"Power gamer" hate?

[Kami2awa]

A single powergamer in a group makes the experience less fun for the other players by overshadowing them. It also makes life very hard for the GM who has to scale the difficulty of encounters to the powergamer's level, making them near-impossible for the other players.

[Chaosticket]

Optimizing takes an idea for a character and translates it through game mechanics. These game mechanics often require understanding elaborate rules and searching through multiple books for exploits that would never otherwise come up in a game.

I enjoy doing that, and so I gather do you. I have also spent far more time doing it then actually playing RPGs, which is prohibitive if someone just want to play the game and not minor in RPG mechanics. Optimizing versus not optimizing is not about superior effort, it is about whether or not you enjoy mechanics.

I have ideas for characters, put them down and work them like an engineer to make fun into effective. For example someone good at throwing things and eventually those things being boulders.

Now from what people say I have to be dumb, blind, and clumsy to be fair.

Drawbacks are a good determinator. Do you fix them and/or take minor ones or do you take severe ones just for the story value?

[kyoryu]

Want a combat monster? Combat 8, Social 1, Exploration 1.
Social magician? Combat 1, Social 8, Exploration 1.
Balanced, but with a slight exploration emphasis? Combat 3, Social 3, Exploration 4.

Each time you select your stats, you're optimizing for your concept, unless you're picking stats that actively work against your concept. Which, if you are... Why?

Now, for a game like D&D 3.5, optimization varies IMMENSELY in how deep you can go. You can do the bare minimum (stats in the right places, feats that don't suck, and a few good magic items) or go hog-wild (see: Iron Chef), but if you have a concept and you build towards it, that's optimizing for your concept.

The problem with D&D is that two players that want "combat monsters" could end up with:

Player 1: Combat 8, Social 1, Exploration 1
Player 2: Combat 25, Social 1, Exploration 1

and you have combos that end up looking like:

Player 3: Combat 10, Social 10, Exploration 10

or

Player 4: Combat [use Social score], Social 15, Exploration [use Social score]

Even the simplistic system you've described can lead to problems as somebody who wants to be combat focused but not utterly stupid in combat (6/2/2) may find themselves completely and utterly overshadowed by someone with the 8/1/1 build, while still being utterly ineffective in social/exploration. So even the system you've suggested can quickly be in a position where it prefers certain "builds" to others - most notably it can lead to hyper-specialization as a default.

[JNAProductions]

The problem with D&D is that two players that want "combat monsters" could end up with:

Player 1: Combat 8, Social 1, Exploration 1
Player 2: Combat 25, Social 1, Exploration 1

and you have combos that end up looking like:

Player 3: Combat 10, Social 10, Exploration 10

or

Player 4: Combat [use Social score], Social 15, Exploration [use Social score]

Even the simplistic system you've described can lead to problems as somebody who wants to be combat focused but not utterly stupid in combat (6/2/2) may find themselves completely and utterly overshadowed by someone with the 8/1/1 build, while still being utterly ineffective in social/exploration. So even the system you've suggested can quickly be in a position where it prefers certain "builds" to others - most notably it can lead to hyper-specialization as a default.

I wasn't saying it's a GOOD system. I was just using it as an example of ridiculously easy to optimize. Moreover, I think you're getting more hung up on the details than the point.

But yes, 3.5 has issues where there's an immensely variable power range.

[Rhedyn]

Exactly.

I don't want to do anything more than that. I am not an idiot that is deliberately "suboptimal"
but nor am I apart of this stupid "optimizer culture" that creates elitism and stupid terms I don't want anything to be apart of. in my view optimizing ruins a lot of things I enjoy by making it all about the metagame rather than the game itself. I don't want to play the metagame. I want to play the GAME. not the completely different thing that people turn it into that changes all the rules and calls what I enjoy suboptimal and stupid. not that I can even see any metagame at all, because metagames are invisible things that I cannot grasp and only frustrate me when they come up and say "hey screw you for not playing to me!" and screw me over. I just want to play my characters and things that I WANT, optimizing and metagames are just things that get in the way.

Suggestion: Play more balanced games. That way you won't need advance system mastery to just make an OK character.

People putting the correct bricks together to realize a concept is not a flaw in their playstyles.

[Quertus]

as far as I can tell optimizers are just people who put an above average amount of work into the mechanical side of character creation. That's it.

Runners may do more running than most people, but most people run.

Exactly.

I don't want to do anything more than that. I am not an idiot that is deliberately "suboptimal"
but nor am I apart of this stupid "optimizer culture" that creates elitism and stupid terms I don't want anything to be apart of. in my view optimizing ruins a lot of things I enjoy by making it all about the metagame rather than the game itself. I don't want to play the metagame. I want to play the GAME. not the completely different thing that people turn it into that changes all the rules and calls what I enjoy suboptimal and stupid. not that I can even see any metagame at all, because metagames are invisible things that I cannot grasp and only frustrate me when they come up and say "hey screw you for not playing to me!" and screw me over. I just want to play my characters and things that I WANT, optimizing and metagames are just things that get in the way.

As I understand it, "My Guy" Syndrome* is not playing the metagame. Party imbalance is not playing the metagame. I'm struggling to understand the notion of glorifying not playing the metagame. It really feels like both you and the faction you oppose are using the whole "anyone driving slower than me is a slug / anyone diving faster than me is a maniac" logic. Whereas someone playing the metagame might note that people are driving at different speeds / trying to play Thor and a potted plant in the same party, and wonder whether that's cool with the group (my general preference is for groups that say "yes").

