Power Gaming vs Role Playing

[pdzoch]

That means that the role-players have to at least not make incompetent characters, but play characters that can legitimately contribute to party success and which try to contribute to party success.

Full endorsement of this statement. I am a big fan of open ended character design. Every player can make the character he/she wants to play. As this is a game about heroes, I always ask the player, "What makes this character a hero?" This targets at least ONE valuable asset to the group. Hopefully more. But, just as in reality, not everyone can be a hero and some character concepts just would not be accepted into a group because they are a danger to the safety of the group. A character with one or more low stats is merely a challenge, unless it renders the character unable to contribute to the party any more than the common NPC. (I can't help but think of the number of bands who have dumped sub-par musicians and hired replacements for this very reason).

However, it does make for some interesting group dynamics, capabilities and limitations. Here is where I think the DM needs to be cognizant of the group. I customize my adventure to the group capabilities. I've had player groups without a cleric, or without rogues. In such cases, I do not design dungeons (or offer adventure choices) that cater to the strengths of missing classes. Realistically, the party would not agree to an adventure they were not suited to accomplish. So forcing such an adventure on them seems more like punishing them for not optimizing or party balancing. It does limit some design choices and in some cases story choices, but I think this is why the DM is as much a part of the play group as is any player.

 

[Celebrim]

Full endorsement of this statement. I am a big fan of open ended character design. Every player can make the character he/she wants to play. As this is a game about heroes, I always ask the player, "What makes this character a hero?"

20 years ago or so, I naively had this idea that as a GM, not only should I not steer how a character plays their character, but I shouldn't steer what sort of character a player creates. I still believe GMs shouldn't play a player's character, but I've learned the hard way that you can't have open ended character construction with no GM input.

Open ended character construction only works if you only have one player - which frankly has been true of most new wave RPGs since about the time Vampire: the Masquerade came along. Most of them play as written only of there is a single PC protagonist. If you have a group, you have to invent a new dynamic that isn't what is described by the text. How VtM was actually played in practice had nothing to do with the game that was described - unless you only had one player. When you only have one player, the game can be about whatever that player wants it to be about. You can lavish spot light on the characters internal life, and all sorts of things. But when you have a group, the game has to be about whatever the group is doing, and that means that every character in the group has to be fairly suitable to whatever the group is actually doing.

This means that no matter how "good" or "creative" the player's conception is, as a GM you just can't approve it unless it works with the group.

I learned this trying to jump start a GURPS campaign where basically every player created a massively introverted character who had no reason to be a member of a group and every reason to just want to go their own way, and none of the players really had or was willing to create any motivation for changing that. I learned that playing a Chill campaign where all of us were good players, and we each ended up creating really cool conceptual characters that could have worked as a team - but which... it dawned on the otherwise skillful GM almost as soon as the first session began, had no role whatsoever in the story he'd prepped. (Ironically, this may have partly been my fault in trying as a player to help my GM, as he'd given me one hint about the larger campaign he planned ("South America"), and I had tried to 'plan ahead' by creating a character I thought would be very useful, only to find the kicking off point ("Small Town America") was totally different than my expectation and I was a complete fish out of water.)

Nowadays, I think a lot about whether the player is going to be happy with the concept, whether the player has a plan for getting along with the rest of the party, and whether the character is going to be fun for everyone before I let anyone play anything. Once I approve it, it's my fault if it doesn't work out, but nothing comes into the game unless I approve it.

I customize my adventure to the group capabilities.

I agree that not being able to switch to plan B is a GM fault. But it can also be something the GM should bring up to the group if he thinks character design is skewing the group toward a different sort of story than was pitched. If I pitch and the party agrees to a 'heroic' campaign, and everyone shows up with a CN or N rogue, thinking they'll be the cool gray character in the cast, it suggests maybe we should play a game were everyone is a Pirate (or some such) instead. And if no matter what you pitch, everyone wants to be the rebel with the edgy misfit character, it suggests there is some dysfunctionality going on where people are judging their character solely by how he messes with everyone else ("Loonie" motivation).

