| From: | Jonas Gabrielson <m94jga@*******.tdb.uu.se> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: My take on Munchkinism |
| Date: | Fri, 17 May 1996 18:14:15 +0200 (MET DST) |
> TopCat was my first character and the only one that I hideously powergamed
> at creation.
So fine, it's OK. I take it back. (I really hate this about
e-mail, you can't really get all the sides of the story and have to write
on false premises.)
> > However, you mention that you not only min/maxed your char, but
> >also had the GM make a lot of solo runs for you, to "explore the
> >character", and you were surprised to see that this just furthered the gap
> >between you and the others. I hope you won't hate me extremely much, but
> >from my point of view, both you and your GM acted munchkinously. You
> >decided to make your character the best of your group, not at all
> >considering the other gamers' situation because of this. And your GM, on
> >his part, failed to restrict your character and play up the others to get
> >balance.
>
> I decided to flesh out my character and the GM and I hung out a lot
> together. Other players also did solo runs, so I wasn't alone in this. The
> karma I earned from solo stuff allowed me to add skills that fit the
> character but had no effect on combat. Most of them I don't ever remember
> rolling dice once for, combat or not. TopCat was a pretty good Chinese
> cook. The last run TopCat ever did netted him (literally) millions of nuyen
> (ever wonder how much a shipment of the latest simsense would be worth?).
> After that I changed his 'ware and retired him.
So, you did the right thing after all. But it could have gone
awfully wrong. That's all I'm saying.
> I am a number cruncher and I've looked over every aspect of Shadowrun
> available to me. The most munchable basic archetypes in the Shadowrun game
> are mages and deckers. I love samurai, probably because they aren't in that
> category and end up having karma lying around that can go to fleshing-out
> skills. Many people also confuse speed in combat with munchkinous. If the
> character is rolling 7 dice for initiative because he's got +3D6 from a
> spell and +3D6 from wired 2, then he's munchkin. If he gets 6 dice for MBW4
> and a SynAcc1, then he's within the rules. The GM had to let the character
> get that way and I'd assume the rest of the characters are also along those
> lines, so it's just a powerful campaign. If the character has no defining
> traits aside from "firearms skill of 6, specialized in AK-98" or "has
a
> force 6 hellblast" then it's powergaming.
I guess I have to take it from an expert on the field. :-)
But the MBW4+SynAcc1 would be a no-go in my game, nevertheless (at
least not before a long campaign, a great hoard of cash, very good
roleplaying, several heavy favours and a few sacrifices).
> I never saw a need to create munchkinous bioware/cyberware as
> Cybertechnology has pretty much covered a lot of the bases that the SSC,
> SRII, and Shadowtech left open. Spells of munchkinous proportions are out
> there, Edge Runners contains numerous examples.
Yeah? Sorry, haven't read it. I don't agree with you when you say
that everything has been covered - I mean, there seems to be an insatiable
demand for cyber on the net. And creating munchkinous ditto is just a
question of GM bribery.
> > Note that I don't say sams are better than mages, or anything
> >other along these lines. Sams just have more potentiol for rule-tweaking.
>
> Far from. Take a long look at the numbers available to mages, there's more
> out there and they can be defined in more numerous ways. Which is all it
> takes for a hideous amounts of tweaking. Cyberware is cyberware, it can't
> be tweaked to provide more for less, there's always at least one downside
> and usually there's two (essence, price, or power, pick one to keep low,
> raise the rest). This isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. Magic,
> however, faces no such limitations. Which is a bad thing, IMNSHO.
On the contrary, magic also have a lot of limitations. Spells cost
karma in the way cyber costs essence, and more often than not cost money
too, though it can be substituted for lots of time. (Pick one to keep low,
raise the rest, huh?) Magicians carry around foci. Foci can be grounded
through. agicians travel the astral. The Astral brims with evil entities
that would love to take a big bite in a savoury aura. Etc, etc. Let's keep
this from the tech/magic debate, shall we?
> I never have to leaf through a bio to figure out anything about my
> characters. I know the characters nearly as well as I know me if I've done
> anything right at all. I couldn't imagine ever having to leaf through a bio
> to figure out what a character would do, I wrote the bio, I know the
> character, I know what he'll do in any given situation. If you didn't write
> it, then I could see problems. Never once has a well-developed character
> bogged down a session due to having to look through his bio in my entire
> lifetime of gaming. I could be an exception, though. Am I?
No, probably not. Though I were primarily talking about setting
you personality on paper (because I think you play better if you limit
yourself to improvisation). Histories can fly. (But I can't imagine why
you would need 20 pages...) But perhaps this dislike comes from the time a
played a superhumanly intelligent magician (in a fantasy game, mind you)
and had troubles fathoming the incredible brain power she had. :-)
-Jonas Gabrielson, approximately IQ 150.
