Munchkins

Kicked in the Dicebags has a nice episode up about Munchins and Min-Maxers. I had some thoughts that I figured were a little large for a comment, so I am posting here instead of their comment thread.

One of the attractions of the OSR to me is the reductionism. The huge quantity of character design choices that are involved in 3rd or 4th edition play (or Pathfinder play) is reduced down to a bare minimum of choice. While designing Errant, I really made a conscious effort to reduce choice as much as possible, to make things as simple as possible, yet keep everything I wanted to keep in the game. For example, I choose to have Gifts start at 2nd level, so that it is one less thing to think about at 1st level.

The appeal of creating a character in a few moments is strong. But what may be overlooked is that OSR character creation kinda stops min-maxing and munchkin play in it's tracks. In later editions, you can hide your cheating in a sea of choices that the GM cannot keep track of. In later editions, you can chart out a path from 1st to 10th level so you can take that special prestige class or whatever; not possible in OSR play. You cannot create a dump stat if you are assigning stats as rolled (not even Errant is that hardcore though).

And by stopping that cold, in a way you are liberating the player. You are liberating them from the weight of all those decisions. Liberating them from the weight of worrying whether you made the "best" 5th level Elven Druid, or whatever you make. And the psychological benefits of this liberation are, I think, underappreciated. I know because I did not appreciate them until very recently.

Yes, it may be cool to have lists of hundreds of feats, powers, spells, gods, whatever. There may be some satisfaction in building that really cool Gnome Rogue/Illusionist/Monk. But what cost are you paying for that? What cost is your group paying for that? We have made games that are breeding grounds for this destructive behavior and you need to take that into account when you think about which game you want to play.

When you are not spending a lot of time maximizing your character build, you can focus on the actual character you are playing. You can add layers of story to your character to make them cooler. You can pay more attention to the world around you. You can focus on being creative. Interesting how that works, eh?

And I say this as a power-gamer personality. By removing that choice, I am preventing myself from slipping into my destructive habits. In a similar way, I love ice cream. If there is ice cream in my freezer, I will eat it. But if I don't buy the ice cream, I don't miss it that much.

In a way similar to consumerism, we have bought a bill of goods that may actually not make us happy. Maybe a more simpler path is better.

A final reminder, Errant will be available as a public beta tomorrow. That might be midnight tonight, it might be sometime tomorrow during the day. Depends on how a few things shape up.

Cheers!