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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6999784" data-attributes="member: 42582">What RPGs are we talking about?In Marvel Heroic RP, XP can be spent to change or boost PC abilities. XP are earned by completing "milestones". Here is one of Nightcrawler's milestones:Romantic: 1 XP when you woo an ally or enemy. 3 XP when you spend a Transition Scene with a romantic entanglement. 10 XP when you either break off a romantic relationship, or seek to enter into a more permanent partnership and ask your love to marry you.The first time the "powergamer" in my group played a session of MHRP, he played Nightcrawler. The other PCs were Bobby Drake (Iceman) and James Rhodes (War Machine). The session started with Nightcrawler suggesting a trip to a night spot. Being a good GM, the women whose table the heroes joined at the bar were the members of B.A.D (Black Mamba, Asp and Diamondback) - and they were particularly keen to get details of some Stark tech from Rhodes. Nightcrawler wooed one of them; then had a romantic "entanglement" with her; then - at least partly in order to keep her from trying to steal a Stark-produced orbital/reentry vehicle - teleported her to the top of the Capitol Dome where he proposed to her - only to abandon her! (Fuller session write-up <a href="http://file:///F:/aaRoleplaying/aaSystems-Other/Marvel%20Heroic%20Roleplaying/zActual%20Play/2%20GMed%20a%20session%20of%20MHRP%20today.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.)That seems to me to count as roleplaying, by any definition. (If a somewhat more cynical version of Nightcrawler than I'm accustomed to from Chris Claremont.)It's also powergaming - in one session that player, by seeing opportunities to play to his character's milestones, and then exploiting them, earned more XP than the other players over two or three sessions.Another example would be Burning Wheel: to succeed at most challenging tasks in BW requires spending metagame resources (fate points, and "persona points" which are another type of fate point). These points are earned by doing things like fulfilling a PC goal; making a choice or performing an action during play that expresses one of your PC's Beliefs; playing out the conflict between Beliefs forced by a particular choice your PC has to make; etc. So any player wanting to powergame BW has to look for, and create, opportunities to roleplay their character in these various ways.Even 5e D&D allows for this sort of thing: play to your bonds/flaws etc to get Inspiration to grant advantage to power your GWM/SS -5 to hit (or your sneak attack, or whatever).Or going back to AD&D, if a GM used the rules for gaining experience levels by training then, if you didn't play your PC in accordance with class and alignment (eg, to quote p 86 of Gygax's DMG, "[c]lerics who refuse to help and heal or do not remain faithful to their deity, fighters who hang back from combat or attempt to steal, or fail to boldlylead, magic-users who seek to engage in melee or ignore magic items they could employ in crucial situations, thieves who boldly engage in frontal attacks or refrain from acquisition of an extra bit of treasure when the opportunity presents itself, "cautious" characters who do not pull their own weight"), you had to pay a lot more for training.So I don't agree that, in general, RP and powergaming are not related. This is true in some systems (eg 3E D&D; Rolemaster; Traveller) but not in general.</blockquote>

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