DM says goes (unless the players revolt and leave him without a game). He's not house-ruling, he's not changing a rule--setting facts aren't rules. They're left entirely at his whim.

It kind of has to be this way, not only out of fairness (the DM takes on a lion's share of the work, it's their world), but out of practicality. Rules arguments can already get silly when it comes to things like mechanics, but if settings cannon became fair game for discussion? Nothing would ever get done.

[Cluedrew]

I feel the need to call the Playgrounder's Fallacy, there are games that are not D&D in which case most of the arguments for allowing multi-verse hopping characters kind of fall apart. I mean I suppose if only play D&D games it might be a mute (yes, not moot) point to you, but as someone who has been poring a few years into a new system*, it is an important distinction to me.

* That probably no one outside my group will ever play.

[Quertus]

I feel the need to call the Playgrounder's Fallacy, there are games that are not D&D in which case most of the arguments for allowing multi-verse hopping characters kind of fall apart. I mean I suppose if only play D&D games it might be a mute (yes, not moot) point to you, but as someone who has been poring a few years into a new system*, it is an important distinction to me.

* That probably no one outside my group will ever play.

I know I'm senile, but I believe I already covered a range of games, from D&D, to (shudder) RIFTS, to various superhero genre games all have this kind of thing baked into their lore and history. In fact, I'm pretty sure I included the (shudder) last time, too.

So, personally, I'mma claim immunity to Playgrounder's Fallacy on this one. :smalltongue:

[Cluedrew]

Fair enough. That is still a mere two systems and a genre though, in the long run that is still quite small. Well I could add some more world hopping settings to the list, but the number that are alone or a fixed set of worlds (such as alt-reality and a mystic other world) are even higher.

Out of curiosity, how do you handle crossing systems? It seems to me that you would have to re-build the character from the ground up, even if you used an existing character as this character's background.

[Guizonde]

Out of curiosity, how do you handle crossing systems? It seems to me that you would have to re-build the character from the ground up, even if you used an existing character as this character's background.

poorly, personally. just going from 3.5 to pf i spent 5 hours poring over ressources, documents, and threads on how to make a specific character as close to the original as possible. my main problem was that there is no "heroes of horror" and "libris mortis" porting in pf. at the end of the day, i noticed a huge power and flexibility drop by recreating the character in pf. and by that, i mean the character concept was simply unplayable. was a challenge in 3.5, would barely last one session in pf.

apparently, ffg is much better at doing cross-over characters, specifically their 40 material. the all guardsmen party started out as a game of only war before moving on to dark heresy. some homebrewing was done, says shoggy, but the kinks have been worked out by dark heresy v2, or so i'm told. i know someone at my club wants to port a whfrp2 character into a game of rogue trader, and aside from the massive disadvantages his character will have, it seems that not much is stopping that character from being sucked up in a warp storm and thrown out somewhere in 40k.

[Pelle]

What I'm baffled by is this newfangled proliferation of poorly-thought-through closed worlds, that, from my PoV, seem to provide only a detriment to gameplay, and the general lack of GMs or Playgrounders to have good reasons for making them such.


It's a detriment to gameplay to you because the assumption of closed worlds prevent you from playing your old characters in them. That is understandable.

For a lot of people however, they like to experience belonging to an imaginary real world. If I want to play a game in a particular setting, I don't want to see any characters that don't belong to it, that ruins the experience. If you can't understand it, please at least accept it.




I've played in a few closed worlds that were actually built by good GMs, who had good reasons for making their works closed. I've not seen such quality in the modern flood.


Since GMs cover a range of experienced and talented to less experienced, of course some worlds will be of good quality and some not. That doesn't change what other people want to experience when playing, and what will ruin their enjoyment.

[Quertus]

Out of curiosity, how do you handle crossing systems? It seems to me that you would have to re-build the character from the ground up, even if you used an existing character as this character's background.

Although I'd enjoy such a game, it's something I rarely actually get to do - far, far more rare than, you know, playing a D&D character in D&D.

Yes, it's much more work than just building a new character in the target system.

Take... Dr. Doom. In... D&D. Back of the napkin conversion... Hmmm... He can cast spells, kinda, so he'd be some kind of casting class - maybe adept? With knowledge of many rituals. He's probably an Aristocrat with Leadership (although his followers are on another world, tough break). In 2e, his high-tech armor would get converted to Artifact status (another tough break). For his stats, well, I'd look up official stats on Dr. Doom. The old FASERIP system gives him... wow, some fairly ridiculous stats, actually - "max human" is his lowest stat. So, all 18's+?

I'd take much more care in converting my own characters.

So... Briq, in... M&M. Hmmm, I've misplaced the book. That makes this harder. So, back of the napkin thought process it is. There's doubtless something close to a Panther Assault Cannon (a howitzer, maybe?) that's already been statted out. I'd start with that as a base, and make modifications for things like range, ammo, and man-(troll-)portability. Obviously, he'd have innate Growth. Stats would be fairly easy to convert. I'd give him Toughness based on his odds of taking damage from said Panther Assault Cannon. Reflex and Will saves might be harder to generate faithfully, and might just get set to "whatever the closest sample character has".

Then we hit the sticky bits. If you look at Harry Potter and the Natural 20, the protagonist continued healing at his normal rate despite world-hopping, continued understanding magic exactly the same way, etc. If his entire dungeon had been transported to Hogwarts, the party wouldn't have noticed that anything had changed until they exited the dungeon. This is how I like conversions to work - you could uproot the entire campaign / world to the new setting, and no-one would ever be the wiser (barring things like technology actively being changed, and Dr. Doom's armor becoming an Artifact in 2e D&D).

So, I'd need to look at things like recovery rates, and other little fiddly bits, sure. And Briq would get some Hero Points. No problem. But the tough parts would be things that the new system doesn't comprehend, like how much of a disadvantage opponents who melee Briq get - how he usually gets free attacks on them instead of them getting to attack him*. Or how he gets to go several times before they get to go once.

For groups that care about balance, he could, even so, be balanced with a group for a single point in time, but there'd be no guarantee that this balance wouldn't fall apart in either direction once things like XP or treasure were added to the mix.

Fortunately, I rarely play with groups that care over-much about balance. So I'd only need to be worried about staying faithful to the character, and maybe a rough idea about his appropriate balance range.

* it could almost work as a field which suppressed normally innate things (melee attacks), coupled with an innate damage shield power applied to all his melee attacks, but the math would be wrong.

[Quertus]

It's a detriment to gameplay to you because the assumption of closed worlds prevent you from playing your old characters in them. That is understandable.


For a lot of people however, they like to experience belonging to an imaginary real world. If I want to play a game in a particular setting, I don't want to see any characters that don't belong to it, that ruins the experience. If you can't understand it, please at least accept it.


Since GMs cover a range of experienced and talented to less experienced, of course some worlds will be of good quality and some not. That doesn't change what other people want to experience when playing, and what will ruin their enjoyment.

So, when you've got thousands of similar D&D worlds floating around out there, that all use the same classes, the same spells, etc, it ruins immersion and credulity for them to all be completely unrelated. Especially back when they had obvious ties to each other via things like the various named spells.

There are two kinds of closed worlds - those which are closed off to all other planes, and those which have their own copies of all the other planes, and then close that entire bundle off.

At a beer & pretzels level, I can maybe pull off a pirate in a pirate campaign, or maybe pull off a martial artist in a kung fu campaign. But I'll be the odd man out, like Captain Jack Sparrow. But if the GM or the group actually take their world building seriously, it's impossible without a masters in "your world" - and possibly not even then. Far better, IME, to let people like me competently play William Turner than be a constant irritant by not getting the setting at the level everyone else does. If the setting were built to be open, then the character fits, what's the problem?

It's much like my stance on any other form of player skill - people are different. That's going to be a disparity in skill level. It's just a fact of life. Closed worlds have no recourse to handle a disparity in skill level of ability to grok the world.

Further, when the campaign is over, when the GM moves away or dies, that's it. If everyone's world is closed, you'll never play the character again. Regardless of whether their story is done or not.

You and a friend have cool characters you'd love to have get together for a play date? Sorry, they were created in different worlds, it's never happening.

These are a few of the reasons I say that it's a detriment to everyone.

Then, sure, on a personal note, there's also the fact that I neither get to play characters in any meaningful way*, nor do I get the opportunity to properly explore a cool new setting.

* which, I'd argue, would detract from the fun of the table, by virtue of having a fellow player play a playing piece being generally less enjoyable than one playing a proper character, savvy?

[Rhedyn]

...but also by treating the fluff as secondary concerns, like the mentality to disregard any existing fluff and use pure mechanics any way you like...
And in some games like Savage Worlds, it's explicit that the fluff is something you tac on to pure mechanics.

The power bolt does 2d6 damage. It's only damage before you add a trapping and can't exist in the game world until you add a trapping. Fluff is by the rules modular. You can even trap skills to actually be magic spells. The limit of trappings depends on the GM and the setting.

I personally think this is better game design because you have less rules to cover more concepts.

[CantigThimble]

But if the GM or the group actually take their world building seriously, it's impossible without a masters in "your world" - and possibly not even then. Far better, IME, to let people like me competently play William Turner than be a constant irritant by not getting the setting at the level everyone else does. If the setting were built to be open, then the character fits, what's the problem?

First off, NO ONE, not even the DM has a masters in 'their world'. It's just not possible to create a perfect simulation of a fantasy world in complete detail and understand it well enough to act as if you are someone who has spent your entire life in that world.

But it's also impossible to comprehend the profound impact that the existence of magic would have on a world, socially, personally, economically etc. and act THAT out either. But we try anyway and we manage it at least well enough to make the game fun.

The fact that perfection is out of reach doesn't mean that it's never going to make things better to at least try.

Also, as mentioned previously, if you just create a character from a backwater town or a cloistered wizard's tower/monestary then he would know just about as much about the wider world as you do, so you can play that character authentically while only having a minimum of knowledge about the setting.


Further, when the campaign is over, when the GM moves away or dies, that's it. If everyone's world is closed, you'll never play the character again. Regardless of whether their story is done or not.

You and a friend have cool characters you'd love to have get together for a play date? Sorry, they were created in different worlds, it's never happening.

Personally, I find the idea of just picking up a character and putting him in another game just horrifying. The campaign and the character aren't seperable things. He is a part of that story and that story is part of him and that's what makes the character compelling to play. One of my favorite characters I have ever played is currently trapped in that limbo right now. A great campaign was cut off in the middle and likely won't resume. But just picking him up and putting him in another campaign would be an insult to the character. That campaign defined who he was in many ways, he was a noble man desperately struggling against otherworldly horrors that loomed in the shadows of his future and seemed to have swallowed his past. He was a servant of the god of knowledge and prophecy who felt he had become a pawn of forces utterly beyond his control and understanding and was simply desperate to find any connection to what he had lost, his past, his home and his children. While he drew breath, he would never stop searching for the reasons why his life had been torn apart by these forces and if there was any way to recover what he had lost.

Plonking him down in a random dungeon crawl and acting like he doesn't have bigger problems would be an absolute disgrace. I would rather leave him there, as part of an unfinished story, than rip him out and try to staple him into another where he would never fit.

It's sad that his story will likely never be finished, but I would rather tell more stories like that even if I knew they were going to be left unfinished than deliberately play a character that would never have that level of involvement.


These are a few of the reasons I say that it's a detriment to everyone.

Maybe some people, who connect to their characters very differently than I do, but not everyone.

[Pelle]

If the setting were built to be open, then the character fits, what's the problem?


If the setting was built to be open, there's no problem. Have fun playing any kind of character in it. Personally I like to play in settings that are closed, however, with only characters belonging there. If that means you don't want to play in that game, so what? Just decline the offer. Please don't try to appropriate the setting by dishonestly inserting your character from another game.

If I am watching Inspector Morse, set in fictional Oxford, Gandalf or Spiderman showing up would change the setting completely. You can't objectively say one is better or worse, but I prefer the one without them. If I want to play a game inspired by the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I want to play in a fictional Wild West setting, not in "Wild West but with robots and wizards!". Why? Doesn't matter, just accept the premise or suggest something else instead.



Closed worlds have no recourse to handle a disparity in skill level of ability to grok the world.

Further, when the campaign is over, when the GM moves away or dies, that's it. If everyone's world is closed, you'll never play the character again. Regardless of whether their story is done or not.

You and a friend have cool characters you'd love to have get together for a play date? Sorry, they were created in different worlds, it's never happening.


Yes, those are reasons for choosing to use an open settings. To me they are not more important than characters belonging to a setting, so I'm not interested, thank you.

[Koo Rehtorb]

The whole point of a character is that it's intricately tied to both the setting and the other PCs.

Let me tell you about one of my characters that I most regret the campaign ending prematurely. A elven priestess of the god of war. She'd witnessed generations of human stupidity and greed lead the world to the edge of ruin, including the near destruction of another distinct group of elven people. Her goal was to infiltrate one of the more major human kingdoms, work over the course of a century to build up trust and support in the nation by filling a religious vacuum and establishing herself as high priestess of it. And then eventually arrange to throw the kingdom into chaos with some choice assassinations and seize the reigns of power as the natural choice, being the only established authority figure left. And then, use the new kingdom of disposal human worshipers of war to strategically subjugate or destroy the other human kingdoms in a position to threaten the elves left in the world.

Why on earth would I want to rip her out of that setting and then go **** around exploring random dungeons or whatever in some other plane of reality? Why would anyone want to? Frankly, the desire reads like a safety net designed to protect the player from their character having to care about anything or anyone because they're just a tourist and this world and all its problems aren't that important in the big picture.

[Thrudd]

I feel like this whole argument is based on a hypothetical scenario that will never exist. If someone has a 13th level D&D character and they want to bring them into a new D&D campaign, the first thing to determine is if the campaign is starting around 13th level- if not, then the whole matter is over- your old character is not the right level for the game.

If 13th level is where the game is starting, then you need to look to see if the character is built according to the set of rules that will be in use. If it isn't, then the character has to change to fit.

The fluff of the character's past and background are the last thing you need to worry about. If the player wants his character to babble on about parallel dimensions, is that a big deal? It doesn't mean the campaign and other characters need to include other dimensions nor even to acknowledge they exist. He might as well be an insane character. If it makes the player happy, who cares? He's an eccentric that tells stories nobody believes. If the player wants to imagine that his character's stories are really true, unbeknownst to everyone else, that doesn't affect anything.

I guess I'm saying, I don't disagree with Quertus completely, at least in regards to a D&D character like his playing in one of the generic published settings without a lot of homebrewing involved. Its not a stretch to think someone popped in from a parallel Toril or Aerth or whatever.

[Koo Rehtorb]

The fluff of the character's past and background are the last thing you need to worry about. If the player wants his character to babble on about parallel dimensions, is that a big deal? It doesn't mean the campaign and other characters need to include other dimensions nor even to acknowledge they exist. He might as well be an insane character. If it makes the player happy, who cares? He's an eccentric that tells stories nobody believes. If the player wants to imagine that his character's stories are really true, unbeknownst to everyone else, that doesn't affect anything.

People have always suggested this for characters who want dumb backstory things and I've never liked it. An insane character plays in a completely different way and it matters a lot whether he's actually crazy or not. I'm fine with a character who thinks he's a dimension shifting wizard so long as the player admits the character's nuts and plays to it and everyone's in on the joke.

[Chaosticket]

It's probably indicative of that problem being more theoretical, particularly on this forum - high optimization is standard, incredibly low basically non-existent. It's the same way that on local highways there's always complaints about the people from warmer states thinking that going the speed limit in a blizzard is a good idea, and basically no complaints about people going too slowly for the weather. The latter could be a problem, but it just doesn't come up.


Friendly games of MtG also routinely restrict what you do in the deck building phase to keep the playing the game phase more interesting, because a game won in deck building is just a frustration to play. That same dynamic applies to a much greater degree to a cooperative RPG, particularly given that the time balance between deck/character building and play is drastically shifted towards the play direction.


There are plenty of people who dislike power gaming who are also on board with all sorts of bizarre and even gonzo settings, to the point where calling them "conservatives" is hilarious in its wrongness. For instance, I generally dislike power gaming. The last few games I've run have included, in order from most to least recent:

A magical girl setting where the PCs are sorority members pulled to a fantasy realm.
A deliberately bleak setting involving the warriors of a small village turning to banditry to avoid the starvation of their village.
Ace pilots of a technologically backwards space government flying cutting edge prototype fighters they stole from their most advanced rival.
Official explorers of a space federation trying to get their ship back in order after crash landing on a large asteroid space pirate base.
A bunch of pulp heroes who happened to be on the same zeppelin, only to get pulled into saving the world from a Nazi doomsday plot which would hypnotize the world with a synthetic Aurora Borealis powered by a volcano.
Nomad mages on a quest to commune with remote nature spirits, gain their power, and implement a magitech society in their formerly bronze age world with no controlled magic.
Members of a destroyed alchemist guild seeking revenge on the noble who destroyed them.
The crew of the starship Shrodinger's Hummingbird going on all sorts of ridiculous missions.


You'll notice the absence of one true setting. None of these used class based systems, but you'll also notice the absence of a consistent set of heroic archetypes. As for the horror of the human only game, while this list is all human the idea that all settings allow for a variety of sentient races is itself a very conservative attitude to take towards RPGs, where D&D expectations are exported where they don't belong. Plus, if I make the list a bit longer I can add in a bunch of robots, some driftwood golems (and one person with enough magic prosthetics to be half driftwood golem), a lizardman, insectoid mage, pottery golem, and living tree (those last four were all from the same game), and a handful of biological experiments that were basically intelligent slime creatures able to rapidly develop into different forms.

I fail to see the point on this as it seems perfectly reasonable when I was referring to unreasonable people.

[Quertus]

If the setting was built to be open, there's no problem. Have fun playing any kind of character in it.

If I am watching Inspector Morse, set in fictional Oxford, Gandalf or Spiderman showing up would change the setting completely.

Again, that's not the kind of thing I was talking about. I was only discussing settings like D&D where, by cannon, most if not all established settings are connected by cannon, yet more and more GMs seem to feel the need to create closed worlds.

Would a character from Eberon really be as disruptive to Toril as Spiderman?

Again, I've run a closed world before, I'm not adamantly against the concept, just... I neither see the point in most cases, nor think it generally healthy for the hobby. However, some of these responses are making me question that, at least in regards to certain play styles.


The whole point of a character is that it's intricately tied to both the setting and the other PCs.

No. That's too far. That's "if your character serves any other function, you're having Badwrongfun".