I won't deny that "just playing the game" is more fun. In many ways, I used to have more fun in the way I was taught to play the game, where role-playing was Good, and metagaming was Evil. Where My Guy Syndrome was good role-playing, and, when it occurred, determining fault was easy: if anyone failed to built characters in accordance with session 0, they were at fault; otherwise, the GM was at fault for not properly defining what characters were acceptable in session 0. The players were only responsible for playing the game; the GM was responsible for the metagame. That level of immersive roleplay, of just playing the GAME, and not the metagame, was the best.

However, optimization - as I understand it - typically doesn't occur at the game level, but during the character creation minigame. It feels completely orthogonal to the game / metagame distinction, as I'm accustomed to discussing it.

So, I'm going to keep poking at this for a bit. Thinking out loud, rambling.

I loved playing in a group with Thor and a sentient potted plant. I was the potted plant. And it was great. Because I knew going in what I was. I knew going in what I was going to contribute. I knew going in that Thor was a possible character, what Thor was, and what he could contribute. I chose to play a sentient potted plant, and I got exactly what I signed up for. It was great.

You complain that optimizing changes all the rules, changes the game. What exactly does that mean? Suppose you take something that works just fine, exactly like you expect it to out of the box - like a brand new car from the dealership. Then someone else takes something horrible, and optimizes it to get roughly similar performance to you - like, say, strapping low-power jet engines to a riding lawnmower. I'm assuming that you don't have a problem with optimization in this instance.

So what do you have problems with? Other players strapping turbo boosters / jet engines on the same car that you just drive stock off the dealer's lot - who are playing the same game with "better" / more optimized playing pieces? Players who take jet airplanes, and change the game / ignore your roads? Players who make optimal tactical Determinator choices in combat (I guess, to continue the analogy, that would be players who are professional drivers, and do more with the same car than you can?)?

What, exactly, makes you so upset that you can't stand to admit that, by virtue of not just being lol random or intentionally suboptimal, that you, too, engage in optimization, even if not to the extent of a dedicated optimizer?

* I don't actually remember the name for sure - Doing something anti-social because "it's what my character would do".

[Lord Raziere]

As I understand it, "My Guy" Syndrome* is not playing the metagame. Party imbalance is not playing the metagame. I'm struggling to understand the notion of glorifying not playing the metagame. It really feels like both you and the faction you oppose are using the whole "anyone driving slower than me is a slug / anyone diving faster than me is a maniac" logic. Whereas someone playing the metagame might note that people are driving at different speeds / trying to play Thor and a potted plant in the same party, and wonder whether that's cool with the group (my general preference is for groups that say "yes").

I won't deny that "just playing the game" is more fun. In many ways, I used to have more fun in the way I was taught to play the game, where role-playing was Good, and metagaming was Evil. Where My Guy Syndrome was good role-playing, and, when it occurred, determining fault was easy: if anyone failed to built characters in accordance with session 0, they were at fault; otherwise, the GM was at fault for not properly defining what characters were acceptable in session 0. The players were only responsible for playing the game; the GM was responsible for the metagame. That level of immersive roleplay, of just playing the GAME, and not the metagame, was the best.

However, optimization - as I understand it - typically doesn't occur at the game level, but during the character creation minigame. It feels completely orthogonal to the game / metagame distinction, as I'm accustomed to discussing it.

So, I'm going to keep poking at this for a bit. Thinking out loud, rambling.

I loved playing in a group with Thor and a sentient potted plant. I was the potted plant. And it was great. Because I knew going in what I was. I knew going in what I was going to contribute. I knew going in that Thor was a possible character, what Thor was, and what he could contribute. I chose to play a sentient potted plant, and I got exactly what I signed up for. It was great.

You complain that optimizing changes all the rules, changes the game. What exactly does that mean? Suppose you take something that works just fine, exactly like you expect it to out of the box - like a brand new car from the dealership. Then someone else takes something horrible, and optimizes it to get roughly similar performance to you - like, say, strapping low-power jet engines to a riding lawnmower. I'm assuming that you don't have a problem with optimization in this instance.

So what do you have problems with? Other players strapping turbo boosters / jet engines on the same car that you just drive stock off the dealer's lot - who are playing the same game with "better" / more optimized playing pieces? Players who take jet airplanes, and change the game / ignore your roads? Players who make optimal tactical Determinator choices in combat (I guess, to continue the analogy, that would be players who are professional drivers, and do more with the same car than you can?)?

What, exactly, makes you so upset that you can't stand to admit that, by virtue of not just being lol random or intentionally suboptimal, that you, too, engage in optimization, even if not to the extent of a dedicated optimizer?

* I don't actually remember the name for sure - Doing something anti-social because "it's what my character would do".

ok 1. Don't lump me in with Those Guys Who take the Chaotic Neutral Alignment and claim "i'm just roleplaying my character" when they be a jerk. because I don't do that. that was uncalled for

2. screw your driver metaphor. its bad. actual driving is about adhering to rules that are important and can get people killed if not followed. there is no subjectivity to it. drive under the speed limit and all your doing is asking for someone from behind to crash into you, drive over it and your asking to crash into someone else. either way, someone's day is going to be ruined

