Psion said:I can only speak to my experience, but my experience is this: It has happened in nearly every GURPS game I have played in which the disads weren't filtered or nerfed by the GM or the "no points" optional rule was used. When it did happen, it happened with fairly normal players who I never had any problem with minmaxing in other games*.
I don't buy the retort (which I have heard before) that it must be my players that are the problem. I find that reletively normal players are prone to this, and I feel that it is the job of the system to cater to the players, not vice versa. (Sort of a corrolary of my sig.)
I'm very much of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, i think that system does matter. On the other hand, i agree with the maxim that munchkinism is thefault of the player (or maybe group), not the rules. I'm not sure how these two elements interact. My own observations are that players are equally munchkiny in any system, or at least as munchkiny as the mechanics allow. But, on a bit of a tangent, while i don't see significant variablitiy in munchkin-ness due to ruleset, i *do* see noticable (if not quite significant) variance in how people play in other ways due to ruleset. So i have seen players play a more hack-n-slash style in games that are more mechanically combat-oriented, while those same players don't do so in games that are, say, society-oriented. I'm not sure why, IME, this general tendency of game systems to affect player behavior doesn't seem to extend to munchkin-ness.
And, i gotta say, i suspect you're having a similar cognitive dissonance-- IIRC, when it comes to bashing D&D3E, isn't your usual position that it's not the system, it's the players?