Even at a more moderate "the primary point of a character" stance, most of the people I've gamed with would disagree. From the war gamers who would view it as a playing piece, or a chance to roleplay, or even as a clever vehicle to showcase build skills, or to turn an inherently competitive activity into a team game. To the method actors who might say that it's a way to practice their craft, an opportunity to immerse themselves in roles they'd otherwise never get to play, a way to encourage others into experiencing the joy of acting, or even a subtle trick to add rules to a game of make believe. To the jaded pragmatists who insist it's a way for gaming companies to capitalize on the self-insert fantasy market. To the noobs who say it's the price of entry into the game.

Myself, I view characters largely as an opportunity to explore the human psyche, a chance to attempt to understand the strange species that populates this planet. Generally, I really couldn't care less about what setting you drop a given character into, only that he get to interact with a diverse range of stimulus.

I don't care about what ties he has, I care about what ties he forms, and wants to form.

How funny. I care about the character who knows who he is, and sees how he connects. Others seem to care that the charter knows how he connects, and learns who he is. I should probably run a character based on this notion some day, to explore this facet of humanity.


Also, as mentioned previously, if you just create a character from a backwater town or a cloistered wizard's tower/monestary then he would know just about as much about the wider world as you do, so you can play that character authentically while only having a minimum of knowledge about the setting.

Maybe I've just had picky GMs / groups, but my experience is, they'd get upset that my character couldn't possibly have that particular view on that particular topic (be it slavery, racism, distribution of funds, morality in general, whatever) coming from that particular background.

I've grown rather tired of all the ways I've been told I'm role-playing my character wrong. And I'm sure some of my old GMs were tired of me saying that they were role-playing my backstory connections wrong, when they choose to have them make a cameo appearance.

Maybe this is just another thing to add to my list of many ways I've had a lot of bad GMs, like the tables of alignments and responses to common scenarios, but, if it's normal, I'll stick to being "not from around here".


Personally, I find the idea of just picking up a character and putting him in another game just horrifying.

Why? Because your character's definition and self-image are so intricately tied to others, that you cannot picture who he is in a vacuum? I continue to need to explore this aspect of humanity.


The campaign and the character aren't seperable things. He is a part of that story and that story is part of him and that's what makes the character compelling to play.

If Harry Potter had been the one sucked into another world in Harry Potter and the Natural 20, would that have made him a less compelling character?


One of my favorite characters I have ever played is currently trapped in that limbo right now. A great campaign was cut off in the middle and likely won't resume. But just picking him up and putting him in another campaign would be an insult to the character. That campaign defined who he was in many ways, he was a noble man desperately struggling against otherworldly horrors that loomed in the shadows of his future and seemed to have swallowed his past. He was a servant of the god of knowledge and prophecy who felt he had become a pawn of forces utterly beyond his control and understanding and was simply desperate to find any connection to what he had lost, his past, his home and his children. While he drew breath, he would never stop searching for the reasons why his life had been torn apart by these forces and if there was any way to recover what he had lost.

Plonking him down in a random dungeon crawl and acting like he doesn't have bigger problems would be an absolute disgrace. I would rather leave him there, as part of an unfinished story, than rip him out and try to staple him into another where he would never fit.

Acting like he doesn't have bigger problems? No, I never said that - and I never would.

However, what if he believed that some key to his past or future lay here, buried in one of these ruins? Or what if your god sent you to another world to try to protect you from further loss / get you off something's radar for a bit*? Are you truly unable to imagine the possibility of a scenario in which this could work?

* similar to Titania trying to save her son with a mundane egg, in, um, Books of Magic?


Let me tell you about one of my characters that I most regret the campaign ending prematurely. A elven priestess of the god of war. She'd witnessed generations of human stupidity and greed lead the world to the edge of ruin, including the near destruction of another distinct group of elven people. Her goal was to infiltrate one of the more major human kingdoms, work over the course of a century to build up trust and support in the nation by filling a religious vacuum and establishing herself as high priestess of it. And then eventually arrange to throw the kingdom into chaos with some choice assassinations and seize the reigns of power as the natural choice, being the only established authority figure left. And then, use the new kingdom of disposal human worshipers of war to strategically subjugate or destroy the other human kingdoms in a position to threaten the elves left in the world.

Why on earth would I want to rip her out of that setting and then go **** around exploring random dungeons or whatever in some other plane of reality? Why would anyone want to? Frankly, the desire reads like a safety net designed to protect the player from their character having to care about anything or anyone because they're just a tourist and this world and all its problems aren't that important in the big picture.

Well, I admit, this one was harder - at first. Personally, I'd never attempt that plan without going off to other worlds. Because I'd want allies elsewhere - and I'd want them to be the ones to do the assassinations, to make it as difficult as possible to tie back to me. Besides, you've got ~100 years - who knows what all might happen in that timeframe.

Now, why would I want the charter getting involved in an equally important story elsewhere? Well, the character wouldn't, I don't think, but, personally, I'd love it as a chance for the character to grow, and the internal struggle of balancing their attention to two such important callings. That sounds much more engaging to me than just this singleminded dedication.

[Thrudd]

People have always suggested this for characters who want dumb backstory things and I've never liked it. An insane character plays in a completely different way and it matters a lot whether he's actually crazy or not. I'm fine with a character who thinks he's a dimension shifting wizard so long as the player admits the character's nuts and plays to it and everyone's in on the joke.

I don't love it either, but I'm generally willing to let someone do what they want and see how it goes- if it becomes annoying to everyone or disruptive to the tone of the game then I'll address it. Of course, this really only applies to D&D games where I don't care about backstories. Nobody's backstory means much, you don't even really need one other than to explain why you want to go dungeon delving. If one guy wants to say he popped in from another dimension and likes to explore new places, that's as good as any other reason (I want to get all the magics, be the strongest, richest,drive away evil stuff, etc.)

[CantigThimble]

Acting like he doesn't have bigger problems? No, I never said that - and I never would.

However, what if he believed that some key to his past or future lay here, buried in one of these ruins? Or what if your god sent you to another world to try to protect you from further loss / get you off something's radar for a bit*? Are you truly unable to imagine the possibility of a scenario in which this could work?

* similar to Titania trying to save her son with a mundane egg, in, um, Books of Magic?

This is actually funny now that I think about it. One of the defining moments of the campaign was the moment when the party was thrust into an alternate timeline. It very nearly drove the character mad, and he's living in the aftershock. Finding himself in a world where not only was there almost nothing left of everything he had worked for his entire life, but it was like it had never existed consumes him to the degree that would do ANYTHING to undo what happened and is focused entirely on the tiny shreds of his old life that seem to have continuity.

If that happened a second time it would break him. If he was put into a world where he didn't have those shreds to grasp at, or lacked the apocalyptic force that was the only thing keeping him moving forward, then I think he would likely kill himself. He is invested in his world to the degree that its loss would mean the end of his life. (well, that got kind of dark)

If he had always known and been considering the possibility of other worlds, worlds which lacked his problems, or had entirely different ones, then I kind of wonder how much differently he would think about the world. I wonder if its a bit like the difference between "I was born in this house and dagnabbit I'm going to DIE in this house" and someone who always has in the back of their mind that they could just move to the next town over and not have to deal with any of the problems the town is having anymore.

A story that is all consuming for a character who lives on the scale of a world might just be a footnote for a character who lives on the scale of a multiverse.

At some point in the many, many rewrites of this post it went from compelling argument to rambling musings. Whatever, I'm posting it anyway.

[Florian]

@Quertus:

Where did you get this "setting like D&D" nonsense? Outside of organized play, there is no such thing. "Make it your own" is the first rule for published settings and "Rule Zero" is the first rule for published rules. The existence of meta-settings like Planescape or Spelljammer doesn't supersede or overwrite the status of a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance, unless you're actively playing the meta-setting. For me, Al´Qadim and Kara Tur are not part of the Realms and the Realms themselves are still the old Grey Box, pre Avatar Crisis. thank you very much.

Let me remind you of an earlier conversation we had, about the difference between "I play a game of Pathfinder" and "I play a game, set in Golarion, using the Pathfinder rules". Maybe the last pages in this conversation help clear up the difference.

[Cluedrew]

So... Briq, in... M&M. Hmmm, I've misplaced the book. [...] No problem. But the tough parts would be things that the new system doesn't comprehend, like how much of a disadvantage opponents who melee Briq get - how he usually gets free attacks on them instead of them getting to attack him*. Or how he gets to go several times before they get to go once.First there are some official online references on M&M if you need them, you seemed to do fine without them though. The other comment is: I think you might be zooming in a bit too much. Is it really important that he gets to go a bunch of times at the beginning of combat? Or is that just supposed to be general speed? I honestly can't tell what that mechanical ability is supposed to represent.

Also in general I like characters who are connected to the world around them. Characters who are not seem to be more often a narrative convenience than actually representing a person (not always, but often).

[Guizonde]

I feel like this whole argument is based on a hypothetical scenario that will never exist. If someone has a 13th level D&D character and they want to bring them into a new D&D campaign, the first thing to determine is if the campaign is starting around 13th level- if not, then the whole matter is over- your old character is not the right level for the game.

If 13th level is where the game is starting, then you need to look to see if the character is built according to the set of rules that will be in use. If it isn't, then the character has to change to fit.

The fluff of the character's past and background are the last thing you need to worry about. If the player wants his character to babble on about parallel dimensions, is that a big deal? It doesn't mean the campaign and other characters need to include other dimensions nor even to acknowledge they exist. He might as well be an insane character. If it makes the player happy, who cares? He's an eccentric that tells stories nobody believes. If the player wants to imagine that his character's stories are really true, unbeknownst to everyone else, that doesn't affect anything.


i agree with this, but resignedly. sure, you could retool the character to fit, but it's really not worth the effort. my post above tried to say that (5 hours for a system change? sorry, too long for me). i'd rather reroll another character entirely and have new adventures. precisely because that one character known as brutehilde got thrown in-game clear out of greyhawk through a wormhole (ie, the dm let me keep the character to throw into any other world i wanted to play it).

i've found this to be nigh-on impossible outside of 3.5, and even then, brutehilde's motivation is litterally "go to dorakka, kill iuz, get her memories back on why she wanted to kill a god in the first place". so, let's imagine she gets thrown into the forgotten realms. i've got the rules to let her stay a level 5 necropolitan sorceror//barbarian, but if the dm bans gestalt, i'm back to respeccing. now, let's imagine i can respec her into non-gestalt. she'll want to find a way back to greyhawk, meaning finding another portal. without dm intervention, that's impossible, which means that the dm has to tool his campaign in a way as to allow her access to a portal. why would the rest of the group care? better to just roll up another character and let her rest in piece, her story unfulfilled. i'm not that big of an egomaniac as to demand the dm do a campaign or story arc just so i can roleplay that one character.

[RazorChain]

Fair enough. That is still a mere two systems and a genre though, in the long run that is still quite small. Well I could add some more world hopping settings to the list, but the number that are alone or a fixed set of worlds (such as alt-reality and a mystic other world) are even higher.

Out of curiosity, how do you handle crossing systems? It seems to me that you would have to re-build the character from the ground up, even if you used an existing character as this character's background.

I had this player that just claimed that all his characers were the same person from Amber who had shapeshifting. I said sure and it made him feel better. When his characters died they were only pretending to die because he was a prince of Amber.

Did this bother me? No. Did this make him happy? Yes. Were his charactesr really a prince of Amber? Not as far as I was concerned.



Edit: His Amber character was also dead after I as a player destroyed Amber. He never forgave me for that and pretended that it never happened. Quertus sometimes reminds me of him.....Quertus you didn't start playing in '79 and were dissapointed that you couldn't cast fireballs for real? Are you Thor?

[Quertus]

Is it really important that he gets to go a bunch of times at the beginning of combat?

Is it important that the pawn only be able to move forward, or can we just have it move like checkers? Is it important how chocolate tastes, or that it melts in your mouth, or can we just replace it with lettuce?

If you can tell that you're no longer in the same universe, the conversion has failed*. If the stories you tell about the characters cannot have happened under these rules, the conversion has failed.

But, then, I'm picky. :smallwink:

Harry Potter and the Natural 20 did a decent job of staying true to both source materials.

* generally speaking, barring exceptions where the universe actively changes things, like technology becoming artifacts in 2e D&D.


Also in general I like characters who are connected to the world around them. Characters who are not seem to be more often a narrative convenience than actually representing a person (not always, but often).

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that established connections make someone feel more like a person, whereas the lack of such makes them feel like a narrative contrivance? So, then, travelers IRL feel to you like narrative contrivances? That just doesn't make sense to me.

Personally - unless it's an established PC or NPC in the campaign already - I want anything my character has a connection to to be "not from around here" - ie, to permanently remain off camera. Because what I fell in love with was chocolate, but what the GM is role-playing is lettuce. It ruins the flavor and experience.

Also, I find it much more interesting to have the experience of forming the connections. What role, if any, will the barmaid play? The shopkeep? The mayor's son? The surly captain of the guard? I like being handed a huge toolkit of actors to plug and play - kinda like a sandbox, but at the character connections level, you know?

[Quertus]

Quertus sometimes reminds me of him.....Quertus you didn't start playing in '79 and were dissapointed that you couldn't cast fireballs for real? Are you Thor?

79? That's about right. Thor... Um... I may be the Norse god, but Rumplestiltskin is my name. In other words, as I've said in other threads, if you have to guess my name, you're wrong. If you know me IRL, and know me in a gaming context, you won't have to guess if it's me

EDIT: I completely missed the "disappointed that he couldn't cast fireballs IRL" bit. I'm... not entirely sure how to respond to that one. There's a lot of ways that this world could be better; me personally having the capacity to commit magical mass murder and arson isn't exactly at the top of my list.


i've got the rules to let her stay a level 5 necropolitan sorceror//barbarian, but if the dm bans gestalt, i'm back to respeccing.

I mean, or you could wait until you find a GM who allows gestalt...

But, still, a character with such a driving motivation isn't likely to fit in most other campaigns.

So, unless the character fits, statistically, with the group, and with the "module", you pick someone else. Or, at least, that's WWQD.

[Cluedrew]

If you can tell that you're no longer in the same universe, the conversion has failed*. If the stories you tell about the characters cannot have happened under these rules, the conversion has failed.... I don't know how to respond to that. I mean what is your motivation if you are going to ignore the "what ifs" of a character changing worlds. Continuing to play the same character for its own sake? Don't they have something at home that they care about?

In terms of the previous comment is I care about the character as the narrative construct, with the mechanical representation being a mere representation. So if in one system the character's talent of going weak spots is represented by ignoring armor and in another it is a damage bonus, I'm OK with that (not ideal yes, but I live in a world of imperfection).


I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that established connections make someone feel more like a person, whereas the lack of such makes them feel like a narrative contrivance? So, then, travelers IRL feel to you like narrative contrivances? That just doesn't make sense to me.No, I mean often there are characters with few-to-no connections for reasons that feel like narrative contrivances. They can be done well (or and often well enough that you only notice it if you look for it) hence the some times.

[Quertus]

... I don't know how to respond to that. I mean what is your motivation if you are going to ignore the "what ifs" of a character changing worlds. Continuing to play the same character for its own sake? Don't they have something at home that they care about?

Hmmm... I think we need to tease this apart.

When a character changes systems, I expect / intend / desire that to, mechanically, be transparent. I want to be able to, say, uproot Oerth, drop it in Gurps, tell the story of characters who adventure there, and no one hearing it would have a clue that I wasn't playing D&D. I believe that the author of Harry Potter and the Natural 20 used not dissimilar logic, even if as a spoof.

Some systems say "no" to that possibility, though, like 2e D&D and its conversation of technology to artifacts, or the D&D Wizard and his reliance on a particular planar geography (although, if not just his world, but all those planes went with him as well, the transition of systems could continue to be invisible).

When a character travels to a new world - whether within the same system or not - that should usually be rather apparent. At the very least, "My investigation into the recent disappearances led me into a spooky cave, but I discovered neither corpses, nor clues as to their current whereabouts. When I got back to Waterdeep, the city guard didn't recognize me, and Bob the shopkeep had been replaced by Lady Dermot. Also, someone's living in my house. :smallconfused: :smallannoyed:"

As far as having something back home... Wow, there's so many ways I could address that. Here's just a small sample:

D&D is a game about adventurers, about exploring the blank parts of the map that read "here be monsters". A character who just inherently wouldn't explore a whole new world is probably a poor fit for a classic D&D adventurer.

Why do soldiers ever go fight wars in other countries? Don't they have anything back home that they care about? And why do some of these soldiers choose to stay in these new countries? Don't they have anything back home that they care about?

Have you ever traveled? Didn't you have anything back home that you cared about?Have you ever moved? Didn't you have anything back home that you cared about?

My characters' pre-game established connections are exclusively back home*. Of course "home is where the heart is". But that doesn't mean that Bilbo will abandon Thorin to go home for tea and crumpets before the quest is complete. Most of my characters who are able to do so will visit their homeland whenever possible, or plan to return there some day. Heck, Armus spent almost the entirety of his adventuring career collecting the components (and funds!) necessary to hire a Wizard to craft his custom not-so-cubic gate to allow every one of his fellow abductees to return home. That was (one of) his secret, span the entire campaign side quest(s). I never told anyone what I was doing, until I had collected everything, showed the GM my (Armus') formula, and Armus, shoving treasure at him, asked the Wizard if he could build this item for him. Many of my world-traveling characters are not so lucky, and, having no clue where they're from or how to get home, simply settle down in their new home.

* Or, at the very least, elsewhere.


In terms of the previous comment is I care about the character as the narrative construct, with the mechanical representation being a mere representation. So if in one system the character's talent of going weak spots is represented by ignoring armor and in another it is a damage bonus, I'm OK with that (not ideal yes, but I live in a world of imperfection).

Hmmm... this one does get a bit tricky. Normally, if a D&D character in a D&D world wears D&D armor, they become harder to hit. If a WoD character in a WoD world wears WoD armor, they become easier to hit, but take less damage. Which component is responsible for the difference: the character, the world, or the armor? If the answer isn't 100% clear cut, I tend to let the player* decide whether their character "carries their reality with them" or not.

Although... The more I discuss this with you, the more I'm tempted to say that I'm just wrong. :smallfrown:

* yes, it's far more likely that I'll be GM when someone tries to import a character from another system than that I'll actually get to do so myself. Sigh.


No, I mean often there are characters with few-to-no connections for reasons that feel like narrative contrivances. They can be done well (or and often well enough that you only notice it if you look for it) hence the some times.

You mean, like how Harry Potter knowns little of the world outside his cupboard, and nothing of Wizards, so that we, the readers, get to explore the world with him? Or are you discussing some other form of narrative contrivance related to a lack of connections?

[Satinavian]

Hmmm... I think we need to tease this apart.