3. let me tell you how it REALLY is: there are casual players who play the actual game, it can be whatever game you can picture from roleplaying game to a videogame. then there are people who decide to look at it and say "lets break it, who cares about the consequences?" just to see what happens and the result is them telling everyone how its broken and then everyone decides to do the same to break it forever, and the great experience that was once there, is now gone. they BROKE IT. its ruined. pandoras box opened, now all people can talk about is the broken remains left behind. there are things better left unopened. things better left unbroken. its like someone playing the game normally up against someone with all the cheat codes, its never a fair comparison and it ruins the immersion with video-game logic. finding a bug and exploiting it isn't playing the game, its abusing it. because its all fun until somebody finds that Pun-Pun or Shudderwock combo and completely screws everyone else over just because its there because when you break the game- thats all the game becomes: the shards you broke it into, with no one caring about anything else anymore. thus leading to people ruining perfectly good fluff to make a broken tippyverse world or something like that and screw everyone who just wants to play a fantasy game, screw the people who don't care to exploit any of this and just want to play this out in y'know they they want to. because once the exploits that, combos are out there, you imprison people with them, you screw over any archetype, design or thing that can't stand up to it even if they'd be perfectly good if they weren't there! Its frustrating! you think its bad that someone personally is against your thing? well try your thing being shunned by an entire communities because someone random jerk somewhere else made some combo you didn't know or care about and now everyone constantly references it as if your supposed to care and saying that their exploitative hack is better than whatever you came up with just because its "optimized"! try never winning at entire videogames against other people just because of some preparation done long before you could ever do anything about it! all because you decide you actually want to play and discover and have fun rather than obsessively reading up all this or reading videogame guides and spending endless hours honing that some stupid trick thats not going to be useful any time else!

this optimizing mindset? all it has done is screw me over every time it happens in anything! the fact that these optimizers whether they be hearthstone players, DnD players or whatever, so often stop trying to win just they can start playing with something less than optimal so they can have fun playing whatever they want anyways just proves my point: I don't see any reason to start optimizing if its just going to eventually lead me right back to where I am now. I already play whatever I want and have fun, I am already free to do create whatever I want. I don't need some fancy mechanics and exploits for that.

[melvinmelon123]

I think a lot of problems people have with power gamers is actually a problem with bad players. Many of the experiences I see posted about involves people being jerks and them being an optimized character is the least of the issue. There is a big difference between a character being more effective mechanically and that player making others feel bad outside the mechanics of the game. I honestly think that if Billy is upset that his Wizard does less damage with Fireball than Timmy's Wizard, that it is not Timmy's fault for having an effective character. Billy can either get over it, make his character better, or find a different table to play at. Complaining that Timmy's Wizard is better just means that the person with an issue about "winning" the game is Billy. I have DM'd for characters of all different power levels and it has not been hard. As long as there are no issues with the person being a jerk, they can play as strong or weak characters as they want and if someone has a problem with that then it is on them.

[Mechalich]

As I understand it, "My Guy" Syndrome* is not playing the metagame. Party imbalance is not playing the metagame. I'm struggling to understand the notion of glorifying not playing the metagame. It really feels like both you and the faction you oppose are using the whole "anyone driving slower than me is a slug / anyone diving faster than me is a maniac" logic. Whereas someone playing the metagame might note that people are driving at different speeds / trying to play Thor and a potted plant in the same party, and wonder whether that's cool with the group (my general preference is for groups that say "yes").

Tabletop should not have a metagame. It's not a MOBA or MtG. It's not even a single-player RPG where combat is mostly an obstacle and making your character nigh-invincible for the purpose of more easily accessing the story makes logical sense (a common approach in games like Skyrim). Insofar as you need to play the metagame in order to make the game work - whether it's a GM doing so in terms of bans/hand-holding/fudging or the players by agreeing to certain builds only - that's bad design.

An RPG offers various concepts to PCs and all the concepts the game supports should have roughly even levels of viability in play as part of the base design. If your game is about adventurers, than the types of adventurers you're allowed to play should all be able to contribute roughly equally. If your game is about superheroes or vampires this still holds.

A huge number of TTRPGs have massive conceptual imbalances built into the game design, almost always to the detriment of the resulting gameplay. Generally this happens when conceptual options aren't valued equally - for instance 'hurting people' is generally valued too high in design while abilities like 'mind control' aren't valued highly enough, because designers fail to connect the dots that mind-control may well provide limitless amounts of hurting people in addition to all its other functions (and this isn't even a principle D&D problem, VtM has this out the wazoo).

Now, any game with any real rules complexity is going to throw out some emergent scenario that the designers couldn't anticipate that will, if chosen, break the game. This happens in competitive games that have highly managed metagames all the time. It's a problem in those games just as it is a problem in table-top. It's worth noting the OP formulations that break the meta in competitive video games get nerfed. Games like Overwatch constantly reformulate balance, MtG bans certain cards and rotates out the entire set periodically in order to keep the combos manageable. TTRPGs can't do this very effectively due to the absence of active management, but that doesn't mean using those exploits is a good thing. People who exploit in MOBAs and MMOs eventually get banned. In tabletop GMs who know what they're dealing with ban broken combinations, but this is harder for a lot of reasons - notably a GM working with five people has a lot less leverage than, Blizzard, and also can only spot things as they occur with one sample group as opposed to thousands.

[Chaosticket]

Not PowerGamer, but munchkin behavior includes slang terms such as "killstealing", "lootNinja". Toxic behavior often irrational and self destruction.

Now I dont understand how carefully choosing something like a Crafting feat is considered toxic.

A large number of problems are based on the move between single and team based games.

For Dungeons and Dragons as well as Pathfinder I ask groups I meet how people feel about, in order, the Leadership feat, item Crafting Feats, and Spells. These are touchy subjects.

