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Powrgaming is a nice thing, it's the only kind of "work" that I enjoy doing. It means thinking on your feet, it means analyzing and gathering informaiton and figuring out how to apply said information.
Powergaming in WoW was great, getting server first kills, figuring out the perfect item builds, cold sweats when a tank/tank-healer was down and the boss was around 8-15% hp.
Actually, what I do in starcraft might also be considered power gaming, I try to find the best strategies to apply them the best way, think on my feet and win every game I can. There are obviously people that are doing this better than me and putting in dozens of hours weekly to increas that gap, but I can live with that.
I also like getting high scores, speed running, finishing a game with the "best" ending, completeing item sets, it's fucking fun. Even if I am only compeating with myself it's still fun.
However I do think something are kind of retarded...
One of the best examples of this is powergaming a fucking book. Which is what ,it seems to me, most people on every god damn DnD site I go to think the freaking game is about. I have tried playing 4th edition DnD twice, and both time there were 2 people there who seemed to know the book by hand and were concearned with min maxing their characters.
Get the race that fits you best, get the background that helps you most, get the feats and skills that are best for you... it goes on and on and on. It's supposed to be a fucking role-playing game ! You are supposed to play a character because you like the concept of him not becasue:
"Dragonborn lightning sorcerrer is totally OP after 6th level dude ! Like, you can blow shit up !!"
DnD is not a competition, it's a story created by the GM as much as it is by the players. The encounters are what the DM wants them to be, the loot is what the DM wants it to be, every NPC is what the DM wants him to be.
And it's dice roll based for fucks sake, you are trying to power game a dice rolling game in which the GM can, if he wants to, even "cheat" the dices.
And this attitude isn't a result of stupid people only, it's a result of books. All the "new" table-top systems that I see are so complex, they try to get the random out of the game, do add hundreds of spells, powers, attacks, to balance in such a way that a party can prevail without healers/tanks.
Meanwhile, I play a game of Swords and Wizardry with a pinch of homebrew. And it's fucking great, stats are rolled with multiple d6 and we pick the best 6 out of 9 rolls and distribute them as we want. Thus I played characters weak and strong. And because of the dice, my shittiest character stat wise was actually the best archer the party had.
We don't spend time min-maxing our trap skills and deciding who will do a trap roll. We spend time looking in the are for materials that might be good for the trap and discussing how the trap will work. And it's fun, because we you talk, you play your character and you get horribly murdered or own faces based on what you did.
I remember vividly and encounter where we were supposed to bottle-neck enemies in a cave and we used some elements of the cave to make an improvised pitch-moat. The encounter got from hard to easy because the GM was planning on using bat like creatures that were sacred of fire. And it was rewarding, because we might have just as well used spikes, or employed and existing spike trap or barred the door and waited for the morning or simply fought, or maybe even negotiated with them.
Shit like that doesn't happen in 4th edition, you have people running around with their 3 pages long character sheets and rolling a d20 to see how good their trap is:
"and it has to be good, is speced this rogue so it get like FUCKING +3 for this shit by default and trap making gives me +2 and he is a rogue so +3, THATS a fucking lot, it's like +8 dude !".
We have a weight limit for full speed, a weight limit for half speed, a sheet with the items we carry, a few non-combat skills and 6 stats with bonuses that apply when it seems reasonable that they should apply.
The game, after only a dozen or so weeks got me involved, I like ( or dislike ) PCs,NPCs and I experienced "emotion" that ranged from anxious and scared to happy and relief. I did some shit that was smart, some shit that was dumb and a lot of shit that was funny.
God, table-top games can be so fantastic and about 90% of the people playing them online nowadays seem to think of them as a dice and figuring based video games that they want to powergame... I really have to think of how many people shun away DND because they think of that 90% when they think of DND and how much they would enjoy a game with a capable GM and group that wants to role-play and use simple rules.
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Never understood why ppl wanted to powergame in D&D yet there are plenty who do and I agree the "rules" further this since by now there are so many additional books with new rules and spells, prestige classes and whatnot, at points u have characters that just handily beat monters with a CR way higher than the groups lvl while "normal" base rule characters just get one hitted. As a GM it forces you to adjust monsters in a very particular way to even stand a chance yet then the powergamer comes and cries: "this is not fair! Their abilities don't work like that!" Of course the GM is always right, however it leaves this bitter taste, that you had to create enemys that may be challenging but do not really comply to the logic of your setting.
edit: typos
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Sounds like you like Neal's style on Rollplay :D
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I never played myself but i allways wa generally interested and talked with a friend that used to Master that shit solved by creating/using an adventure in which there is not much fighting. All that min/maxing for combat suddenly becomes damn stupid. When there is not much combat, suddenly all the "mins" you had to take can bite you in the ass.
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Never played D&D never was really interested in it, although I do find Jp's rollplay shows entertaining. But back to power gaming. I suppose it is possible like every game just about has someone who will try to power game their way through it, and that is just how they have fun with it. Nothing wrong with it.
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On July 23 2013 20:37 imJealous wrote: Sounds like you like Neal's style on Rollplay :D
I like Neal's story-telling and the party in role-play. Neal's style is also fine, although the way he does encounter it makes even the most dangerous shit seem a bit boring.
Also, he puts little emphasis on his players planing. Up until now all the guys did was go in, kill shit, get out. Never tried to lure enemies with a complex plan, interrogate, bribe or persuade. Obviously that is the fault of the inexperienced party but he could give them more incentive to do so.
But he is also one of the quickest fucking GM's I have ever seen, some of his characters seem to be great and I want to bunch the player for not talking to them more. And the rules he uses are enjoyable, because, once again, he puts an emphasis on role playing not min maxing.
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I find power-gaming D&D to be downright stupid, and I hate playing with anyone who does that. If any of them are ever playing characters in a dungeon of mine, I (politely) tell them to knock that shit off or else they're out. It ruins the experience for everyone else and completely defeats the purpose of D&D.
If you want to make some ridiculous dungeon where power-gaming is necessary, then yea, go ahead, play with your power-gaming friends, but that definitely isn't the norm or the original purpose of D&D.
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People need to stop caring how other people game. There is no superior method of playing RPGs.
And the purpose of D&D (or other RPGs) is: Have fun with your group. Everything is allowed when it aids said goal for a group of individuals.
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I always enjoyed reading the DnD books more than playing the game, does that count as powergaming?
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The Great Fojod enjoys this power gaming you speak of on bingo nights. The Great Fojod commands an army of bingo stampers so massive all the bingo dabbers are dried just by his presence and bingo sheets spread out farther than the eye can see. His slave army is whipped and driven by mammoth riders as bingo chips block out the sun and rain down victory against the pathetic elderly.
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On July 24 2013 03:03 Zocat wrote: People need to stop caring how other people game. There is no superior method of playing RPGs.
And the purpose of D&D (or other RPGs) is: Have fun with your group. Everything is allowed when it aids said goal for a group of individuals.
I agree that every individual should be allowed to have fun the way he wants but you also have to consider that those people might have never actually tried playing a "classic" game of DnD and even if they did and they did not like it they still blur the image of what DnD can be for new player that just see this "neck beards" talking theory-crafting.
I for one know that I never got closed to DnD for that very bloody reason and I know people that shared that reasoning with me, had I not had a huge amount of luck finding a game and a game-master I would have never started playing.
I fell like even most people who play 4e nowadays play because they don't know any better.
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