Whats a Munchkin?

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Oh, and everyone in your gaming group should be considered completely spineless chumps for putting up with him for all those years.

That's not fair - you get to judge him only by the aggregation of years of bad RPGing behavior in one pre-packaged post. The gamers in question obviously liked this guy as a person enough to spend time with him, and steadily built up the "hey, this guy sucks as a GM and a player" evidence. You got it in one go. If he showed up the first session cheating at dice, yelling at other players, and running off a fudged character sheet but acted friendly, I'd agree with you. But I strongly suspect if they played with him for years, it wasn't like this was his constant non-stop behavior from the second he walked in the door.

It's like saying everyone who ever had a "my ex-gf" or "my ex-bf" story about a horrible ex doing nasty stuff - yet still stayed with that ex- for a while after - is a spineless chump for letting that happen to them. Sometimes you get a mix of good and bad, and it takes a while for you to determine that the bad outweighs the good.

***

My definition of munchkin, to address the topic, is a little more flexible. Basically, I apply it to rule-bending cheats trying to achieve maximal power regardless of the intent and design of the rules. Merely maximizing power is more of a "power gamer" - a label that fits me exactly in CRPGs, wargames, and in my old PBM days. You can be a power gamer with excellent roleplaying skills and a good character background, but I find it hard to think of a real munchkin having positive gaming benefits.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

My definition of munchkin, to address the topic, is a little more flexible. Basically, I apply it to rule-bending cheats trying to achieve maximal power regardless of the intent and design of the rules. Merely maximizing power is more of a "power gamer" - a label that fits me exactly in CRPGs, wargames, and in my old PBM days. You can be a power gamer with excellent roleplaying skills and a good character background, but I find it hard to think of a real munchkin having positive gaming benefits.

On the behave of power games I'll have to cry insult there 8)

Powers games like high powered characters, in high powered settings, this has nothing to with rule bending or disregard to intent.

the only rule bending might bein in house rules to get the setting feel out of an inferior system that only goes most of the way to creating a game the group wants. But that's done as a group.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

On the behave of power games I'll have to cry insult there 8)

Powers games like high powered characters, in high powered settings, this has nothing to with rule bending or disregard to intent.

I never said Power Gamers bend the rules - I rather specifically did not say that. I don't think that's a trait of power gamers.

In RPGing, I regard power gamers as the sorts who want high-powered play pretty much regardless of the situation. I have a couple power-gamer leaning players - they'll play anything, but given a choice they'll always choose the 500 point campaign over the 250 point one, and the 250 over the 150. I run that way myself. I don't mind low-point characters, but the rare times I get to play I want to play action heroes and blockbuster movie main characters - I want to be Han Solo, not Joe 1st Level Smuggler.

In PBMs (for example), I was a pure power gamer. We regarded ourselves as the ones who played to win. For example, you'd get guys in a fantasy wargame naming their characters after Tolkein characters, writing fanfic about their heroic deeds, or refusing to use human troops because "I am an elven king, our army is only elves!"
We'd be running around assassinating characters if we couldn't suborn or recruit them, amassing the most powerful armies the rules would allow, and generally savagely fighting to win. It was a winner-take-all wargame, after all - not an RPG, so we generally regarded the role-players as speedbumps. So we were "power gamers" but not munchkins - we'd min-max to get the most power, and choose power over flavor, but we wouldn't cheat or break the rules (and if we found bizarre loopholes, we'd report them to the GMs - winning a broken game is a bizarre thing to pay $ for).

So yeah, I specifically didn't ascribe rule-breaking or rule-bending behavior to power gamers because I think that's what sets munchkins apart.

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

On the behave of power games I'll have to cry insult there 8)

Powers games like high powered characters, in high powered settings, this has nothing to with rule bending or disregard to intent.

It depends where you come from. Around here there's a bad connotation with the term power gamer and a downright vicious connotation toward munchkin.

It was surprising to me to see some people vocally abjuring the benefits of power gaming, mostly because it meant something completely different to them.

[Tiger Maggot]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

I knew a guy once in a Champions game who took Quadripalegic as a limitation so he could put more points into his power suit -- which he never took off.

I ran an NPC kind of like that. He was the group's hacker, and spent most of the time in cyberspace (he didn't get much use except as a "so Satyajit found this on the network. You guys should check it out" kind of deal). But when an MIB strike team showed up looking for the alien scout plane they'd stolen from the guys who shot it down, he was nowhere to be found. When things got REALLY bad, he and the NPC leader burst out of the water tower on the roof in battlesuits. I figured if you can do a full environmental interface through a skull jack, you should be able to rig some kind of software to let it act as a straight interface.

[Tiger Maggot]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

You Might be a Munchkin if...

You are trying to figure out how to make "Holy Napalm" ...,

Holy Napalm is an actual concoction used by my religion. It is ordinary napalm, blessed by a clergyman of the True Faith. You might as well claim holy water, crosses, and other anti-undead religious gear is "munchkin."

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Kaldrin

It depends where you come from. Around here there's a bad connotation with the term power gamer and a downright vicious connotation toward munchkin.

Heh, one of my best friends and occasional player/GM often accuses me of running low-powered supers games in some of my settings due to my tendency to give all the PCs access to some type of power and/or ability which sets them off from the normal.
To that I usually reply that if we wanted to play normal characters we wouldn't be wasting our evenings with make-believe.

Besides, he like most everyone has fun playing a super, or even a god now and then, and nothing like running a god campaign to sharpen a GM's improv.

Power gamers don't really bother me, min-maxing doesn't bother me, (as long as its on theme), but on the other hand, someone can be a lousy character builder, not know power from shmower, not be able to add worth a fig, and still be the biggest munchkin you'd ever not want to deal with.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Kaldrin

It depends where you come from. Around here there's a bad connotation with the term power gamer and a downright vicious connotation toward munchkin.

It was surprising to me to see some people vocally abjuring the benefits of power gaming, mostly because it meant something completely different to them.

Yeah I know the types it normally from people that like to play a level of realism where you can virtually smell the sweat and blood, but what more believe this is the one true way to play, when the run int those the like to play larger than life type games. 8)


oh and Toadkiller_Dog the reason what I replied like that is it read like you "little more flexible" definition included power gamers, but it looks like I might have miss read you.

edit: for the recrd I too can enjoy a low powered game, I've been known to play Child's perpestive campain by choice, sort of like the adventures of the Famous Five

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

Power gamers don't really bother me, min-maxing doesn't bother me, (as long as its on theme), but on the other hand, someone can be a lousy character builder, not know power from shmower, not be able to add worth a fig, and still be the biggest munchkin you'd ever not want to deal with.

I'll even go as far as say min-maxers are well come, if their willing to shre their "skills" with others in the group to flesh out character consepts.

one of the main reason I min-max is to build an effect character, with enough points left over to flewsh out the "fluff" abilites 8)

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

I've been known to play Child's perpestive campain by choice, sort of like the adventures of the Famous Five

Oy, Enid Blyton, that brings back memories . . .