 

[pemerton]

I generally like the idea of giving "Power Gamers" (or any player in that matter) a reason to heavily invest in roleplaying their character. I also like the idea that such systems provide a mechanical pedestral for those players who like to roleplay a lot but are not too good when it comes to character building. But those "system-based benefits" are extrinsic motivations for ropleplaying, other than the intrinsic value of feeling good and having fun while portraying a memorable character.
Coming from an education background, extrinsic motivators (like making a trip to Disneyland for getting good grades) do work to achieve a certain set of behaviours, but they can diminish the overall enjoyment of a task (i.e. learning about physics).

I don't think the "ticket to Disneyland" analogy works, though. Because that has no connection to learning physics (unless the traveller is going to start analysing the kinetics of the rides).

Whereas earning fate points in BW helps you do more of what you want to do anyway - it makes it possible for you to commit even more strongly to the play of your character by enabling you to declare even more ambitious or crazy actions.

(Also: the intrinsic/extrinsic thing doesn't operate for at least some people who enjoy and take pride in their work even though they're paid for it. So one would need to be careful generalising it outside of whatever context it was initially established in.)

for my own group the reason why giving mechanical rewards for good roleplay, connecting with your bonds, playing your flaws etc. doesn't work too well is because I'd have to hand them out all the time. Literally. Because they have just too much fun roleplaying their charactres. And as my players are already good character builders on top of that, overwhelming them with "luck dice" or other benefits (we play PF, so no inspiration per se) would make it even harder for me to challenge them mechanically.

That looks like a problem of design - the system isn't designed to interact well with the ideals/bond/flaw/inspiration mechanics, which have simply been jacked on.

 

[Lylandra]

I don't think the "ticket to Disneyland" analogy works, though. Because that has no connection to learning physics (unless the traveller is going to start analysing the kinetics of the rides).

Whereas earning fate points in BW helps you do more of what you want to do anyway - it makes it possible for you to commit even more strongly to the play of your character by enabling you to declare even more ambitious or crazy actions.

You're right. i'm totally not being deterministic here, and I generally like the idea of fate points etc. I'm just not 100% sure whether or not the drawbacks of such a system could influence my own group (or other groups that work like mine) in a negative way.

(Also: the intrinsic/extrinsic thing doesn't operate for at least some people who enjoy and take pride in their work even though they're paid for it. So one would need to be careful generalising it outside of whatever context it was initially established in.)

To some extend it does. At least for young-ish people. I don't remember exactly who did the reseach, but there was an oler psychological study on children who loved to draw. They painted every now and then and had fun doing it. Then their parents/supervisors started giving them rewards for painting, ranging from new paint to sweets to money. The painting frequency of these children increased and so did their art quality (of course, since they basically practised more), but their fun diminished and one day they would view painting as some "work" they did to earn a reward.

Now of course, you cannot mirror this study 1:1 on roleplay systems who reward good roleplay in a mechanical fashion. But such a system has to be designed carefully or you may have effects that you don't intend to. Let's say, some imaginary system gives your character one "quirk" and one "flaw". Roleplaying one of these two (or both) will give you some benefit. I guess that some players, especially those who hunt for benefits anyway will play exactly those two manners over and over again. They don't have to invest in playing another manner or think about their character's emotional, social etc. background in a given situation. Such a character can quickly descend into stereotype territory if you, as a GM, are not cautious enough.

That looks like a problem of design - the system isn't designed to interact well with the ideals/bond/flaw/inspiration mechanics, which have simply been jacked on.

