I am become Pun-Pun, destroyer of multiverses

[cwhs01]

Has anyone ever gotten to actually play Pun-Pun? My guess is no, and therefore the Pun-Pun brokenness is never going be a real in-game problem. But cool as a thought experiment and kickstarting flamewars.

 

[Hussar]

I wonder if people go around talking about how broken other games are? I mean, it takes about 20 seconds to break Vampire. Gurps can be busted fairly easily. I think that Palladium is meant to be broken. I could violate earlier editions pretty badly.

Why do people figure that just because you can install cheats into 3e that it means that 3e is broken? Considering how mind blowingly obvious this one is, I'm wondering what the hoopla is about.

 

[Dave Turner]

Seems to me that this ability was never meant to be in the hands of players and relies on the DMs control of the ability to keep it from running amok in the campaign world.

If it's exclusively a DM tool, then why not just call it "Rule 0" and not write it up? Seems to me like it's supposed to be used by players.

 

[Faraer]

3E goes out of its way to uphold 'consistency', patch loopholes, be 'balanced', etc., all so inexperienced and incompetent (two separate categories) DMs don't inadvertently mess up. For competent DMs, this effort and the design complications it necessitated is a big waste of time. Conversely, it's no shame to 3E that loopholes are possible in the letter of the rules that no competent player would exploit or DM would allow.

 

[Nellisir]

Say what you like about AD&D -- it was *hard* to become a god and the DM's judgement was written into the process.

I've run several 3.5 campaigns, and no character, in any one of them, has even become close to becoming a god. Certainly not without my consent. I don't feel like my judgement has been excluded at all.

Heck, the characters in my campaign can't even get a single experience point without my consent and judgement.

 

[Henry]

... hmmm ... let's assume one player wants a Pun-Pun. Then it's only fair to give all the other players Pun-Puns too. But if all the PCs are Pun-Puns, then all the NPCs must be Pun-Puns too. And if all the NPCs are Pun-Puns, then everyone in the multiverse is a Pun-Pun.

I'm a Pun-Pun, you're a Pun-Pun, he's a Pun-Pun, she's a Pun-Pun, wouldn't you like to be a Pun-Pun, too?

Sorry, it just sorta came out...

Now the only thing missing is to give Pun-Pun a PhD, so he can be Doctor Pun-Pun...

 

[riprock]

Here's the rub for me: How is the Pun-Pun build, getting to it or as proof that D&D 3.x is broken, any fun?

D&D, for me, is a game. A game is supposed to be fun. I have fun playing D&D 3.x. Therefore, I don't particularly care if there's a phenomenal loophole out there that I can exploit. I don't exploit games, I play them.

...

Since then I've noticed a trend toward options,...

First off, Pun-Pun is just darn humorous to me for a good half an hour. I envision that most despised of opponents, the kobold, as an ubergod and I just have to hold my sides and giggle.

But after the giggling passes, I feel *relief*. I've seen a lot of D&D games with very bad DM judgement calls because the DM trusted the rules to be consistent. In many cases that trust over-ruled logic, reason, player objections, etc.

I've seen a lot of loopholes exploited in various versions of D&D. A loophole of this magnitude heightens my understanding of loopholes -- although whether I can parley that into better gaming experiences remains to be seen.

The worst breakages are accidental, IMHO. The game publisher didn't playtest enough, and the players get two months into a campaign when suddenly it goes pear-shaped. That's very frustrating to me, and Pun-Pun gives me a notion of how to avoid it.

Then, as you mention, I notice the trend towards options. Optional rules have destroyed a lot of the "social contract" that is necessary at the gaming table. It's all very well to say that the rules aren't meant to be definitive, that the DM must exercise judgement -- but nearly every DM I've seen has had at least some bad judgements, and some favoritism. Those bad judgement calls are often what kills the joy of a campaign for me. The first step to avoiding such experiences is understanding how they arise.

I like to understand how things get put together. The story of Pun-Pun has led me to converse with one of the designers of Spycraft, which was fun and taught me a lot about how game rules are made. So that was fun for me.

Pun-Pun is a useful thought-exercise. For me, it would be no fun to play Pun-Pun. Boredom for four or five levels, followed by total omnipotence ... it would go from too weak to too strong without passing through any happy medium.

 

[riprock]

Define this “perfectly legal” concept. Core D&D3 is the PHB, DMG, and MM. Everything else is supplemental, optional, dependent upon the DM’s permission. And for Players, anything outside the PHB is dependent upon the DM’s permission. Pun-pun is about 1% core legal.

The “extra material” is completely optional. Completely and absolutely optional.

All right, that proves that the average players are not going to be able to hack the rules to produce Pun-Pun because almost every DM will disallow it. I call that category "Players breaking the design."

