Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing

[Packrat]

I recall seeing the opposite as well with people on a WoD game trying to insist that attributes of 2 were pretty poor and that you needed 3 to pose/ICly be at all capable in an area, in complete defiance of the actual descriptions of different attribute levels. One oWoD game took it to weird extremes and dictated how tall/buff you could describe yourself being based on your Strength - reasonable on the face of it but they basically deemed any male character had to have strength 3 or be written up as actively weedy looking.

Whilst the actual description for Strength 3 gave a suggested a bench press value suited for say, the level required for a firefighter, implying that Strength 3 was supposed to be somebody who pretty seriously hits up the gym or carries out intensive manual labour.

[WildBaboons]

@packrat said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

One oWoD game took it to weird extremes and dictated how tall/buff you could describe yourself being based on your Strength

I wish more places did something like that just to avoid the 5', 90 lbs people running around with 5 strength and wielding greatswords. (without some supernatural muscly strength thingy happening)

[Packrat]

@wildbaboons I agree that some level of supervision there is good but it should probably pay actual attention to what levels in a stat are supposed to mean.

If that is clear, which it certainly is not on a lot of games.

[The Sands]

@thenomain said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

There's a reason people who take the the Crafts skill push staff to let them use it to make cool stuff, because that's why they took the bloody Crafts skill to begin with.

My character has Crafts-5, good attributes, and Professional Training with Crafts as an asset skill (along with several other related merits) and I've never 'pushed' staff to let me make cool stuff. I have actually made two swords for my character that have increased Durability and a couple of cold-iron weapons for other characters who wanted them, but I have never tried to push for anything I would consider extraordinary (I did ask at one point if I could increase the Durability of a cold iron weapon by requiring more successes but when I was told no that was it).

I took Crafts because it was appropriate for the character, not because I wanted to 'make cool things' (he's a Professor of Medieval History who is focused on medieval techniques of construction and manufacturing).

The real thing that causes min-maxing is people wanting to be 'better' than everyone else, so they search for the best way to shave points to get some kind of advantage over the other players (and while my skills might look like that's what I'm trying to do with Crafts I don't think so. Yes, I have an outrageously good roll to Craft mundane items, but if I really wanted to be 'the guy' everyone came to to make swords I would be taking merits that allow you to make better than normal weapons such as Relic Maker).

[Misadventure]

Because I am always behind these days:

One way to help ensure that people have a wide spread of skills is to just say "and after you spend your xp, you also get 5 skills at 1, 3 at 2. Or whatever, so they can choose to have some exposure to some things that fit them. Those fixed slots have the same value/cost to everyone (usually, looking at you here Chivalry and Sorcery 3rd edition and on) so its fair and assures that people will still have some width.

[Ganymede]

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

That now means I'm now 2 dots "behind" someone else who comes along and ignores the skill descriptions and plays a driver without the Drive skill. It creates a situation that is inherently unfair between those who follow the rules and those who don't.

A driver without the Drive skill has a -1 penalty to their rolls to Drive. So, if that ever comes up, you have a 3-die advantage over the other driver. How a driver ever managed to get by without Drive is a staff-side problem.

[The Sands]

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

That now means I'm now 2 dots "behind" someone else who comes along and ignores the skill descriptions and plays a driver without the Drive skill. It creates a situation that is inherently unfair between those who follow the rules and those who don't.

Wait a second. We've already established that the skill description is nonsense. This isn't a case that they aren't following the rules. This is a case of you not understanding the game system well enough to realize that something was poorly described.

In other words, it isn't that they are cheating and have gained a 2 die advantage over you. It's that you have made a mistake.

On one level, yes, it is a problem with the system that they have included these nonsense descriptors in the first place, but stop trying to say it is the fault of the player who didn't take Drive and they are somehow bad players. Sure, if they are saying that they are Professional NASCAR drivers and they haven't taken Drive because they know it will never come up in game then they are crummy RPers, but if they are just average people and they didn't take it then you shouldn't blame them because you did something wrong.

[Roz]

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@thenomain said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

There's a reason people who take the the Crafts skill push staff to let them use it to make cool stuff, because that's why they took the bloody Crafts skill to begin with.