Yep, it is. As I said previously, we're currently playing Pathfinder where you don't get rewards for playing *your* character, but for advancing the story. If I, as the GM, jacked on some half-baked roleplay reward system on top of that, my already systems-savvy players would become so powerful that I needed to throw unfair obstacles at them. I hand out bonus exp or in-character benefits though (having a befriended fire elemental be a runesmith that can be contacted for magic item creation, giving them precious information earlier than originally intended, expanding and building on strange ideas they have etc.)

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have been following a thread, where some diametrically opposing views on how a D&D (non specific on edition) should be played. The Power gaming faction wants to exclude characters and even their weapon choices f they aren't max out to the most powerful possible, even down to calling character creation a "build". As can be imagined, this has created some not so polite responses from traditional role players. The key thing that has come out, is the two factions are not playing the size game. The fact the system can be used for the two games is a credit to the system, however doesn't, change the validity of both types of games and the position taken on both. I think we all need to take a step back and realise the two games actually are mutually exclusive, with alot of grey in between. It does however put a responsibility on DM to explain how his game will be played, and also to advise new players the game is played a variety of different ways. Would hate neophytes to be put off completely, as the as the style of play ill suits them.

To me the irony is that the role-playing not roll-playing brigade who look down on power gamers are saying they themselves are roleplaying badly - and the people who look down on the thesps are automatically min-maxing badly.

Real Roleplayer: Because of my roleplaying I'm going to ignore the actual rules of this world and then force your character to drag a useless lump into combat and look after them when your character would actively find it easier if my character followed advice on what sensible weapons and armour are rather than taking something that the rules of this universe (i.e. the game mechanics) show are impractical. Playing a character who pays more attention to looking cool than staying alive is the only way to play.

Powergamer: I'm going to get as much as possible down on my sheet but I'm going to ignore easily accessible buffs by not paying attention to the setting and not engage with it in detail.

Both these are a consequence of bad game design. Any game designer should be trying to reward the activities they want to encourage. In e.g. Smallville drama is encouraged - so the most powerful characters are those on a highway to hell and with conflicting motivations that are about to collapse as the game starts. And because there aren't long weapon tables the weapons are whatever fits the theme.

 

[Celebrim]

To some extend it does. At least for young-ish people. I don't remember exactly who did the reseach, but there was an oler psychological study on children who loved to draw. They painted every now and then and had fun doing it. Then their parents/supervisors started giving them rewards for painting, ranging from new paint to sweets to money. The painting frequency of these children increased and so did their art quality (of course, since they basically practised more), but their fun diminished and one day they would view painting as some "work" they did to earn a reward.

I think the bigger danger is the one that is ever present in gamification of anything - you end up incentivizing the markers of your goals and not the goals itself. It may sound weird to talk about the dangers of gamification in a game, but I think it is relevant when we are talking about creating game incentives in areas of the game which previously lay outside the mechanics of the game.

First, to background on this, some may not know that for a while there, there was this fad where you were supposed to incentivize work by making it more like play. Lots of people tried, but except in a very few areas, there hasn't been a lot of success. Mostly what they discovered was what was already known from rewards programs - people start gaming the system to maximize the collection of rewards for the minimum amount of work. The most spectacular failure recently was the Wells Fargo scandal where Wells Fargo had a rewards structure in place that incentivized the creation of new accounts, so in response their agents began to manufacture new accounts - entirely without the permission of the person to whom the money was owed.

Designers that give story or role-play rewards for objective story events (rather than subjective story-teller impressions) are hoping to incentivize story creation and role-play. But I strongly suspect that these rewards will mostly just incentivize the checking off of the markers of story, without necessarily encouraging building a strong and effective story structure. In other words, you will motivate players to pursue quantity over quality, and to treat role-playing like a sort of level treadmill to grind - "Let's see how efficiently and quickly I can check off the things on my list of things to do." The results are likely to meet the wording of the rules, but not the spirit of them, and the overall story is likely to resemble 'X-Files' or 'Lost' or 'The Force Awakens' or 'Twin Peaks' or 'Sherlock' or any number of similar post-modern plotted story lines where you make up the event or force your plot through some hoop and then struggle to try to explain it affords. The individual scenes might be effective depending on the skill of the players, but if you step back from them a little, they signify nothing and don't support a good story as a whole.

