D&D: character optimization

[cellio]

I commend this response to a discussion about optimizing RPG characters, by akitrom, to my role-playing-gamer friends. This captures a big part of what made ralph_dnd such a fun campaign: it's primarily about the character development, not the power development.

When I want to play an optimization game, I'll go for one of the German-style games of that sort, like El Grande or Merchants of Amsterdam or Hermagore. Optimization games can be fun for several hours. But when I play D&D (or similar games), that's not the kind of game I'm looking for.

Ralph's game ended several years ago, and I still enjoy remembering and telling stories from it. I've played in, and enjoyed at the time, RPGs that were less about character and more about optimizing power; I don't even remember the names of most of the characters I played in those games. I enjoyed it then, but it didn't stick and it's not very interesting to me now. What attracts me now is the role part of "role-playing game".

Which is kind of funny because I'm a pretty inhibited player, and not very good at role-playing, until I've been with a group and a set of characters for a while. My character in Ralph's game was pretty under-developed for the first several months, while some others sprung to life in the first session or two. Keeping the game journal actually helped a lot.

Comments

[yuggazogy.livejournal.com]

The post you're referring to is excellent-I will further posit that rather than Magic: The Gathering that really triggered the min/maxing trend, it was the online MMORPGs like Everquest (which was alive and kicking in '99) that were the primary culprits for 3rd edition munchkinism. 4th edition clearly swiped several pages (philosophically) from these games and World of Warcraft in particular, with each class section having pages of recommended character build optimization.

[cellio]

It's probably a combination for 3rd edition. (I definitely see the hand of WoW in 4th edition.) I remember playing Magic: the Gathering in 1993, but I don't remember it really getting out of hand until a few years later. MMORPGs were building by then, and I expect they and M:tG and the emerging D&D edition all influenced each other to some extent.

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

One of my pet peeves is the use of words such as "optimize" with the implication that everyone has the same objective function: in D&D, typically some notion of combat effectiveness.

You know, I miss Ralph's campaign too, just from reading about it in your LiveJournal and Ralph's. I think that fact attests to the value of narrative goals.

[byronhaverford.livejournal.com]

My favorite character was a paladin with a perception score of 6. He would simply /assume/ that everyone was paying attention to him and would follow his commands in any situation.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I'm more interested in characters and story, although I do like my characters to be useful.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Useful is good. Amusing is also good, at least for me. Hence, Alten. :) Who probably would have been much different in a more powergaming campaign.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Alten worked out pretty well in the end, even if his path to get there was jagged.

[cellio]

Yeah, having a useless character would squash my enjoyment of the game.

And, of course, the players and the GM have to all be in agreement about what kind of game is going to be played.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

You're right about the agreement as to what kind of game is going to be played. I think Carl would agree that we had some disconnect with that for a while in the Greyhawk game but after time and much GM shifting, we figured it out.