[Rhedyn]

ok 1. Don't lump me in with Those Guys Who take the Chaotic Neutral Alignment and claim "i'm just roleplaying my character" when they be a jerk. because I don't do that. that was uncalled for

2. screw your driver metaphor. its bad. actual driving is about adhering to rules that are important and can get people killed if not followed. there is no subjectivity to it. drive under the speed limit and all your doing is asking for someone from behind to crash into you, drive over it and your asking to crash into someone else. either way, someone's day is going to be ruined

3. let me tell you how it REALLY is: there are casual players who play the actual game, it can be whatever game you can picture from roleplaying game to a videogame. then there are people who decide to look at it and say "lets break it, who cares about the consequences?" just to see what happens and the result is them telling everyone how its broken and then everyone decides to do the same to break it forever, and the great experience that was once there, is now gone. they BROKE IT. its ruined. pandoras box opened, now all people can talk about is the broken remains left behind. there are things better left unopened. things better left unbroken. its like someone playing the game normally up against someone with all the cheat codes, its never a fair comparison and it ruins the immersion with video-game logic. finding a bug and exploiting it isn't playing the game, its abusing it. because its all fun until somebody finds that Pun-Pun or Shudderwock combo and completely screws everyone else over just because its there because when you break the game- thats all the game becomes: the shards you broke it into, with no one caring about anything else anymore. thus leading to people ruining perfectly good fluff to make a broken tippyverse world or something like that and screw everyone who just wants to play a fantasy game, screw the people who don't care to exploit any of this and just want to play this out in y'know they they want to. because once the exploits that, combos are out there, you imprison people with them, you screw over any archetype, design or thing that can't stand up to it even if they'd be perfectly good if they weren't there! Its frustrating! you think its bad that someone personally is against your thing? well try your thing being shunned by an entire communities because someone random jerk somewhere else made some combo you didn't know or care about and now everyone constantly references it as if your supposed to care and saying that their exploitative hack is better than whatever you came up with just because its "optimized"! try never winning at entire videogames against other people just because of some preparation done long before you could ever do anything about it! all because you decide you actually want to play and discover and have fun rather than obsessively reading up all this or reading videogame guides and spending endless hours honing that some stupid trick thats not going to be useful any time else!

this optimizing mindset? all it has done is screw me over every time it happens in anything! the fact that these optimizers whether they be hearthstone players, DnD players or whatever, so often stop trying to win just they can start playing with something less than optimal so they can have fun playing whatever they want anyways just proves my point: I don't see any reason to start optimizing if its just going to eventually lead me right back to where I am now. I already play whatever I want and have fun, I am already free to do create whatever I want. I don't need some fancy mechanics and exploits for that.

Meanwhile, I find anti-munchkins to be far worse to play with than power gamers.

Anti-munchkins tends to disrupt the game to complain at anyone who bothered to care about the game enough to make their character.

Caring about the game should never be a bad thing. If it causes bad results, that is the game's fault and you can just go play a better game and not have that problem.

But yes, it is rude for someone to come into a group and snap the game everyone thought was fine until you showed up. For example, D&D 5e is such a mess that I have to actively build unoptimized characters just to not ruin the game for people. Me knowing how to break it is not a flaw with my approach to these games, it's a flaw of that system.
But, me wanting to play a point-buy human champion fighter with 5 14s and remarkable Athlete to make a skill monkey fighter is still me optimizing pointless skills on a fighter but not optimizing combat or anything that actually matters.

[Quertus]

ok 1. Don't lump me in with Those Guys Who take the Chaotic Neutral Alignment and claim "i'm just roleplaying my character" when they be a jerk. because I don't do that. that was uncalled for

I wasn't actually referring to the idiot who chooses Chaotic Neutral and does whatever stupid thing crosses his mind and calls it "role-playing". This was more, eh, the Thief stealing from the party. Because Thief. Or the Holy Knight killing the PC Necromancer, because it's what his character would do. Or the (insert racist archetype here) verbally abusing the PC (and, by extension, player) of the chosen race, because it's what the character would do. Or the Wizard of Lloth summoning spiders, even though one of the players has a petrifying fear of spiders, because it's what the character would do.

2. screw your driver metaphor. its bad. actual driving is about adhering to rules that are important and can get people killed if not followed. there is no subjectivity to it. drive under the speed limit and all your doing is asking for someone from behind to crash into you, drive over it and your asking to crash into someone else. either way, someone's day is going to be ruined

I mean, personally, I tend to follow a "posted speed limit" style of balance - my first step to analyzing potential balance is to compare against expected opposition / challenges. But, by your speed limit logic, if someone optimizes more than you, you have no grounds to complain so long as they're obeying the speed limit. Do you agree with this?

3. let me tell you how it REALLY is: there are casual players who play the actual game, it can be whatever game you can picture from roleplaying game to a videogame. then there are people who decide to look at it and say "lets break it, who cares about the consequences?" just to see what happens and the result is them telling everyone how its broken and then everyone decides to do the same to break it forever, and the great experience that was once there, is now gone. they BROKE IT. its ruined. pandoras box opened, now all people can talk about is the broken remains left behind. there are things better left unopened. things better left unbroken. its like someone playing the game normally up against someone with all the cheat codes, its never a fair comparison and it ruins the immersion with video-game logic. finding a bug and exploiting it isn't playing the game, its abusing it. because its all fun until somebody finds that Pun-Pun or Shudderwock combo and completely screws everyone else over just because its there because when you break the game- thats all the game becomes: the shards you broke it into, with no one caring about anything else anymore. thus leading to people ruining perfectly good fluff to make a broken tippyverse world or something like that and screw everyone who just wants to play a fantasy game, screw the people who don't care to exploit any of this and just want to play this out in y'know they they want to. because once the exploits that, combos are out there, you imprison people with them, you screw over any archetype, design or thing that can't stand up to it even if they'd be perfectly good if they weren't there! Its frustrating! you think its bad that someone personally is against your thing? well try your thing being shunned by an entire communities because someone random jerk somewhere else made some combo you didn't know or care about and now everyone constantly references it as if your supposed to care and saying that their exploitative hack is better than whatever you came up with just because its "optimized"! try never winning at entire videogames against other people just because of some preparation done long before you could ever do anything about it! all because you decide you actually want to play and discover and have fun rather than obsessively reading up all this or reading videogame guides and spending endless hours honing that some stupid trick thats not going to be useful any time else!