Now of course, you cannot mirror this study 1:1 on roleplay systems who reward good roleplay in a mechanical fashion. But such a system has to be designed carefully or you may have effects that you don't intend to. Let's say, some imaginary system gives your character one "quirk" and one "flaw". Roleplaying one of these two (or both) will give you some benefit. I guess that some players, especially those who hunt for benefits anyway will play exactly those two manners over and over again. They don't have to invest in playing another manner or think about their character's emotional, social etc. background in a given situation. Such a character can quickly descend into stereotype territory if you, as a GM, are not cautious enough.

Exactly. Actually, the real problem here is less likely to be a stereotype per se (since RPGs lend themselves to stereotypes) but the problem of trope decay in all of its various forms. The real motivation is out of story and mechanical. So the reason for the character to behave that way in character not only gets lost, but the mannerism becomes more and more clownish and loutish as the button is repeatedly pushed to get the reward. I believe the technical term is Flanderization. What had been simply a characters quirks become the whole character. Characters in a sitcom that are known as 'dumb' tend to get dumber and dumber the longer they are written, until they are not only a stereotype, they become a parody of their original character. You end up with flat unnuanced illogical often ridiculous characters that behave according to an increasingly rigid and extreme simple paradigm of what the character is known for. Their motivation decays over time until they are basically just parroting sayings and actions that they are known for.

A comparison might be the initial scene chewing by which we are introduced to Darth Vader and Kylo Ryn. Both villains are searching for something. We are initially introduced to Darth Vader holding aloft a prisoner and choking him to death. We are initially introduced to Kylo Ryn displaying similar villain badassery. But then Darth Vader says something that follows from his clear motivation, "Commander, tear this ship apart and find those plans. And bring me the passengers, I want them alive." But Kylo Ryn faced with the exact same problem says something that is not sensible from his in story motivation, and is sensible only if you view the purpose of the scene as 'display in story how evil you are'. It's as if the creator of the character had on his character sheet, "Gain 1 XP for mercilessly killing someone. Gain 1 XP for destroying an inanimate object." So instead of operating according to his stated character motivation - "I need to find this map", he starts killing the very people that could help him find the map, and destroying the very objects that could potentially be holding the map he's looking for. Hey, what about the map? This is frankly bad story telling, and while it makes for good scene chewing and I bet 90% of the audience just went with it, if you try to build a long story on a series of plot holes like that, you end up with something that if you step back from it is a mess.

Compare also with this awesome essay on the problems we see persistently in writing fiction these days:
http://www.tor.com/2017/01/18/sherlock-and-the-problem-with-plot-twists/

 

[Zhaleskra]

All munchkins are power gamers, not all power gamers are munchkins. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to game at a higher power level. Problems only arise when either spotlight hogs get in the way of other players' characters, or other players' characters aren't really contributing.

While I am against "always say Yes" GMing because there are many valid reasons to forbid something, within the allowed perimeters I think people should make the characters they want.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A comparison might be the initial scene chewing by which we are introduced to Darth Vader and Kylo Ryn. Both villains are searching for something. We are initially introduced to Darth Vader holding aloft a prisoner and choking him to death. We are initially introduced to Kylo Ryn displaying similar villain badassery. But then Darth Vader says something that follows from his clear motivation, "Commander, tear this ship apart and find those plans. And bring me the passengers, I want them alive." But Kylo Ryn faced with the exact same problem says something that is not sensible from his in story motivation, and is sensible only if you view the purpose of the scene as 'display in story how evil you are'. It's as if the creator of the character had on his character sheet, "Gain 1 XP for mercilessly killing someone. Gain 1 XP for destroying an inanimate object." So instead of operating according to his stated character motivation - "I need to find this map", he starts killing the very people that could help him find the map, and destroying the very objects that could potentially be holding the map he's looking for. Hey, what about the map? This is frankly bad story telling, and while it makes for good scene chewing and I bet 90% of the audience just went with it, if you try to build a long story on a series of plot holes like that, you end up with something that if you step back from it is a mess.