When a character changes systems, I expect / intend / desire that to, mechanically, be transparent. I want to be able to, say, uproot Oerth, drop it in Gurps, tell the story of characters who adventure there, and no one hearing it would have a clue that I wasn't playing D&D.
The system you play at the moment is the system that matters.

If i ever were to allow a character import, i would expect that the player adjusts to the table. Which means, if you import Oerth into a GURPS group you make not only a valid GURPS Character using the same rules as other PC, you behave as if all his former backstory would have happened in GURPS, allowing at best GURPS compatible rules that gouvern the differences to your homeworld.



Harry Potter and the Natural D20 is about mashing systems in typical crossover fashion. That is not what i would ever see at any table neither as DM nor as player. Because it highlights how both systems are abstractions due to different resolution and thus harms suspension of disbelief. And at the same time it looses most benefits of having rules in the first place.

[Guizonde]

I mean, or you could wait until you find a GM who allows gestalt...

But, still, a character with such a driving motivation isn't likely to fit in most other campaigns.

So, unless the character fits, statistically, with the group, and with the "module", you pick someone else. Or, at least, that's WWQD.

or, you know, i could just not even bother... that campaign was 7 or 8 years ago. i'm only patient up to a point. i've had a solid half a dozen characters since then, dm'd two campaigns, and enjoyed all thoroughly. it's time to let sleeping dogs lie. don't get me wrong, i'd love to play gestalt, and i'd love to play a neutrally aligned undead, but i've played deicide charactes since then, i've played unpredictable builds too. i'm thinking so much time has passed it would simply feel weird. better take a fresh start every time.

[Pelle]

Again, that's not the kind of thing I was talking about. I was only discussing settings like D&D where, by cannon, most if not all established settings are connected by cannon, yet more and more GMs seem to feel the need to create closed worlds.

Would a character from Eberon really be as disruptive to Toril as Spiderman?

Again, I've run a closed world before, I'm not adamantly against the concept, just... I neither see the point in most cases, nor think it generally healthy for the hobby. However, some of these responses are making me question that, at least in regards to certain play styles.


As many have already said, D&D is just a system, not a setting. I couldn't care less about the published settings for D&D, I have no interest in them. I have no idea about Eberon and Toril, are they open or closed worlds? If they are open that may work fine for them. But anyways, if the premise of the game was to play characters from Toril, you should get buy in from the others in the group to change the premise to also include a character from Eberon, because that was not what they signed up for.

It is understandable and ok that you don't want your characters to have no ties to the worlds you are exploring. It just is exactly the opposite of what I like to see of characters, and would go against the premise of most games I want to play. If someone says you are role-playing a native wrong, then they are surely in the wrong. But I personally rather prefer playing with people who at least try, instead of refusing to.

[Quertus]

The system you play at the moment is the system that matters.

If i ever were to allow a character import, i would expect that the player adjusts to the table. Which means, if you import Oerth into a GURPS group you make not only a valid GURPS Character using the same rules as other PC, you behave as if all his former backstory would have happened in GURPS, allowing at best GURPS compatible rules that gouvern the differences to your homeworld.

I think you've missed my point. It's not "if you import Oerth into a GURPS group". That doesn't make any sense.

It's "if the entire bloody planet of Oerth gets pulled out of its universe, and sucked into another, that happens to be based on different mechanics, no-one on Oerth should notice (unless they should)".

To keep modern Earthlings from noticing that they'd been abducted, you'd probably need to pull their entire galaxy, plus several other, nearby galaxies along with them. Or fake that you've done such - otherwise, our Observatories would notice that something had changed. But, mechanically, we shouldn't suddenly all start hurling cars, spitting fireballs, full healing every time we rest, have trouble putting on our pants, have half the population competing to publish their cure for cancer first within the first day of arrival, or magically have our possessions and spending capabilities / income / wealth change just because our world moved.

If an adventuring party is adventuring on Oerth, and the entire planet gets sucked into Gurps, they should be able to continue their adventures without noticing, rather than everyone in the world suddenly wondering WTF just happened as suddenly possessions, distances, travel times, and capabilities change the world over.

Or, at least, that's my general theory of character conversion, and what I aim for when I help others convert their characters between systems, or on the much rarer occasion that I get to do the same.


But anyways, if the premise of the game was to play characters from Toril,

It is understandable and ok that you don't want your characters to have no ties to the worlds you are exploring. It just is exactly the opposite of what I like to see of characters, and would go against the premise of most games I want to play. If someone says you are role-playing a native wrong, then they are surely in the wrong. But I personally rather prefer playing with people who at least try, instead of refusing to.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe / bill their game as having a premise of playing people from Toril, only being set in Toril. Or New York. Or on an airplane. Or wherever.

If playing with strangers / people I hadn't gamed with before, I might sign on for a one-shot or other short term game to test the waters, but I certainly wouldn't have any interest in playing a playing piece rather than a character long term, and wouldn't sign on for a campaign with such a throwaway character.

So, why does an explorer who is "not from around here" go against the premise of most every game you'd be interested in playing? The protagonists in many stories - from Harry Potter to Rand Al'Thor to Riddick to Ripley to Luke Skywalker - have their adventures occur far from home, in places to which they start out having no connection (from their PoV, at least).

[Pelle]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe / bill their game as having a premise of playing people from Toril, only being set in Toril. Or New York. Or on an airplane. Or wherever.


Possibly true, but I think it's an implicit assumption for many people. If the pitch was about playing people who is taking a normal airplane flight, or playing police detectives in Oxford, I would be very surprised to see someone showing up to play Spiderman. It could technically meet the criteria, but not what the unspoken intention of the game was. It might be a fun game nonetheless, but still a failure in communication.




If playing with strangers / people I hadn't gamed with before, I might sign on for a one-shot or other short term game to test the waters, but I certainly wouldn't have any interest in playing a playing piece rather than a character long term, and wouldn't sign on for a campaign with such a throwaway character.


Just playing a personality/concept feels to me much more like a playing piece than a character also belonging to the setting, because then the setting just becomes a toy instead of feeling real. Getting to know a character over a long time would of course be nice and improve the quality of the character, but randomly inserting it into settings where it don't belong would be detrimental to me as well.



So, why does an explorer who is "not from around here" go against the premise of most every game you'd be interested in playing? The protagonists in many stories - from Harry Potter to Rand Al'Thor to Riddick to Ripley to Luke Skywalker - have their adventures occur far from home, in places to which they start out having no connection (from their PoV, at least).

I don't actually mind anyone playing a stranger, unless the premise was quite specific, as long as the assumption is that the character actually belong to world. Say in a Star Wars game, you could play a strange alien from a backwater planet without contact with the rest of the galaxy. You don't even need to specify any details as long as that can be assumed. However, saying explicitly that "no, this stranger is factually Bob, my character from the last Wheel of Time game", would hurt my immersion/enjoyment. Also, if the premise was everyone is playing a squad of Stormtroopers hunting Jedi together, I would also be a little annoyed with the alien stranger. It might be a boring premise to you, and that's fine, but then suggest something else or let the others play the game they want.

[Rhedyn]

World hopping has nothing to do with power gaming.

[Quertus]

World hopping has nothing to do with power gaming.

Agreed. That's why I've made a new thread to move this series of side conversations into.

[Florian]

World hopping has nothing to do with power gaming.

In a sense it does, because it says a lot about the stance towards the setting, rules and entitlement, which will in turn be seen es "power gaming".

[Rhedyn]

In a sense it does, because it says a lot about the stance towards the setting, rules and entitlement, which will in turn be seen es "power gaming". If you are assuming the worse in the request then it is cheating/rule-bending which is the realm of munchkins.

If we aren't assuming the worse, then it has nothing to do with gaining power in a game, legitimate (power gaming) or not (cheating).

[Chaosticket]

Character creation and progress are my favorite aspects of Roleplaying games. How does that result in an insulting moniker and poor treatment?


There shouldn't be such a divide between people but that I have to tolerate the hate directed against me and still treat everyone else fairly is absurd. Youll never see me altering people's characters or saying they cant do something.

I still very much would like more people to start incorporating different lore elements to create a universe not just a tiny village.

[Lord Raziere]

Character creation and progress are my favorite aspects of Roleplaying games. How does that result in an insulting moniker and poor treatment?


Well funny that, character creation and progress are also some of my favorite parts. the difference is that my progress is "actual character development" and my creation is "making an interesting character" rather than "+1 to this" or "I'm so strong, looking at this thing that I can do because I cheesed it."

if in a setting you can only fire lightning 30 feet as a hard rule and you make an "optimized" character that can fire it 31 feet, then the rules have failed and are wrong, going against fluff and should be changed to better fit the fluff. optimization ignores this principle and is thus wrong. also the fluff is often far more reasonable in power than any mechanical theorizing.

[OldTrees1]

Well funny that, character creation and progress are also some of my favorite parts. the difference is that my progress is "actual character development" and my creation is "making an interesting character" rather than "+1 to this" or "I'm so strong, looking at this thing that I can do because I cheesed it."
Interesting, did you know optimizers do the former too and the later is more uncommon than you think?


if in a setting you can only fire lightning 30 feet as a hard rule and you make an "optimized" character that can fire it 31 feet, then the rules have failed and are wrong, going against fluff and should be changed to better fit the fluff. optimization ignores this principle and is thus wrong. also the fluff is often far more reasonable in power than any mechanical theorizing.
Sounds like the only reason you use the word optimizer with bile is that you are assuming terrible goals.

You should read through these 3 examples of optimizing (like you could have back on page 5 when I handicapped my language at your request):

1) Someone wants to start playing the RPG but has basically no knowledge of the mechanics (we all started there once). They have a vague and system agnostic character concept that they would like to play. Bob sits down with them. Through asking them questions about this character concept and Bob's own knowledge of the game system, together the two of them create the in system character that matches the system agnostic character to the best of their ability. Optimizing to match a character concept the new player thought of.

2) Maria and a bunch of her friends sit down to discuss the RPG they want to play next. They all know each other fairly well and thus know where their preferences differ. However they care about each other so they want to collectively make an ideal group decision. Through talking about various theme, challenge, setting, character, and motif preferences they settle on an RPG and have a headstart on making characters. Each of them is cognizant about avoiding unwanted emergent features whether they be unwanted intra party conflict or with a preference for skill clashing with a preference for challenge. In the end they all end up with a party that all of them will enjoy playing with in a setting with the ideal balance of challenge and skill. Optimizing to match a group for the better enjoyment of all.

3) Sam likes challenge. When thinking about a character concept part of her idea is what struggles they will deal with. Unfortunately there is no explicit "peg leg" option for her to apply to her peg legged blacksmith. So you look at the options she have and she figure out how to simulate that challenge in spite of their being no simple explicit option. Optimizing to create a fun challenge to play with.

So, what is wrong with Bob, Maria, and Sam? Or does this imply that having more nuanced optimization goals dispels most of your preconceptions?

[Lord Raziere]

Interesting, did you know optimizers do the former too and the later is more uncommon than you think?


Y'know, no matter how many times I've been told that, I still don't believe it. really you overuse the term. when I make a painting, there is no optimal amount of paint or best picture or rules to the paint, or best method of painting. there is no optimizing art. there is simply the making of it. same with roleplaying.

[JNAProductions]

Y'know, no matter how many times I've been told that, I still don't believe it. really you overuse the term. when I make a painting, there is no optimal amount of paint or best picture or rules to the paint, or best method of painting. there is no optimizing art. there is simply the making of it. same with roleplaying.

They're not saying optimizers optimize their backstory, they're saying that optimizers make a character too. Have you heard of the Stormwind Fallacy?

[Lord Raziere]

They're not saying optimizers optimize their backstory, they're saying that optimizers make a character too. Have you heard of the Stormwind Fallacy?

Yes. which only reinforces my point: no amount of numbers will replace a real character. even these optimizers recognize that. they can roleplay yes, they just think that for some reason the numbers should matter, when they don't. freeform happens and makes great roleplaying all the time without any numbers or learning a system at all, so stormwind fallacy doesn't matter because the numbers themselves are useless and meaningless to roleplaying. you don't need a system to make god, you imagine up an entire world in your head and make whatever you want happen within and already ARE god. you already restrain yourself by making a character, you already restrain yourself choosing a specific story to play. you don't need a system for that. you have logic and imagination to balance it.

[JNAProductions]

Yes. which only reinforces my point: no amount of numbers will replace a real character. even these optimizers recognize that. they can roleplay yes, they just think that for some reason the numbers should matter, when they don't. freeform happens and makes great roleplaying all the time without any numbers or learning a system at all, so stormwind fallacy doesn't matter because the numbers themselves are useless and meaningless to roleplaying. you don't need a system to make god, you imagine up an entire world in your head and make whatever you want happen within and already ARE god. you already restrain yourself by making a character, you already restrain yourself choosing a specific story to play. you don't need a system for that. you have logic and imagination to balance it.

Ah, okay-you still want to play god, you're just not good enough at optimizing to do within a system!

Sarcasm aside, I'm a fan of freeform, with some people. But I also like having structure-and a game system (which, shock and horror, includes numbers) provides that. It helps ensure that no one just says "My character is God-Man, with the power to do anything he wants!" No, no system is perfect, but they can really help focus a story.

And, in addition to that, there's basically no game to a freeform story. It's just a story told by multiple people. That can be a lot of fun, but sometimes, I want to play a game, but also play a character. You can't really roleplay in 20XX, but you can in Shadowrun.

[Lord Raziere]

Sarcasm aside, I'm a fan of freeform, with some people. But I also like having structure-and a game system (which, shock and horror, includes numbers) provides that. It helps ensure that no one just says "My character is God-Man, with the power to do anything he wants!" No, no system is perfect, but they can really help focus a story.

And, in addition to that, there's basically no game to a freeform story. It's just a story told by multiple people. That can be a lot of fun, but sometimes, I want to play a game, but also play a character. You can't really roleplay in 20XX, but you can in Shadowrun.

Then why try to optimize to break out of that focus? You contradict yourself.

To me, systems are necessary evil to make other people play with me because they insist upon using them. often the ones I like the most are narrative, light or generic ones that allow me to play whatever I want. Yes I am aware you insist upon applying the optimization label to everything, I am annoyed and tired of it. I hope that someday there is a system that succeeds in making character creation nothing but an art where I don't need to worry about levels of power.

[OldTrees1]

Y'know, no matter how many times I've been told that, I still don't believe it. really you overuse the term. when I make a painting, there is no optimal amount of paint or best picture or rules to the paint, or best method of painting. there is no optimizing art. there is simply the making of it. same with roleplaying.

Either you are not very skilled at painting, or you are skilled enough that some of that skill has become invisible to your eye. When you decide to capture a concept on a canvas, you try to do a good job at that right? You are not trying to make it beautiful (unless that concept calls for it being beautiful), rather you are trying your best (or maybe only your 90%) to capture the concept into the painting.

So when I come up with an interesting system agnostic character concept (or when I am helping someone else after they came up with an interesting system agnostic character concept), I then do my best to create a mechanical representation for that character that satisfies 3 criteria as best as possible:
1) How well does the mechanical representation match the character concept? A peg leged pirate mechanically represented without a peg leg or nautical skills is a bad representation (unless there was a character concept reason for the pirate to be nautically inept)
2) How well does the mechanical representation match how the character concept would fit into the campaign? Does it fall within the power range the story calls for? Does it have any problematic elements? Or does it fit the story well?
3) How well does the mechanical representation work for the enjoyment of all the players? We want everyone to have as much fun as possible. So let's catch issues before they become issues and seize about points of shared enjoyment.

Read those 3 again, then compare them to "Belh bleh blah, I want all the +1s. Wah wah wah. I don't want a character concept at all. Wah Wah Wah". There are plenty of living examples of optimizers that clearly demonstrate how inaccurate/naive your definition is. Optimizing is not about power, it is about pursuing a goal during the creation of the mechanical representation. Some goals are much less naive than others.

So maybe you are going to constantly ignore or refuse to accept the testimony of players described above that identify as optimizers. Maybe you have such a negative association with the word that you would rather choose between refusing to respect the labels people identify with vs spewing undeserved bile at those people all because you don't want to risk reconsidering your associations with the word.

However I am not sorry that the backlash for that decision annoys you. Of course optimizers are going to try to repeated correct you when you spew bile at their label while also rejecting their experiences as if they were not optimizers merely because their experiences did not match the bile you want to associate with the word.

[Thrudd]

I hope that someday there is a system that succeeds in making character creation nothing but an art where I don't need to worry about levels of power.

Not meaning to be flippant, but have you considered writing? That is literally an art where you don't need to worry about levels of power. You can create anything. You can explore every facet of any kind of character in any world you can imagine. It might be really satisfying for you.

There is also such a thing as free form role playing, which is exactly what you're talking about, right? Don't a lot of people do that in PbP?

There's nothing wrong with knowing a game system and making a character that is effective mechanically. It's what should be expected on the game side of the role playing game. That's "power gaming". Whenever this causes problems and imbalances, it's the system's fault- it's a bad system. I don't blame players for wanting the best character they can make. It's a totally different matter from developing personality and background.

[Lord Raziere]

Not meaning to be flippant, but have you considered writing? That is literally an art where you don't need to worry about levels of power. You can create anything. You can explore every facet of any kind of character in any world you can imagine. It might be really satisfying for you.

There is also such a thing as free form role playing, which is exactly what you're talking about, right? Don't a lot of people do that in PbP?

There's nothing wrong with knowing a game system and making a character that is effective mechanically. It's what should be expected on the game side of the role playing game. That's "power gaming". Whenever this causes problems and imbalances, it's the system's fault- it's a bad system. I don't blame players for wanting the best character they can make. It's a totally different matter from developing personality and background.

*looks at the fan fiction I've written right in my sig, and all the settings and notes on characters I want to write on my computer. and the notes for the freeform game I'm in.*
Yeah, might've considered it, once or twice. /understatement.
(The hard part is connecting the events/ideas I have. I have lots of ideas, its putting them together so they form a story thats the problem. freeform roleplaying is kind of freeing to me because I don't have to connect it myself like with writing, I just post something, someone responds and I can improvise something new from that response, I wish I could do that with writing.)

fine fine whatever I'll just go back to doing what I'm already doing.

[Rhedyn]

Well funny that, character creation and progress are also some of my favorite parts. the difference is that my progress is "actual character development" and my creation is "making an interesting character" rather than "+1 to this" or "I'm so strong, looking at this thing that I can do because I cheesed it."

if in a setting you can only fire lightning 30 feet as a hard rule and you make an "optimized" character that can fire it 31 feet, then the rules have failed and are wrong, going against fluff and should be changed to better fit the fluff. optimization ignores this principle and is thus wrong. also the fluff is often far more reasonable in power than any mechanical theorizing. You keep using the word optimizer when you mean power gamer.

