A criticism aimed at myself (and others) when I was a lot younger...

An action that I regret and would never do now days. But I used to argue relentlessly with a GM when i felt they were being unfair.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;1135563No, I'm not going to call you a liar but I will call you a shitbrain and tell you to fuck off when I'm done with your dumb ass. I don't know you personally (besides you being a dumb fuck) but I know a lot of people love to play off hearsay as personal experience or make up bullshit to support their argument so while I didn't call you a liar, based on my experience, I find it hard to believe because it hasn't happened to me. Now, shitbrain, fuck off.

So you thought just waltz into the forum and call some of us liars without having the stones to just come out and admit. When that kind of posting gets a negative reaction now your getting all angry and full of piss for being called out on it.

Your not interested in having an actual discussion and just trolling duly noted and you can also fuck off as well.

RPG stuff.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1135561As recent events have demonstrated, turns out you can't quarantine it, either.

I have a love/hate relationship with power gaming behavior.  When it is the stereotypical scraping every edge of every rules lawyer case and then arguing the case in game--and then trying to twist the same rule another way next time--I hate it.  Yeah, that's bad behavior that is more than just the power gaming, which goes to show that asshole power gaming is just one more way for the asshole to try to wreck things for everyone else.

When the power gamer just gets a deep satisfaction out of tinkering with the mechanics, so much so that they'll happily help any casual player in the room that wants it and happily leave the player alone if they don't--all within the spirit of the rules, then I don't mind it at all. When the power gamer recognizes that they are more interested in this stuff than anyone else at the table so that they channel that instinct by trying to make a difficult to pull off concept work just as well as a normal character?  Or play a character that is deliberately under-powered mechanically but challenge themselves to make it work?  Love those players.  You'll note that their first instinct is to make the game fun for the whole group.

This.

System Mastery is knowledge.  Like all knowledge it can be used to help others and have fun or can be used to make yourself into a shit-eating fucktwaddle that no one wants to be around.

I wonder if the Powergamer problem people are pointing out isn't just a matter of egotism and a lack of group awereness/sentiment? I've played with some players who would ferociously try to steer the game to their own goals and agenda, convincing the group at all costs to their ideas and even fighting if needed. Or the player who wants the spotlight at all times to do whatever he wants without minding that there may be others in the table who are having little time on the screen because of that. People who lack a sense for the threshold when their drives become disruptive to the game.

In other words: the kind of people that would be a problem no matter the activity. The ball hog in the weekly basketball game that pisses off friends, the obtuse colleague in a bar table who thinks his opinion is the absolute truth and tries to convince everybody of it, etc

Because, as Mitchel pointed above, there are powergamers who manage to contribute positively to the group with interesting characters and atitutes that do not disrupt games.

One of the worst power gamers and min/maxers I've seen was one of the best players I've had.  Still, I liked that Rolemaster Standard System made rules arguments pretty cut and dried.

power gaming was, in older editions, trying to max ability scores and attack bonuses, rarely goofy tricks like magic item combinations. Starting in 3e though it began to become something else. Now it was players demanding the use of poorly worded spell and power descriptions with no regard to internal versimilitude, treating it like glitching in a vidya game; stacking contortion bonues to sneak into, literally, an opponents butthole and kill them from the inside, arguing for such with a straight face, demanding they can multiclass dipping into thisthat'n'theother to make a "build" (this word is blasphemy) with utterly broken results. Then they had the temerity, the audacity even, to declare that the game was broken if you let them do this, first the claim you are not playing the game right if you don't let them, then if you do the game is broken and is shit so we should play my lil pony erp adventures instead. i hate these people. i would genocide them. i will genocide them. gotham both needs and deserves such.

You missed out on Skills and Powers.  That made 3e look like childs play for power gaming.

Quote from: Shasarak;1135787You missed out on Skills and Powers.  That made 3e look like childs play for power gaming.

Skills & Powers, plus my own house rules and a bunch of other options from kits and all those "Complete X(Class or Race) Handbooks" that were floating around at the time, was the thing that clued me into the fact that if you allowed a bunch of options and cool powerz without proper constraints or giving enemies similar benefits you would completely break and trivialize the game. I still liked them, though (at least in concept), cuz they allowed a lot of cool options and flexibility that I was looking for at the time. But Skill & Powers in particular was poorly balanced, with badly configured ability costs that allowed some broken or really crappy selections, creating lots of power disparities in the game.

Quote from: The Exploited.;1135605A criticism aimed at myself (and others) when I was a lot younger...

An action that I regret and would never do now days. But I used to argue relentlessly with a GM when i felt they were being unfair.

Depending on how you address the problem, arguing when you feel wronged can be positive IMO. But you must be ready to cave in and let the GM have their way anyway (even if that means never showing up at their table again).

Quote from: Shasarak;1135787You missed out on Skills and Powers.  That made 3e look like childs play for power gaming.

Old school gamers lament 3e as the point that D&D started to rot... but in reality, it was the introduction of Skills and Powers.

as i recall skills & powers was optional, labeled as "players option" in fact; and most treated it as such, whereas in 3e you met the new age gamers that insisted a broken interpretation of poorly written raw be used or you were railroading or houseruling them, then further insisted the whole game was trash because you let them do it. This phenomenon was not existent to my knowledge in 2e even if S&P was used.

Quote from: Slipshot762;1135973as i recall skills & powers was optional, labeled as "players option" in fact; and most treated it as such, whereas in 3e you met the new age gamers that insisted a broken interpretation of poorly written raw be used or you were railroading or houseruling them, then further insisted the whole game was trash because you let them do it. This phenomenon was not existent to my knowledge in 2e even if S&P was used.

The term "optional" was really code for "if you are hard enough"

I've got another one. I'm really burned out running games for players who don't set goals for their characters and just turn up and wait for the adventure to happen.

I use the example Conan strangled the king of Aquilonia on the steps of his own throne and took his kingdom, but people still don't grasp the idea even if I say explicitly "You have to set some goals for your character"

Quote from: Altheus;1136422I've got another one. I'm really burned out running games for players who don't set goals for their characters and just turn up and wait for the adventure to happen.

I use the example Conan strangled the king of Aquilonia on the steps of his own throne and took his kingdom, but people still don't grasp the idea even if I say explicitly "You have to set some goals for your character"

Yeah, I hear you. But then some games/styles kinda ask for that passivity, I guess.