Whats a Munchkin?

[Tom Kalbfus]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That sort of thing could actually happen, though you'd have to know the officer in question. Looting like that is illegal. It's done, but illegal.

In any case, if a character with greedy decides to go try and loot, well, that's roleplaying. It's munchkinism if the player expects this process to go smoothly, or objects to the fact that much of the time he won't actually get anything, or expects to get any special benefits out of his looting. For example, in GURPS I would have a simple way of determining if he actually found useful loot: if he pays the points for wealth, he's found enough loot to give him a level of wealth.

Well searching for treasure is dangerous, fighting the Germans is dangerous, and looting for treasure and not getting caught is dangerous, also the soldier in question will have to find some place to hide the treasure until after the war or after his tour of duty at least, then he can recover the treasure and sell it to some pawn shop of fence or something. All this activity is worth some points, defeating those who are guarding the treasure is worth some points and instead of receiving the point award the character instead receives some of it in treasure, not really that different from D&D. The amount of treasure reflects the difficulty in aquiring it and aquiring the treasure is worth some character points, maybe half of them go into the treasure itself. So how many dollars worth of treasure do you think a character point is worth?
You know this might not be a bad idea for a World War II campaign, I mean the characters don't have much of a chance to affect the outcome of the war itself, so they might as well go on some hazardous duty and enrich themselves in the process. the chaos of war provides plenty of opportunity and cover for this, and in the process they might actually do something heroic besides. All in all, its in principle not that much different from going through a dungeon, killing monsters and collecting their treasure. There are even some World War II movies where the characters do exactly that. Of course most of the victims are German soldiers and some Nazis that are shooting at them. The PCs figure that in a fight to the death, they get to take the enemy's loot if they win, fair is fair. And while collecting the loot if the find some of the enemy's plans, well they pass it on to the higher ups while keeping things of high monetary value to themselves.

[Stonebender]

Wow! this post really exploded on me. Thanks much all for posting here.

I'll keep watching to see what else is posted

[Stonebender]

LoL You guys are describing one of my favorite movies to a T.

Kelly’s Heroes

Clint Eastwood, Telly Sevales (misspelled) and a couple of other nameable actors.

A Squad in WWII, fed up with their lot in the war, stumble across proof that there is 18,000 gold bars (stolen by the germens?) hidden in a small town bank 30 miles behind enemy lines.

I would classify the movie as an action/comedy.

[Qoltar]

Stonebender,

Kelly's Heroes is such a classic and Typical example of an RPG situation - that I use it as an example at the store I work at.

Kelly /Clint Eastwood could either be a PC ..or a GM controlled NPC.

if there were 4 to 5 players - each could play 2 soldiers each ...an older charater and a younger character for each player.

- E.W. Charlton

P.S.: And "Oddball' is NOT a Munchkin character - he is comic relief plausibly within the environment....if played right. I'd allow him.

[Lord_Kjeran]

Chello!

Yes, and reset in the First Gulf War as "Three Kings."

Three Kings

Tony

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

In that case the character's choices are restricted by out of game social pressure on the player. I'd rather not have knowledge that I can't act on, and so have freedom to act in what ever way I choose than to have someone say, I can't do that because my character wouldn't know.

Actually, no. The character's choices are restricted by the player's commitment to the idea of narrative authenticity. The other players speaking up is reminding people who've slipped up, which is something that people do.

As for having knowledge you can't act on, this is purely a matter of personal preference, and my players' preferences differ from yours. I don't say this just as speculation or "it's true because I say it's true": Several campaigns back I offered the player the two options of having each character's private experiences handled out of sight of the other players, or having everything take place in the open. They voted unanimously for the second option. So I'm playing with people whose tastes are not the same as yours.

Would you want to play "Open Card" Poker? Imagine a game of poker where everyones cards are on the table face up so everyone can see them, and then have social pressure on each player so they don't act on the knowledge of what the other player's cards are. This doesn't sound like much fun to me. The best games are when the players knowledge and the character's knowledge are the same, or the character might know more than the player, but instances where the player knows more than the character should be kept rare if the GM is doing a good job.

In the first place, I don't agree; I think situations where the player knows more than the character can add a lot to a campaign. For a start, they make possible irony, which is a literary effect I like.

In the second place, as I said above, my players don't agree with you either. They find what I'm doing to be fun.

In the third place, given that this is so, clearly they are not playing in my campaigns in the spirit in which one plays poker. More specifically, my campaigns are not very competitive, neither player vs. player nor player vs. GM. The heart of poker is competitive bidding based on the strength of one's own hand and one's guesses as to the strength of the other players' hands; but that's not the heart of roleplaying. For my players, at least, the heart of roleplaying seems to be doing the best job of playing a scene the other players will find memorable.