this optimizing mindset? all it has done is screw me over every time it happens in anything! the fact that these optimizers whether they be hearthstone players, DnD players or whatever, so often stop trying to win just they can start playing with something less than optimal so they can have fun playing whatever they want anyways just proves my point: I don't see any reason to start optimizing if its just going to eventually lead me right back to where I am now. I already play whatever I want and have fun, I am already free to do create whatever I want. I don't need some fancy mechanics and exploits for that.

Hmmm... You may be conflating optimization and cheat codes. So let's poke at this a bit.

The first time I ever played Warcraft, I was playing against people who actually owned the game.

I got attacked before I had built any soldiers.

I knew that it was "game over"... But then I noticed that my workers had a non-zero attack value. I had them mob the soldiers, and I actually won the defense of my town!

Not wanting to die before I'd even gotten to play, I sent workers to the far corners of the map, and built expansions everywhere, taking in gold from at least a half a dozen mines.

I climbed the tech tree to paladins, and built... Whatever their spawn point was... scattered across the map. Then I built paladins. Lots and lots of paladins.

I found an enemy base, surrounded it, and sent in a diversionary force. Once they had engaged, I sent in the two real task forces. Utterly obliterated my opponent.

Then I found my other opponent, and didn't bother with subtlety - I just sent the flood of holy vengeance through his gates, while constantly spawning reinforcements.

No cheat codes, just careful observation of a) the rules - peons can fight, too; b) simple strategy - all things being equal, the side with greater numbers has the advantage; c) human behavior - my opponent wasn't psychologically prepared for a war on three fronts.

Still, I think I see where you're coming from (maybe?). On LoL, I'm a very casual player. People have all kinds of cool words, like "support" and "jungling". They have all these optimized strategies, and try to suss out my intended role. Me, I just hit stuff. Because that's what I find fun.

What I don't understand about your stance is where pun-pun fits in - unless such builds actually show up in play at your tables.

Tabletop should not have a metagame. It's not a MOBA or MtG. It's not even a single-player RPG where combat is mostly an obstacle and making your character nigh-invincible for the purpose of more easily accessing the story makes logical sense (a common approach in games like Skyrim). Insofar as you need to play the metagame in order to make the game work - whether it's a GM doing so in terms of bans/hand-holding/fudging or the players by agreeing to certain builds only - that's bad design.

An RPG offers various concepts to PCs and all the concepts the game supports should have roughly even levels of viability in play as part of the base design. If your game is about adventurers, than the types of adventurers you're allowed to play should all be able to contribute roughly equally. If your game is about superheroes or vampires this still holds.

A huge number of TTRPGs have massive conceptual imbalances built into the game design, almost always to the detriment of the resulting gameplay. Generally this happens when conceptual options aren't valued equally - for instance 'hurting people' is generally valued too high in design while abilities like 'mind control' aren't valued highly enough, because designers fail to connect the dots that mind-control may well provide limitless amounts of hurting people in addition to all its other functions (and this isn't even a principle D&D problem, VtM has this out the wazoo).

Now, any game with any real rules complexity is going to throw out some emergent scenario that the designers couldn't anticipate that will, if chosen, break the game. This happens in competitive games that have highly managed metagames all the time. It's a problem in those games just as it is a problem in table-top. It's worth noting the OP formulations that break the meta in competitive video games get nerfed. Games like Overwatch constantly reformulate balance, MtG bans certain cards and rotates out the entire set periodically in order to keep the combos manageable. TTRPGs can't do this very effectively due to the absence of active management, but that doesn't mean using those exploits is a good thing. People who exploit in MOBAs and MMOs eventually get banned. In tabletop GMs who know what they're dealing with ban broken combinations, but this is harder for a lot of reasons - notably a GM working with five people has a lot less leverage than, Blizzard, and also can only spot things as they occur with one sample group as opposed to thousands.

Thor and the sentient potted plant were both completely viable in play. They offered radically different levels and types of contribution, yes, but you knew that when you signed up to play. There were no trap options. If, however, Thor's player had failed to play the metagame, and (switching systems here) had taken "genocidal hatred of all plant life (uncommon, total)", the game would have failed. I see no way to not play the metagame in character creation.

So I'll take the opposite stance here: MtG should not have a metagame; RPGs should. Because in an RPG, you care about the other players; whereas in MtG, it's acceptable - and almost expected - for the player to just field the most efficient playing piece that they can build (although I personally prefer to play the game more casually).

[Kami2awa]

My dislike of powergaming comes the team nature of RPGs. The player party is supposed to work together to overcome obstacles. A powergamer in such a group can easily become a one-man team, leaving the rest of the group wondering why they are even present.