Disregarding the fluff or the setting is not an inherent value of optimization.

I make spreadsheets to analyze numbers and the math of a system, yet I've never used the Dervish Dancer feat from Pathfinder to add DEX mod to melee damage because the fluff is that it's a religious feat.

Yet I've played with the more "narratively" inclined who have used that feat without following the fluff at all, and I optimize way harder than any of them.

Even my power gamer friend always makes monstrosities for characters, I'm much faster at the process than he is because I know the system better and what numbers I'm trying to get. Yet my characters are normally weaker than his, but that's because I'm not optimizing for raw combat power all the time even if I'm optimizing all the time. Sometimes I want to just take a level 20 cavalier to a fight because he's a cool character.

[Thrudd]

*looks at the fan fiction I've written right in my sig, and all the settings and notes on characters I want to write on my computer. and the notes for the freeform game I'm in.*
Yeah, might've considered it, once or twice. /understatement.
(The hard part is connecting the events/ideas I have. I have lots of ideas, its putting them together so they form a story thats the problem. freeform roleplaying is kind of freeing to me because I don't have to connect it myself like with writing, I just post something, someone responds and I can improvise something new from that response, I wish I could do that with writing.)

fine fine whatever I'll just go back to doing what I'm already doing.

Hey, if you think the perfect RPG for you doesn't exist yet, you could be the person who creates it. You could fulfill that desire for all the people like you.

Also, you can do that with writing. Don't give up! There are as many processes as there are people when it comes to developing stories, some take longer than others. There's no such thing as "can't", there's only giving up before you get there.

[Talakeal]

You keep using the word optimizer when you mean power gamer.

The problem is that the difference between the two, if any, is often debated. Take for example the wikipedia definition:

"Powergaming (or power gaming) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximising progress towards a specific goal, to the exclusion of other considerations such as storytelling, atmosphere and camaraderie. Due to its focus on the letter of the rules over the spirit of the rules, it is often seen as unsporting, un-fun, or unsociable. This behaviour is most often found in games with a wide range of game features, lengthy campaigns or prize tournaments such as massively multiplayer or collectible games.[1] Those wishing to discuss the behavior without pejorative connotation may use the neutral term optimization."

[Chaosticket]

Well funny that, character creation and progress are also some of my favorite parts. the difference is that my progress is "actual character development" and my creation is "making an interesting character" rather than "+1 to this" or "I'm so strong, looking at this thing that I can do because I cheesed it."

if in a setting you can only fire lightning 30 feet as a hard rule and you make an "optimized" character that can fire it 31 feet, then the rules have failed and are wrong, going against fluff and should be changed to better fit the fluff. optimization ignores this principle and is thus wrong. also the fluff is often far more reasonable in power than any mechanical theorizing.

You may have heard of people being able to make an interesting character which has a possible major downside. That is that mechanically they suck. If you ignore key details then I hope you have a GM that doesn't kill you off.

Ive played more Pathfinder than 3rd-5th edition Dungeons and Dragons. There are quite a few classes but there are also subclasses with different bonus, penalties, and sometimes tradeoffs with other classes. using that its very possible to make numerous ideas.

But what do I often see? lots of cuts mostly because they they actually as are good in concept as theory. There are plenty of questionable ideas like Totem Druids. The game is still generous as you are own penalized for not using a preferred form as opposed to completely losing access.

Optimizing isn't a problem. A Melee Druid is quite possible. Just focus your starting stats, know feats, spells, and tactics and you can.

a key flaw with any argument against Power Gaming is challenge and risk. Tell someone they shouldn't when they have lethal traps to face and youre arguing its a good thing they are going to die.

Okay different people have different desires for what they want as a challenge. For me its more like a puzzle of character creation tactics. Not really surprising as I like military themes and Im treating things that way. My characters are usually military veterans and I treat them as no-nonsense survivors. Now that is different from say a loudmouthed Viking warrior with an axe in one hand and a mug in the other. In narrative purposes that works together as that would make my character The Sane Man/Woman compared to the Boisterous Warrior.

Now why do people insist that Power Gamers cannot cooperate? Or more specifically yet what do you consider cooperation? If its "hamstring yourself to make me happy" they the its an a one-sided relationship. I have those problems as I just find people using house rules to limit what people can do rather than make using them like interesting like adding Chaos Magic rules.

[Lord Raziere]

Hey, if you think the perfect RPG for you doesn't exist yet, you could be the person who creates it. You could fulfill that desire for all the people like you.

Also, you can do that with writing. Don't give up! There are as many processes as there are people when it comes to developing stories, some take longer than others. There's no such thing as "can't", there's only giving up before you get there.

thanks on the writing thing....

well the closest I ever felt came to making that system was to basically have the idea of turning the entire usual rpg paradigm on its head. see, the usual assumption of a system is that you start out at a "level one" or something similar and this is this the simplest character to make, and then you build up from there.

my idea is to instead make a system where the simplest character you can make is God. as in, the entire character sheet for an omnipotent, omniscient being is "Name: God" and absolutely nothing else. because there are no rules to constrain such a being. the rest of rules are things you apply to limit that being down to what you actually want to play. with ideally the best built characters being ones with a lot of constraints and limitations that play out logically and self-consistently. the mechanics would be based mostly on how your limited more than how you get stronger.

like say I wanted to make.....an orc warrior. I'd take the orc body limitation, I'd take the one person limitation, the mortal limitation, the warrior focused limitation, and perhaps the no magic limitation, the medieval technology limitation, things like that. and then my rolls would be limited to doing all the things defined within all those things.

problem is of course, how does a character develop in such a thing? because such a system would be great at making static concepts but since it'd be made of limitations, you'd have to relax limitations for them to grow stronger, see? because the less mechanically defined, the stronger you are in this hypothetical system, simply because omnipotence is defined as having no rules to mechanically constrain you. while the weakest being would be harder to stat because of all the limitations involved. thus it would turn the entire mechanical game on its head, by convincing the people who play that being godlike is mechanically boring and vague while making something weak mechanically rich and self-consistent and thus challenging to make and play- by your terminology, you'd have to optimize for weakness. while those who like being powerful, simply don't have to expend much effort to do so. but the idea just never gets off the ground cause I have no idea where to start.

[OldTrees1]

problem is of course, how does a character develop in such a thing? because such a system would be great at making static concepts but since it'd be made of limitations, you'd have to relax limitations for them to grow stronger, see? because the less mechanically defined, the stronger you are in this hypothetical system, simply because omnipotence is defined as having no rules to mechanically constrain you. while the weakest being would be harder to stat because of all the limitations involved. thus it would turn the entire mechanical game on its head, by convincing the people who play that being godlike is mechanically boring and vague while making something weak mechanically rich and self-consistent and thus challenging to make and play- by your terminology, you'd have to optimize for weakness. while those who like being powerful, simply don't have to expend much effort to do so. but the idea just never gets off the ground cause I have no idea where to start.

I have 2 solutions which would work for separate kinds of campaigns:

1) Depowerment Horror.
Consider a core gameplay mechanic of the players guiding their characters through challenges in a horror campaign. Like the RPG Dread, the GM decides when an action counts as a challenge. On a failure: The character gains a limitation (beyond the initial set). On a success: the character continues uneffected. Fill the game with limitations that are interesting to the players and fun to play with. Now you have a game where the players don't know whether to root for the characters to succeed (surviving adversity feels good) or to root for another interesting limitation (there is a reason I like to roll nat 1s).

2) Limited power but with persistent progress.
Consider someone climbing a mountain. Each day they can climb 5 miles. Each night the mountain teleports them back down 3 miles. Despite the climber's frustrations at the extra limitations, they can make progress if they persevere. Obviously you find situations where this metaphor is playing out in multiple dimensions. Some COOP boardgames like Pandemic make good examples of the general concept but an RPG can go much further. Here the core gameplay would keep the limitations rather static as character traits but would allow the players to slowly grow through shaping their environment rather than gaining superpowers or levels.

[Florian]

@Lord Raziere:

I think this will largely depend on whether you want rules/mechanics to simulate things or use them for conflict resolution. Maybe take a look at Marvel Heroic Roleplay and Lady Blackbird, which are two good examples for having self-contained characters that are defined by their limit and needing change to "grow".

[Mr Beer]

The optimizer at my table also makes the most interesting and well conceived characters. It's almost like fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive.

[Lord Raziere]

The optimizer at my table also makes the most interesting and well conceived characters. It's almost like fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive.

Its almost as if optimization is pointless in the first place because all it does is create a pointless arms race with the GM that doesn't actually increase chances of success, because they need to provide a challenge so the game doesn't get boring from too much victory. All that changes is bigger dice numbers and more things. At best case scenario.

[Mechalich]

The optimizer at my table also makes the most interesting and well conceived characters. It's almost like fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive.

Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch

Fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive so long as total effort can be increased. However, if you hold effort constant, then it becomes a zero-sum contest. Optimizers - especially optimizers who use a complex system like D&D which requires a high level of system mastery and effort to make work (as opposed to say, oWoD where you can optimize by simply dumping as many points in Resources as your GM allows) - tend to be high effort players overall. it is not uncommon for a high effort player to put ten times as much energy into making a character as a low-effort one. As a result, even if that effort is expended is a massive crunch-dominant ratio like 8/2, they'll still have the best fluff.

This is relevant because a large component of the TTRPG player base has severe constraints on how much time and energy they can devote to character creation. If an optimizer at the table who does not have such constraints puts a massive amount of effort into optimizing their character, this can force other players (and the GM) to spend effort trying to keep up, which means they have less time to compose fluff for their character, especially if their system mastery is lower. Remember, the most popular D&D character class is fighter despite it being one of the least effective and interesting classes. That's because it's the easiest character to build and play.

Additionally, when a system is structured such that system mastery = power is provides barriers to entry and feeds exclusivity in a way that is detrimental to the hobby. When that equation outputs counter-intuitive results that make it more difficult for players to accept the shared reference frame this is doubly true.

[Nifft]

Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch Nah, that's too much of a simplification.

Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch + Arguing + Cajoling for Special Exceptions + Fighting About Rules + Cheating + Second-Guessing the DM + Reading Ahead in the Module + Posting on the Forums + Googling Builds + Dollbuilding for Games That Will Never Happen + Pizza + Other Stuff

If you take away the time for Crunch, you might just get more Arguing or Cajoling, with no increase in Fluff at all.

Would you prefer to have that?


I'd prefer more Pizza.

[The Insanity]

Its almost as if optimization is pointless in the first place because all it does is create a pointless arms race with the GM that doesn't actually increase chances of success, because they need to provide a challenge so the game doesn't get boring from too much victory. All that changes is bigger dice numbers and more things. At best case scenario.
It's not pointless. We WANT a bigger challenge. And we LIKE to optimize.

[Guizonde]

It's not pointless. We WANT a bigger challenge. And we LIKE to optimize.

depends on the game, really. in pathfinder, throw me like, ALL the undead, so i can wipe 'em out while drop-kicking an elder dragon.

in rogue trader, we had a near-death lord of change in a face off. it was about 700,000 nopes too many. hell, we weren't sure we could win versus a bloodletter (a minor daemon), and our big bad end boss was a daemonicus arcana majoris. i'd've settled for the summoner and his bodyguards, which was already a nail-biter of a fight before they summoned that thing.

[Pelle]

It's not pointless. We WANT a bigger challenge. And we LIKE to optimize.

But the challenge becomes lower if you optimize. I guess what you want is to fight orcs instead of goblins, but have the same degree of challenge...

[Rhedyn]

Some of us really don't choose to optimize, the better choices are just obvious or it has become so habitual (for 3.x) that we really don't even have to think anymore to throw together a character that's decently optimal.

[OldTrees1]

Its almost as if optimization is pointless in the first place because all it does is create a pointless arms race with the GM that doesn't actually increase chances of success, because they need to provide a challenge so the game doesn't get boring from too much victory. All that changes is bigger dice numbers and more things. At best case scenario.

You are talking about power gaming again. Obviously the goal of optimizing for power is self contradicting, so why do you so doggedly assume optimizers pursue that naive goal instead of another goal? I would much rather create a mechanical representation that is better at representing my character concept and increase party enjoyment than do something stupid/naive like pursue power at the cost of party enjoyment and challenge enjoyment.

[Talakeal]

It's not pointless. We WANT a bigger challenge. And we LIKE to optimize.

Maybe. I have had a lot of players who get mad at me for scaling the challenge, telling me they min-man because they want to feel powerful, and if I up the challenge to match their power they have to min-max even harder to get that feeling of power, and then I just up the challenge again, they termed it "the cycle of stupidity".

Also, maybe the DM and / or the other players can't or don't want to optimize to that degree or don't want a bigger challenge, so the one or two guys who do is ruining the game for the rest of them.


Personally I prefer the DM to make encounters that make sense in the world and the players to make characters who are still challenged by but have the potential to overcome said encounters, but that is just me.

[CantigThimble]

Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch

Fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive so long as total effort can be increased. However, if you hold effort constant, then it becomes a zero-sum contest. Optimizers - especially optimizers who use a complex system like D&D which requires a high level of system mastery and effort to make work (as opposed to say, oWoD where you can optimize by simply dumping as many points in Resources as your GM allows) - tend to be high effort players overall. it is not uncommon for a high effort player to put ten times as much energy into making a character as a low-effort one. As a result, even if that effort is expended is a massive crunch-dominant ratio like 8/2, they'll still have the best fluff.

This is relevant because a large component of the TTRPG player base has severe constraints on how much time and energy they can devote to character creation. If an optimizer at the table who does not have such constraints puts a massive amount of effort into optimizing their character, this can force other players (and the GM) to spend effort trying to keep up, which means they have less time to compose fluff for their character, especially if their system mastery is lower. Remember, the most popular D&D character class is fighter despite it being one of the least effective and interesting classes. That's because it's the easiest character to build and play.

Additionally, when a system is structured such that system mastery = power is provides barriers to entry and feeds exclusivity in a way that is detrimental to the hobby. When that equation outputs counter-intuitive results that make it more difficult for players to accept the shared reference frame this is doubly true.

In my experience its more often fluff that's held constant than effort. Many players will put a certain amount of work into their fluff until it reaches the point that they consider 'finished' and at that point you'd need to start pulling teeth to get them to do more. No matter how much work they had to do for the crunch, be in a 5 minute build in a system they know inside and out or learning a whole new system just to build one character they'll write the same amount of fluff.

Players don't sit down and think "I have 3 hours to work on this character, I will allocate this much time to working on fluff and this much to working on crunch", instead, they sit down and work on fluff and crunch until both are complete to their satisfaction. If they're not done before the game begins they'll work with what they have, if they have extra time left over they'll go do something completely different.

In addition, effort matters much less than skill for fluff. I've seen players write 10 page backstories and then waste any potential that those backstories offered in the actual game. Others barely write 2 sentences and roleplay those two sentences beautifully.

[Arbane]

I powergame/optimize/whatever because I LIKE DOING COOL STUFF.



Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch + Arguing + Cajoling for Special Exceptions + Fighting About Rules + Cheating + Second-Guessing the DM + Reading Ahead in the Module + Posting on the Forums + Googling Builds + Dollbuilding for Games That Will Never Happen + Pizza + Other Stuff


Behold, DeSaad, the ANTI-GAME EQUATION! :smallbiggrin:

[Mr Beer]

Its almost as if optimization is pointless in the first place because all it does is create a pointless arms race with the GM that doesn't actually increase chances of success, because they need to provide a challenge so the game doesn't get boring from too much victory. All that changes is bigger dice numbers and more things. At best case scenario.

Then levelling and loot is also pointless. It's fine to take for people to take that perspective BTW, it just doesn't apply for every player. It probably applies to a minority of specifically D&D players though I bet the ratios change according to the favoured RPG.

[Mr Beer]

Player Effort = Fluff + Crunch

Fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive so long as total effort can be increased. However, if you hold effort constant, then it becomes a zero-sum contest. Optimizers - especially optimizers who use a complex system like D&D which requires a high level of system mastery and effort to make work (as opposed to say, oWoD where you can optimize by simply dumping as many points in Resources as your GM allows) - tend to be high effort players overall. it is not uncommon for a high effort player to put ten times as much energy into making a character as a low-effort one. As a result, even if that effort is expended is a massive crunch-dominant ratio like 8/2, they'll still have the best fluff.

This is relevant because a large component of the TTRPG player base has severe constraints on how much time and energy they can devote to character creation. If an optimizer at the table who does not have such constraints puts a massive amount of effort into optimizing their character, this can force other players (and the GM) to spend effort trying to keep up, which means they have less time to compose fluff for their character, especially if their system mastery is lower. Remember, the most popular D&D character class is fighter despite it being one of the least effective and interesting classes. That's because it's the easiest character to build and play.

Additionally, when a system is structured such that system mastery = power is provides barriers to entry and feeds exclusivity in a way that is detrimental to the hobby. When that equation outputs counter-intuitive results that make it more difficult for players to accept the shared reference frame this is doubly true.

This is a non-issue for me. My players tacitly agree not to break the game so it doesn't matter. The guy who optimises better, I nix some build aspects if I think they might be OP. He's happy to compromise. Frankly, my view is that because he puts more effort to learn the mechanics and also build interesting characters with adventure hooks and also fit the setting...he deserves a better build. I could nerf everything he wants to do and give him a pre-gen I guess but then I'd be a ****.

Now if you've got a group where one guy routinely researches crazy builds, then turns up and disrupts the beer-and-pretzels game by having his character casually nuke the BBEG while everyone else kind of stands around with their thumbs up their butts, yeah you have a problem.

It comes back to what is problematic and what isn't.

[kyoryu]

Then levelling and loot is also pointless. It's fine to take for players to take that perspective BTW, it just doesn't apply for everyone.

It's called "the leveling treadmill" for a reason.

Even aside from that, gaining power usually changes the nature of what you're fighting, and if you're playing in a world that is more or less static rather than a continuous stream of encounters, you can see how you change against the persistent backdrop.

[Dimers]

Its almost as if optimization is pointless in the first place because all it does is create a pointless arms race with the GM that doesn't actually increase chances of success, because they need to provide a challenge so the game doesn't get boring from too much victory. All that changes is bigger dice numbers and more things. At best case scenario.

A mundane gumshoe, Batman and the Silver Surfer face different types of challenges. Some players like Silver Surfer scenarios and find them more interesting. Some would rather face Batman challenges and find those more interesting. Some people would be turned off by those levels of power, preferring the average-joe category. They all provide the same level of challenge as each other. Is it "pointless" for all three to exist?

[Mr Beer]

It's called "the leveling treadmill" for a reason.

