Transcript
God mode! You spend hours trying to find some secret code to download and hack your game. You aren’t even sure the code is going to work, you’re just hoping. And then you punch that thing in and bang! You’re indestructible! Insanely powerful! You fly around doing all the things that were nearly impossible to achieve while playing in a normal mode. And it’s super fun!
Some people love to play in god-mode. But it’s never sustainable. Right? Maybe that’s just me? I mean, once you’ve got infinite ammo, infinite funding, infinite mana, once you’ve got infinity, things tend to grow a little stale. Dare I say “boring”. This is literally probably why real life is hard. And why elves would be … insane.
And why From Software games are actually bought and played.
Not by me, I have no interest those kinds of tears.
But what is sustainable is min-maxing. Surfing Wowhead to find that perfect build for maxing out the DPS on your Shadowpriest. Or looking up info on what levels to dip into for multi classing your Sorlock or your rogue bard.
Some folks enjoy it as its own kind of mini-game, this min-maxing of stats and rules exploits. And that’s awesome. But how about one time making a character that sucks.
Greetings good humans, and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we bite off more than we can chew by trying to arm-wrestle stupidly large concepts for use in our silly little hobby.
Is our hobby silly? No, not really. I mean, it’s not any sillier than chasing a ball around on a grass field or jumping outta perfectly good airplanes with plastic bags to hold onto. We all just wanna be Mary Poppins.
What came first, the Bag of Holding or Mary Poppins’ suitcase?
Anyway, our topic for today is min-maxing for tabletop rpgs. And yes, this is quite the iceberg. Not in an “ooh” sensationalistic way – though that would be kinda fun – but rather because asking this little anthill-sized question actually leads to a mountain-range sized plethora of topics and ideas to explore.
I of course wanna say that playing whatever game you dig the way you dig it is always best and the coolest thing. All I want to do today is present an idea for discussion or inspiration that might be fun to try if you haven’t. At the very least it might be interesting to just think about.
I’ve got a friend who’s tried a couple of tabletop RPG sessions and he’s been bored through every one of them. Now it’s possible some of that reaction stems from either the groups he’s played with or the game masters but I suspect it has a lot more to do with his misguided expectation of D&D being similar to a video game. I kinda explained to him that while video games can excel at “static storytelling” and action, D&D excels at “dynamic storytelling” and unpredictable character development. I should say “can” excel at those things.
Now min-maxing a character really can be it’s own mini-game sort of activity, kinda like how “building army lists” or “war bands” for skirmish games is basically it’s own pastime. But I think what can be even more interesting is how intentionally not min-maxing a character can create way more opportunities for interesting story. Versus, you know, tactical advantage. This really does just boil down to “how do you want to play your character”.
We can look at movies and books for some correlation here. Now these are just some random examples, and they’re all from media I quite enjoy.
So how about the scene from Force Awakens where Rey just sorta suddenly figures out how to use the Force mind control gimmick. Or when she discovers she can definitely put this light saber to good use, based on her martial training with the staff thing she ran around with in the desert. You know, in D&D a fighter can just sorta pick up any weapon and go to work with it. Or how about any scene in a John Wick flick? This guy’s got gunkata down to a video game science, and it’s super fun to watch. In fact, most min-maxed characters are fun to watch. But to me they’re more like watching spectacle rather than watching story. And one is more satisfying to me than the other, in the long term.
In contrast, we could look at, say, Ripley trying to survive her situation. Or McClane trying to survive his situation. For me, there’s a lot more investment in the character when I’m hoping John can stay alive on his godawful bloody feet than there is counting how many headshots John manages to crit in a four-second span. There’s probably just north of a gazillion other examples we could compare. None of which is to say one viewing experience is superior to the other, they are just different experiences.
And I’m not saying characters with flaws, or non min-maxed characters, are incompetent at what they do. Far from it. It’s just that they have more opportunity to create dramatic stories because they have limitations or obstacles to overcome in a more relatable manner.
It’s hard to have a heroic moment while in god-mode.
Maybe one time you might wanna try out something like incorporating a substantial flaw for your character to overcome or contend with. You can do this even if you’re min-maxing a character. Doing something like this could inherently create the basis for a character arc without even trying.
Granted, this kind of reality bummerness might not be what you want in a fun pastime of a game, and that’s perfectly fine. I know a lot of the time we play games specifically for the power fantasy. But, maybe doing something like this once could result in a super satisfying story experience over the long haul. And maybe that would something new. It’s just an idea.