To take an example, would your average school football team, playing for fun, want David Beckham to join them? Once the novelty wore off, probably not. It wouldn't be fun for them or their opponents to have such a massive imbalance of skill.

[Koo Rehtorb]

To take an example, would your average school football team, playing for fun, want David Beckham to join them? Once the novelty wore off, probably not. It wouldn't be fun for them or their opponents to have such a massive imbalance of skill.

I think it'd be manageable, considering he's a soccer player.

[Knaight]

Yeah, that makes sense. And not every game is hard to optimize-let's take a theoretical game that has three stats, Combat, Social, and Exploration. You get 10 points to distribute between the three stats, at a one-to-one ratio.

Want a combat monster? Combat 8, Social 1, Exploration 1.
Social magician? Combat 1, Social 8, Exploration 1.
Balanced, but with a slight exploration emphasis? Combat 3, Social 3, Exploration 4.

Each time you select your stats, you're optimizing for your concept, unless you're picking stats that actively work against your concept. Which, if you are... Why?

Now, for a game like D&D 3.5, optimization varies IMMENSELY in how deep you can go. You can do the bare minimum (stats in the right places, feats that don't suck, and a few good magic items) or go hog-wild (see: Iron Chef), but if you have a concept and you build towards it, that's optimizing for your concept.

The definition of optimization used tends to slide a fair bit though - just picking very basic mechanical representation isn't generally considered optimization, and tends to only slide into that definition when useful to defend optimization from people criticizing it. Then, once that criticism is gone it reverts to a different definition which isn't about mechanically representing a character so much as refining a mechanical representation such that it becomes more powerful - and that's without getting into TO.

[Talakeal]

I think it might be prudent to point out that meta-gaming has at least two very different definitions.

In games like RPGs it typically means acting on information your character wouldnt know.

In games like LoL it typically means modifying your strategy based on the psychology of other players or the community as a whole.

[Rhedyn]

My dislike of powergaming comes the team nature of RPGs. The player party is supposed to work together to overcome obstacles. A powergamer in such a group can easily become a one-man team, leaving the rest of the group wondering why they are even present.

Nah, that really really depends on the system. Sure what you are saying is true for 3.5 and Pathfinder for even equal level parties. But that is an exception not the general rule.

I guess Savage Worlds with high power point Super Powers from the super powers companion can also get into that territory. If you combine shape change and duplicate, you can end up playing a flight of Dragons which is far stronger than someone who spent 40 points on super skills.

[LudicSavant]

2. When does optimization become "power gaming?"

To be brutally honest?

At least half the time it's whenever you do something in-game better than someone with a giant ego, who can't stand to see someone else do something significantly better than them, and then try to rationalize why it's offensive that someone outperformed them. Compare derogatory terms like "tryhard" in videogames. A similar case also occurs with DMs, when they see players overcome a challenge in an unexpected way and, rather than adapt or blame the game, they choose to blame the players for the crime of resourcefulness.

That's also why this opinion is heard so often, even though many gamers don't share it. It's because the kind of people who do it are often very petty and very loud. And if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. And then people will try to rationalize why they believed it, so they start redefining words to make them hateful (which is why you see so many incompatible definitions of what "powergaming" means in this thread and others, separate from simply being a pejorative term for optimization). Conflating things with these redefinitions is roughly the other half of the time.

The rationalizations for the hatred are often remarkably flimsy, or even outright fallacious. For instance, a common one is the false dilemma fallacy (also known in some D&D circles as the Stormwind Fallacy when talking about powergaming in particular), where people wrongly assume that you can be good at mechanics OR good at roleplaying, but not both.

Another equally silly rationalization is denying that D&D is or has any elements of a turn-based strategy game (despite that being the bulk of what takes up space in the books), and claiming that players should not engage with the core gameplay loop of turn-based strategy games (evaluating choices and choosing the one you think is most likely to advance your goals). It's fine if you, personally, do not want to engage with the strategy aspect of the game, as there are other aspects to enjoy as well, but that's no reason to hate people who do.

[kyoryu]

Meanwhile, I find anti-munchkins to be far worse to play with than power gamers.


....

So much BadWrongFun in one post.

[Drakevarg]

To be brutally honest?

At least half the time it's whenever you do something in-game better than someone with a giant ego, who can't stand to see someone else do something significantly better than them, and then try to rationalize why it's offensive that someone outperformed them. Compare derogatory terms like "tryhard" in videogames. A similar case also occurs with DMs, when they see players overcome a challenge in an unexpected way and, rather than adapt or blame the game, they choose to blame the players for the crime of resourcefulness.

That's also why this opinion is heard so often, even though many gamers don't share it. It's because the kind of people who do it are often very petty and very loud. And if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. And then people will try to rationalize why they believed it, so they start redefining words to make them hateful (which is why you see so many incompatible definitions of what "powergaming" means in this thread and others, separate from simply being a pejorative term for optimization). Conflating things with these redefinitions is roughly the other half of the time.

The rationalizations for the hatred are often remarkably flimsy, or even outright fallacious. For instance, a common one is the false dilemma fallacy (also known in some D&D circles as the Stormwind Fallacy when talking about powergaming in particular), where people wrongly assume that you can be good at mechanics OR good at roleplaying, but not both.

Another equally silly rationalization is denying that D&D is or has any elements of a turn-based strategy game (despite that being the bulk of what takes up space in the books), and claiming that players should not engage with the core gameplay loop of turn-based strategy games (evaluating choices and choosing the one you think is most likely to advance your goals). It's fine if you, personally, do not want to engage with the strategy aspect of the game, as there are other aspects to enjoy as well, but that's no reason to hate people who do.

