Whats a Munchkin?

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Kaldrin

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.

That's another good indicator, but I did take pains to point out that if the GM considers the character an appropriate and campaign-friendly character, it's not munchkinny behavior. To quote myself:

Originally Posted by Toadkiller_Dog

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.

So I don't think you're disagreeing with me. I didn't say a fish-out-of-water type is munchkinny, but if you want to be a fish-out-of-water type for bad reasons, and regardless of the objections and enjoyment (or lack of enjoyment) of the GM and other players, you're probably a munchkin. If what you're proposing is still okay with the other players and the GM, you're just making odd choices, not showing indications of munchkinness.

[Kaldrin]

Originally Posted by zorg

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.

Hey, maybe that should be the agreed upon definition of a munchkin. Someone who tries to win a role-playing game.

[zorg]

Munchkinny is also to try to design a character with enormous/problematic/adventure-wrecking powers and hoping the GM doesn't notice. Or to get permission from the GM for a minor aberration and turn it into a huge one, again hoping no-one notices.

In a Shadowrun game we played years ago, one player wanted to play a cyber-zombie (if you get cyberware installed in SR, you lose Essence. If you get a negative total of Essence, you die. Or you become an extremely rare, mostly NPC type, called cyber zombie. The rules state explicitely that such a CZ should never, ever be allowed to players). The GM agreed - cool RPing possibilities - and allowed at most a negative Essence of Minus One (Essence starts at Six). The player designed a character with Minus Twelve (in numbers: -12). Ridiculous.

[Casey]

Originally Posted by Stonebender

How do you guys define Munchkinism? Examples would be apreciated. munchkin and non munchkin

Exploits rules, treats party unity or working towards any sort of common goal as alien concepts, always wants to play the same over the top character who the player thinks (and says) is better than anyone else in combat, roleplays at best some idealized ubermensch version of themself, must have everything their way and throws a tizzy fit when they don't, must have first pick of loot, never shuts up about their p0werz, doesn't pipe up about their character's disadvantages, and repeatedly states "My character will never die". It's not any one factor, it's multiple all at once. The larval stage most gamers grow out of. It took Call of Cthulhu for me. x.O

GM's Bane. Often the wimp bully of the RPG set.

The term was usually associated with the various D&Ds but now it's often leveled at detailed point-based games since its arguably easier to support Munchkinism with such rules vs. a more random/less detailed system. That being said, a good Munchkin will attempt to exploit any game, regardless of system or setting.

[Casey]

As for Ninjas in Renaissance Florence a munchkin wouldn't bother trying to justify it, or come up with some neat roleplaying hook, or whatnot. Such things are beneath (beyond?) them and wouldn't matter. That a ninja could do more damage than anyone else and kill more people in one turn while never getting hurt and have more l33t shtuff than anyone else would.

And no that's not Exalted (or other high-powered game). Exalted has reasons why. :)

[Tom Kalbfus]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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.

If it takes a month for a player to introduce a new character into a campaign, then what do you do if a character gets killed? There is no suspense if there is no danger and if there is danger there is a chance that characters may get killed. Do you go soft on them so that players don't have to make new characters? Or do you have frequent and easily available means to bring dead characters back to life in your game?

[Brandy]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

There is no suspense if there is no danger and if there is danger there is a chance that characters may get killed.

Au contraire. There are many kinds of danger. If the players care about game dimensions other than life and limb then there are many means of putting characters in peril and players into suspense.

A character could be at risk of:

• Financial ruin
• Loss of station
• Loss of face
• Sexual or emotional rejection by loved ones
• Loss of loved ones, though death or abandonment
• Sullying of reputation
• Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

In the real world, I'd care about all of those things. I'd struggle against the forces that put me at those risks. In a roleplaying game, if I'm truly identifying with the character and playing the role, those risks should be just as palpable as risk of injury or death.

There is no suspense if there is no conflict, but conflict isn't just crossing swords.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Originally Posted by Bookman

Au contraire. There are many kinds of danger. If the players care about game dimensions other than life and limb then there are many means of putting characters in peril and players into suspense.

A character could be at risk of:

• Financial ruin
• Loss of station
• Loss of face
• Sexual or emotional rejection by loved ones
• Loss of loved ones, though death or abandonment
• Sullying of reputation
• Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

In the real world, I'd care about all of those things. I'd struggle against the forces that put me at those risks. In a roleplaying game, if I'm truly identifying with the character and playing the role, those risks should be just as palpable as risk of injury or death.

There is no suspense if there is no conflict, but conflict isn't just crossing swords.

But for those other things you really don't need what's on the character sheet, the rest is just an exercise in acting. Character sheets are mostly designed to handle combat, with its hit points, DR, and Dodge, and your character's skill with each weapon type. For other types of roleplaying, its mostly just interpersonal interaction, yeah you may role some dice in that, but true social role playing doesn't require dice rolls just common sense.

But in any game where you really have to use whats on your character sheets, there is danger to life and limb.

[sharkey0818]

A munchkin is a player who plays a normally cooperative game exclusively for the purposes of "winning", usually at the cost of the other players' enjoyment of in an RPG game. The term is also frequently used in reference to powergamers and to immature players in general.

A more neutral use of the term is in reference to young players, who, not knowing yet how to roleplay, typically obsess about the statistical "power" of their characters rather than developing their characters' fictional personalities.

Some people say this is a certain stage of a gamer's growth and that if one starts to understand the philosophy behind an RPG, they will stop these kind of Munchkin behaviours.

A GM who constantly awards players magical or "broken" (overly powerful) items without proper backstory or justification can also be called a munchkin master.
Other roleplaying stereotypes :
Real Man (the guy who usually plays rough-and-tumble fighter types)
Real Roleplayer (the guy who gets the most into 'playing' their character, and also tends to be the brains of the group),
Loonie (the guy who comes up with ridiculous character concepts, makes lots of wise-cracks, and generally plays for laughs)
Munchkin (the aforementioned power-gamer).

When encountering a sleeping dragon...
Real Men wake it up and then attack it.
Real Roleplayers sneak away quietly.
Loonies tie its shoelaces together.
Munchkins kill it with a single stroke, make armor out of the hide, then resurrect it as a familiar.


Or it could just be the squeaky-voiced little people in L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz

My thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[Brandy]

Originally Posted by Tom Kalbfus

But in any game where you really have to use whats on your character sheets, there is danger to life and limb.

Maybe in d20 or Hero, but not in GURPS. There's a ton of stuff on the character sheet that has absolutely no bearing on combat: social advantages like status, talents like smooth operator, and the vast, vast majority of skills don't do anything in combat.

Contrary to your assumptions, lots of people do use skill levels and die-rolling (as opposed to "an exercise in acting" and "common sense") to handle interpersonal encounters. You continue to err in thinking that everyone plays these games the same way that you do.

Hey, if combat-oriented games are your gig that's cool. That doesn't alter the fact that you're just not correct in some of your assumptions about other styles of gaming.