Here, for example, is a comment by one of my regulars about the "brutal sex" scene I discussed in a thread in the roleplaying board:

For example, in Oak and Ash and Thorn during the intense moments between Spider and Lucy I could feel Lucy's feelings, and at the same time my own frustration with her inexperience and my glee at just how cool it was to be playing such an intense scene.

Since splitting the party up and the players slows down play, this ought to discourage the party from splitting up. One exception is when one of the characters gets killed and the player creates another character. The GM then works the new character into play. GURPS characters take a while to create, so you have the player create this character in another room while the rest continue role playing, then at some later point the GM introduces the new character into the situation with backstory on how he got here.

I have played an entire campaign where the PCs were split up until the final couple of episodes. You get slower progress, but you also get much more intense focus on the motives and experiences of the individual character and on the relationships between the characters who are together at a given time.

Your strategy of sending the player to another room would never work for me. I don't let people create characters and drop them into play on their own say-so. The last time a character left a campaign, I asked the player to discuss replacement characters with all the other players, and then draw up a character sheet and let me have a week or so to review it before the character could enter play. This meant he was out for a month. I'd rather do that than take a chance on having a character who won't fit into the Gestalt of the campaign.

In summation: What you are saying is a clear description of one style of play. But there are other styles. You should not suppose that the customs of your tribe and island are laws of nature.

[zogo]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

The best games are when the players knowledge and the character's knowledge are the same, or the character might know more than the player, but instances where the player knows more than the character should be kept rare if the GM is doing a good job.

While Mr. Stoddard has already addressed this I feel the need to speak up. It makes me sad when people tell me there is an objectively best way to game.

I do not like a dungeon crawling hack and slash sort of game. I would not normally play in such a game. But other people do like those kinds of games, and if they play them I think its a good thing.

Mr. Stoddard and I both like games where players often recieve information that their characters do not*. You do not like such a game. This probably means we shouldn't game together. It does not mean that my style is better than yours or vice versa.

*I have even occasionally played out brief scenes that NO PC observed and was therefore OOC knowledge to all the players.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Der Wanderer

Though I agree the player needs to show some variation of his character depending on the setting. And someone who likes to slaughter should probabely not play in a Jane Austen "Adventure"

Which is at least partly the point - the "ninja in <wherever>" is just an exaggerated example. But if the player insists on non-campaign appropriate characters, that's often a good sign of munchkinism. Not the whole definition, but yeah, always wanting to run some killer* character regardless of the appropriateness of that character to the campaign (and presumably the fun of the other players and the GM) is munchkinny behavior. If the GM is up for it ("I'm running a game in Scarlet Pimpernel France!" "I wanna be a ninja!" "Okay, I can work with that. Stat him up.") then it's not really a problem. If the player selfishly and inappropriately wants something for its sheer coolness and power, it's probably munchkinny behavior. Wanting Stormbringer because you want to run Elric in a Melnibone campaign is not necessarily munchkinny (he'd be a roleplaying challenge), but wanting Stormbringer in someone's non-Melnibone fantasy game so you can kill everyone including your fellow PCs and blame it on the sword IS.


* literally or figuratively, both "killer" as in "he/she/it can kill anything and does" and "killer" as in "really cool."

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

Which is at least partly the point - the "ninja in <wherever>" is just an exaggerated example. But if the player insists on non-campaign appropriate characters, that's often a good sign of munchkinism.

I know you say it's not really the whole indicator, but I know two people who are pretty good roleplayers and the concept of a 'fish out of water' type character is very popular between them. I think they've played one 'straight' character each in the last fifteen years that I've known them.

I think you should modify that to say that a munchkin would be 'resistant to correction' when they want to design their character that is out of whack.

One of the people I've mentioned came up with an idea for a magic-using minotaur in a predominantly low-magic society of humans. But he allowed himself to modify the concept when corrected... though he still wanted it to be a strong and ugly character who had some innate spells. In the end he came up with an interesting character design who was strong and able to cast 2 low-level innate spells.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

The amount of treasure reflects the difficulty in aquiring it

I disagree. You can have much work and hassle to get a minuscule amount of treasure, or no treasure at all.

To defeat an enemy does not require a reward in form of treasure. The defeating is a reward in itself.

It is, of course, perfectly OK to hand out treasure in some form or another if you want to do that - but it's not required in any way; certainly not by the difficulty the character had in getting to the treasure (Unless this is a specific setting or world restriction).

Originally Posted by whswhs

In the third place, given that this is so, clearly they are not playing in my campaigns in the spirit in which one plays poker.

Agreed. In a RPG, you cannot win or lose. That's a fundamental point - you can only have fun or not. How you get this fun is a matter of personal preference.