"To be brutally honest, everyone who disagrees with me is just lying to themselves and if they had any sense they'd hold my opinions."

Resentment towards optimization may be the result of fragile egos sometimes (though that can easily be on either side of the question - maybe the complainer has a fragile ego and can't stand someone being better than them, or maybe the power gamer is the one with the fragile ego and that's why they insist on being the ubermensch right out of the gate), but I think far more often the problem is that people have different definitions of "fun."

For some, winning = fun, and so fun = winning. If they (or someone else in their party) effortlessly resolves an encounter with their extensive familiarity of the mechanics (or just has overpowered toys, whichever), that's great! We win, winning is fun, what's to complain about? These people, if not power gamers themselves, generally do not have any problem with power gamers unless it proves a distraction for whatever reason.

For others, fun comes from the experience. If their character decides to rob a bank, having the money isn't nearly as important to them as doing the heist. So if Jim the Wizard singlehandedly teleports into the vault and robs it empty with two or three well-selected spells then yeah they won, but they didn't get to do the part that was actually important to them. Similarly, if Ted the Barbarian is totally psyched to have an epic showdown with the dragon, it's similarly disappointing when his buddy Sara the Assassin kills it in its sleep, even if that technically was more efficient and got the job done.

I'm decidedly in the latter camp, but I'm also aware that I have absolutely no comprehension of competitive spirit. I legitimately do not understand the mindset of having an overwhelming drive to win. I don't watch sports, I don't understand people who care about victory for its own sake. Call it a personal failing. But I'm not going to tell them they're having Badwrongfun, I just don't necessarily want to put up with it at the expense of my own enjoyment.

[LudicSavant]

"To be brutally honest, everyone who disagrees with me is just lying to themselves and if they had any sense they'd hold my opinions."

That was awfully rude, stuffing words I didn't say in my mouth.

In fact, your paraphrasing directly contradicts my post. For example, I very explicitly did not refer to everyone. I said some people did something. You know, just like you did in the very next line.

Resentment towards optimization may be the result of fragile egos sometimes

Also,

but I think far more often the problem is that people have different definitions of "fun."

I mentioned this myself, though you excluded it from your paraphrasing. The difference is that there are people who find different things fun and can respect that different people enjoy different things, and then there are people who will directly hatred and toxicity at people who find different things fun. The former do not tend to use "powergamer" as a derogatory term.

[Drakevarg]

That was awfully rude, stuffing words I didn't say in my mouth.

I'm a thoroughly rude and unlikable person.

...and then try to rationalize why it's offensive...

...if you repeat a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. And then people will try to rationalize why they believed it, so they start redefining words to make them hateful...

The rationalizations for the hatred are often remarkably flimsy...

So, back to the subject at hand.

I mentioned this myself, though you excluded it from your paraphrasing. The difference is that there are people who find different things fun and can respect that different people enjoy different things, and then there are people who will directly hatred and toxicity at people who find different things fun. The former do not tend to use "powergamer" as a derogatory term.

You mentioned it as an afterthought, a "that's okay though," not as a root function of the conflict. People generally don't care about power gamers at large, just about having to put up with them at their table, unless they're having a philosophical debate on the subject. And as mentioned previously, the two mindsets do not work well together because their objectives are contradictory. "You do you" doesn't work very well when it can't function both ways simultaneously.

[GeometryGuru]

1. I have noticed more than a few people who have this really strong disgust for "power gamers"...DnD Youtubers, forum people, randos I met at the LFGS...they hate power gamers. Am I the only one who notices this? What is the motivation behind this sentiment?

2. When does optimization become "power gaming?"

3. What is the alternative to "power gaming?"

1. Personally I think the fun of rpgs is seeing your character grow and eventually be able to take on crazier villains and enemies. By power gaming you lose that element of growth because your character goes from jacked to super jacked and as someone who appreciates a fun game of roleplaying and storytelling someone punching a hole through your game like its made of tissue paper is annoying. I typically begin to slap down these characters.

2. I see optimization as power gaming when the character goes from being understandably good at something, such as a bard having a good charisma or a thief being moderately skilled in pick-pocketing, to being ridiculously over-qualified in their class or in something that makes no sense, like a fighter starting off stupid high attack with their weapon or a wizard being strangely skilled with a longsword.

3. The alternative to power gaming would be just PLAYING THE GAME. Power gaming really takes all the fun out of gaming and really just hurts the group's dynamics. I recommend that players creating characters should start with a concept of their character and then use their randomly generated results to build the character with the strengths and weaknesses of the concept kept in mind.

[LudicSavant]

I'm a thoroughly rude and unlikable person.

Well then.

You mentioned it as an afterthought, a "that's okay though," not as a root function of the conflict.

Again, I feel you have mischaracterized my position. I don't think it's "okay though." I think that it's inexcusable to lather hatred on someone simply for having fun doing something that you, personally, don't enjoy.

It's one thing to enjoy vanilla ice cream while another person prefers chocolate ice cream. It's another thing entirely to hate the person who enjoys chocolate ice cream. Or even a person who enjoys both chocolate and vanilla.

[Talakeal]

Its odd, is talk about people who dont like power gaming must be bad at the game or not care about mechanics.

I care very much about mechanics and player skill, but I also care about challenge.

I am the type of person who plays video games on the hardest difficulty and often imposes further challenges on myself like iron man runs or only using a knife.

Most of the power gaming and optimization I see online seems less like that and more like playing with the cheat codes on.

