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Rules Lawyers, Powergamers, and Munchkins: Thoughts on the Origins of Diverse Species
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9132881" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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<em> tends</em> 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).</p><p></p><p>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:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>3) The real game-breaking thing they consistently do is <strong>always try and force the game to be about what their character is good at</strong>. 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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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".</p><p></p><p>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).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9132881, member: 18"] 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[I] tends[/I] 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 [B]always try and force the game to be about what their character is good at[/B]. 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). [/QUOTE]
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