A great post I saw on another site.  This pretty much sums up my own experiences.

Quote from: David J ProkopetzTo hear certain segments of the "role-playing, not roll-playing!" crowd define it:

Min-maxer: A player who understands how the game's rules operate.

Munchkin: A player who favours the style of play that the game's rules encourage and facilitate, as opposed to the style of play that the game's self-promotional text claims the rules encourage and facilitate.

Power-gamer: A player who wishes for his or her character to be competent.

The Evolution of Munchkin.

By Monte Cook.

By that token, drug cheats in sport are just min/maxers.  Since I believe performance-enhancing chemicals should be open slather in professional sport, I don't know if that's a criticism of the OP or not.

Prokopetz must be a munchkin. All three are the same thing.

With the way XP is awarded for mainly killing monsters, it's not too surprising that min-maxing/munchkin-ism/powergaming is inevitable.  With very little to no XP awarded for role playing, figuring out stuff, diplomacy, etc ... it's not too surprising the approach many players take is killing all the monsters and taking all the loot.  Whether D&D was intentionally designed this way from the very beginning, nobody will know.  The two original designers are both dead, and we can't personally ask them anymore.

I've noticed that DMs who constantly complain about stuff like powergamers/munchkins/min-max, typically don't understand that the problem is in the rules system itself intrinsically.  Either that, or they prefer to turn a blind eye to it.  It's like an alcoholic blaming all their health problems on everything and everybody else, but not on their own actions and the booze itself.

If a game was designed with XP awarded mainly for role playing, diplomacy, figuring out stuff, etc ... and very little to no XP for killing monsters, that would completely change the nature of the game.  A railroad-like version of this type of game, would probably resemble a murder mystery type game.

Exactly, if you want players that do X but the rules encourage Y, then its a bit silly to complain about the players doing Y, just make the rules encourage X instead. It works a lot easier than telling players that they should role play more.

In a well designed game the people who understand/care about the mechanics a lot are going to act in about the same way as the people who don't care about/understand the mechanics.

Not really. In GURPS and Ars Magica you get no xp for killing things, but you still get shitloads of munchkins.

Munchkinism is a personality flaw corrected by GM bias and in-game pwning, it has nothing to do with game mechanics.

Quote from: ggroy;320520With the way XP is awarded for mainly killing monsters, it's not too surprising that min-maxing/munchkin-ism/powergaming is inevitable.  With very little to no XP awarded for role playing, figuring out stuff, diplomacy, etc ... it's not too surprising the approach many players take is killing all the monsters and taking all the loot.  Whether D&D was intentionally designed this way from the very beginning, nobody will know.  The two original designers are both dead, and we can't personally ask them anymore.

I've noticed that DMs who constantly complain about stuff like powergamers/munchkins/min-max, typically don't understand that the problem is in the rules system itself intrinsically.  Either that, or they prefer to turn a blind eye to it.  It's like an alcoholic blaming all their health problems on everything and everybody else, but not on their own actions and the booze itself.

If a game was designed with XP awarded mainly for role playing, diplomacy, figuring out stuff, etc ... and very little to no XP for killing monsters, that would completely change the nature of the game.  A railroad-like version of this type of game, would probably resemble a murder mystery type game.

Bullshit.

The rules for gaining XP in noncombat situations were covered in 3.x D&D as far back as the first printing of the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook. They are in the section in the back of the book.

Y'all know you don't REALLY have to use those little xp charts, right? I mean, they're the only part of a rulebook I'll probably never use. And I'm with Kyle here, BTW. (Dude, if I contradict him he might punch me. Have you seen that avatar? Geez. Hasta la vista, Kyle)

Quote from: David J Prokopetz Min-maxer: A player who understands how the game's rules operate.

No, this is a term about how a player goes about building his characters. Not a bad thing in itself. Not every competent player min-maxes.

Quote from: David J Prokopetz Munchkin: A player who favours the style of play that the game's rules encourage and facilitate, as opposed to the style of play that the game's self-promotional text claims the rules encourage and facilitate.

Complete bullshit! A munchkin is a player that ruins a game by behaving badly. So the cheaters and tards that slink off to another room when they don't get their way are munchkins too.

Quote from: David J Prokopetz Power-gamer: A player who wishes for his or her character to be competent.

Close. A player who wishes for his or her character to be as effective as possible would be a less insulting way of putting it.

All three fit the same definition: a useless little bitch who won't be missed.

BTW, OD&D and AD&D 1e XP is primarily focussed on acquisition of gold and magic items.  Monsters are a poor method of XP gain compared to loot.

Palladium's XP system is heavy on roleplay / decision rewards with combat rewards being secondary.

As I understand it, a min-maxer is simply a powergamer in one particular mode, or a powergamer who is not aware that other modes (of powergaming) exist. The perspective, right or wrong, is that the game in question favours specialisation over generalisation, and, being powergamers, they obviously want to play a character whose statistics are favoured by the system.

Powergamers? Of course, they want to have the most powerful characters possible. They also might, if necessary, sacrifice other things to make that so. Or possibly just take those other things down a few notches of priority.

Munchkins should just find a different kind of game (i.e., not a roleplaying game.) Cards, minis, pixels, whatever. Yes, they might still be annoying little shits in those games too, but the effect will be less extreme, and sometimes not even noticeable (hopefully.)

Quote from: jeff37923;320537The rules for gaining XP in noncombat situations were covered in 3.x D&D as far back as the first printing of the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook. They are in the section in the back of the book.

The problem I found with using a noncombat XP table (such as challenge ratings in 3E/3.5E adapted to noncombat stuff), or in general deciding how much XP to award for clever role playing, diplomacy, figuring stuff out, etc ... was determining how much XP should be awarded in the first place.  In my games where role playing was the emphasis and combat was deemphasized, these noncombat CR-like XP tables were not particularly effective.  Elegant or clever solutions should be awarded more XP imho, but how much exactly.

In a few games, I dealt with the problem by eliminating XP altogether and where leveling up was done by DM fiat.  Typically it was around 8 to 10 encounters, I would have the players level up.  Though if players were able to use role playing, diplomacy, figuring things out, etc ... they would level up significantly faster.  If the players did everything by hack and slash and taking all the loot, it would take significantly longer to level up.  I told the group up front from the beginning that's how I was going to be DM'ing the game.  In these particular games, the munchkins/powergamers/minmaxers were frequently killed off by the other players themselves.  (I allowed the players to fight and kill one another).

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;320533Not really. In GURPS and Ars Magica you get no xp for killing things, but you still get shitloads of munchkins.

Munchkinism is a personality flaw corrected by GM bias and in-game pwning, it has nothing to do with game mechanics.

Penalties to XP for killing things not meant to be killed, would also change the game dynamics significantly.  This would be subtracting large XPs for doing such things.

I remember in one game where I did things in such a manner, where the munchkin type player frequently had a negative total XP and was wondering why he wasn't leveling up like the other players.  He was not subtracting the XP penalties from his XP total, thinking they were XP awards.  I keep track of all the player's XP.  (I told all the players upfront that XP penalties were possible for doing things like killing things not meant to be killed, and doing things that would be disruptive to the party).

Quote from: jeff37923;320537The rules for gaining XP in noncombat situations were covered in 3.x D&D as far back as the first printing of the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook. They are in the section in the back of the book.

Exactly which pages in the 3E PHB are you referring to?

Skimming through my 3E/3.5E books, they mentioned noncombat XP stuff on pages 168-169 in the 3E DMG and pages 40-41 in the 3.5E DMG.  In these particular sections, they describe the challenge ratings CR and XP awards as being more ad hoc to determine.