That roleplaying anecdote in full...

[aumentou]

There's this one anecdote I hear a lot. This one anecdote that really pisses me off. Here it is:

"Oh, well we were playing [game system] and I was playing a [min-maxed monstrosity]. So at one point, [interaction with event] happened, and because my character was [horribly overpowered compared with the statted challenge] it was [remarkably easy to succeed]."

Alternatively, especially from old WoD, though I suspect new WoD would give similar results (if mages were involved, anyway):

"Oh, well we were playing [game system] and we were playing [min-maxed monstrosities]. So at one point, [crossover event with a different game] happened, and because my character was [horribly overpowered compared with the other game], we [walked all over them and ruined their game]."

To which the question I want to ask, but never do* is: If you knew it was going to be overpowered, and you knew it was going to succeed, didn't that kind of ruin the game? And for the crossover: If you knew you were going to walk in and walk all over someone elses game, why did you do that? That's pretty similar to walking down a beach until you find someone smaller than you building a sandcastle and then kicking it over. Do you do that, too? If they put time and effort into characters and have an interesting plot that they're enjoying, your presence as unstoppable badasses fucks up the fun game they were having and turns their lovingly-crafted characters into expendable mooks for your game. You can do that without them, and thereby avoid ruining their fun.

*because it seems rude

I understand the desire to play the almighty badass who's invincible, but I also know that a) it's a pretty immature desire, and b) you can't do that all the time. The concept of "screen time" is actually important in games, and the idea that you get to be the hero(ine) so everyone else has to be a mook is fine, briefly. But then you have to get taken down, or ride off into the sunset, and somebody else gets to be the hero(ine) for a while.

Okay, rant over.

Comments

[grok-mctanys.livejournal.com]

Surely the first is a failure of GMing. The GM should either be upping the challenge so its in line with the group's abilities, or changing the type of challenge so that your combat monster party finds themselves in a situation where they need social skills/intelligence/whatever their collective dump stats are to succeed. (If a smart player comes up with a clever idea for their dumb character, then FFS make the player roll INT to see if the character thinks of it/understands it well enough to implement it properly.)

The second will probably sort itself out in time, because the players are demonstrating their OOC social skills/intelligence dump stat, and will fail their real life checks to get asked back to do that sort of thing again. :-)

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

I agree completely that it's a failure of GM-ing. But the part where they tell it as an anecdote - that's a failure on their part. I've had GMs and STs fuck up and stat encounters so soft that my character breezed through them before. If I tell that story, I don't tell it as "hey, I'm awesome", I tell it as "hey, the ST fucked up", because that's what it is... and I don't think it's a fun story, I think it's a cautionary tale. It bothers me when people tell that story like that, because the monsters can (and usually should) be as hard as necessary to make it an interesting challenge.

Also, I think the part where you don't ask them back... is a good start. But it doesn't change the part where they've damaged something to start with. If I come round your house and break something expensive then you might not ask me back but you've still got a broken thing. Would be better not to break it at all :o(

[nigelh.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that's a good analogy though. If you invite me round to your house the accepted standards of behaviour entitle you to expect that I will not deliberately smash the place up.

On the other hand if you invite me to a game you're running you should expect that I will play my character (which presumably I've put time and effort into too). If I'm faced with a group of antagonistic but vastly inferior PCs you should expect mayhem, unless there are valid in-game restraints. I know player-vs-player can be a very touchy subject but I don't think the way to manage it is to expect PCs to routinely be nicer to other PCs than they would be to otherwise-identical NPCs.

If an individual or a group of individuals playing their characters "correctly" can have such a devastating effect on a much bigger group then it sounds like a fundamental problem with the game as a whole much more than an issue with those individuals.

[mr-s-face.livejournal.com]

Damn internet communications. I agree with the "playing your character" bit. However, if your character is hostile to the existing group I'm a little puzzled as to why they'd show up - you'd need some pretty contrived reasoning for them to attend. Which is not to say it would never make sense, just that I think it happens more often than there is a plausible reason for it to happen.

The example the other day, for example, was some oWoD changelings showing up at a vampire game. Why? If the answer is "because we want to fuck wiht the vampires" then that's kind of fair... ish... except for the part where your characters should be doing research in order to find out where the vampires are. I mean, it's not like the prince sends messages to the seelie court saying "we love you guys. Please show up and bring Grief".

I do also agree with the sentiment that there's a problem with the game system if it's possible. However, I still think that it's a shitty thing to do to exploit that. Yes, there's a game design error if there's an imbalance like that, but if you weren't being a griefing dick that game design error wouldn't matter, because your character would just not do that. WoD always provides you with ample reasons to avoid other supernaturals.

Now like, if these fairies had a long-established background reason to fuck with vampires (like, some vampires had done crossover and killed one of their mates), and had spent time and effort tracking vampires to work out when they meet (thereby giving the vampires some actual protection and possible warning that shit was going on), and had shown up specifically to fuck with, then that's not so bad (morally at least. System design would still be crap in that example). At that point they're basically playing guest adversaries.
In the example the other night, they showed up because there's an OOC advertised event as a sanctioned game. No indication how their character knew, no pre-existing motivation to go, just show up and kick off.