Even aside from that, gaining power usually changes the nature of what you're fighting, and if you're playing in a world that is more or less static rather than a continuous stream of encounters, you can see how you change against the persistent backdrop.

Yeah well because there's an arm-race, which requires the GM to adjust the combat power of adversarial encounters (whether or not by changing the nature of what you are fighting), then that renders the exercise pointless by definition. According to my understanding of Lord Raziere's opinion about being mechanically better at something.

EDIT

And of course, this is true to some extent for the majority of players. Everyone turned around at some point and said 'well I'm do I want to level if the fights are just as bad?'. So that necessarily begs the question 'Do I like the levelling game' enough to make this worthwhile? If not, are there other things going on here that maybe I should be focussing on as well?'. Which leads to better players IMO.

[Stuebi]

For me personally, it always came down to the context. I've been DMing for two groups in Rogue Trader for a little over a year now, more or less regularly. In one of those groups, I had one player who knew both the setting and the mechanics like the back of his hand. After the first few sessions, he was by a pretty wide margin the strongest Char in terms of combat power. Now in RT you can't really usurp class-specialties too easily, as taking skills and upgrades from a different career can either be flatly denied by the DM, or just costs so much more xp that you'd fall of the curve eventually. But combat is a pretty big factor in playing, so him just boasting the power of basically the rest of the group combined quickly became very tedious, for both me and the rest. So we'd have a session of a few hours of just roleplaying, doing non-combat related things, which worked fine. And then you'd have any sort of conflict, and it would be sorted within a fraction of the time that I expected it too.

Enemies that we're supposed to be a fair challenge, or even motivate the group to search for alternatives to "Shoot it until it dies, then shoot it some more for good measure", we're dying in a round or two to this guy. He had a response to basically everything I threw at him. Until it reached a point where I would have to either specifically build stuff that was capable of fighting back (And thus leagues above what the rest could handle), or increase the numbers massively so Captain PW could not deal with all of them before the rest of the group actually got to act.

I didnt do any of the two, for me the point where I have to basically handcraft a middlefinger for one specific player is when I wanna pull the brake and try just talking about it. He didnt want to tune it down ("I'm playing the way you're supposed to, the others are just doing it wrong."), so I just accepted the fact that this was a conflict of interests and had him leave.


Cases such as this are just what happens if you get different people at the table. And it's way more comfortable than those cases were people are ACTUALLY trying to break the system, or make the experience worse for the rest.

[Rhedyn]

Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game.

[Grim Portent]

Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game.

Combat ability is heavily gear dependant in RT. A heavy weapon deals more damage than a primitive pistol and you can build to mitigate the downsides of having a heavy weapon.

If half the party has autopistols and the rest are wielding plasma pistols and lascannons then the former half will ping off most enemies and the latter half will one shot most enemies even if they're otherwise identical characters.

A guy with good stats in the melee skills (WS, Str and Agi) and the useful melee talents with a good power sword and high quality armour can blend dozens of common enemies in a few rounds. A scholar PC with a knife will struggle to kill a drunk guy armed with a broken bottle.


Though thee game is designed around the assumption that in a party of four or so two characters will be basically useless in combat, but be great at non-combat activities.

[CantigThimble]

Combat ability is heavily gear dependant in RT. A heavy weapon deals more damage than a primitive pistol and you can build to mitigate the downsides of having a heavy weapon.

If half the party has autopistols and the rest are wielding plasma pistols and lascannons then the former half will ping off most enemies and the latter half will one shot most enemies even if they're otherwise identical characters.

A guy with good stats in the melee skills (WS, Str and Agi) and the useful melee talents with a good power sword and high quality armour can blend dozens of common enemies in a few rounds. A scholar PC with a knife will struggle to kill a drunk guy armed with a broken bottle.


Though thee game is designed around the assumption that in a party of four or so two characters will be basically useless in combat, but be great at non-combat activities.

Wait, so does that mean that Stuebi's story is actually the way the game is intended to be played?

[Guizonde]

Wait, so does that mean that Stuebi's story is actually the way the game is intended to be played?

up to a point. i was part of a campaign that ended last week, and i was the combat specialist. nothing fancy, storm trooper carapace, sub-dermal armor, and a good quality hellgun. but (and this is important), i was a slaughterhouse with laser weapons as per the arch-militant specialty of "choose your favored weapon". this gave me an edge in both damage and initiative meaning that i usually shot first and shot hard. unlike mister "badwrongfun" above, though, i actually did my best to get the other players to think strategically and participate actively in combat. the void-master of the group pulled off a brilliant suppression fire action with his submachine gun (i honestly don't know the translation for his exact gun) and bought enough time for the tech-priestess to get to safety. they didn't mind one bit that i was the kill-power of the group, since outside of combat, i was a bit of a load skills-wise. you can only get so far rolling 12 and under in diplomacy.

i couldn't talk my way out of a paper bag, i couldn't fix my own gear, couldn't fly the ship, but i could recon and fight like all of them put together (and get hit hard enough to throw any two of them in the crit-ranges without flinching). we were a team of specialists where without one of us, the team suffered. our seneschal had to leave the game due to finding employment, and man oh man did we regret his leaving. said seneschal was also a grenade-magnet, so he was the most vulnerable in combat. he didn't mind it one bit.

another thing about my group was that we always encouraged the rest of the team and congratulated them on glorious actions. at no point did the other players want me to tone down the overkill, they relied on it as much as they relied on the void-master to fly us through the roughest situations.


Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game.

it's not broken, it's meant to be unbalanced. in that game, you'll have gutter-scum rubbing shoulders with top-of-the-line super-soldiers on occasion. it would break suspension of disbelief if a hobo was as hard to kill as a space marine, and for all intents and purposes, that's a bit rare on the current pen and paper scene. dnd is all about moaning about balance and power-gaming, shadowrun is about maximizing dice pools, the warhammer rpgs are about what happens when you get a baker, a cutpurse, a fire-and-brimstone preacher and a cyborg tech-wizard in the same party. each can bring their own to a table, but if you rolled an average joe, it will be harder to survive. this is somewhat mitigated by exploding dice, opposing rolls, and fate points, but not by much.


Combat ability is heavily gear dependant in RT. A heavy weapon deals more damage than a primitive pistol and you can build to mitigate the downsides of having a heavy weapon.

If half the party has autopistols and the rest are wielding plasma pistols and lascannons then the former half will ping off most enemies and the latter half will one shot most enemies even if they're otherwise identical characters.

A guy with good stats in the melee skills (WS, Str and Agi) and the useful melee talents with a good power sword and high quality armour can blend dozens of common enemies in a few rounds. A scholar PC with a knife will struggle to kill a drunk guy armed with a broken bottle.

Though thee game is designed around the assumption that in a party of four or so two characters will be basically useless in combat, but be great at non-combat activities.

this. there's a reason people knock on rogue trader as playing rocket-tag and the common joke is "find cover, throw grenades, repeat". good stats only get you so far. my arch-militant ended the campaign with a raw 65 in shooting skill, bumped up to a whopping 125 if shooting on burst mode at close quarters with his hellgun. i didn't miss too often, and even difficult shots barely landed me in the 95 or under range. unarmored, i had 40 toughness, allowing me to negate 4 points of damage before it hit my wounds. fully armored and endgame, it was TB4, sub-dermal armor 2, stormtrooper carapace 6, so a hit that dealt 12 wounds or under i shrugged off. remember that normal pc stats are TB3 with 8-10 wounds. a damage of 12 will incapacitate most pc's. my grunt was pretty solid and regularly weathered full-auto salvoes like the terminator. my team just hid behind me and plinked with hand canons and bolt pistols. it worked ok.

just don't play rogue trader with the expectations of playing a jack of all trades mary sue. at best, you'll be a specialist (face, fighter, rogue, wizard, or skill-monkey). at worst, gear will help you survive.

[CantigThimble]

I actually like asymmetry in cooperative games, including RPGs. I'm reminded of a story told in an RPG manual I read a while ago (I don't recall which) where the author described how when he played D&D as a kid, their DM thought they were getting too invested in being more powerful than their allies, so he had them play an adventure with characters that were all pathetically weak, except for one of them that he made significantly stronger than normal. Instead of wallowing in uselssness, it turned into an exercise to figure out how the party could work together to help that character be as effective as possible.

That's kind of the mentality behind 'specialist' based games like Shadowrun or Rogue Trader. No matter how good you are with an assault rifle you can't hack a computer with it, so when that's what needs to be done you step back, let the decker do his job and do whatever you can to make his life easier. Basically, it's just the players taking turns being 'the overpowered one' and having everyone else do support or interference for them. This kinda gets around the problem of powergaming because having a super amazing decker is never going to render the gunman irrelevant and having a super amazing gunman is never going to render the decker irrelevant. Powergame all you want, the game still works.

However, even in games that aren't focused on specialists it's totally fine to play an underpowered character IMO. Figuring out what you can accomplish with limited means and how to effectively support characters that are out of your tier can be a fun challenge. (Note that I said CAN be, this won't work for every game, style of play or player.)

[Rhedyn]

Meh, I prefer the Savage Worlds approach where non-combat characters can contribute to combat using tricks or test of wills (aka doing something creative) while using cover, movement, and tactics to protect themselves decently without needing to be a dogde specialist with high parry and toughness. It's very hard to create a character that is completely useless in combat.

I'll say Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game because people seem to get kicked out of groups for making a combat focused character.

If a system can't handle people playing it, then that's the fault of the system, and if the system encourages you to blame players and not the system, then it's downright dysfunctional.

[CantigThimble]

I'll say Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game because people seem to get kicked out of groups for making a combat focused character.

If a system can't handle people playing it, then that's the fault of the system, and if the system encourages you to blame players and not the system, then it's downright dysfunctional.

Because people playing savage worlds have never had a disagreement? No one has ever played or run a savage worlds game poorly? :smallconfused:

Seriously, I get that you like the system, but this is getting absurd. People who play games do literally anything will argue about how to do those things. Nothing under the sun will remove that.

[kyoryu]

I'll say Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game because people seem to get kicked out of groups for making a combat focused character.

If a system can't handle people playing it, then that's the fault of the system, and if the system encourages you to blame players and not the system, then it's downright dysfunctional.

Gamers: We want a game with near limitless options that can be combined in unrestricted ways, creating a gazillion combinations. We'd also like more options to be added over time.

Also Gamers: If any combination in a game is broken and overpowered, the game is irredeemably bad and the designers are idiots.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Gamers: We want a game with near limitless options that can be combined in unrestricted ways, creating a gazillion combinations. We'd also like more options to be added over time.

Also Gamers: If any combination in a game is broken and overpowered, the game is irredeemably bad and the designers are idiots.

Who wants that? I certainly don't.

[Guizonde]

I'll say Rogue Trader sounds like a broken game because people seem to get kicked out of groups for making a combat focused character.

If a system can't handle people playing it, then that's the fault of the system, and if the system encourages you to blame players and not the system, then it's downright dysfunctional.

i have no idea how you came to that conclusion, honestly. based on stuebi's story, i'd say that was a player-problem, not a system problem, since i played the same role and was a fully-fledged part of the team. cantigthimble's approach is the right way to approach that system, and without knowing, hit the nail on the head on how i envision rpg's.

[Talakeal]

Gamers: We want a game with near limitless options that can be combined in unrestricted ways, creating a gazillion combinations. We'd also like more options to be added over time.

Also Gamers: If any combination in a game is broken and overpowered, the game is irredeemably bad and the designers are idiots.

Point-buy games tend to trade options for balance. They let you create a character in a more or less free-form manner, but balance is often up to the individual players and GMs. Its a trade-off.

Then, of course, you have 3.5, which has fairly narrow and restrictive classes but is still wildly unbalanced beyond the dreams of most RPGs right out of the box.



Although I still tend to have negative feelings about Rogue Trader. I didn't play it long enough to see the balance issues, but the class trees were really weird and restrictive. I remember trying and trying to make a surgeon character and not seeing any way to do it without first going through some other class and picking up all sorts of weird baggage I didn't want to maybe one day play a surgeon if the game lasted long enough, and I eventually just gave up on the idea and decided to play an assassin instead. But the game only lasted a few sessions and it was some time ago, so I wouldn't take my opinions as any sort of gospel.

[Darth Ultron]

The optimizer at my table also makes the most interesting and well conceived characters. It's almost like fluff and crunch are not mutually exclusive.

Except your one example is just one of the rare exceptions.


It's not pointless. We WANT a bigger challenge. And we LIKE to optimize.

I find this to be false. Most optimizers want the mook power trip where they can blast or cleave through like 100 commoners and then think they are awesome.

As soon as the DM optimizes even a tiny bit and makes even a slight challenge, it is the Optimizers that immediately start to whine and cry. After all, they are only optimized vs the dull game world, and once that game world is gone, their optimized character is no long special.


A mundane gumshoe, Batman and the Silver Surfer face different types of challenges. Some players like Silver Surfer scenarios and find them more interesting. Some would rather face Batman challenges and find those more interesting. Some people would be turned off by those levels of power, preferring the average-joe category. They all provide the same level of challenge as each other. Is it "pointless" for all three to exist?

This is so good....

At typical Batman story plot has both Batman and Bruce Wyane doing a lot of talking, investigation and other non combat things(aka Role Playing). There will be lots of detail, often a mystery and an unknown, and lots of fluff. Most often Batman defeats foes through intelligence, preparation, skill and will power.

The typical Silver Surfer story plot has a bad guy ''tooz blows up Earth(or the universe or whatever)'' and the Silver Surfer, despite being intelligent and having the ''can do anything power'' will ONLY attack the bad guy with Blasts (''Pew! Pew!") No story depth, no details, no fluff, just endless pages of pretty colors of blasts....until the Silver Surfer wins, often for no reason other then the pages run out.

[Rhedyn]

Because people playing savage worlds have never had a disagreement? No one has ever played or run a savage worlds game poorly? :smallconfused:

Seriously, I get that you like the system, but this is getting absurd. People who play games do literally anything will argue about how to do those things. Nothing under the sun will remove that.
It's not about the arguing. Strawman

The story from the Rogue Trader game is one where someone picked completely legal options and played completely legally and then was told that his character was ruining the group. After he showed no interest in the proposed house rules of "tone it down" and suggested instead that his squad needs to be better at combat, he was asked to leave.

Now you can argue that the game was just being ran terribly or that this guy must have been doing other things, but the story as portrayed, is that someone was considered a bad player and ejected from a group because he was following the rules.

That doesn't make the player sound bad to me, that makes Rogue Trader seem like a dumpster fire of a game.

[CantigThimble]

It's not about the arguing. Strawman

The story from the Rogue Trader game is one where someone picked completely legal options and played completely legally and then was told that his character was ruining the group. After he showed no interest in the proposed house rules of "tone it down" and suggested instead that his squad needs to be better at combat, he was asked to leave.

Now you can argue that the game was just being ran terribly or that this guy must have been doing other things, but the story as portrayed, is that someone was considered a bad player and ejected from a group because he was following the rules.

That doesn't make the player sound bad to me, that makes Rogue Trader seem like a dumpster fire of a game.

I think blaming the problems of a gaming group on the system they're playing is absurd. Working with other people requires a degree of trust and cooperation, that story clearly illustrates that there was very little trust and cooperation between them. I don't think it is remotely possible to replace that trust and cooperation with rules. Literally no system is immune to breaking down when the people in it aren't willing to work together to make it function.

There was no consensus on what kind of game should be played and neither side was willing to compromise to reach one. The group broke apart.

I'll say the system is broken when the players are willing to compromise and are trying to reach consensus and the game is a train wreck regardless, not before then.

[Guizonde]

It's not about the arguing. Strawman

The story from the Rogue Trader game is one where someone picked completely legal options and played completely legally and then was told that his character was ruining the group. After he showed no interest in the proposed house rules of "tone it down" and suggested instead that his squad needs to be better at combat, he was asked to leave.

Now you can argue that the game was just being ran terribly or that this guy must have been doing other things, but the story as portrayed, is that someone was considered a bad player and ejected from a group because he was following the rules.

That doesn't make the player sound bad to me, that makes Rogue Trader seem like a dumpster fire of a game.

that's just it. his squad doesn't need to be better at combat. if you're the fighter in the group, that's your main goal. where the group falls apart is if you adopt an "if all you have is a hammer" mentality. combat in rt is to be kept to a minimum. it's a mostly social game compared to only war or dark heresy (or heavens forbid deathwatch). you're the fighter, you don't gripe your non-com teammates don't fight more, that's not their job.

in theory, yes, you can totally specc a character in rogue trader to have man-portable anti-tank guns. how practical is that? not very. it's very niche. i remember more "the fighter got so obsessed with fighting that anything that moderately challenged him would wipe out the party due to blast radius". the dm had to make a call:

artificially boost the combat capabilities of the non-coms (bad idea, since the fighter would have called favoritism).
augment the difficulty to challenge the fighter (bad idea, tpk risk too high)
tell the fighter to tone it down with the overkill and quit bringing a heavy bolter to a barfight. the player didn't want to, and so was told to leave. different expectations. you want to mow down everyone and not have to bother with all that "talking" stuff? play deathwatch, an only war tank brigade, play black crusade, hell, even dark heresy can pull it off! just don't hog the sheets. it's really not that complicated, and believe me, i've been in groups where the main beatstick wanted more fights because he was bored of all the talky parts. we explained to him that in the fighty parts he was having all the fun, and the talkers were not. fair was fair. ultimately, like any mature 16 year old, he left in a huff talking about winning dnd.

also, i'm not sure if it's a logical fallacy or something, but according to the rules, you get abberations in all systems, that's why RAW is such a battlecry around here. yeah, according to the rules in rogue trader, you get control of a 7km space-ship capable of wiping out planets with one salvo. it's in the rules, and there's a gun called a planet-killer. you don't wipe out planets because it's bad for business. just because it's in the rules doesn't make it mandatory. our techpriestess used a "power-club". litterally a taser hooked up to a monkey wrench. in the rules, she had access to much more potent weaponry, but she figured she needed a quick and dirty way of frying electrical circuits rather than following the rules as written.

if my character had routinely caused headaches for the dm and the team, i'd've listened. all they asked of me was to limit my smoking breaks to one every two hours (and i obeyed). that's why i say it was a player problem and not a system problem.

[kyoryu]

Who wants that? I certainly don't.

Many gamers do.


Point-buy games tend to trade options for balance. They let you create a character in a more or less free-form manner, but balance is often up to the individual players and GMs. Its a trade-off.

Well, of course. Combinatorial complexity is a thing. That's kind of my point.


Then, of course, you have 3.5, which has fairly narrow and restrictive classes but is still wildly unbalanced beyond the dreams of most RPGs right out of the box.

Given multiclassing (and then spell/feat options), I'd say that 3.5 is really a skill-based system. It just has a few different types of skills, including "classes", and they tend to be large-grained and contain multiple things.

