[DF] Munchkins in the Dungeon: Yeah or Nay?

[Greg 1]

Do you like munchkins in your dungeon? Do you say:

Yeah! DF is a celebration of clean, munchkiny fun - just like the old days but with better rules.

Nay! Munchkins ignore cool ideas and just chase the plusses.

Other! Which I shall explain!!

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by Greg 1

Do you like munchkins in your dungeon? Do you say:

Yeah! DF is a celebration of clean, munchkiny fun - just like the old days but with better rules.

Nay! Munchkins ignore cool ideas and just chase the plusses.

Other! Which I shall explain!!

Other!, I suppose. I prefer my players to be non-munchikinny... munchkin-like... whatever... in their actions, but I'm always willing to help them save points on the road to realizing their character concept; letting them lower a bunch of skills by one point if it gives enough character points back to raise the base attribute by one point, for example.

For Dungeon Fantasy, I really do prefer the players focus a bit more on the gameplay than the roleplay to some extent, though. If a player just wants to roleplay an elf, I don't need to build a huge dungeon full of traps and monsters for that. :P If I build the dungeon, I want it to be the focus of the game.

[kure]

YEAH! well, just not push it to hard

[Anders]

Other!

Because my group has Conservation of Munchkinism: if four of them come up with reasonable, sensible characters, the fifth's character will be... strange. So I prefer the Munchkinism to be as thinly spread as possible.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by Greg 1

Do you like munchkins in your dungeon? Do you say:

Yeah! DF is a celebration of clean, munchkiny fun - just like the old days but with better rules.

Nay! Munchkins ignore cool ideas and just chase the plusses.

Other! Which I shall explain!!

DF is all about the pluses. It is munchkin by its' very definition. (Not that I've room to talk as my campaigns don't have point limits ... :) )

[Nemi3e]

YEAH!

Oh, wait, you weren't talking about having incredibly difficult humanoid monsters called munchkins in the dungeons for my DF players to slay?.

[gjc8]

I would say Yeah!

But if you have players with different experience levels, you have to use caution to ensure the expert munchkins don't overshadow the beginner munchkins.

[panton41]

I once sat in on Lizard (of Lands Before Time and Tales of the Solar Patrol) reading a story at a writing club that began with the murder of a Munchkin, but the story was about a society that could enter into fictional worlds at will.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by gjc8

I would say Yeah!

But if you have players with different experience levels, you have to use caution to ensure the expert munchkins don't overshadow the beginner munchkins.

With my tabletop, one player is super competitive and super bright, and if necessary will invent his own goal conditions so he can "win" whatever game he's playing. However, he IS bright, and realizes RPGs aren't about directly opposing the other players, or really even the GM - he usually just sets himself personal goals like "highest damage delivered to a single target", but since he's the only one playing that game he gets to define who gets to take credit for what damage (if he's buffing someone else, he tends to "count" some of their damage towards his high score goal). He is also just as likely to make a "super munchkin" healer or buffer as he is a super damage character. In all cases he points out to the GM where he thinks he's doing something actually dubious in a game design sense, rather than "just" hyper-efficient.

He's also very willing to help other players achieve the most hyper-efficient implementation of their character concept - setting that players own goals first, not his own. One of our players wants the simplest character to play that she can get that still fits her concept of "rogue-like that throws lightning bolts", and he's aggressively simplified it for her and is always on the look out for simpler ways to do it. Although his secondary goal is to ALSO maximize her "plusses".

So he's got some serious munchkin tendencies, but they're definitely held in check by decent human nature, and he basically uses his rules-fu for good.

That's the kind of "munchkinism" I don't mind at all.

However, the problem is that "Munchkin" is a vague term, and to a LOT of people a munchkin's methods include outright cheating and a hostile relationship between the player and GM, or even the player vs everyone else. Bigger "plusses" acquired at any cost, including ruining the friendly social atmosphere I like at my games? No, no, many times no. Cheating is no, deliberately and/or constantly ruining someone elses fun (including the GMs) is no, it's all just very no.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Bruno

With my tabletop, one player is super competitive and super bright, and if necessary will invent his own goal conditions so he can "win" whatever game he's playing. However, he IS bright, and realizes RPGs aren't about directly opposing the other players, or really even the GM - he usually just sets himself personal goals like "highest damage delivered to a single target", but since he's the only one playing that game he gets to define who gets to take credit for what damage (if he's buffing someone else, he tends to "count" some of their damage towards his high score goal). He is also just as likely to make a "super munchkin" healer or buffer as he is a super damage character. In all cases he points out to the GM where he thinks he's doing something actually dubious in a game design sense, rather than "just" hyper-efficient.

He's also very willing to help other players achieve the most hyper-efficient implementation of their character concept - setting that players own goals first, not his own. One of our players wants the simplest character to play that she can get that still fits her concept of "rogue-like that throws lightning bolts", and he's aggressively simplified it for her and is always on the look out for simpler ways to do it. Although his secondary goal is to ALSO maximize her "plusses".

Sounds a lot like how many video games will "score" players in an otherwise cooperative game - Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 comes to mind.