Is powergaming bad?

[Wraith]

This discussion comes up time and again, and it really boils down to one thing.

The Alliance, as a whole, at some point decided it was desirable to allow those with better access to real-world funds to buy in-game advantage.

We can dress it up however we like by trading real currency for the currency of goblin and dragon stamps, but at root, it is a simple fact. We let players buy their way to unearned build and items.

As time goes on, this adds up, and you get what we have now. Players who have spent this money are in a position to demand plot's attention, no matter what story the plot team would like to be telling. Even if plot's goal is to write and run something that is intended for and thus scaled for less powerful characters, they cannot ignore the gorilla in the room. The simple threat of a powergaming player deciding to sandbag a plot just because they can ensures that those players will always receive plot's attention.

Personally, I don't believe that this is in any way beneficial to what we ostensibly play for, namely telling a cooperative story. But then there are several reasons why I am not terribly motivated to play anymore.

"Be all you can't be." becoming "Be all you can afford to bribe your way into." is one of them.

 

[Lurin]

Grandiose discussion of the rules system aside for the moment, I figure I'll add my two cents.

Player a character focused and active in gaining power is generally good, taking things out of game to maximize the rate they gain power is not. I'm all for power gaming (if that's your style) as long as it's kept in game. However, the negative effect I generally see crop up from time to time with power gaming, is people get so intense on completing the deal/filling in the squares that they do things outside of the realm of their character. That catalyst I got on a mod that I haven't talked about in game that I get an "informal" offer on. The Level 20 newish fighter "alt" that walks into game knowing the ins and outs of ritual castings and every possible effect despite the fact that they didn't waste the build on read and write.

Power gaming leads people to make shaky justifications for things that want OOG (Well my fighter could have spent a lot of time talking to people about these things, even though it never happened/showed itself in game). Generally these aren't "against the rules" and if it was people would find other ways around it, but I think people playing the numbers game too much takes away from their personal immersion (okay fine whatever) and the immersion of people they interact with (less fine/fun).

Personally if you want to power game, I'm down with it, but occasionally have your toon make a mistake, come close to buying something before realizing it's not what you want (What...you mean a flame aura won't hurt things better than a regular sword...that's stupid...it's...ON...FIRE!) I have 3 toons, One knows basically nothing (go turtle) excluding how to be a fighter, another knows everything you could want to know about anything that doesn't actually help (go rabbit artisan), and the third has a vast wealth of knowledge, but ask him about celestial rituals and he knows about the one that hurts people who killing blow you, and there's some wands enhancing widgets or some such.

At any rate, to sum up the question is power gaming bad? I'll answer, at times yes, but not really more than a variety of other things that hurt immersion. I'll say this, I'll take a power gaming over a 'too cool for this game' player any day of the week. (The too cool for this game players are in my mind the type that don't deal with anyone outside of their group, and generally on participate in one or two things total in a weekend. If you feel that's you, I still love you and encourage you to come, I just think that it's not the best way to keep everyone involved.)

 

[Mike Ventrella]

This discussion comes up time and again, and it really boils down to one thing.

The Alliance, as a whole, at some point decided it was desirable to allow those with better access to real-world funds to buy in-game advantage.

We can dress it up however we like by trading real currency for the currency of goblin and dragon stamps, but at root, it is a simple fact. We let players buy their way to unearned build and items.

As time goes on, this adds up, and you get what we have now. Players who have spent this money are in a position to demand plot's attention, no matter what story the plot team would like to be telling. Even if plot's goal is to write and run something that is intended for and thus scaled for less powerful characters, they cannot ignore the gorilla in the room. The simple threat of a powergaming player deciding to sandbag a plot just because they can ensures that those players will always receive plot's attention.

Personally, I don't believe that this is in any way beneficial to what we ostensibly play for, namely telling a cooperative story. But then there are several reasons why I am not terribly motivated to play anymore.

"Be all you can't be." becoming "Be all you can afford to bribe your way into." is one of them.

What are you basing this on? Using goblin stamps to buy blankets? Or is there something else I'm missing?