Which makes the unintended consequences/combinatorial complexity even worse.

[Pelle]

that's just it. his squad doesn't need to be better at combat. if you're the fighter in the group, that's your main goal. where the group falls apart is if you adopt an "if all you have is a hammer" mentality. combat in rt is to be kept to a minimum. it's a mostly social game compared to only war or dark heresy (or heavens forbid deathwatch). you're the fighter, you don't gripe your non-com teammates don't fight more, that's not their job.


Wasn't the story about a player getting kicked because he played his role well, and the other players didn't like that he overshadowed them at his role? He was asked to tone down his combat abilities, not griping about others lack thereof. That the fighter dominated combats shouldn't have been a problem with the player, it sounds like...

[Rhedyn]

Wasn't the story about a player getting kicked because he played his role well, and the other players didn't like that he overshadowed them at his role? He was asked to tone down his combat abilities, not griping about others lack thereof. That the fighter dominated combats shouldn't have been a problem with the player, it sounds like...
Yup. Which is why I leave it open as a GM issue or a terrible game issue. (I don't remember it being said that the fellow party members were complaining. It was the GM who was upset)

If it's meant to be some sort of rotating spotlight game where a minority of the party can interact with any given event, then a combat focused character shouldn't have been a problem. If it was a problem, and the GM was running the right kind of game for the system, then the system is broken.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Many gamers do.

I submit that the people who want a dizzying array of options and the people who say a game is broken if there's broken options in it are, in fact, two separate groups of people and "gamers" are not some monolithic entity.

[JoeJ]

I submit that the people who want a dizzying array of options and the people who say a game is broken if there's broken options in it are, in fact, two separate groups of people and "gamers" are not some monolithic entity.

Yes, two separate but non-exclusive groups. They have some members in common.

IME this is mainly a 3.x phenomenon simply because most other games don't have a staggering number of character options that are largely chosen as sets rather than individually.

[kyoryu]

Yes, two separate but non-exclusive groups. They have some members in common.

IME this is mainly a 3.x phenomenon simply because most other games don't have a staggering number of character options that are largely chosen as sets rather than individually.

Most other games with a huge array of options also seem to have a culture of GM veto on overpowered characters.

There's definitely overlap, though I'll acknowledge that not all of them are overlap. And, of course, gamers are not a single block. Hyperbole for humor and all that, you know?

[JoeJ]

Most other games with a huge array of options also seem to have a culture of GM veto on overpowered characters.

That's true. And on expecting the GM to blanket veto certain options that don't fit the setting, genre, or type of characters that have been planned for.

Additionally, a lot of the issues with overpowered characters stem from an expectation that the game will focus primarily on a very narrow set of activities, which makes it difficult to separate out different niches. If Superman and Robin are put into an arena against Darkseid, Robin's player might as well not show up. But if the scenario requires Superman to keep Darkseid occupied so Robin can sneak in and disable his doomsday machine, they can both have fun.

[Mechalich]

Additionally, a lot of the issues with overpowered characters stem from an expectation that the game will focus primarily on a very narrow set of activities, which makes it difficult to separate out different niches. If Superman and Robin are put into an arena against Darkseid, Robin's player might as well not show up. But if the scenario requires Superman to keep Darkseid occupied so Robin can sneak in and disable his doomsday machine, they can both have fun.

The thing is a game that lets two players who at anything close to the same amount of XP (or whatever else is being used to measure points) build Robin and Superman is poorly designed. Those characters aren't even in the same mechanistic universe and once you remove the constraints of comic book logic - which you can rely on in a narrative but not in a collaborative RPG - things break down. Now, very few games are sufficiently lacking in balance that you can actually build superman and robin with roughly the same amount of points. D&D is pretty bad though - it gets to the point where, at higher levels you've got some people playing Captain America and others playing Dr. Strange and that simply does not work.

To some extent this can be managed mechanically, but at some point a GM has to step in, since there are many types of power that - while perfectly reasonable to measure in a game world - easily break a system when applied to a PC. The easy example is wealth. For any game set in a modern setting it is useful to have some mechanical measure of ludicrous wealth - because people like Bill Gates actually exist. Letting a PC buy immense wealth is almost universally a terrible idea however, because they can then go about converting wealth into all sorts of other resources that absolutely break the game.

[kyoryu]

I really don't know why "Superman and Robin" (or the slightly less insane "Superman and Batman") is so often used as a benchmark of what a system should handle.

[Florian]

Wait, so does that mean that Stuebi's story is actually the way the game is intended to be played?

Not really. RT rewards niche specialization but is also geared towards catering to those niches. It´s a game that deals heavily with the "macro level" and some GMs just don't get it, instead going into it D&D-style.

[JoeJ]

The thing is a game that lets two players who at anything close to the same amount of XP (or whatever else is being used to measure points) build Robin and Superman is poorly designed. Those characters aren't even in the same mechanistic universe and once you remove the constraints of comic book logic - which you can rely on in a narrative but not in a collaborative RPG - things break down.

Why? If it works, it works. Check out Smallville (https://www.amazon.com/Smallville-Roleplaying-Game-Cam-Banks/dp/1931567891), for an example. Forget Robin, it lets you build Superman and Lois Lane and play them both, effectively, in the same game.

More broadly, every superhero game I've ever seen allows you to run skilled normals, nigh-invulnerable powerhouses, super speedsters, energy blasters, psychics, etc. in the same group with nobody feeling inadequate. The characters may have the same number of points (or whatever) but they are vastly different in raw hitting power, yet they work together just fine because everybody has something important and interesting to do.

Traveller, also, doesn't have any problems if you want to have an expert marksman, a hotshot pilot, a smooth-talking conman, and a retired Navy doctor become partners. Nor do most versions of D&D have a problem with doing the equivalent, once you scrap the idea that dealing damage in combat is the sole way to have fun.


Now, very few games are sufficiently lacking in balance that you can actually build superman and robin with roughly the same amount of points. D&D is pretty bad though - it gets to the point where, at higher levels you've got some people playing Captain America and others playing Dr. Strange and that simply does not work.

It doesn't work in D&D, primarily because so many players judge characters almost entirely on one particular activity - fighting against a small group of enemies within a restricted environment. If we were talking about a superhero game I'd call it broken if it didn't handle Doc/Cap teamups well, because having a mix of power levels is a basic expectation of the genre.


I really don't know why "Superman and Robin" (or the slightly less insane "Superman and Batman") is so often used as a benchmark of what a system should handle.

Not so much a benchmark of what every system should handle, but of what some systems, at least can handle. It's to point out that having characters with different levels of combat power is not inherently a problem; the problem is when the system allows those different characters but doesn't make them all able to contribute equally to the game.

[Quertus]

Maybe. I have had a lot of players who get mad at me for scaling the challenge, telling me they min-man because they want to feel powerful, and if I up the challenge to match their power they have to min-max even harder to get that feeling of power, and then I just up the challenge again, they termed it "the cycle of stupidity".

Also, maybe the DM and / or the other players can't or don't want to optimize to that degree or don't want a bigger challenge, so the one or two guys who do is ruining the game for the rest of them.


Personally I prefer the DM to make encounters that make sense in the world and the players to make characters who are still challenged by but have the potential to overcome said encounters, but that is just me.

Do not get into an arms race with your players, because they cannot win.

I've been in parties where anything from individual characters to the whole party were well optimized to handle (but still enjoy, and occasionally be challenged by) the adventure. I've been in parties where anything from individual characters to the whole party was The Load. And I've been in parties where, well, one player was playing figurative Thor, and another, me, was playing a literal sentient potted plant. And, IME, these ran best when the GM did not change the adventure, did not tailor encounters to the party.


Enemies that we're supposed to be a fair challenge, or even [/b]motivate the group[/b] to search for alternatives to "Shoot it until it dies, then shoot it some more for good measure", we're dying in a round or two to this guy. He had a response to basically everything I threw at him. Until it reached a point where I would have to either specifically build stuff that was capable of fighting back (And thus leagues above what the rest could handle), or increase the numbers massively so Captain PW could not deal with all of them before the rest of the group actually got to act.

I didnt do any of the two, for me the point where I have to basically handcraft a middlefinger for one specific player is when I wanna pull the brake and try just talking about it. He didnt want to tune it down ("I'm playing the way you're supposed to, the others are just doing it wrong."), so I just accepted the fact that this was a conflict of interests and had him leave.

This sounds more like an issue of a GM trying to run a linear game, and a player lacking Participationism, than an issue with the system or the player.


Wait, so does that mean that Stuebi's story is actually the way the game is intended to be played?


another thing about my group was that we always encouraged the rest of the team and congratulated them on glorious actions. at no point did the other players want me to tone down the overkill, they relied on it as much as they relied on the void-master to fly us through the roughest situations.

Ignoring everything else, that's what we should take away from this thread, IMO.


I actually like asymmetry in cooperative games, including RPGs. I'm reminded of a story told in an RPG manual I read a while ago (I don't recall which) where the author described how when he played D&D as a kid, their DM thought they were getting too invested in being more powerful than their allies, so he had them play an adventure with characters that were all pathetically weak, except for one of them that he made significantly stronger than normal. Instead of wallowing in uselssness, it turned into an exercise to figure out how the party could work together to help that character be as effective as possible.

That's kind of the mentality behind 'specialist' based games like Shadowrun or Rogue Trader. No matter how good you are with an assault rifle you can't hack a computer with it, so when that's what needs to be done you step back, let the decker do his job and do whatever you can to make his life easier. Basically, it's just the players taking turns being 'the overpowered one' and having everyone else do support or interference for them. This kinda gets around the problem of powergaming because having a super amazing decker is never going to render the gunman irrelevant and having a super amazing gunman is never going to render the decker irrelevant. Powergame all you want, the game still works.

However, even in games that aren't focused on specialists it's totally fine to play an underpowered character IMO. Figuring out what you can accomplish with limited means and how to effectively support characters that are out of your tier can be a fun challenge. (Note that I said CAN be, this won't work for every game, style of play or player.)

These would be more good examples of what we should learn from this thread, IMO.


someone was considered a bad player and ejected from a group because he was following the rules.

That doesn't make the player sound bad to me, that makes Rogue Trader seem like a dumpster fire of a game.

Ignoring the specific example, the conclusion I'd draw from what you said here, well, it makes the GM sound like a bad GM, not like that there's anything wrong with the system.


The thing is a game that lets two players who at anything close to the same amount of XP (or whatever else is being used to measure points) build Robin and Superman is poorly designed.

you've got some people playing Captain America and others playing Dr. Strange and that simply does not work.

Cue my obligatory "Thor and the Potted Plant" reference. It absolutely does work - if that's what people signed on for.

[Mechalich]

Cue my obligatory "Thor and the Potted Plant" reference. It absolutely does work - if that's what people signed on for.

I feel like I need to name this dodge the 'freeform fallacy' or something, because it completely misses the point. Yes, you can bypass essentially all system-based problems if your group and GM are onboard with ignoring them and finding workarounds. This is obvious - VtM - a terribly designed system that has fundamental problems on every level was the second most popular TTRPG for well over a decade. That doesn't make the design good or effective.

You want a game's design to be robust to abuse in order to minimize the amount of personality massaging and OOC management required by the GM, because this reduces the overall stress on the group.

You may very well have played a game with Thor and a potted plant in the same party, but the GM of said game had to design every. single. last. encounter. around that problem so that the potted plant did not get summarily obliterated by any enemy capable of threatening Thor at all.

If combat is an element in a game at all, then all characters must be within the same range of general robustness (one of the few advantages of D&D-style HP systems is that it becomes relatively easy to handle this issue) or the game is constantly beholden to the undercurrent of not killing the frail character. Essentially this forces your game to utilize comic book logic - so if Thor and Black Widow fight the Hulk the Hulk never targets Black Widow - in order to function. This is not a good way to design a game.

[JoeJ]

You may very well have played a game with Thor and a potted plant in the same party, but the GM of said game had to design every. single. last. encounter. around that problem so that the potted plant did not get summarily obliterated by any enemy capable of threatening Thor at all.

As opposed to every other game, where the GM also has to design every single last encounter?


If combat is an element in a game at all, then all characters must be within the same range of general robustness (one of the few advantages of D&D-style HP systems is that it becomes relatively easy to handle this issue) or the game is constantly beholden to the undercurrent of not killing the frail character. Essentially this forces your game to utilize comic book logic - so if Thor and Black Widow fight the Hulk the Hulk never targets Black Widow - in order to function. This is not a good way to design a game.

I'm wondering now how much experience you have with games other than D&D.

It's hardly a flaw that a game designed to represent a particular genre works best if the GM designs encounters that follow the assumptions of that genre. In your own example, why is it so hard to picture Thor playing the tank and drawing agro while the Widow hangs back and shoots from a distance? Or to imagine that Hulk - who is not the world's greatest tactician - would focus on the guy hitting him in the face with a hammer rather than the woman shooting from five blocks away?

[Mechalich]

As opposed to every other game, where the GM also has to design every single last encounter?

There is a big difference between a system where encounters can be designed generically - which is something that every single system that has ever published an adventure module claims to be able to do by the way - and one in which every encounter must be designed to specifically handle the particular ability combinations of the individual party members.

In general OP abilities are those that, when taken, drastically disrupt encounter design for a large percentage of encounters. While these sometimes emerge do to design oversights - like building a 3.X diplomancer - sometimes they result from a failure to structure the system properly.




I'm wondering now how much experience you have with games other than D&D.

Plenty. Heck, the game I've played and run more than anything else is MtA. It's mechanics are absolutely terrible and rapidly descend into mother-may-I and I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge this. That has the side effect of making it fairly resistant to in-character power-gaming (because outputs are essentially wholly at the GMs whim) but more susceptible to out-of-character power-gaming (ex. bribing the GM with pizza, being the GM's boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.) which is something rules-lite systems share generally.

It's hardly a flaw that a game designed to represent a particular genre works best if the GM designs encounters that follow the assumptions of that genre. In your own example, why is it so hard to picture Thor playing the tank and drawing agro while the Widow hangs back and shoots from a distance? Or to imagine that Hulk - who is not the world's greatest tactician - would focus on the guy hitting him in the face with a hammer rather than the woman shooting from five blocks away?[/QUOTE]

First of all, if the assumptions of the genre are dumb - and while I like superhero comics the assumptions of the genre are really dumb - being forced to follow them by the mechanics is extremely limiting (and very few systems are willing to openly cop to doing this, perhaps Smallville does, go for it if so, but your average superhero game is going to lie blatantly about this). Additionally, 'drawing agro' or similar MMO-style tanking mechanics are not actually a component of most superhero systems. In pretty much any table-top RPG - including D&D where the only penalty is an AoO that likely does highly limited damage - there's nothing to stop a villain from completely ignoring a 'tanking' character and doing full damage to the much more vulnerable second-row characters. The Hulk is just an example, if you reverse the roles and it's Black Widow and Hulk versus Thor, Thor can lightning blast Black Widow dead in one round, and should do so because any other action means he's carrying around the idiot ball.

[JoeJ]

There is a big difference between a system where encounters can be designed generically - which is something that every single system that has ever published an adventure module claims to be able to do by the way - and one in which every encounter must be designed to specifically handle the particular ability combinations of the individual party members.

How fortunate, then, that designing for a particular ability combination isn't required in any system I know, including those that deal successfully with characters of different power levels. Instead, the easiest way to handle it is to require the party to do several separate things at once. So there's been a jailbreak and criminals are heading off in every direction, or the group's spaceship is under attack and they need to fire the guns, jam the enemy's sensors, and handle damage control while flying through a debris field, or the BBEG releases a monster at the football game while he goes off to kidnap the mayor, or the team has to keep the BBEG and his horde of minions occupied long enough to disarm his doomsday device, or they have to keep corporate security goons busy long enough for the team's decker to break into the computer, or they have to hold off the army of skeletons so that the rogue can get the door open before the room fills with water and drowns everybody, or any of an almost unlimited number of scenarios where more than one thing is going on at the same time. It's not the GM designing the encounter for the specific party, it's the party deciding how to divide themselves up to handle multiple tasks.


First of all, if the assumptions of the genre are dumb - and while I like superhero comics the assumptions of the genre are really dumb - being forced to follow them by the mechanics is extremely limiting (and very few systems are willing to openly cop to doing this, perhaps Smallville does, go for it if so, but your average superhero game is going to lie blatantly about this).

Are you seriously arguing that it's bad design for a game to accurately model the genre it claims to represent?


Additionally, 'drawing agro' or similar MMO-style tanking mechanics are not actually a component of most superhero systems. In pretty much any table-top RPG - including D&D where the only penalty is an AoO that likely does highly limited damage - there's nothing to stop a villain from completely ignoring a 'tanking' character and doing full damage to the much more vulnerable second-row characters. The Hulk is just an example, if you reverse the roles and it's Black Widow and Hulk versus Thor, Thor can lightning blast Black Widow dead in one round, and should do so because any other action means he's carrying around the idiot ball.

Since when do you need a mechanic for not giving up an action to shoot at somebody who is good at dodging and is probably doing less damage than the powerhouse who's right in your face?

And if you reverse the situation, shouldn't Widow be letting Hulk keep Thor busy while she goes after whomever or whatever is controlling him? Thor doesn't generally just start randomly tearing things up, after all. In a well designed adventure, there's a reason Thor has gone berserk and the team has to deal with that reason, not just fight him.

[Stuebi]

I'm not even gonna try quoting all the people that responded or talked about my post, I hope they can still see what I'm trying to respond to.

"Rogue Trader just sounds like a bad game."

This is subjective, so me going "No it isn't" does not really carry any value. It IS volatile, 40k is a hostile place to be even for Characters that would be considered Demigods in other systems. And as somebody else mentioned, powerlevels tend to scale with gear the same, if not even more than with actual levels or stats (Then again, gear can and WILL break or come with it's owns et of issues, while skills/stats stay, so it evens out in my opinion.). I disagree that the game doesnt/shouldnt have a lot of combat, that entirely depends on the group, what they encounter, and how they want to respond to situations.


He was doing everything within the rules, you're just a bad GM

Again, if you wanna interpret it as such, feel free. I've certainly neither the experience nor the talent to claim that "No you guys, I'm totally an awesome GM". But in this particular case we had 3 out of 4 players unhappy with the situation, which led to the problem factor being asked to leave. We parted completely agreeably btw, I still play with the guy in another group where the other players line up more with his style of play. And I consider this the superior option to pretending everything's dandy while it clearly is not.