My character has Crafts-5, good attributes, and Professional Training with Crafts as an asset skill (along with several other related merits) and I've never 'pushed' staff to let me make cool stuff. I have actually made two swords for my character that have increased Durability and a couple of cold-iron weapons for other characters who wanted them, but I have never tried to push for anything I would consider extraordinary (I did ask at one point if I could increase the Durability of a cold iron weapon by requiring more successes but when I was told no that was it).

I took Crafts because it was appropriate for the character, not because I wanted to 'make cool things' (he's a Professor of Medieval History who is focused on medieval techniques of construction and manufacturing).

The real thing that causes min-maxing is people wanting to be 'better' than everyone else, so they search for the best way to shave points to get some kind of advantage over the other players (and while my skills might look like that's what I'm trying to do with Crafts I don't think so. Yes, I have an outrageously good roll to Craft mundane items, but if I really wanted to be 'the guy' everyone came to to make swords I would be taking merits that allow you to make better than normal weapons such as Relic Maker).

There are also people who just want to be really good at the thing their PC is focused on. I feel like there's an implication of disdain in your words for people who would take Crafts and then want to use Crafts to do cool things, but why? That sounds really normal to me. People get excited for the areas their PCs are focused in, and there's nothing wrong with that. It is, in fact, good. It's good for people to find niches that they can creatively shine in. People like feeling like their PCs have value in the game. That's a sentiment that should be encouraged and balanced around.

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

That now means I'm now 2 dots "behind" someone else who comes along and ignores the skill descriptions and plays a driver without the Drive skill. It creates a situation that is inherently unfair between those who follow the rules and those who don't.

Wait a second. We've already established that the skill description is nonsense. This isn't a case that they aren't following the rules. This is a case of you not understanding the game system well enough to realize that something was poorly described.

In other words, it isn't that they are cheating and have gained a 2 die advantage over you. It's that you have made a mistake.

If the game itself literally describes the skills in a way that is contrary to how the game is being played, it's not a newcomer building a sheet who has made the mistake. It's whoever came up with the skill descriptions or the staff/playerbase for playing against how the skills are written to be used.

[Thenomain]

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

The real thing that causes min-maxing is people wanting to be 'better' than everyone else

Min-maxing is the act of making the best of the resources at hand.

It can be used for good or evil. Good: Baking for Cats. Bad: Dump stats.

It's going to be done no matter what anyone wants. There is no stopping it. Period.

I would rather a game where I can still participate even if I don't spend a lot of time min-maxing, than a game worried about people focusing on a talent sometimes creating unbalanced situations.

I'm more worried about people abusing a system, and systems that allow themselves to be abused. I would rather balanced systems.

I've made my suggestions, largely agreeing with @Ganymede and @surreality and others I should credit: If everything in the game can be used to effect the game, then that's good enough.

[The Sands]

@roz said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

If the game itself literally describes the skills in a way that is contrary to how the game is being played, it's not a newcomer building a sheet who has made the mistake. It's whoever came up with the skill descriptions or the staff/playerbase for playing against how the skills are written to be used.

If a make itself literally describes the skills in a way that is unsupported by the mechanism then it is whoever can up with the skill description that is at fault. That is the simple case with WoD.

Now if you need to assign any blame further than that is it fair to put it on the people who realize that the description is nonsenese? Because that is exactly what is being implied. Do I feel a little bit bad with saying 'it's the newbie's fault for not realizing that what was written was wrong'? Yes, I actually do. However, if you ask me to chose between blaming them and blaming the other people who realized that what was written makes absolutely no sense then I'm going to chose the newbie.

If somewhere in the book was written the description 'the ultimate weapon known to man' for the light pistol do you blame the other players for looking at the stats and saying 'no, I'm going to chose this other gun instead'? While it is understandable how the new player made the mistake of thinking that the light pistol would be the best weapon possible they still should have looked at its stats are realized such a description simply made no sense.

[Roz]

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@roz said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

If the game itself literally describes the skills in a way that is contrary to how the game is being played, it's not a newcomer building a sheet who has made the mistake. It's whoever came up with the skill descriptions or the staff/playerbase for playing against how the skills are written to be used.