 

[Sym of Moria]

I think Power Gaming is 45% perception, 45% not knowing when to pull back, and 10% attitude of the power gamer player. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Just because you have toys it doesnt mean you have to be a show off or a hog on the battlefield.

Perception issue is how others view the person who is percieved to be power gaming. I think some people just need to worry about what they do and let players be as long as they are not breaking rules.

The bigger issue is the not knowing when to pull back. Players who have been playing this game for many years learn what monsters can generally do/act. They also are very intimate with the rules mechanics and nuances. Sometimes your OOG knowledge of the game muddles your characters in-game knowledge and this is when things get hairy. When you are calculating as a new character.. "this monster has 3 dumb resists lets throw some crap spells like lesser invests or ligh spells before we hit him with the web" or as a new character being played by a seasoned player "that's afire and (never having met one ig as this new character) lets thow some alchemy it will kill/incapaciate it instantly ..being a fighter and not havin the skills in question... You need to roleplay your character not play yourself in a new body. There is a big diffrence.
My 2 cents
- O

 

[Dan Nickname Beshers]

I honestly had no idea other people found it so difficult to resolve conflicts via role play, where the numbers on someone's character card mean absolutely nothing.

 

[Wraith]

Numbers are never meaningless unless plot decides to make them so. You can give a five star roleplaying performance, but you aren't going to intimidate someone who knows he swings for half your health total and has defenses for anything you try.

One of the main points of powergaming is that, especially in dealing with other pcs, numbers rule the day.

Mike : Gobbied event blankets, Gobbied items, pay-no-play. All means of turning OOG funds into Ig power, which no player who can't spend as freely can ever match.

 

[Zen Mallowbrooks]

Numbers are never meaningless unless plot decides to make them so. You can give a five star roleplaying performance, but you aren't going to intimidate someone who knows he swings for half your health total and has defenses for anything you try.

Im sorry but this is just wrong. Our characters don't know the number that our OOG selves do. I haven't been larping for so long (just a few months) but Ive already seen PCs bluff extrordinarily powerful monsters out of their valuables and fairly weak NPCs get away with way more than they should have because PCs didn't know or understand the situation. Its all about the roleplay. Its why we play, is it not?

What you're talking about here is metagaming which is a different matter.

 

[Dan Nickname Beshers]

I thought I made it clear: I am on plot, and I frequently choose to make it so.

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Mike : Gobbied event blankets, Gobbied items, pay-no-play. All means of turning OOG funds into Ig power, which no player who can't spend as freely can ever match.

How is that different from just having events that cost money? People who have money will always be able to attend more events, won't they? Even if we got rid of all that stuff, the people with money would attend more events than people who don't have money.

 

[phedre]

I'd like to point out that most chapters give better gobby rewards for doing things like cooking, cleaning, and organizing than they do for many other things.

I've got several thousand gobbies in two chapters without spending a dime of my own money, one for running Monster Desk and the other for cooking 3 meals per game for the chapter. That certainly isn't because I had cash to burn, it's because I was willing to work hard for entire events. When I had no cash to play, I still showed up and NPCed.

So please don't begrudge me a monthly blanket and call me a powergamer because I worked my butt off for the benefit of the chapter. It's insulting and demeaning, I earned where my characters are. And neither of them, for the record, are over 25th level, and the only LCO items I have are from workdays that had a "pick 3 times evers" as the reward, or RP rewards.

 

[prashka]

So please don't begrudge me a monthly blanket and call me a powergamer because I worked my butt off for the benefit of the chapter. It's insulting and demeaning, I earned where my characters are. And neither of them, for the record, are over 25th level, and the only LCO items I have are from workdays that had a "pick 3 times evers" as the reward, or RP rewards.

+1

I have disposable income that I can use to help the chapter, which I do because it makes my game better, and makes everyone else's game better too. Likewise, I've spent more than an event or two cooking my butt off on MY game time for NPCs because I wanted to help out. Which, btw, lost me access to more than a few magic items and loot, in my time.

Please don't tell me that I'm a powergamer, or that I've gotten unfair "IG advantages" because I'm committed to bribery. The only "extra attention" I get from Plot is when they're asking for glow sticks or if I can cook for NPCs this upcoming weekend.

