It seems like min/maxing should be included on a list of cardinal sins for the RPG'er. With words, like sad, insecure, manipulative and so forth being used to describe rolling a character I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling about "min/maxing", it almost feels overly pedantic and judgmental. So for that reason I'm a little compelled to play the devil's advocate in the spirit of fun and see if there might be some light in all this darkness. Enjoy.
Is it min maxing when the rules for the game call for an automatic subtraction or addition to a player's character based on their race? As is the case with dnd3.0 rules. Or is it a clever way to show distinction among the races from the get-go?
Another case is the character generation rolls that are called for in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Edition 1 & 2. Where you find that choosing one race over another will affect which scores are likely to be stronger than other scores in a category in which the race does not excel per it's individual related lore. (Dwarves are tough, Elves are quick, Halflings are hungry j/k) The human however is always shown to be equal in every measure of his stat block however:
WeaponSkill 2d10+20 Ballistic Skill 2d10+20 Strength 2d10+20 Toughness 2d10+20... and so on.
Reads the same as:
STR 3d6 CON 3d6 DEX 3d6... etc
Now I enjoy DCC's 3d6 to all, and to all a good night dealy but I'm beginning to wonder if it's flagellant style popularity isn't related to the "funnel" concept? After all, given the types of danger this game features it's players it isn't likely that characters who have scores that don't the 'bell curve for survivability' aren't going to stick around to carve their name into the demon's head at the end are they?
I'm all for smart play, I really favor tactics and strategy, I really do, and players should use them to increase survival rates but dungeons really aren't the place for safe bets, drawing room heroes and knights of the ink well are they? In fact the players who prefer to rpg using tongue and quill tactics aren't really all that fond of a crawl anyway. I've seen people quit the game (WFRP) because they enjoy playing roles with high Fellowship (Fel) * (read CHA), and feel utterly useless in the dungeon setting.
I suppose I have to remember some important concepts; the game is abstract not real, the game is a
game, and have fun... So in the spirit of that it doesn't have to make sense that for some reason all humanoids, and humans are born equal lumps of d6, but their monstrous counterparts (read NPC's) well, they are born of bizarre algorithms of dice even the great mage
Zocchi wouldn't conjure.... I guess that means the greatest manipulators aren't the players but we the screen hiding* judges ourselves!
*I know that isn't recommended, but letting the dice fall where they may, that's for the PC!
