D&D General Rules Lawyers, Powergamers, and Munchkins: Thoughts on the Origins of Diverse Species

[Snarf Zagyg]

My last Snarfticle (yes, Virginia, I am still trying to make fetch happen) was about the concept of fairness in D&D. Weirdly, it managed to get sidetracked into a conversation about rules lawyers, and optimizers, and min/maxers, and powergamers (OH MY!). Since that seemed to be of interest to some people (for a small value of "some"), I thought it would be worthwhile to delve a little more into the history of the terms, and why they are sometimes used interchangeably, but are certainly not the same.


A. The Origins of D&D, and Existence of the Barracks Lawyer.
I like Flo Rida. I mean, moms need to enjoy rap too.

As we all know by know, D&D arose out of the wargaming hobby. Now, within the hobby, and prior to D&D even being a thing, you have to remember that a large number of players were veterans. While veterans are less common today in the United States as a percentage of the general population, at the time (the late 60s into the early 70s), we were only a score of years removed from World War 2 (when there was massive mobilization), fewer years from the Korean War, and in the middle of the Vietnam War.

In the military, there is a term called a "Barrack-room lawyer" or a "Barracks lawyer," although this can vary somewhat (with the Navy, for example, calling them "Sea lawyers"). This refers to a soldier who thinks he knows the regulations forwards and backwards, and who will freely offer authoritative-sounding opinions on subjects, often to try to get some sort of advantage- like saying that there is some sort of "loophole" that will keep them from doing work. The important thing to understand about the term is that it is pejorative; while we all like to romanticize characters like Yossarian in Catch-22, in real life an actual barracks lawyer who continually argues with his commander is not viewed positively. After all, militaries tend to run best when people follow orders, not when people spend time arguing about loopholes that they think they know better.

Anyway, this term was borrowed by veterans into the wargaming scene to refer to the players who would spend time arguing over various rules within the game in order to gain some advantage, instead of playing the game. Again, the term is always pejorative. It wasn't meant to apply to someone who would point out, for example, that the rules called for 2d6 to be rolled instead of d6 - that would just be a mistake. Instead, it was applied to people who would try to find some legalistic or formalistic reading of a rule that clearly was not intended, or was not within the good-faith ambit of the rule, in order to gain an advantage while playing.

From wargaming, the term "barracks lawyer" was borrowed and used in D&D, and continued to be used throughout the 70s, with the afterword of the DMG, published in 1979, containing a reference to it-

It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. Never hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you.

1e DMG 230.

However, with the "Egbert explosion" (a term I often use, and refers to the influx of new, and mostly young, gamers following the disappearance and widespread publicity regarding James Dallas Egbert III in the fall of 1979 ... aka, the beginning of the Satanic Panic), the term morphed into the one we now use today without really changing its meaning- the Rules Lawyer. While the new term pops up as early as 1979, by 1989 it had become so well-entrenched as the standard in RPGs that a Dragon Article mocked it by making "A Field Guide to Game-Convention Ornithology" and calling the "Great Crested Rules Lawyer" "arguably the worst pest of all convention birds."


B. On Powergamers and Munchkins.
Poor people don’t have time for investments because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor.

Talk to any grognard about How it was back in the day, and you'll fall asleep. Well, before that, you'll probably here about how players were lucky (LUCKY!) if they managed to survive first level, and they never got past second, and that's they way it was, and we loved it!

It's not that this is not true- obviously, there were meatgrinder dungeons. But it's certainly not the whole story- there was a plethora of playing styles back then as well. And among them, of course, was what we would think of as powergaming. How prevalent was it? Well, in 1976, TSR released Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes, aka Supplement IV for OD&D. And in the foreword, Tim Kask wrote this-

This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?
Of course, any good powergamer looked at that supplement and said to themselves, "Self, if it has hit points, you can kill it. Time to take down ODIN!"

Don't believe me? Well, in the very first Sage Advice, Dragon #31 (Nov. 1979), there was the following question-

In GODS, DEMI-GODS AND HEROES it says that a forty-plus level character is ridiculous. In our game we have two characters that are at one thousand-plus level. This happened in “Armageddon,” a conflict between the gods and the characters. Of course, the characters won. What do you think about that?

Ahem. Now, the term "powergamer" wasn't used at that point. Instead, the preferred term was that it was a "Monty Haul Campaign" (from Monty Hall, the gameshow host, with "Haul" as in treasure, substituted in). It was usually believed that the issue was not that the players were powergamers, per se, but rather that the DM had let the campaign get "out of control" by being too generous with treasure and too easy on the players. Not only was "Monty Haul" in the glossary of the 1e DMG, it was also warned about in the pages. Again, though, this was considered a DM problem, not a player problem. Here's the 1e DMG definition-

Monty Haul -A campaign (or the DM running it) in which greatly excessive amounts of treasure and/or experience are given out.