However, I've known quite a few DMs who have killed their campaigns because they assumed supplements would work well together. They stretched the rules beyond what players would tolerate and players left. I call that category "DMs breaking the design."

The worst category, however, is when there is no crisis point, neither the DM nor the players know why everything seems out of whack, and after the game collapses they realize that they were putting together rules that don't go together well. I call that category "accidental breakage."

The Pun-Pun case is useful and instructive because it shows how easily accidental breakage can pile up. I've seen a lot of campaigns that petered out because they were accidentally broken. No one was *trying* to break them, but they broke anyway. The solution of more play-testing or more logical rule design is applicable.

Also, I've noticed that quite a few rule designs are much, much harder to break, even accidentally. Those designs usually turn out to have been much more carefully play-tested.

You shouldn’t judge D&D3 by its supplemental materials any more than you should judge AD&D1 (or 2) by its supplemental materials. (And there was a *lot* of supplemental materials for both AD&Ds.

I'm not subjecting AD&D to enough criticism, then, due to my ignorance of AD&D's supplemental material. It's my impression that AD&D was better-playtested and harder to break accidentally, but possibly if I knew about the right supplements I would know how to do it.


In the context of "becoming a god in AD&D":

Psionics, in the PHB. Wish spell. Ability score generation methods II-IV. The bard “prestige” class. Artifacts on the random treasure tables. Treasure in published adventure modules. Etc.

I think you don't understand my intended meaning. Perhaps I didn't express it well. What I meant was, "In AD&D, there was one way to become a god, namely by going through the process in Deities and Demigods." That process required DM input explicitly, which prevented casual loophole abuse.

Psionics, Wish, artifacts, etc. could produce high-powered PCs, but my interpretation of the rules for gods in Deities and Demigods was such that PCs always had to fear gods. I could be wrong about this, but that was how it seemed to me.

Judging any game, or any edition of any game, based on the ability of determined twinks with plenty of time and resources to find ways to twist the rules (including any and all optional rules) into absurdity is a foolish mistake.

All right. I can rule out Pun-Pun and still say that D&D 3.x had more accidental breakage than AD&D in my limited experience. Quite possibly my experience is not representative of most folks' experience.

I could sit down and type out the gory horror stories of bad DM judgement calls and incompatible players. All of that doesn't really establish anything about the game at all, because it basically says that a DM ran a bad game -- whether that was due to unplaytested rules, bad DM skills, bad players is pretty hard to prove from one man's story.

If it's a foolish mistake to judge D&D 3.5 core rules based on Pun-Pun, is it also a foolish mistake to judge the supplemental material's optional rules based on Pun-Pun?

 

[riprock]

I found out the hard way there is an easy solution to such powermongering.
It was known as Mordenkainen's Disjunction. ...
It was almost wondrously ghastly, how quickly a Christmas Tree Character could be stripped of his ornaments, reduced to mundane nakedness, and put in the Dead Book.

Morale of Story: Pride goeth before a fall.

Melee powermongering also could get foiled with spells that attacked the mind.

In my experience, AD&D characters never got to be powerful without the DM's consent and a group of varied specialists. There were always too many niches for one character to handle. Either you needed followers of other classes, or you needed a friendly party of other PCs.

Yes, some AD&D characters did get powerful enough so that they could use Deities and Demigods as a Monster Manual -- but (in my experience) it required the DM's consent, cooperation, and participation.

Pun-Pun would require the DM's consent, but IMHO, in situations where Pun-Pun is even possible, the rules are tending toward what I call accidental breakage.

 

[riprock]

I wonder if people go around talking about how broken other games are?

Hello, I'm Riprock, and I spend about 90% of my bandwidth explaining how to break Mage: the Ascension. (This may be evidence that I have more spare time than I should.) I'm the guy you're looking for, who talks about how to break other games.

If anyone is interested, I'll also explain the flaws of Traveller, Top Secret, Deadlands ... heck, I'll talk about how to break any game.

Further, I'm fascinated by the logic of counter-examples, as applied to just about anything, but especially technology. Technology needs consistent policies, so learning how to break it leads to knowledge about how to design better technologies.

I talk about breaking technology in the real world all the time and no one gets offended, because they know bugs must be fixed and they don't have much emotional attachment to the products in question.

I mean, it takes about 20 seconds to break Vampire. Gurps can be busted fairly easily. I think that Palladium is meant to be broken.

Many Palladium products are inherently broken. Others are hard to break.

I think GURPS depends a lot on your assumption of what "broken" is. I think it's play-tested pretty consistently, but it is designed to produce results many people don't like. So whether that's "broken by design" or "functioning according to spec" is debatable.

Vampire takes 18 to 21 seconds to break, so round it off and call it 20 seconds.

Considering how mind blowingly obvious this one is, I'm wondering what the hoopla is about.

Pun-Pun just has style. He makes me laugh. He's much more amusing (to me) than the other breaks I read about.