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

[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.