And here is what Gygax had to say about these types of campaigns-

The sad fact is, however, that this was not done, so many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better DMs jape at and ridicule - rightly so on the surface - because of the foolishness
of player characters with astronomically high levels of experience and no real playing skill. These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy righteously japing as much as the next DM! The question becomes, when did the idea switch from powergaming being a "DM-side" problem, to a "player-side" problem?

Well, that's when we get to the idea of munchkins. Originally, munchkins was just a term, borrowed from the Wizard of Oz, to refer to kids. As late as August of 1978, you can still see that use in Dragon Magazine (#17), in an article referring to "magic munchkins" as a monster and referring to children, not powergamers (the same article has "Scholars" that are killed with the phrase "tenure denied"). However, the influx of young players just after that ... because of the Egbert explosion ... caused a shift in the meaning of term. There was a growing schism between the older D&D players and the new players, with the older players complaining that the new players weren't playing it right. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. One of the primary divides was that the older players, who grew up playing OD&D with its much more streamlined system, weren't looking for the type of wish-fulfillment that they thought the younger players ... the MUNCHKINS ... were into. So, the term that was used for kids in the hobby became synonymous with powergaming.

A brief aside on minmaxers- while we think of optimization in many different ways today, and might consider doing things like "choosing a class based on your abilities correctly" to be minmaxxing, that wasn't really thought of at the time. Instead, as far as I know, people who played TSR-era D&D didn't use the term, and to the extent that the term started gaining currency in the '90s, used it as a counterpoint to other systems that were point-buy. D&D could have munchkins, but only point-buy systems would have minmaxxers. Obviously, this changed!


C. Cool history. So what?
I think if we spent the time we spend thinking about not spending money, spent that time on spending money, then it’d be time well spent.

Before explaining why I think there is a useful difference in these terms, a little anecdote. In law schools, there is the idea of a gunner. They are the person in a class that always sits toward the front, has "helium hands" (raises their hands at every question), shouts out answers before the professors asks the class, and treats the class as if it is their personal office time with the professor. To the rest of the class, a gunner is the worst. And along with that is the saying, "If you don't know who the gunner in your class is, you're the gunner."

I find that this is helpful in understanding the differences between the two main concepts here- the rules lawyer and the powergamer. Let's leave aside the term "munchkin" because it is needlessly pejorative and is subsumed by powergamer. For that matter, we can do the same with minmax, which is also subsumed by powergamer.

At a fundamental level, powergamers (or optimizers) understand that they are powergaming. In fact, they often derive great joy from it! And that's only an issue if that's an issue for the table. Do you remember that question about the the characters that were "one thousand-plus level" that was written to Sage Advice, above? Well, this is the response by Jean Wells:

Not much. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I will repeat: A forty-plus-level character is ridiculous. We feel that you must advance one level at a time, not a whole bunch at once. I don’t understand how or what happened or even if all the gods were in this battle, but if you enjoy playing this way, feel free to do so. I don’t want to spoil your fun.

Emphasis supplied. A single powergamer who isn't playing to the social compact of the table might cause friction at the table and it might not be appropriate, but, generally, people should do what is fun for them.

A rules lawyer, on the other hand? This is necessarily a pejorative term. When you read that, you might think ... Woah. No. Look, I am actually HELPING everyone out. I'm the good guy here! But like the proverbial law school gunner, the hallmark of the rules lawyer (or the barracks lawyer in the military) is a lack of self-awareness. All the time spent arguing during a game is time spent not playing the game. While the rules lawyer is busy "making the game better for everyone," the rest of the table is invariably rolling their eyes, sighing loudly, and scrolling on their phones. No RPG is written with the prolixity of a legal code, and no game should be held up by lengthy arguments over loopholes and exploits.

Anyway, it's an open thread. Feel free to parse the language above, and rules-lawyer me as to why I am wrong in the comments below!

 

[TwoSix]

Nope, general agreement. I definitely recall my first exposure to the term "minmaxer" being in the '90s on Usenet; I believe it was in the context of World of Darkness characters, generally vampires (which seemed to be the WoD game that attracted the highest amount of edgelord combat god types).

Totally agree that "rules lawyer" is almost always pejorative, while "powergamer" can be but is also often used as a badge of honor. I'm certainly a powergamer and label myself as such, but I certainly don't view myself as a munchkin.

 

[James Gasik]

I've re-written this post three times now, trying to keep it short.

I think it's just the classic clash that has plagued gaming since the very beginning.

Gamist players vs. simulationist players.