One of my favorite tables in any game book – not that I’ve read a whole bunch of rule sets, I have a pretty limited experience in that regard – but one of my favorite tables is the Permanent Injuries table found in the skirmish game Frostgrave – and subsequently in the Stargrave, Rangers of Shadowdeep and Ghost Archipelago books. I think this is pretty fun – I mean, it totally sucks in the tactical part of the game but it lends so much character to the warband I’m playing with. It almost forces story to imbue itself in what’s essentially otherwise just a chess match. Okay, chess match with ranged weapons.
So what if you’re playing a melee class and you lose an eye to some vile wizard’s bastard of an owl? Now you’ve got no depth perception and have to rely on, maybe a bow? for the first time in your life. I mean until you’ve trained your melee skills back up. Or maybe you go full Jaime Lannister, have to learn how to fight with only your off hand.
Or maybe your monk took an arrow in the knee. You try to be zen about it, but after descending into a life of crime to save up for some extravagant healing spell, you encounter something that shakes up or reinvigorates your faith in the universe and you start down a new, long and arduous path towards redemption.
This is fun, I’m gonna keep rolling.
What if you played a middle-aged merchant who’s always always wanted to cast magic. But your academic acumen has always been a stumbling block – like with me and math. Or maths. Whatever, whatever it’s called. Damn that low Intelligence score! But maybe perseverance in the face of constant failure – and a growing mastery of cantrips – starts to show some progress on the higher level, spell side of things?
Or how about rolling a straight up coward. Like maybe the character starts as a rogue, because they need to hide in the shadows and they’re afraid of things, but after one level goes into fighter class because they decide that dammit, they’re tired of being afraid of everything. Of course there’s no easy way to conquer internal fears, but through hard work, focused determination and internal struggle, they begin to master their overwhelming sense of fear. Maybe you work out some kind of fear-based constitution or wisdom save with the DM, who gets to decide when to call for it – maybe it functions a little like the Wild Magic table.
Here’s one I’ve always wanted to play. A surly egotistical bard who has no musical talent and feels sorely put upon by a world that doesn’t appreciate his craftsmanship. Cause he’s actually a skilled puppeteer who crafts amazing marionettes … How does a bard who’s just kind of an asshole inspire people with puppetry?
Or how about a half-orc zen cleric who’s addicted to opiates and is a steadfast pacifist. He’s a great healer but too long between fixes – or what he calls his “lunar dreams” – and his stats start suffering penalties. You can riff off of other classic existing characters, play someone like a Doc Holliday, a drunk who’s suffering from a terminal illness, but she’s still got things she wants to accomplish – nay, NEEDS to accomplish before she takes that one last long nap.
That one last long nap? What? That’s terrible, that is terrible writing. Uh, anyway.
This is probably why I really like the idea of the Wild Magic surge or other similar mechanics. Unpredictability is another facet of great storytelling. Yes, stories typically adhere to a sort of pattern or rhythm but what makes a good story good is the unpredictable details that populate those classic patterns. This is why I think it’s fun to come up with strange or unexpected takes on character archetypes. I think Raistlin and Caramon from Dragonlance were a pair of awesome characters, of course Raistlin in particular. In literature some of my current favorite inspirational characters come from Mr. Abercrombie. He’s taken the writer’s advice “stick your characters in a tree and throw rocks at ‘em” to a whole other level. More like, stick your characters in a tree, light the tree on fire and start slinging tomahawks at ‘em. I’m sure at some point we’re gonna see Inquisitor Glokta on the big screen.
The thing that’s cool about good stories is they typically teach us things about ourselves or about life and they kinda do it without us realizing it’s happening. There’s a reason psychologists are now getting into using role playing games as therapeutic exercises for patients and clients. Tragedy and failure are often what make stories both great and captivating, both because they are relatable to every one of us and because the contrast of those failures against hard won successes can be cathartic. And yeah, this can all be part of a Dungeons and Dragons game without really putting in too much extra effort. It’s just about approaching a character a certain way, and then rolling some dice!
And playing into story is playing into one of the strengths of tabletop role playing games versus video games.
Like I said, this is really just a portion of an enormous conversational topic iceberg. Right now we’re just the Titanic and we’re interacting with a tiny chunk of it.
I just, I can’t hear the word iceberg without thinking of the Titanic.
Where were we? Polishing the brass on the Titanic
Right. Well, I suppose that wraps this one up. I mean, aside from the dozens of highly sophisticated and convoluted discussions one could have over several pints of beer or cups of coffee in a dark, wood-paneled cafe. Or pub. Or, you know, wherever the story might find you.
So, go play a character that sucks. Could be fun.
See ya!