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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: "Ahern T. Stephan" <MAXIM@****.MANKATO.MSUS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Thievs and Their Pools
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1993 19:26:40 -0600
Why would being called a "Power-Gamer" be an insult?

--- Hail iL-Khan Crittchel
(I defected)
Message no. 2
From: "J.D. Falk" <jdfalk@***.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Thievs and Their Pools
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 02:21:15 -0500
Most power-gamers have no other life. They spend all their time
discussing gaming and realted subjects, and try as hard as they can to
come up with complicated histories and other mostly useless background
information which bogs down the players and eventually either frustrates
them and drives them away from that GM or makes them so intent on keeping
track of minutia that they can't effectively roleplay anymore.

/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| J.D. Falk, Co-Founder, GRAB! Multimedia Productions |
| Silver Spring, Maryland jdfalk@***.gwu.edu |
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------/


On Tue, 2 Nov 1993, Ahern T. Stephan wrote:

> Why would being called a "Power-Gamer" be an insult?
>
> --- Hail iL-Khan Crittchel
> (I defected)
Message no. 3
From: The Deb Decker <RJR96326@****.UTULSA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Thievs and Their Pools
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 03:52:51 GMT
>Most power-gamers have no other life. They spend all their time
>discussing gaming and realted subjects, and try as hard as they can to
>come up with complicated histories and other mostly useless background
>information which bogs down the players and eventually either frustrates
>them and drives them away from that GM or makes them so intent on keeping
>track of minutia that they can't effectively roleplay anymore.

I take issue with your description, good sir. The player-type you describe is
that rare breed, the Real Role-player, who puts more effort into the less-
tangible details of his character not reflected in the rules. A Power Gamer
is a kinder eupemism for one who fall short of Munchkinism; one who spends an
equal amount of study and persual of the game texts but for the maximizing of
his abilities in game terms rather than crafting an intricate and
interesting background. The Power Gamer lives for statistics; the player-type
you have described lives for stories.

J Roberson
Message no. 4
From: "J.D. Falk" <jdfalk@***.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Thievs and Their Pools
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 14:32:36 -0500
On Wed, 3 Nov 1993 RJR96326@****.utulsa.edu wrote:

> >Most power-gamers have no other life. They spend all their time
> >discussing gaming and realted subjects, and try as hard as they can to
> >come up with complicated histories and other mostly useless background
> >information which bogs down the players and eventually either frustrates
> >them and drives them away from that GM or makes them so intent on keeping
> >track of minutia that they can't effectively roleplay anymore.
>
> I take issue with your description, good sir. The player-type you describe is
> that rare breed, the Real Role-player, who puts more effort into the less-
> tangible details of his character not reflected in the rules. A Power Gamer
> is a kinder eupemism for one who fall short of Munchkinism; one who spends an
> equal amount of study and persual of the game texts but for the maximizing of
> his abilities in game terms rather than crafting an intricate and
> interesting background. The Power Gamer lives for statistics; the player-type
> you have described lives for stories.
>
> J Roberson

Yes, my friend, but is either of them really much fun to game with? It is
my thought that the Power Gamer you describe will slow down the game for
others due to their endless stacks of virtually useless statistics, and
the Power Gamer I describe will slow down the game due to endless stacks
of virtually useless histories. What ever happened to purely recreational
roleplaying?

J.D. Falk
Roleplaying was my life
Now its just a hobby

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Thievs and Their Pools, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!