The Gamist makes optimization choices based on the mechanics. If a game like, say, D&D, says longbows fire 2x per turn and deal d8 damage, with a possibility to add Strength bonuses, and a heavy crossbow fires once every other turn, and does d6+1 damage, with no such possibility, they're going to use the bow, unless they have found some advantage to using the inferior weapon.

The simulationist might know quite a bit about crossbows in real life, and use them because it makes sense for the imaginary character they have created in their mind to do, irregardless of what the rules say about crossbows.

When the bow user consistently shows them up in ranged combat, making their choice seem foolish, it annoys them. Surely, they think, the mark of a good character and a good player is to make simulationist choices, not simply gravitate towards what the rules say is the "best" option.

But games don't reward you for making simulationist choices. They reward you for making mechanically sound choices. In a vacuum, our two ranged experts will never reach parity; one will always be better than the other.

It becomes the GM's job, then, to tweak the rules, and adjust play, so that everyone has an equally fun time. Not all GM's do this though. "The world is the world", they say. "I won't change the world based on what you decided to play."

In a perfect world, both gamist and simulationist choices would have equal merit. They don't. The best they can do is not make your character completely suck if you decided a 14 Intelligence is good enough for your Wizard, and instead give them a 18 Constitution, even if all that means is you can take one more goblin arrow before falling down each combat.

That's what bounded accuracy was intended to solve, but YMMV if it does.

Rules lawyers can be seen in much the same way; they can glean benefits from their knowledge of gamist elements like RULES, as opposed to making simulationist decisions.

For example, a simulationist might say they wish to feint in combat. This is something a real warrior would do. But if the feinting rules are terrible, because you give up an attack to maybe gain an advantage (because, say, the rules say zombies can't be feinted), and you still do it, while the gamist looks at the feinting rules and goes "ah, yeah, I think I can gain advantage in an easier way, like multiclassing into Sorcerer to get Grease".

This often feels like cheating (even though it isn't, obviously, since the game supports it) to some simulationist players, and bad blood is the result, because the simulationist finds themselves fighting against the system, when it should be supporting them.

 

[Reynard]

Sometimes "simulationist" designs or desires are based on completely false interpretations of things, but good luck convincing the misninformed player, GM or designer that they are wrong. In this sense, it is infinitely preferable to prefer a mechanical solution.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've re-written this post three times now, trying to keep it short.

I think it's just the classic clash that has plagued gaming since the very beginning.

Gamist players vs. simulationist players.

The Gamist makes optimization choices based on the mechanics. If a game like, say, D&D, says longbows fire 2x per turn and deal d8 damage, with a possibility to add Strength bonuses, and a heavy crossbow fires once every other turn, and does d6+1 damage, with no such possibility, they're going to use the bow, unless they have found some advantage to using the inferior weapon.

The simulationist might know quite a bit about crossbows in real life, and use them because it makes sense for the imaginary character they have created in their mind to do, irregardless of what the rules say about crossbows.

When the bow user consistently shows them up in ranged combat, making their choice seem foolish, it annoys them. Surely, they think, the mark of a good character and a good player is to make simulationist choices, not simply gravitate towards what the rules say is the "best" option.

But games don't reward you for making simulationist choices. They reward you for making mechanically sound choices. In a vacuum, our two ranged experts will never reach parity; one will always be better than the other.

It becomes the GM's job, then, to tweak the rules, and adjust play, so that everyone has an equally fun time. Not all GM's do this though. "The world is the world", they say. "I won't change the world based on what you decided to play."

In a perfect world, both gamist and simulationist choices would have equal merit. They don't. The best they can do is not make your character completely suck if you decided a 14 Intelligence is good enough for your Wizard, and instead give them a 18 Constitution, even if all that means is you can take one more goblin arrow before falling down each combat.

That's what bounded accuracy was intended to solve, but YMMV if it does.

Rules lawyers can be seen in much the same way; they can glean benefits from their knowledge of gamist elements like RULES, as opposed to making simulationist decisions.

For example, a simulationist might say they wish to feint in combat. This is something a real warrior would do. But if the feinting rules are terrible, because you give up an attack to maybe gain an advantage (because, say, the rules say zombies can't be feinted), and you still do it, while the gamist looks at the feinting rules and goes "ah, yeah, I think I can gain advantage in an easier way, like multiclassing into Sorcerer to get Grease".

This often feels like cheating (even though it isn't, obviously, since the game supports it) to some simulationist players, and bad blood is the result, because the simulationist finds themselves fighting against the system, when it should be supporting them.

The solution to this is to use a largely simulationist system, where options are better or worse in certain situations in game because they are better or worse in those situations out of game. That's always what I strive for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sometimes "simulationist" designs or desires are based on completely false interpretations of things, but good luck convincing the misninformed player, GM or designer that they are wrong. In this sense, it is infinitely preferable to prefer a mechanical solution.

