They're bad at playing the game in the sense that they miss the whole point of it and can't have fun unless they're winning 100% percent of the time and making bigger and bigger gains yes. And they are usually not only unaware of their inability, but rather feel they are superior gamers to non-munchkins (after all they have more powerful characters)
This reminds me of a super-munchkin who tried to join my Zioth campaign once. To give you a little background, the Coming of the Zioth is about as un-munchkin-oriented as it gets. So far, in three years of game play, there have been three real battles. The huge majority of experience points come from writing well (it's an email game) and role-playing well. There is almost no magic, and I try to keep the game as close in feel to medieval Europe as I can. I emphasize all these points frequently, especially to potential players.
The submission I got was of a seven foot tall albino with dreadlocks, complete with super-high stats (despite the clear rule in my game that I roll the stats myself), a horse, full plate mail, full shield, two-handed sword, and plenty of other goodies. The first thing I did was explain the ridiculousness of the character. An albino giant with dreadlocks does not fit into my rather conservative campaign world. Furthermore, there's no way his horse (which I told him he couldn't have anyway) could carry a three hundred pound man, plus full plate and full shield. The shield was silly anyway. Who can fight while holding a full shield? They're intended for archers, to hide behind while they cock their arrows. Especially while wearing full plate mail, there's no way he'd even be mobile enough to carry around that shield. Finally, I never allow a player to start with that much equipment.
Next, I asked him to supply a character history. Histories are very important in my game, and I've seen submissions up to five or six pages in length. This player's history was a single paragraph, that included a story of the time he was so angry that he single-handedly killed a dozen trained soldiers, despite his own lack of training and the fact that he had only a single sword to work with, and no armor.
We went a couple more rounds of that, before the player got angry and said that the only reason I didn't like his character was that he was a better roll-player than me. He actually spelled it “roll-player.”
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 03:24:24 +1000
[me] wrote:
We went a couple more rounds of that, before the player got angry and said that the only reason I didn't like his character was that he was a better roll-player than me. He actually spelled it “roll-player.”
ROFL well… at least he was honest about his stance on the game I suppose. Scary part is I can remember having a player IRL with an attitude similar to this, only that he would refuse to play unless he was given a lycanthrope displacer beast with over 20 strength regardless of the campaign, the setting or the actual level of the party.
Fortunately for me though he was mature enough to admit he didn't know anything about the game and never really argued about having or not having his favourite character race.
BTW I like the idea of you Zioth world (all RP and writing with few battles etc) and playing be email with sensible character restrictions. Keep up the good work.
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 14:02:13 -0400 (EDT)
BTW I like the idea of you Zioth world (all RP and writing with few battles etc) and playing be email with sensible character restrictions. Keep up the good work.
Thanks. There's a space open if you're interested. There's a female human thief without a player who I was going to get rid of soon because the character was poorly thought out and she hasn't added to the game. I was going to get rid of her by having a minstrel discover her (heretofore unrecognized) talent for poetry and take her away from the party. Until I do get rid of her, though, that character's available. There's also always room for a new character, and since the party's split into three groups right now, there shouldn't be too much of a wait to get in.