Compare also with this awesome essay on the problems we see persistently in writing fiction these days:
http://www.tor.com/2017/01/18/sherlock-and-the-problem-with-plot-twists/

On the contrary in the specific case you mention it's excellent storytelling. It fundamentally establishes that Kylo Ren is a wannabe who has a vision of the real thing in his head and is trying to live up to that vision - and both that vision is wrong and Ren himself is a petulent brat. Indeed Vader doesn't flamboyantly display villain badassery much in TFA; none against Leia, and force choking an officer isn't that special other than in reactions.

I'm not going to disagree with you that The Force Awakens is massively overrated or full of that sort of plot hole. But the character of Kylo Ren was one part where they got it right. They knew that if they were trying for a beat-for-beat remake whatever they did with Vader would be compared and come up short. So they worked Ren in from the very beginning to be a Vader wannabe.

Of course "If you follow that sort of checklist you may end up playing a character more like Kylo Ren than Darth Vader" makes the underlying point even more clearly. And there are thousands of bad examples that could be used where tropes substitute for character (ask me about The Amazing Spider-Man sometime).

 

[Celebrim]

On the contrary in the specific case you mention it's excellent storytelling.

This requires you to believe that the writers consciously and deliberately created as their central villain a character that is an oafish buffoon. Was he supposed to have a laugh track and they forgot to put it in?

Indeed Vader doesn't flamboyantly display villain badassery much in TFA(sic)...

I would argue that this is the result of trope decay itself. At the time Vader was presented, he was one of the most awesome powerful villainous flamboyant figures that had ever been shown on the screen. Every villain since Vader has been trying to either be Vader, or one up Vader, to the point that Vader's demeanor in the original film seems to a modern audience to be calm by comparison.

The same thing happens with Gandalf. We write articles in retrospect about Gandalf being 'a 6th level wizard', because every wizard since Gandalf has been trying to either be Gandalf or one up him. But at the time of Gandalf's original conception, he was one of the most overtly powerful wizards in fiction - especially as it relates to what in D&D we'd now call 'evocation magic' (fireball!). Only in the context of what has come afterwards does he seem extremely reserved and limited in his magical ability.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This requires you to believe that the writers consciously and deliberately created as their central villain a character that is an oafish buffoon. Was he supposed to have a laugh track and they forgot to put it in?

Most people don't need to be told where to laugh. Kylo Ren's characterisation was consistent throughout the film - and they deliberately chose Adam Driver to play him. Seriously, how many more clues could they have dropped that that was deliberate.

I would argue that this is the result of trope decay itself. At the time Vader was presented, he was one of the most awesome powerful villainous flamboyant figures that had ever been shown on the screen. Every villain since Vader has been trying to either be Vader, or one up Vader, to the point that Vader's demeanor in the original film seems to a modern audience to be calm by comparison.

This is because frequently less is more. Vader as a villain wasn't made by flamboyant shows of power. If flamboyant shows of power were all it took then Kylo Ren would be more of a villain than Vader would. Vader as a villain was made in part by Peter Cushing, and in part by Carrie Fisher. And above all he was made by that conference room scene with the way Vader casually choked an admiral, and the interaction between Tarkin and Vader. (It was also made by costuming of course - but if costuming and movement were all it took then Darth Maul would be memorable).

The same thing happens with Gandalf. We write articles in retrospect about Gandalf being 'a 6th level wizard', because every wizard since Gandalf has been trying to either be Gandalf or one up him.

And this is completely wrong. The reason that Gandalf is such a poor fit for D&D is because D&D was using an entirely different model for what a wizard is from D&D.