There's no accounting for individual opinions. Just do your research, and be prepared to make changes if and when new evidence comes to light.

Also, I wish the playstyle issues in gaming were confined to Gamist vs. Simulationist. There's that whole Narrativist angle throwing a spanner in the works too, and it's been getting louder and louder in recent years.

 

[Tony Vargas]

oh, man, GNS (Thing about GNS is, when you solve for (GN) it reduces to B.)

You write a Snarfticle about fairness, you spawn a discussion about rules lawyers/munchkins/powergamers.

So you write a Snarfticle about them, and you get GNS discussion.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

oh, man, GNS

You write a Snarfticle about fairness, you spawn a discussion about rules lawyers/munchkins/powergamers.

So you write a Snarfticle about them, and you get GNS discussion.

GNS arguments are the only thing that will outlive the heat death of the universe.

 

[Micah Sweet]

GNS arguments are the only thing that will outlive the heat death of the universe.

Seems pretty likely that this would lead to GNS. I really don't like the model personally (since it's biased against simulation), but Edwards managed to get the community's ear better than others. I prefer the Six Cultures model personally.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

When I started discussing RPGs on the internet in the early 1990s, I would say Powergamer and Munchkin were not synonymous, nor did one subsume the others.

Also it's interesting that the Real Man and Loonie and so on are now absent from the discussion, where in that era, that was rarely the case.

Personally, based on usage when I was discussing RPGs (including in RPG-related printed materials/books), I would make a distinction between Powergamer and Munchkin, of a fairly simple nature. The Powergamer seeks to optimize their character, but tends to stick within both the spirit and the letter of the law, and avoids actual "exploits" (i.e. rules loopholes and the like). Most Powergames also don't intentionally seek to disrupt games - that doesn't mean they never do, but any player can be disruptive in the right/wrong environment (including those who make very suboptimal characters, or intentionally rubbish ones).

Munchkins, on the other hand, want three things that clash with almost all other gamers (including Powergamers), and differentiate them from "mere" Powergamers, the third of which is the key. Specifically:

1) They're optimized to the maximum degree the player can come up with, including any exploits or intentional misinterpretations/misrepresentations of the rules that they can get past the DM. That's often only a little different to a Powergamer (sometimes merely a difference of perspective), so that's not the main deal but it's worth mentioning.

2) They don't care about the other players, or the game overall at all - they care about one thing: "winning". They internally (or sometimes openly) reject the notion that you can't "win" an RPG. They believe (consciously or otherwise) that you can win an RPG, and that the way you "win" an RPG, is to utterly dominate play of that RPG, to make it all about you all the time.

3) The real game-breaking thing they consistently do is always try and force the game to be about what their character is good at. For example, if their character is good at loudly killing people with big guns, they will go extremely far out of their way to drag the game into loud gunfights. They'll shoot NPCs in the middle of negotiations, they'll intentionally spoil stealth missions, they'll generally be extremely uncooperative with anything which doesn't center them and what their character is utterly optimized for. Normally that's some kind of brutal combat, but it can be stranger things - I've seen this kind of play in Vampire, for example with social characters with social disciplines, for example. This is more extreme than merely being a spotlight hog, I'd note - I've seen players who absolutely hog the spotlight any time they can, but won't blow up a plan or adventure just to make it about them more (also a lot of spotlight hogs have weirdly incompetent characters in my experience).

I note that this division between Powergamers and Munchkins is one I've seen play out IRL. There's probably a better way to describe it in modern terms, but at least on places like Shadowland.org and to some RPG.net in the 1990s, this was how the terms were typically used. Some people used Powergamer pejoratively, but weirdly most of those people were, if you saw their characters, clearly Powergamers.

As for Rules Lawyer, whilst it's definitely intended to be pejorative, I've seen it misused far too many times by bad or mediocre or just confused DMs in the 1990s and '00s to describe "players who actually knew the rules", and there was a consistent failure in those periods to draw a line between a player pointing out the correct rules, or correcting the DM's understanding of the rules in an entirely reasonable way, and players who just trying to gain something by exploiting the letter of the law of the rules. Both got labelled "Rules Lawyers" extensively. I just put my main RPG collection in storage but I bet if I went through it, I could even find DM/Storyteller books that misused Rules Lawyer in this way, to just mean "anyone who disagrees about the rules".

I'd also note I've played at the same tables as people with the "Munchkin"-type behaviour, I didn't find real kids to be the worst for it, but rather older teenagers and very young 20-somethings. One of the players still in my main group sort of progressed from normal player, to Powergamer, to full-blown game-wrecking Munchkin (not a fun time), and then gradually back to Powergamer, and at this point I'd say he thinks he's a Powergamer, but actually his level of optimization tends to be so low he's just making normal characters now (he also became an excellent and keen RPer, weirdly).