And yes, he wasnt doing anything illegaly. He wasn't playing "wrong". But his knowledge of the system, and a big focus on "How can I get the most power out of it", meant that he left the 3 others completely behind. And yes, they didnt really appreciate it either. If you get to a point where players ask "Why bother doing my turn? "Other Player" will win this anyway.", that's usually when I start thinking wether or not the people at the table are looking for the same thing.

If the others wanted to do it the same way, or had the same amount of veterancy with the system, this would've probably been a non-issue. I could've upped the Ante to make it interesting for the higher-power players without leaving anybody behind.

Does not mean that it couldnt have been me. But I did legit not see a way to fix this without tearing the group apart further. Making combat harder so PP actually enjoys it would have made it even more stacked against the rest, while engineering scenarios where he wouldnt be present so the others got to do cool stuff would feel like excluding him, even tough, again, he isnt doing anything "wrong" in the context of the system.

[Satinavian]

Maybe. I have had a lot of players who get mad at me for scaling the challenge, telling me they min-man because they want to feel powerful, and if I up the challenge to match their power they have to min-max even harder to get that feeling of power, and then I just up the challenge again, they termed it "the cycle of stupidity".

Also, maybe the DM and / or the other players can't or don't want to optimize to that degree or don't want a bigger challenge, so the one or two guys who do is ruining the game for the rest of them.


Personally I prefer the DM to make encounters that make sense in the world and the players to make characters who are still challenged by but have the potential to overcome said encounters, but that is just me.
Yes, that is a thing that happens.

But the problem here is not the min-maxing at all. The problem is that players and GM have different taste in regards to how much challenge they want. Challenge is a sliding scale, too little of it leads to boredom, too much of it leads to stress and/or resignation. But the feel-good area might change from individual to individual.

Optimisation is a tool a player has to influence the challenges to his liking. Building encounters, rising/lowering stakes is a tool a GM has to do the same. If instead of simply talking it out how much challenge would be fun, all parties just try to influence the challenge with the tools they have, you can get a stupid arms race like you describe. Less common, but still happening you could also get a race to the bottom where players just take one trap option/crippling handicap after another or "forget" to level up and GMs continues to weaken the opposition to still guarantee a happy ending.

You can also have the same kind of disagreement between players about the appropriate challenge level, but that won't start an arms race because a player can't really offset the power of an optimized character that much.

[Pelle]

Does not mean that it couldnt have been me. But I did legit not see a way to fix this without tearing the group apart further. Making combat harder so PP actually enjoys it would have made it even more stacked against the rest, while engineering scenarios where he wouldnt be present so the others got to do cool stuff would feel like excluding him, even tough, again, he isnt doing anything "wrong" in the context of the system.

First, I have no experience with RT. Based on what others said, it sounds like characters are supposed be heavily specialized, leading to spotlight 1/n of the time, and little participation (n-1)/n of the time. If so, you should just let the player dominate the combats, and increase the frequency of stealth, tech and diplomacy enounters (?). And the other players should shut up when others do their thing. Sure, if they don't want to play like that, it's best to just split up the group, but it just sounds like they have the wrong expectations then... I am not sure the other player would feel excluded by having more scenarios he couldn't contribute to, he seemed to know he was playing the game correctly, did you ask him?

[Guizonde]

I disagree that the game doesnt/shouldnt have a lot of combat, that entirely depends on the group, what they encounter, and how they want to respond to situations.


ok, i kind of exaggerated on that one. when i played, we had entire sessions devoted to figuring out how to screw over potential trade partners, and other sessions entirely devoted to void-fights. all in all it balanced to about 1/3 heavy fighting, 1/3 social encounters, and 1/3 exploration (which went either way). that said, judging by my experience with other systems and dm's, that campaign was relatively combat-light. i mean, sure, there was tension, suspense, and the ever present risk of danger, but it didn't devolve into 3 hours of slug-fests every session. hell, the only time we gleefully jumped into combat mode was during void-fights (where all the team had a role to play: the seneschal boosting morale, the pilot angling the heavy cruiser so i could get the perfect shot, the tech-priestess fixing damage... you get the idea).

i just went in with the assumption that rogue trader has less combat than most dnd games i've played.

[Lorsa]

Maybe. I have had a lot of players who get mad at me for scaling the challenge, telling me they min-man because they want to feel powerful, and if I up the challenge to match their power they have to min-max even harder to get that feeling of power, and then I just up the challenge again, they termed it "the cycle of stupidity".

Also, maybe the DM and / or the other players can't or don't want to optimize to that degree or don't want a bigger challenge, so the one or two guys who do is ruining the game for the rest of them.


Personally I prefer the DM to make encounters that make sense in the world and the players to make characters who are still challenged by but have the potential to overcome said encounters, but that is just me.

This situation describes very well the feeling I have towards "power gaming" (that is, players focused on having a really powerful character). Since the power of a character is always in relation to the rest of the world, the player has very little ability to influence this. It is all in the hands of the GM (as Darth Ultron would say).

This is why I always try to talk with my players to make sure how powerful they want to feel, and deliver the experience they are after. What I do find silly is when they think higher numbers on their character sheet automatically makes them more powerful. Since that depends on the assumption of the average character numbers in the world.

[Quertus]

I feel like I need to name this dodge the 'freeform fallacy' or something, because it completely misses the point. Yes, you can bypass essentially all system-based problems if your group and GM are onboard with ignoring them and finding workarounds.

Actually, that misses my point - namely, that disparate power levels is not inherently a problem. It's only a problem if the group considers it a problem, or if the game bills itself as intrinsically balanced (cue 4e "the math just works" references, or 3e devs "no, it's balanced, honesty, you're just having Badwrongfun").

Unless the group desires or expects balance, there is nothing inherent to gaming to require balance to exist for a game to be fun, as evidenced by - well, by a great many things, actually, but probably the most extreme of which, in my personal experience, being the one I label "Thor and the Potted Plant".

So, what I'm objecting to is the value judgement of labeling imbalance a problem.


in this particular case we had 3 out of 4 players unhappy with the situation, which led to the problem factor being asked to leave.

Being unwilling to address how one's actions are negatively impacting the fun of others is an issue.

Of course, having been in games where others were jealous of and upset by my character's "power", when a) my character was not, statistically, the most powerful character in the party (the players were just inexplicably dumb here); b) my character had contributed nothing - had had exactly zero narrative impact on the game... well, I'd hope it's obvious that "toning down my character" was an idiotic request, and one that I was best equipped to respond to with percussive maintenance with a clue-by-four.

Clearly, not what was happening in your story, but still something to watch for in the general case.


Yes, that is a thing that happens.

But the problem here is not the min-maxing at all. The problem is that players and GM have different taste in regards to how much challenge they want. Challenge is a sliding scale, too little of it leads to boredom, too much of it leads to stress and/or resignation. But the feel-good area might change from individual to individual.

Optimisation is a tool a player has to influence the challenges to his liking. Building encounters, rising/lowering stakes is a tool a GM has to do the same. If instead of simply talking it out how much challenge would be fun, all parties just try to influence the challenge with the tools they have, you can get a stupid arms race like you describe.

Appropriate level of challenge being a matter of taste is (one of the reasons) why I firmly believe that the GM should create static opposition, and let the players build characters to taste. If they complain that things are too easy or too hard, simply explain that that is on them. It's amazing how easy it is to train players to engineer the level of challenge that they prefer - or, even better, to have that level of challenge vary by party! It's great when a single group has multiple parties of characters, including a party that struggles, a second party that's generally competent, and a third party of BDHs! They get to really feel the full spectrum of gaming experience, without me having to lift a finger to do any extra work whatsoever. I highly recommend it.


This situation describes very well the feeling I have towards "power gaming" (that is, players focused on having a really powerful character). Since the power of a character is always in relation to the rest of the world, the player has very little ability to influence this. It is all in the hands of the GM (as Darth Ultron would say).

This is why I always try to talk with my players to make sure how powerful they want to feel, and deliver the experience they are after. What I do find silly is when they think higher numbers on their character sheet automatically makes them more powerful. Since that depends on the assumption of the average character numbers in the world.

As I say above, I believe in setting the fairly static expectations about what the world will look like, and letting the players customize the experience by building their characters. But I'm just Player Empowerment / lazy like that. :smallwink:

[Lorsa]

As I say above, I believe in setting the fairly static expectations about what the world will look like, and letting the players customize the experience by building their characters. But I'm just Player Empowerment / lazy like that. :smallwink:

That still means the GM decides on the power level of the PCs. They are the ones that set the expectation (static or dynamic), and they are the ones that sets the bounds for character generation for players (start at level 1 or 20 or whatever). Sure, within those bounds the player has some ability to alter their power level, but this ability is still very small compared to the GMs power to do so. Basically, the GM sets the power levels of the PCs when they design the world.

[Grim Portent]

First, I have no experience with RT. Based on what others said, it sounds like characters are supposed be heavily specialized, leading to spotlight 1/n of the time, and little participation (n-1)/n of the time. If so, you should just let the player dominate the combats, and increase the frequency of stealth, tech and diplomacy enounters (?). And the other players should shut up when others do their thing. Sure, if they don't want to play like that, it's best to just split up the group, but it just sounds like they have the wrong expectations then... I am not sure the other player would feel excluded by having more scenarios he couldn't contribute to, he seemed to know he was playing the game correctly, did you ask him?

Depends on what careers the players had and what they thought they were going to be doing. You can build against type in RT, it's just never as effective as playing to type unless you're one of the two more powerful careers, Astropaths and Explorators, because they get psychic powers and special bionics respectively that can help them be more generalist, even if they suffer in their main role as a result it's often less than most others do.

If the party was an Arch-Militant (dedicated soldier), a Rogue Trader (party face/pistols and melee specialist), a Seneschal (face/lore master/general skillmonkey) and an Explorator (tech guy/medic/lore master/tank/bipedal forklift) then the Rogue Trader at least would expect to be doing a lot in combat even if the Seneschal shouldn't be expecting much, but either the Arch Militant or Explorator (if built right) could make the other warriors basically redundant against a lot of enemies by picking up a heavy machine gun and focusing on shooting stats and abilities and mowing down half a dozen regular enemies per round.

Even when two PCs are the same career their background selections can make some pretty big changes in how effective they are, with differences of about 10 points in their major stats coming just from backgrounds, bonus talents coming from backgrounds and even mutations and psychic powers being available in some backgrounds.

[Quertus]

That still means the GM decides on the power level of the PCs. They are the ones that set the expectation (static or dynamic), and they are the ones that sets the bounds for character generation for players (start at level 1 or 20 or whatever). Sure, within those bounds the player has some ability to alter their power level, but this ability is still very small compared to the GMs power to do so. Basically, the GM sets the power levels of the PCs when they design the world.

... Um, what?

Let's say I go crazy, and just hand you the adventure. There's a pair of Warrior 1 guards (straight out of the DMG; sense motive DC 20 / knowledge local DC 10 to know how the guards will respond) outside a single-room building (locked door, DC 10, standard wooden door & walls). Inside are four skeletons (knowledge religion DC 11 to recognize their nature) which will animate and attack anyone who touches the McGuffin in the middle of the room. The McGuffin is cursed to exude a contact poison the first time it is touched each day, chosen at random each time (knowledge arcana DC 25 to know this, +5 bonus when the pc sees the object, +2 synergy bonus for 5 ranks in knowledge nature, history, or nobility), and is sitting on a pressure plate which will drop a net (search / disable device DC 20, touch attack +6, entangled (-2 attack, -4 dex, half speed, cannot charge or run, concentration DC 15 to cast) until full round escape artist DC 20 / strength check DC 25, or cut the rope for 5 damage) on the would-be thief.

Bring whatever level 3 character you would like to solo that with.

How would it not be on the player to determine how challenging that was?

Similarly, if a pre-built linear adventure was designed to give a static level of challenge to a known sample party, then the players can build PCs at whatever competence they desire relative to that sample party.

Yes, it's a different ballgame in a more Sandboxy scenario - but it just feels funny to say that players have less agency in a sandbox. :smalltongue:

[Lorsa]

... Um, what?

Let's say I go crazy, and just hand you the adventure. There's a pair of Warrior 1 guards (straight out of the DMG; sense motive DC 20 / knowledge local DC 10 to know how the guards will respond) outside a single-room building (locked door, DC 10, standard wooden door & walls). Inside are four skeletons (knowledge religion DC 11 to recognize their nature) which will animate and attack anyone who touches the McGuffin in the middle of the room. The McGuffin is cursed to exude a contact poison the first time it is touched each day, chosen at random each time (knowledge arcana DC 25 to know this, +5 bonus when the pc sees the object, +2 synergy bonus for 5 ranks in knowledge nature, history, or nobility), and is sitting on a pressure plate which will drop a net (search / disable device DC 20, touch attack +6, entangled (-2 attack, -4 dex, half speed, cannot charge or run, concentration DC 15 to cast) until full round escape artist DC 20 / strength check DC 25, or cut the rope for 5 damage) on the would-be thief.

Bring whatever level 3 character you would like to solo that with.

How would it not be on the player to determine how challenging that was?

Similarly, if a pre-built linear adventure was designed to give a static level of challenge to a known sample party, then the players can build PCs at whatever competence they desire relative to that sample party.

Yes, it's a different ballgame in a more Sandboxy scenario - but it just feels funny to say that players have less agency in a sandbox. :smalltongue:

If you can force me to use a specific adventure in a specific way without changing any of the details, then I can hardly call myself the GM can I?

But sure, let's decouple the term and claim that the power level of the PCs are in the hands of the scenario builder (or adventure creator or whatever).

Usually, a RPG has rules to determine the bounds for PCs strengths (or power level), but no rules for the bounds of the setting, or scenario power levels. Even if the PC bounds interval can be fairly large (as would the case for, let's say level 15 D&D 3.5 characters), the largest tune of the PCs power levels are still in the hands of the adventure creator. Which is, most typically, the GM.

[Arbane]

At typical Batman story plot has both Batman and Bruce Wyane doing a lot of talking, investigation and other non combat things(aka Role Playing). There will be lots of detail, often a mystery and an unknown, and lots of fluff. Most often Batman defeats foes through intelligence, preparation, skill and will power.

And punching. Lots and lots of punching.



The typical Silver Surfer story plot has a bad guy ''tooz blows up Earth(or the universe or whatever)'' and the Silver Surfer, despite being intelligent and having the ''can do anything power'' will ONLY attack the bad guy with Blasts (''Pew! Pew!") No story depth, no details, no fluff, just endless pages of pretty colors of blasts....until the Silver Surfer wins, often for no reason other then the pages run out.

"Even the Power Cosmic cannot defeat.... THE STRAWMAN!"

(We get it, you hate any character more powerful than an illiterate leprous beggar, you can stop beating that point into the ground any time you like.)

[Florian]

First, I have no experience with RT. Based on what others said, it sounds like characters are supposed be heavily specialized, leading to spotlight 1/n of the time, and little participation (n-1)/n of the time. If so, you should just let the player dominate the combats, and increase the frequency of stealth, tech and diplomacy enounters (?). And the other players should shut up when others do their thing. Sure, if they don't want to play like that, it's best to just split up the group, but it just sounds like they have the wrong expectations then... I am not sure the other player would feel excluded by having more scenarios he couldn't contribute to, he seemed to know he was playing the game correctly, did you ask him?

Hm, how to best phrase that? Thing with RT is, it really boost the career specialization and wants you to go 3-1, but break a bit if you go 4-0.

[Pelle]

Hm, how to best phrase that? Thing with RT is, it really boost the career specialization and wants you to go 3-1, but break a bit if you go 4-0.

Allright, I don't know. If you choose to go 4-0 then, can you complain if you contribute 0 in many parts of the game? If you don't mind, it doesn't sound like a problem, unless that 4-0 practically turns the other 3-1s into 3-0s...

[Darth Ultron]

It is all in the hands of the GM (as Darth Ultron would say).

This is why I always try to talk with my players to make sure how powerful they want to feel, and deliver the experience they are after. What I do find silly is when they think higher numbers on their character sheet automatically makes them more powerful. Since that depends on the assumption of the average character numbers in the world.

This is all on the DM, not just for optimizing the game world, but also just having the game world do anything.

It can be hard for players to get that ''powerful feeling'', when they don't do anything to get it. Sure the DM can just bend over backwards and say the characters are ''so powerful'', but it becomes very clumsy and false when the player can't handle a simple pack of giant rats. The player does not feel so powerful when their character is killed by giant rats.




Bring whatever level 3 character you would like to solo that with.

How would it not be on the player to determine how challenging that was?

But your not talking about writing up an encounter in full game detail, and then handing it to the players to they can read through it and make a perfect character, right?

Like your ''house'' adventure, as a player I'd read it over and make:

Zom- Anthropomorphic Bat Cloistered Cleric of Mask2/Rogue 1 with the feat Knowledge Devotion.

But that would just be pure dull Roll Playing.




Similarly, if a pre-built linear adventure was designed to give a static level of challenge to a known sample party, then the players can build PCs at whatever competence they desire relative to that sample party.


But, again, the players won't know the details in a normal game.

Sure they can read the cover and see ''for levels 5-7'' or whatever, but that is so vague as to be useless. And it assumes the DM won't change or add anything.

And it's not all about the numbers. Plenty of players will get their character killed no problem even in your simple ''house adventure'' as they stumble along.

[Nifft]

(We get it, you hate any character more powerful than an illiterate leprous beggar, you can stop beating that point into the ground any time you like.) Hmm.

Thomas Covenant was a leprous beggar who had writer's block (which is kinda-sorta "illiterate" in that he couldn't write).

He was also one of the most powerful characters in the setting, so yeah.

Illiterate leprous beggar OP, pls nerf.



Allright, I don't know. If you choose to go 4-0 then, can you complain if you contribute 0 in many parts of the game? If you don't mind, it doesn't sound like a problem, unless that 4-0 practically turns the other 3-1s into 3-0s... IIRC there was even a way to get equipment bonuses -- so your one character could carry the party's "luck" in acquiring gear, which (as already noted) greatly enhanced performance.

My most-played RT character was a Captain James T. Kirk expy, so he bravely (foolishly) stood out from cover and contributed more ham than HAM, but he worked well enough and didn't die. He was an RT version of Kirk, though, so he did use lethal encouragement on the crew (albeit rarely), and he did use the Teleportorium to threaten an obstructive petty official in addition to beaming up and beaming down.

[JoeJ]

Appropriate level of challenge being a matter of taste is (one of the reasons) why I firmly believe that the GM should create static opposition, and let the players build characters to taste. If they complain that things are too easy or too hard, simply explain that that is on them. It's amazing how easy it is to train players to engineer the level of challenge that they prefer - or, even better, to have that level of challenge vary by party! It's great when a single group has multiple parties of characters, including a party that struggles, a second party that's generally competent, and a third party of BDHs! They get to really feel the full spectrum of gaming experience, without me having to lift a finger to do any extra work whatsoever. I highly recommend it.:

That doesn't work in games that have any significant character advancement. When the character's abilities change then either the opposition or the level of challenge (or both) will necessarily change as well.