If a make itself literally describes the skills in a way that is unsupported by the mechanism then it is whoever can up with the skill description that is at fault. That is the simple case with WoD.

Now if you need to assign any blame further than that is it fair to put it on the people who realize that the description is nonsenese? Because that is exactly what is being implied. Do I feel a little bit bad with saying 'it's the newbie's fault for not realizing that what was written was wrong'? Yes, I actually do. However, if you ask me to chose between blaming them and blaming the other people who realized that what was written makes absolutely no sense then I'm going to chose the newbie.

If somewhere in the book was written the description 'the ultimate weapon known to man' for the light pistol do you blame the other players for looking at the stats and saying 'no, I'm going to chose this other gun instead'? While it is understandable how the new player made the mistake of thinking that the light pistol would be the best weapon possible they still should have looked at its stats are realized such a description simply made no sense.

I think that blaming the newbie for trying to follow the direction of the source material is incredibly shitty and really indicative of some of the attitude that comes out of WoD games that makes so many of them so incredibly unfriendly to newbies.

[insomniac7809]

@kanye-qwest said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

especially when systems throw in a lot of skills that everyone should have to some extent, like Athletics, Persuasion, Awareness, Driving, etc.

Wait, why should everyone have these, though? People don't all have these skills. Like driving I get, imo you should be able to be fine driving a car baseline but maybe you aren't a stunt driver or a getaway driver or a street racer unless you invest in that skill.

I mean, that's one of the big questions about "so what do these skills on my sheet mean."

Does Athletics 0 mean "rando with a desk job" or "gets winded walking from the couch to the fridge"?

Does Persuasion 0 mean "baseline conversationalist" or "tongue-tied off-putting weirdo"?

Does Drive 0 mean "can't drift" or "can't drive"?

Does Awareness 0 mean "takes a couple minutes to find Waldo" or https://youtu.be/mqQ8Y9Sjp7o?t=1m ?

[Sunny]

@the-sands

How is a newbie supposed to know that the stats of the pistol there DON'T represent what the game says it does? They are a newbie. They dont know the system. They have no frame of reference for comparison. Or are we all supposed to just magically intuit this, or be able to crunch the EXTENSIVE numbers required to come to that determination...in our heads, the first time we look at it?

What?

[The Sands]

@roz As I said, I don't want to blame them. I want to blame the poorly written material.

I am only blaming the newbie before blaming the experienced player who realizes that the description is nonsense. And once again, I'm not talking about the 'experienced player' who is playing a professional NASCAR driver with no Drive because they realize that on a MU* the skill will never be rolled. I'm talking about the experienced player who knows that you don't have to roll for trivial mundane activities. The person playing the NASCAR driver is absolutely a crappy player, IMO.

[The Sands]

@insomniac7809 said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Does Drive 0 mean "can't drift" or "can't drive"?

Drive 0 means you think Drifting is a faster way to drive.

[Roz]

@the-sands If the descriptions in the source material aren't applicable to the game, it's the responsibility of the game runners to document that somewhere easily accessible in their chargen process.

[The Sands]

@roz We can quibble on that. We'll get into issues about exactly how much 'common sense' knowledge they need to provide. Again, my real point is that you can't blame the person who didn't take Drive (which was what was initially being implied).

[Roz]

@the-sands My experience of being a newbie going through WoD chargen is that people who have been playing games with the system for years consider almost everything to be "common sense knowledge." "The system doesn't play in practice on our game like the book describes" is 100% not "common sense knowledge." "Common sense knowledge" doesn't include "knowledge that veteran WoD players have accumulated over years."

[Sockmonkey]

Should there be +census for attribute and skills so players get a sense of what the actually playerbase spread is?

[Thenomain]

@sockmonkey said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Should there be +census for attribute and skills so players get a sense of what the actually playerbase spread is?

This is best for non-newbies. This is a good tool for people once they get a sense of a game, tho, and can be used to help newbies via their experience.

(Which is the #1 Best Way To Help Newbies.)