 

[Lurin]

Folks, let's try to avoid rehashing this same old argument again, Wraith would prefer that everyone play on an even keel as much as possible, the Alliance, as a whole, has decided the benefits of rewarding people for contribution is worth it and he disagrees that this is the best option. He's not going to convince the Alliance to change and knows that, you are not going to convince him to change his opinion at this point either, so hopefully lets take a deep breath and move off this tangent and back to the main line of discussion.

 

[Druk]

Likewise, I've spent more than an event or two cooking my butt off on MY game time for NPCs because I wanted to help out.

Which, by the way was great. Seriously, my brother and I were just talking about the delicious apple cake you had made at an event about a year ago. We do greatly appreciate all of our wonderful cooks, because otherwise we'd be eating cup noodles and hot pockets all weekend.

 

[prashka]

Those apple pancakes were pretty amazing... ;D

Lurin: I understand I won't change his mind, but I found his remarks offensive, and I feel like that deserves a response. I might prefer my kitchen table to be made out of chocolate, but that doesn't give me the right to say nasty things about it when I look at it in its sadly wooden state.

More on-topic:
I've generally found that people who engage in power gaming do so at the expense of role playing. As this is a role playing LARP, my response to the initial question posed is "maybe." If you can power game without letting the RP part of LARP suffer, fine. Go ahead. However, once it starts to affect the RP, I lose interest and patience very quickly.

Interestingly, the vast majority of power gamers I have identified were the latter variety, and their RP skills were quickly replaced with OOG comments about how amazing this loophole they just found was while I was trying to be in game. I'm not sure if that's because power gaming tends to affect role playing severely, or if the RP power gamers are just so good at the RP part that I never noticed if they're also power gaming. Either way, for me it comes down to this: give me RP or give me activatable deaths!

 

[Wraith]

Mike : Gobbied event blankets, Gobbied items, pay-no-play. All means of turning OOG funds into Ig power, which no player who can't spend as freely can ever match.

How is that different from just having events that cost money? People who have money will always be able to attend more events, won't they? Even if we got rid of all that stuff, the people with money would attend more events than people who don't have money.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I thought the whole point of what we do was to go to events, roleplay as our characters, and have fun telling a story and playing the game. Pay-no-playing and the like are simply buying character progression and the rewards of successful play without the risk of losing a character or the effort of actually having to interact with other players. It adds nothing to the game for anyone but the player making use of it, and in the long term causes serious scaling issues.

I'm more than a bit saddened to see the wave of knee-jerk responses in the vein of 'don't take away my reward for working!' have shown up. Let me be more clear. I'm not talking about not letting players who are staffing and npcing blanket the events they're working. That's never even been a matter for discussion. It's good policy, and is simply rewarding them with character progression that they would have made had they not been working the other side of the desk. It isn't the problem.

 

[Mike Ventrella]

Mike : Gobbied event blankets, Gobbied items, pay-no-play. All means of turning OOG funds into Ig power, which no player who can't spend as freely can ever match.

How is that different from just having events that cost money? People who have money will always be able to attend more events, won't they? Even if we got rid of all that stuff, the people with money would attend more events than people who don't have money.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I thought the whole point of what we do was to go to events, roleplay as our characters, and have fun telling a story and playing the game. Pay-no-playing and the like are simply buying character progression and the rewards of successful play without the risk of losing a character or the effort of actually having to interact with other players. It adds nothing to the game for anyone but the player making use of it, and in the long term causes serious scaling issues.

I'm more than a bit saddened to see the wave of knee-jerk responses in the vein of 'don't take away my reward for working!' have shown up. Let me be more clear. I'm not talking about not letting players who are staffing and npcing blanket the events they're working. That's never even been a matter for discussion. It's good policy, and is simply rewarding them with character progression that they would have made had they not been working the other side of the desk. It isn't the problem.

Your problem is that you have decided that some contributions to the game are good and some are not; that people who give their time (but yet never put their character at risk) deserve compensation but those who give their money (but yet never put their character at risk) do not. Yet the Alliance needs both -- and I'm not sure you can differentiate between someone donating $50 worth of props we can use and $50 in cash that we can use for paying our mortgage/camp fees/insurance/printing costs/food costs/etc.