[Quertus]

But your not talking about writing up an encounter in full game detail, and then handing it to the players to they can read through it and make a perfect character, right?

Sure they can read the cover and see ''for levels 5-7'' or whatever, but that is so vague as to be useless. And it assumes the DM won't change or add anything.

Right. But if a) it also includes sample characters, and b) these sample characters had approximately X difficulty going through the module, just like all the rest of the sample characters in all the rest of the modules had X difficulty going through their respective modules, then I contend that the players can learn to set the difficulty to their choice of X+-Y, with error variance Z, for some values of Y and Z.


If you can force me to use a specific adventure in a specific way without changing any of the details, then I can hardly call myself the GM can I?

But sure, let's decouple the term and claim that the power level of the PCs are in the hands of the scenario builder (or adventure creator or whatever).

Well, no. I was putting the power level in the hands of the players, but the rules for character creation in the hands of the GM. Different beasts, those.


Usually, a RPG has rules to determine the bounds for PCs strengths (or power level), but no rules for the bounds of the setting, or scenario power levels. Even if the PC bounds interval can be fairly large (as would the case for, let's say level 15 D&D 3.5 characters), the largest tune of the PCs power levels are still in the hands of the adventure creator. Which is, most typically, the GM.

Technically, the GM can change / ignore - and, as GM, I have changed / ignored - a module's suggested play level, both when I was also the adventure creator, and when I was not.


That doesn't work in games that have any significant character advancement. When the character's abilities change then either the opposition or the level of challenge (or both) will necessarily change as well.

Well, yes and no. When the sample characters have plotted leveling, too, then the players can plot their expected relative power across that level range. And, as an added bonus, if they "got it wrong", they can advance differently than they had planned to put things back in balance.

Or, alternately, when weakening a build isn't an option, one could do as I did when Armus got too strong, and just bring someone else for a while, so the character would fall behind in XP.

[Darth Ultron]

Right. But if a) it also includes sample characters, and b) these sample characters had approximately X difficulty going through the module, just like all the rest of the sample characters in all the rest of the modules had X difficulty going through their respective modules, then I contend that the players can learn to set the difficulty to their choice of X+-Y, with error variance Z, for some values of Y and Z.

I hope your not talking about Published Sample Characters.... They are useless wastes of space in most books.

But even if they are 'other' characters...it's still really going to depend on the game play. You can give a Goofy Player a powerful character, and three minutes later that character can be dead in the first trap of the adventure. Did the character have like 12 ways to avoid/block/stop the trap or save themselves? Yes they did. Was there like 12 basic intelligent common sense things the player could have done? Yes there was. And yet, the character was still killed as the player just blundered into the trap.


The ''difficulty'' is based on some weird Roll Playing Game Forecasting. And it sure does not take into account the players at all.

[Quertus]

I hope your not talking about Published Sample Characters.... They are useless wastes of space in most books.

Well, I suppose I'm talking about the things that I make, and kinda generalizing.

However, if the GM tested the published module with the sample characters, he could indeed communicate the difficulty of the module relative to those characters.


But even if they are 'other' characters...it's still really going to depend on the game play. You can give a Goofy Player a powerful character, and three minutes later that character can be dead in the first trap of the adventure. Did the character have like 12 ways to avoid/block/stop the trap or save themselves? Yes they did. Was there like 12 basic intelligent common sense things the player could have done? Yes there was. And yet, the character was still killed as the player just blundered into the trap.

The ''difficulty'' is based on some weird Roll Playing Game Forecasting. And it sure does not take into account the players at all.

Yup. Which is why I could play Armus, or why I'd still be underpowered / would still under-perform no matter what I play in Warhammer. But, in general, knowing what hits a known benchmark helps me pick an appropriate character.

[Stuebi]

First, I have no experience with RT. Based on what others said, it sounds like characters are supposed be heavily specialized, leading to spotlight 1/n of the time, and little participation (n-1)/n of the time. If so, you should just let the player dominate the combats, and increase the frequency of stealth, tech and diplomacy enounters (?). And the other players should shut up when others do their thing. Sure, if they don't want to play like that, it's best to just split up the group, but it just sounds like they have the wrong expectations then... I am not sure the other player would feel excluded by having more scenarios he couldn't contribute to, he seemed to know he was playing the game correctly, did you ask him?

Here's the problem with that assumption. "Increase the frequency of X Encounter" sort of falls off the wayside if it can be subverted instantly by the Player in question deciding "Actually we don't have to talk, I can just start shooting."

I design almost all of my stuff while trying to keep the outcome and approach open. I dislike the idea of "This is an X Encounter, you are not allowed to try anything else.". Due to having only having ONE player out of 4 being heavily optimized, balancing would usually be thrown off in that regard. You'd have cases of the group discussing an approach, and all too often the Player in question just get's to go "No we dont actually need stealth or diplomacy, I can take this!"

Rogue Trader, at least in my opinion, is not so heavily into Specialization that you just get "the one" Niche were you are the only one capable. Especially in regards to combat, most classes have abilities there that others don't have going beyond just "I do the most numbers."

But any attempts by me to offer enough variance or the like was thrown over by the players brute force, it got boring for the others who felt like they were background-dancers to Combat-Man, and thus we parted on good terms.

[JoeJ]

Here's the problem with that assumption. "Increase the frequency of X Encounter" sort of falls off the wayside if it can be subverted instantly by the Player in question deciding "Actually we don't have to talk, I can just start shooting."

Talking and shooting are interchangeable? That sounds like a very strange setting.

[Stuebi]

Talking and shooting are interchangeable? That sounds like a very strange setting.

They are not. Opting for violence over talking naturally locks you out of whatever "gain" being diplomatic would have provided. Or comes with ramifications that could have been avoided if you kept your guns holstered. Does not mean that a player might just not care, or be confident that he can get an ultimately positive outcome nonetheless.

[Lorsa]

Well, no. I was putting the power level in the hands of the players, but the rules for character creation in the hands of the GM. Different beasts, those.

But that involves the players being aware of the static difficulty of whatever their characters will encounter. Otherwise, how would they know how to choose power level?

And still, the rules for character creation sets both a lower and upper limit of the power level. Therefore, it can't be completely in the player's hands anyway?



Technically, the GM can change / ignore - and, as GM, I have changed / ignored - a module's suggested play level, both when I was also the adventure creator, and when I was not.

I am not sure if you agree with me or not. It seems like you do...

In any case, it seems like you are talking about a very specific type of game, where the GM brings a pre-written module which might (or might not) have listed an "expected party power" on its back. My statement was much more general; that it is always the one that builds the scenario that sets the power level of the PCs. Even in the specific case you are discussing, the GM selects the module and the GM decides the upper and lower bounds for the characters.

It is true that if the module is known in advance, the players have a higher degree of input on the power level of their characters, compared with the situation when the characters are made first and the scenario afterwards.

[Pelle]

I design almost all of my stuff while trying to keep the outcome and approach open. I dislike the idea of "This is an X Encounter, you are not allowed to try anything else.". Due to having only having ONE player out of 4 being heavily optimized, balancing would usually be thrown off in that regard. You'd have cases of the group discussing an approach, and all too often the Player in question just get's to go "No we dont actually need stealth or diplomacy, I can take this!"


If you design every encounter so that combat is always an option, I see why you get that problem. But you would also get the same problem anyways then without the heavy optimization. The combat specialized player who thinks combat is the most fun part of the game will then always say "No we dont actually need stealth or diplomacy, I can take this!", because the players are conditioned to that. In this case the other players may contribute a little, though.

Personally, I don't mind letting the players get themselves into trouble where they have to talk or sneak their way out. Yes, "this is an X encounter" is maybe boring, "this is not an X encounter" a little less so, but both could be informed by the fiction...

[2D8HP]

For what it's worth the conservatives that dont like power gaming also dont like to accept different settings, classes, races, and so on. They want what they believe s the one true setting and make their games very narrow. Some make human-only games even.


That's a fair cop in my case.

I like the "Generica" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?553440-Let-s-build-Generica-(standard-fantasy-product)) setting, and I like human PC's, so sorry?


Personally I like Dungeons and Dragons, but not the players.


Well with more players overall, it's just likely for there to be more jerks as well as nice people playing D&D than other RPG's.


I think I should give up and look for more open games like Shadowrun.


Even though Cyperpunk isn't my cup of arsenic, I had a great time playing Shadowrun, helped by a GM who didn't force me to learn the rules, gave me a pre-gen character, and just had me role-play. It was great!

[Knaight]

That doesn't work in games that have any significant character advancement. When the character's abilities change then either the opposition or the level of challenge (or both) will necessarily change as well.

It also doesn't necessarily make sense in setting. "They just handled our 4 person death squad with no casualties and minimal injuries, I guess we'll send out another comparable death squad and hope it works this time" makes very little sense for NPC actions. Them sending a more skilled squad, or two squads, or completely changing the angle of attack does.

[JoeJ]

It also doesn't necessarily make sense in setting. "They just handled our 4 person death squad with no casualties and minimal injuries, I guess we'll send out another comparable death squad and hope it works this time" makes very little sense for NPC actions. Them sending a more skilled squad, or two squads, or completely changing the angle of attack does.

What would really make sense would be for the second team to be ten times the size of the first squad with fifty times the firepower. But if BBEGs did that, heroes would have to sneak around and bypass encounters instead of fighting everything, and that would just be ridiculous.

[Knaight]

What would really make sense would be for the second team to be ten times the size of the first squad with fifty times the firepower. But if BBEGs did that, heroes would have to sneak around and bypass encounters instead of fighting everything, and that would just be ridiculous.

If they have the resources for that and the PCs have pissed them off enough, sure. I'm also all for doing that, though at that point it's likely to fail because the logistics involved are harder, thus forcing a smaller team later (or just something/someone more dangerous).

[Cosi]

It also doesn't necessarily make sense in setting. "They just handled our 4 person death squad with no casualties and minimal injuries, I guess we'll send out another comparable death squad and hope it works this time" makes very little sense for NPC actions. Them sending a more skilled squad, or two squads, or completely changing the angle of attack does.

In a vacuum, the question of "why doesn't the BBEG just curbstomp the PCs" is a valid one. But it's actually a really easy question to resolve. The US military has nukes, but it doesn't immediately escalate to nukes when a Spec Ops team or Predator drone fails to kill whoever it is they want dead. Because there's fallout (both radioactive and geopolitical) from just nuking people. Similarly, it's quite easy to imagine that there might be a system of honor where people feel obligated to not use overwhelming force for fear of even bigger fish (or a large group of equally big fish) coming down on them if they do. Everyone has people on their team who are low level, so no one wins in the long run if people start squashing low level people with overwhelming force.

[Quertus]

But that involves the players being aware of the static difficulty of whatever their characters will encounter. Otherwise, how would they know how to choose power level?

And still, the rules for character creation sets both a lower and upper limit of the power level. Therefore, it can't be completely in the player's hands anyway?




I am not sure if you agree with me or not. It seems like you do...

In any case, it seems like you are talking about a very specific type of game, where the GM brings a pre-written module which might (or might not) have listed an "expected party power" on its back. My statement was much more general; that it is always the one that builds the scenario that sets the power level of the PCs. Even in the specific case you are discussing, the GM selects the module and the GM decides the upper and lower bounds for the characters.

It is true that if the module is known in advance, the players have a higher degree of input on the power level of their characters, compared with the situation when the characters are made first and the scenario afterwards.

Yes, and yes.

This assumes pre-built modules rather than dynamic modules or Sandboxy play. I pre-build my content, as do many GMs I know.

Yes, it requires that the party has experience with the GM, to know what they mean when they say "for level X", or when they say that Character Y had Z level of challenge.


It also doesn't necessarily make sense in setting. "They just handled our 4 person death squad with no casualties and minimal injuries, I guess we'll send out another comparable death squad and hope it works this time" makes very little sense for NPC actions. Them sending a more skilled squad, or two squads, or completely changing the angle of attack does.

Yes, the more reactive the opposition, the less Combat as Sport the game. Which also implies the less able one is to gauge the expected level of challenge.

[vasilidor]

another thing about many game systems and the character I make, is a part of their back story or whatever I want them to be good at something, and that something is most probably going to be there go to thing for solving problems. if however I made the character the character turns out to be actually bad at his thing (and it will feel this way if everyone and their dog is better at the thing) then I will probably be having a bad time in the game. another thing is if I do not see the ability to use the thing my character is good at to progress through the challenges in the game, I will have a bad time. as I most often play in games where the challenges are fighting monsters and collecting loot, I will most likely create a character who is good at doing precisely that, and I will try to use my knowledge to help my fellow players to do that. so in that way I am worse than a egocentric power gamer. the DM sets down the challenge, I see it as fun to do my best with the tools available to have my character succeed.sometimes the tools are the abilities on the sheet, sometimes they are in the allies one makes with npcs sometimes they are in the character enviroment. when I am a DM I expect the same thing, and will help my players (who often have little to no system mastery) to create a character who is capable of doing what they want it to, within the confines of the game I am wanting to run. Everyone should have the opportunity to shine.

[Quertus]

the character I make, I want them to be good at something, and if however I made the character the character turns out to be actually bad at his thing (and it will feel this way if everyone and their dog is better at the thing)

What about the case where your character is awesome at that thing compared to the world in general, but not so much compared to the other PCs?

[Vendarien]

I do not believe power gaming is wrong in itself. There are a few issues that you usually(not always) see with it. The first is a lack of interest or input to the story. A lot of the power gamers I have had to deal with build a character for the sole purpose of damage, which is not a problem, but they never explain why there character is like this what they are fighting for, and in general just kind of ignore the game until it comes time to roll to attack. The other issue comes from a DMing standpoint, if all of my players made RP builds but one made a supper fighter build it can be hard to balance. If I throw something hard enough to challenge the munchkin the rest of the party just gets one shot, and combat is no fun. If I throw something that is not that powerful they can easily be one shot, and once again combat is boring. If I try to debuf the munchkin during combat, or play to their weaknesses so they are not ruining things for everyone ells, now I am unfairly targeting one player over and over, and it usually upsets people.

[JoeJ]

The other issue comes from a DMing standpoint, if all of my players made RP builds but one made a supper fighter build it can be hard to balance. If I throw something hard enough to challenge the munchkin the rest of the party just gets one shot, and combat is no fun. If I throw something that is not that powerful they can easily be one shot, and once again combat is boring. If I try to debuf the munchkin during combat, or play to their weaknesses so they are not ruining things for everyone ells, now I am unfairly targeting one player over and over, and it usually upsets people.

Much of the difficulty I think comes from a "never split the party" attitude. If you're willing to create situations where different party members need to perform separate tasks at the same time, balance suddenly becomes a lot easier. Have the OP combat specialists attack the necromancer directly to keep him busy while the sneaky types destroy or steal his ultimate power thingamaguffin.

[Chaosticket]

I don't think there is any "right" way to play roleplaying games. They are for everyone. Power gaming is just one part of the possible options in gameplay. Hating it is hard for me to understand.

I don't hate roleplaying. I actually like it. That doesn't come across well in any conversation, as I inevitably display Gameplay is my #1 focus. I think that is reasonable when I am waiting a week or more to have several hours of what I expect to be a highly enjoyable experience using things Ive thought of in the meantime like tactics.

I do hate when people turn a game into a script I am supposed to follow, commonly known as "Railroading". I have a coworker that plays 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons and actually uses it fully to have various settings like Wild West, Noir, Modern, and of course Medieval Fantasy. I haven't seen that in any groups Ive been in as they stick to one thing and play that no matter what.

[Rhedyn]

I do not believe power gaming is wrong in itself. There are a few issues that you usually(not always) see with it. The first is a lack of interest or input to the story. A lot of the power gamers I have had to deal with build a character for the sole purpose of damage, which is not a problem, but they never explain why there character is like this what they are fighting for, and in general just kind of ignore the game until it comes time to roll to attack. The other issue comes from a DMing standpoint, if all of my players made RP builds but one made a supper fighter build it can be hard to balance. If I throw something hard enough to challenge the munchkin the rest of the party just gets one shot, and combat is no fun. If I throw something that is not that powerful they can easily be one shot, and once again combat is boring. If I try to debuf the munchkin during combat, or play to their weaknesses so they are not ruining things for everyone ells, now I am unfairly targeting one player over and over, and it usually upsets people.
My experience has been the opposite. The ones power gaming tend to be the most invested in the story while those who just don't care about making themselves optimal also spend most of the session on their switch.

[Quertus]

My experience has been the opposite. The ones power gaming tend to be the most invested in the story while those who just don't care about making themselves optimal also spend most of the session on their switch.

Agreed. Both have "cares" as a prerequisite, and thus are positively correlated.

[Chaosticket]

My experience has been the opposite. The ones power gaming tend to be the most invested in the story while those who just don't care about making themselves optimal also spend most of the session on their switch.

The thing is that building and planning or a character means you actually want to keep that character alive rather than wipe the slate and make different characters every time you get bored or killed. Roleplaying games are Serious Business.

[Arbane]

The thing is that building and planning or a character means you actually want to keep that character alive rather than wipe the slate and make different characters every time you get bored or killed. Roleplaying games are Serious Business.

It's hard to roleplay when your character is dead.

[Quertus]

It's hard to roleplay when your character is dead.

I mean, it's really easy - just don't do anything.

Kinda boring, though.

[Pelle]

I mean, it's really easy - just don't do anything.

Kinda boring, though.

Sounds like a good challenge for you, though! With all the talk about playing potted plants and nerfing your own characters to balance the party... :smallwink:

[JoeJ]

Sounds like a good challenge for you, though! With all the talk about playing potted plants and nerfing your own characters to balance the party... :smallwink:

That's a good point. I don't really think a corpse has significantly less agency than a houseplant.

[CantigThimble]

That's a good point. I don't really think a corpse has significantly less agency than a houseplant.

More, if you can tell your son to stage an elaborate plot to kill your uncle.

[RazorChain]

That's a good point. I don't really think a corpse has significantly less agency than a houseplant.

In Fantasy Roleplaying Games? Are you kidding me? Playing a corpse?

You should be asking what kind of a corpse am I playing?

[vasilidor]

in response to the question towards me, at the start of my role playing that was the norm. the people I was gaming with had been (for the most part) going at it since the original chainmail expansion they called dnd. most of these people no longer play(do to things like being dead), but they were to the last the very definition of power gamers, and often played in highly lethal games. that said as long as the ideas and actions I contributed mattered, I was having fun. It probably helped that they took time to help me make my characters.