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

[MichaelSomething]

I'm not sure how improv intersects with rules fidelity.

Well it's more for helping people develop the ability to react to sudden changes in the fiction and/or how engage in the give and take of working with others.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Alright. How do we square this...

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.

...with this...

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.

...particularly in light of this:

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.

My issue is that the first and third things make strong claims about how the game "should" be played; the third also makes such claims, but then hedges them with "I don't want to spoil your fun."

As for me...I'm very self-conscious about any situation where I'm commenting on the rules used by others. I absolutely don't want to crap on anyone else's fun at the table. In fact, the one time I can remember where I had pointed out an error with something, I took it upon myself to find a solution afterward, and actually did manage to make things better thereafter. (TL;DR: gonzo game, fellow player's build needed undead chars, but his method caused other conflicts. I sheepishly noted this, but later found a fix: the Deathless template. Patched up the gap, gave more perks, and made more sense for char's story. It felt good to find that.)

The real game-breaking thing they consistently do is always try and force the game to be about what their character is good at.

Yeah, I played several games (mostly video games) with someone who was like that. If it was competitive, always pick the options that are strongest, especially if they eliminate parts of gameplay (they were BIG into any 4X-game perk that means you eat money/production rather than food.) If it was cooperative, they would always align things so the only way for the team to win was for them to win--meaning if we didn't jump at their beck and call, if we didn't give them the resources they needed, etc., it was our fault for not supporting them enough.

This person has actual, diagnosed mental health issues which contribute to this behavior, so their behavior is not necessarily a useful representation. That said, some folks are just....a little narcissistic in gaming, or in general. (Estimates are that somewhere between 1% and 5% of people have legit narcissistic personality disorder, so the non-clinical narcissistic personality type (which isn't unhealthy, but does involve more extreme narcissism than ordinary behavior) is almost certainly at least as prevalent if not moreso.

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"

Yeah, I've seen it used that way as well. I wouldn't say it is common per se today (my gaming experience is mostly mid/late 00s and later), but it's not rare either. Sort of like how "railroad" sometimes gets thrown around to describe perfectly reasonable, above-board linear gameplay.

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.

100%. In fact, I often find actual children (pre-teens or young teens, up to say 14ish) are much more inclined to be great roleplayers because they often lack the concern about saving face or "proving" themselves. More often than not, their characters are purely vehicles for self-expression and exploration. Varies by person whether they're protective of said character or not, but I find them much less interested in rules minutiae and much more interested in asking probing questions and trying things that make sense to them (the trick, of course, is to get them to explain why it should make sense to others too.)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My issue is that the first and third things make strong claims about how the game "should" be played; the third also makes such claims, but then hedges them with "I don't want to spoil your fun."

First, a typo- the last reference (to Jean Wells' statement) is supposed to be the "second," not the third.

Second, it's because when discussing powergaming, it's because the table can certainly have fun powergaming, or engaging in "Monty Haul," or whatever. On the other hand, Rules Lawyers spoil things for everyone. A Rules Lawyer simply lacks the self-awareness to understand that.

Kinda feel like words were spilled discussing this.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Every time this comes up in a forum, someone suggests a new term for "player who actually knows the rules." But none ever seem to stick.

Players who know the rules? Sure. That's a player who knows the rules. The vast majority of the DMs love players who know the rules, because that's one less player that they have to worry about. Hey, DM, I just noticed my sixth level Champion has this ability called ... um ... second wind. What does this do?

A player who knows the rules and spends all their time telling the DM the rules and how the DM should rule?

How about a "backseat DM." Because, like a backseat driver, they aren't actually driving, but instead spending their time telling the actual driver how they should drive. And they are appreciated by the other people at the table in much the same way that everyone in the car loves the backseat driver.

I kid, kind of, but it's always a lack of self-awareness that is the defining feature. And it's not a player-side only issue. For example, no matter how many times people will say that they don't enjoy DM PCs, there is always a DM who will be, "Ak-shually, DM PCs are awesome. If it wasn't for my DM PC, Deus the Machine, the whole party would have died several times over!!!!"

 

[Zardnaar]

Old joke from 1994. Favorite weapons in D&D

Munchkins. +6 vorpal holy avenger

Power gamers longswords

Loonies cream pies

Real men. Loonies.

So yeah first campaign ever DM told me what a munchkin was.

 

[Reynard]

Loonies cream pies

Real men. Loonies.

I have never encountered these before this thread. Are they regional, or specific to some corner of the internet?

They also both sound much grosser and more pejorative than power gamer, munchkin, or rules lawyer.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I have never encountered these before this thread. Are they regional, or specific to some corner of the internet?

They also both sound much grosser and more pejorative than power gamer, munchkin, or rules lawyer.

I had always thought that the Loonie was a coin used in Upper 'Murikuh to buy pineapple pizza and Tim Hortons.

Who knew?

 

[Bacon Bits]

I had always thought that the Loonie was a coin used in Upper 'Murikuh to buy pineapple pizza and Tim Hortons.

Who knew?

No, that's for those cheese fries with bad chili.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First, a typo- the last reference (to Jean Wells' statement) is supposed to be the "second," not the third.

Second, it's because when discussing powergaming, it's because the table can certainly have fun powergaming, or engaging in "Monty Haul," or whatever. On the other hand, Rules Lawyers spoil things for everyone. A Rules Lawyer simply lacks the self-awareness to understand that.

Kinda feel like words were spilled discussing this.

My point was that there seems to be an undercurrent here that there is a right way to play, and yet simultaneously an overt effort to assert that there is no right way to play. Trying to have the cake and eat it too. That conflict is one of the contributing factors to having disruptions from potential rules lawyers/powergamers/etc. It's a thing I see from a lot of older-school publications, an ongoing tension between two things. First, asserting a no-gods-and-no-masters "do what you want 'cause a pirate GM is free" philosophy where the rules are exclusively a toolkit to do whatever interests you no matter how others feel about it. Second, asserting that there IS a purpose (typically some degree of "Gygaxian naturalism" and dungeon heist type play, often accompanied by some degree of PVP or at least competition) and anyone not fulfilling that purpose is Doing It Wrong.

The pretty clear thing I get from these (and other) quotes, and the whole existence of terms like Monty Haul and what "munchkin" came to mean over time, is that many early-game folks believed their game was "do whatever you want." However, what they actually practiced was an expectation of playing in a particular style, with limits that were far more specific than they realized. When subsequent generations of gamers strained against those limitations in light of the claim that you can do whatever you want, those efforts often got derided.

I don't mean to claim that the "barracks lawyer" nor the "rules lawyer" don't have a tendency to crappy behavior. But it seems to me that there's some space in there for people who would not be rules lawyers, just (shall we say) "rules experts" with little to none of the disruptiveness, but for that particular mix of claiming to embrace anything the player (or GM) might wish to do with the game, while actively mocking anyone who failed to conform to the expectations of the original player base.

 

[billd91]

I have never encountered these before this thread. Are they regional, or specific to some corner of the internet?

They also both sound much grosser and more pejorative than power gamer, munchkin, or rules lawyer.

Oh, those lists made the rounds, sometimes very tediously. Though a lot of them had Real Role-players instead of Powergamers.
A sample: Real Men, Real Rôle-Players, Loonies and Munchkins