 

[djmeser]

not to mention the inability to travel to events causing some characters to fall behind in progression from their companions in local chapters. pay-no-play and monetary donations are a good way to stay caught up with your friends/adventuring companions. so someone who has the money to afford an event but doesnt have the time to actually play it because of work or school or family wont suffer being the runt of the group.

i believe the diminishing returns of the xp system is fair enough when considering power gaming , its the economy that suffers the blame.
its the fact that wealth brings wealth. and the poor are less likely to get rich, if you can solve that here then run for president and help out the whole country.

generally players use what gold we have earned to generate more income but the difference is the new income actually trickles down because we are not greedy.
its the greedy players who power game with wealth. and that's the biggest source of unbalance in the game.

the only way i see for this to change is more reward IG for generosity , ie noble titles or personal plot. and maybe if someone is not generous they might become the target of thieves. because its the wealthy who are worth stealing from. this all seems fair to me as an IG environment that helps promote OOG fun.

maybe one day when the wealthy loose most of their magic items they will invest in some per day skills or cross class .

 

[Mike Ventrella]

My attitude toward pay-no-play is this:

First, you cannot pay for an event in chapter A and then attend an event in Chapter B the same weekend. This prevents someone with money from zooming up faster than someone who actually travels from chapter to chapter for events.

Second, we give XP for an event when you pay for it. If you show up on Saturday and leave three hours later, you get the same XP. If you spend the entire event sitting in your cabin, you get the same XP. Your participation in the game is your own choice, whether you are literally on the site but sleeping the entire time or at home, really.

Third, isn't that what goblin stamps are? Suppose that instead of having GS, we paid our NPCs and then they turned around and gave us that money for the event and got a blanket. How is that any different?

You see? We're just playing with semantics here. A donation to our game is a donation, whether in goods, services, or money. People donate because they want to help the game and want something in return. Making a distinction on the type of donation doesn't seem right to me.

 

[Wraith]

I think it's just a difference of game design theory. I prefer a system to reward players with in-game power for playing the game, and to encourage them to keep playing for character and story progression, rather than rewarding and encouraging maximizing OOG monetary investment to buy progression. I know that, to some extent at least, that's not really a philosophy of play that most owners are going to lean towards, simply because running a game is decidedly not cheap, and donations help offset that.

To bring it back to the original thrust of the discussion, regarding powergaming, the donations for items setup is especially vulnerable to being powergamed. After all, the chances of exactly the scrolls and components required for a specific custom-built item being all dropped to the same character in a season a very low. Allowing the item to be purchased, however, takes character optimization from the realm of using what you can get your hands on and maybe trading to have what you want made in-game to simply looking at a list, determining the best items for your character, and figuring out how much you'll need to pay your chapter in money and volunteer work to get them.

I'm comfortable agreeing to disagree on game theory. All I've got invested is a few years of play and some donations that I don't really feel all that bad about having put together to help out a game I enjoyed. But at this point I am pretty much done playing Alliance anyway, as between travel, reps, and garb, it is an expensive hobby. Sadly, one that I simply don't enjoy enough to justify the cost anymore.

 

[phedre]

A big game-changer, in terms of items for cash, is the fact that LCO travels.

It used to be that if you worked hard for a chapter, you got rewarded there, and if you wanted to make items that traveled you either had to earn dragon stamps or find things IG. Few people begrudge the friend they have who donated time and resources a little extra fun in return. When it's "Some Guy," things get a little more murky.

Now, I can write Paige a check for a cash donation, get gobbies, blanket her chapter's events, make a few LCO items, and then go to Jersey with them, where (if they fall under the 12 rit cap), Erica or her logistics staff will check them in and I will be allowed to use them. I haven't been to Erica's chapter in a few years, I don't think I have any gobbies there to make an item. I've never been to Paige's chapter, so I can't use LCO items there. So now Paige's chapter gets the benefits, Erica's chapter sees more item proliferation (which some people see as being another issue entirely) and some people will notice that a scholar is calling an inordinate amount of Dodges.

It changes the entire balance of the game.