[Drakevarg]

It's one thing to enjoy vanilla ice cream while another person prefers chocolate ice cream, or even a person who enjoys both chocolate and vanilla. It's another thing entirely to hate the person who enjoys chocolate ice cream.

That metaphor would work better if you were talking about events happening in parallel. If you hate chocolate ice cream, and you're sitting at a table with someone who loves chocolate ice cream so much they ordered it for everyone at the table and refuses to do otherwise, it is entirely understandable to resent that person for it. Because chocolate ice cream in this metaphor is a stand-in for victory through optimization, and you can't really set up a group-game scenario where one person wins with very little effort and all the other people on their team somehow don't.

[Rhedyn]

So much BadWrongFun in one post.

If your definition of fun is to berate people for understanding mechanics or strategy, then yes, your fun is wrong.

Anti-munchkins are toxic players.

Being a little miffed that someone broke your favorite game is one thing. Taking an experience like that and generally saying that anyone who bothers to understand the game part of RPGs are bad people, makes you a toxic anti-munchkin.

A rational response to finding out your favorite game is not balanced is to start making house rules to balance it again (which includes general guidelines of play which are defacto house rules). That's being mature enough to not attack people because of a game.

Not liking to play with tactics focused characters (which can be something someone does in character) is a matter of personal preference. Other people aren't bad players for playing characters like that or being ok playing with characters like that.

[LudicSavant]

That metaphor would work better if you were talking about events happening in parallel. If you hate chocolate ice cream, and you're sitting at a table with someone who loves chocolate ice cream so much they ordered it for everyone at the table and refuses to do otherwise, it is entirely understandable to resent that person for it. Because chocolate ice cream in this metaphor is a stand-in for victory through optimization, and you can't really set up a group-game scenario where one person wins with very little effort and all the other people on their team somehow don't.

The metaphor is perfectly appropriate for the subject I was discussing, which was regarding people who voice contempt for powergamers in general, rather than those who simply would prefer to play a different style of game, which I specifically clarified I took no issue with in my very first post.

I'm not talking about people who say "I don't want to play at this style of table" I'm talking about people who do things like go on gaming forums and tell people that they're having badwrongfun for picking an option which happens to be better than some other option. And if you don't think those people are a common thing... I dunno what to tell you, other than "look around." There was even a guy in here earlier saying that he hates that people in ranked matchmaking in competitive videogames try to win when he plays against them. It's like if someone goes on Super Smash Bros and sees the "for glory" and "for fun" modes, picks "for glory," and then complains that people are trying to knock their character off the stage.

It's such a common issue in gaming forums that it's even specifically covered in the forum rules (classified as a kind of flaming).

[Drakevarg]

The metaphor is perfectly appropriate for the subject I was discussing, which was regarding people who voice contempt for powergamers in general, rather than those who simply would prefer to play a different style of game, which I specifically clarified I took no issue with.

I'm not talking about people who say "I don't want to play at this table" I'm talking about people who do things like go on gaming forums and tell people that they're having badwrongfun, or send you hate mail when you beat them in a videogame calling you a tryhard.

Well, people complaining about tryhards in vidjagames are definitely just sore losers. I'm not gonna debate that point. Possible exception for games where competition is optional and they're just venting about being randomly dunked on while trying to mind their own business.

As for the rest, do people that actually do that beyond philosophical debate and/or complaining about personal experience? Someone saying "man, people who insist on ordering everybody chocolate ice cream even when they're with people who don't like chocolate are just the worst" isn't the same as "people who eat chocolate ice cream suck." Or, in non-metaphorese: "I hate playing with power gamers" isn't the same thing as "high-op games are badwrongfun."

This gets a bit blurrier in games with PUGs, because when you're dealing with a constant rotation of strangers you can't really screen for people who are going to play with different priorities than you, but that doesn't make the resentment any less understandable, just harder to do anything about besides "don't play those kinds of games at all."

It's like if someone goes on Super Smash Bros and sees the "for glory" and "for fun" modes, picks "for glory," and then complains that people are trying to knock their character off the stage.

I've only played the older, pre-online SSBs so the comparison is somewhat lost on me, but what if they pick the "For Fun" mode and then they get paired against some super-competitive type? Like I said, PUGs are kind of a crapshoot.

[LudicSavant]

Well, people complaining about tryhards in vidjagames are definitely just sore losers. I'm not gonna debate that point.

Okay, then please don't stuff sarcastic quotes in my mouth when I say so. Thank you.

As for the rest, do people that actually do that beyond philosophical debate and/or complaining about personal experience? Someone saying "man, people who insist on ordering everybody chocolate ice cream even when they're with people who don't like chocolate are just the worst" isn't the same as "people who eat chocolate ice cream suck." Or, in non-metaphorese: "I hate playing with power gamers" isn't the same thing as "high-op games are badwrongfun."

Yes, people actually do that (the "high-op games are badwrongfun" thing). It's just against the forum rules to say it outright on GitP, specifically. On places where it's not? Well... there's a reason the rule got made in the first place.

I've only played the older, pre-online SSBs so the comparison is somewhat lost on me, but what if they pick the "For Fun" mode and then they get paired against some super-competitive type? Like I said, PUGs are kind of a crapshoot.

To explain:

In SSB4, there is a competitive mode that's set up like how people would play tournaments in older SSBs (you know, "no items, final destination" and so forth). And then there is a "for fun" mode that is just a bunch of chaos and people messing around. This division is specifically to cater to both of SSB's flavor preferences (chocolate and vanilla).