Power Gaming and How To Thwart It

[sgtcallistan]

-anyway; the 'grab for what is in the game' style might be power gaming, but if the game isn't about that, do you have power gamers?

If a story is about conflict, or 'returning that what was lost', there will be attempt by players who feel it must be they themselves and no other, who acheives the aim of the game.

I do not thwart this as GM; I have more complex plots instead. One that doesn't have an obvious threat, or target, or conflict, but one that presents them with a society and people, and a subtle reason to defend / support that situation.
Usually it's 'you are in this society / place, and your existence / safety or position depends on it's continued existence'.
The 'no-one gets out of here alive' argument, I call it.

If there's money and magic swords, then the shallow players can go for them.
If they discover that the druid / old man / patron was using that as a motivating factor to gain what he wanted, fine.
Perhaps they even make the break-through to taking charge of their own destinies.
It is to be hoped. I try to have some aspect of enlightenment in every game.

[Jonas]

To me power gaming and character optimization is not inherently bad, nor is it by default the best method. Instead I've always viewed them as just another set of tools available to the GM or Players to be used as dictated by the type of game being had. I've played fairly low powered very much ordinary Joe characters, others who could likely hold their own against an enraged werewolf or two in HtH, and everything in between but I've always strives for them to be appropriate to the game in question. That, at least to me is what seems to cause the most issues in a game. When either the Player and/or GM have differing idea's of what that is and due to stubbornness or communication failure are unable to work it out.

Example, during Lonewulfs brief Fallout-ish Gurps 4ed Campaign at the beginning of the year I offered to be a floater. Since I was happy just to have a gurps game to play in and so far they only had two players, Doc and Techie specializing in Weapons and Armor if memory serves me, figured I'd help out and round out whatever skill set was needed. He mentioned that a combat oriented character would be useful, given the genera and the other two characters being more geared towards light self defense.

As a result I spent the next few days looking over the others CS's, seeing what their strengths and weaknesses were and planning accordingly. In the end I submitted a character that was pretty much borderline munchkin given we only had around 50-75 points to work with, I think. Very good with his rifle(Rifles/TL7 16 plus Weapons bond), acceptable with his backup pistol, and no slouch with his ''walking stick' either. On top of this tracking, scrounging, and other survival skills, the ability to maintain his own gun and could patch himself or another up, and all the gear necessary to logically make it happen including a nice scope for the rifle. All with the extra points I had left over after my primary nich was addressed.

Did I do my best to optimize him given the constraints we had to work under? Absolutely, I won't deny that. Did I do my best to round out the rest of the group with only one character? Yes. Did I intentionally poach on anyone else roles? No. I made sure that while he could at least maintain his own kit and clean a wound if need be both the Doc (can't recall the players name) and the Techie (Tonya) were still far better in their chosen fields. Something I intended, barring IC occurrences, to stay that way. As far as I know none of them ever had a problem with the char, but if they did and had made a comment about it I'd have happily changed things around. Though in part it may have never came to that as shortly after I left due to time differences it seems to have folded.*

So yes, I have power gamed but it has never been out of a desire to be 'superior', it simply appeared to be the correct tool to use at the time and has always been out of the desire to either help the GM or the game.


*Sadly, as it had been interesting so far but 6am Saturdays was kind of pushing it for me.