"abuse the system" characters

[Ethryo]

Think of him as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. He is super good in one aspect.
Now try to place Bruce Lee at the christmas dinner at Buckingham Palace and gie him a problem to solve or among the United Nations talk in how to deal with that Fiji has developed nuclear weapons. Bruce Lee can have as many blak belts in various Martial Arts as he wants, but thy wont help him with those problems.

Other times you can place him in mid combat with some sabbat kindred and he will rock and roll their butts, but to be honest. Dont bother controlling his characters creatiion. Just put him in various situations that he both master and that makes him feel like a fish out of water in.

[Penelope]

Think of him as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. He is super good in one aspect.
Now try to place Bruce Lee at the christmas dinner at Buckingham Palace and gie him a problem to solve or among the United Nations talk in how to deal with that Fiji has developed nuclear weapons. Bruce Lee can have as many blak belts in various Martial Arts as he wants, but thy wont help him with those problems.

Other times you can place him in mid combat with some sabbat kindred and he will rock and roll their butts, but to be honest. Dont bother controlling his characters creatiion. Just put him in various situations that he both master and that makes him feel like a fish out of water in.

Hmmm. That’s a very valid point.

[maekkel]

1. talk more what you both want out of the game and find common ground.
2. Let him minmax - especially in a V.TM game, i could not care less for a combat ace character. Let him be BLADE. Blade is cool.
3. Repeat step 1.
4. If no common ground is found, part your ways or play something you can play together or just don´t vampire to serious and play some blood-hobos.

[Thoth]

Empowerment

I have to say that "empowerment" has more or less lost meaning in the current age.

It used to mean the power given by society to individuals to assist in governance or the power that individuals took for themselves and wielded without the support of others. Examples being building your own company, being elected to office, or training until you become a black belt in a given martial art system. In short, achievements and prowess attained equal power gained.

These days "empowerment" more or less means a mode of behavior that used to be considered ignoble, but no one says anything out of fear of being labeled as non-sympathetic. Hence how "empowerment" is used as reason to have an "only fans" account when we as a society are supposed to be getting beyond over sexualization. Or in other words, using a label to cover bad behavior.

The two examples I gave of gamers was to show the difference in scope the player types were going for. Both want something different, but one wants to more than just a new mask, they want a new outcome.

[Chris24601]

Two other types I think worth noting are what I call the “Punisher” and “Security Blanket” power gamers.

Punishers is the label I apply to people who use the game a pressure release valve. They have some stressful situation in their life they’re unable to do anything about (ex. a crappy boss at a job you need to make ends meet). So they build combat monsters in games to take out those frustrations on what amount to proxies in a safe way that harms no one real. Not only is this good, it’s healthy and shows a strong conscience and awareness that they can use a game as a tool for relief instead of taking it out on the real world.

The Security Blanket power gamer is one who builds combat monsters because physical combat is almost always the part of the system with the most severe consequences for failure and the ultimate backstop against failure in other situations. Failing to pick up someone’s lies or getting a verbal beat down are rarely lethal in and of themselves; failing in combat often is. Likewise, even if there are lethal consequences to a social scene (insulting the Prince) the lethal part is itself going to be a physical conflict they have the prospect of overcoming or fleeing from if their character is physically powerful.

Basically, there are a bunch of nuances to why someone might want a combat-focused powerhouse; particularly when you see health scores in the single digits and aggravated damage that can chew through it pretty quickly.

[Penelope]

I have to say that "empowerment" has more or less lost meaning in the current age.

It used to mean the power given by society to individuals to assist in governance or the power that individuals took for themselves and wielded without the support of others. Examples being building your own company, being elected to office, or training until you become a black belt in a given martial art system. In short, achievements and prowess attained equal power gained.

These days "empowerment" more or less means a mode of behavior that used to be considered ignoble, but no one says anything out of fear of being labeled as non-sympathetic. Hence how "empowerment" is used as reason to have an "only fans" account when we as a society are supposed to be getting beyond over sexualization. Or in other words, using a label to cover bad behavior.

The two examples I gave of gamers was to show the difference in scope the player types were going for. Both want something different, but one wants to more than just a new mask, they want a new outcome.

I disagree 100% with you about empowerment being a bad thing, but my cat just died and I don’t wanna argue.

[Thoth]

I disagree 100% with you about empowerment being a bad thing, but my cat just died and I don’t wanna argue.

I didn't say empowerment was a bad thing, I am saying that the term empowerment has been co-opted to use as a title/social shield, often without the individual gaining actual power or control. I know it is a splitting hairs distinction, but I feel it is an important one.

As for the loss of your pet, you have my sympathies.

[Thoth]

Chris24601 Do think that the security blanket type of player is more of a symptom from poor DMing/STing skills than an innate player mentality? I have seen lots of players working out personal issues via characters in game, but I can't think of coming across a security blanket player who was that way on their own, rather than being that way from bad experiences.

[False Epiphany]

example: he used "blade mistress" as a melee skill, i asked him and he said knifes. so i changed it to knifes.

about making characters, his exact message to me when I sent the updated character to him was:

"Dude thx but no thx I build character based on an idea I have in mind at the time sometimes they built to abuse the system some time it for pure flavour"

There are a bunch of reasons why "Blade Mistress" is a bad Specialty. I'd have told the player to make it Knives too. Or asked them to come up with another Specialty.

This player has an attitude problem. If you don't like the GM's decision, you say, "GM, here are the reasons why I'd like Blade Mistress as a Specialty. Would that be okay with you?" If the GM says yes, awesome. If the GM says no, you accept their decision gracefully and move on. What you don't say is, "GM, I'm just not gonna do what you said."

This might be over a minor thing, but you've made a whole bunch of threads about problems you've had with this guy. I get the feeling he just might not be a good fit for your group.

[Chris24601]

Chris24601 Do think that the security blanket type of player is more of a symptom from poor DMing/STing skills than an innate player mentality? I have seen lots of players working out personal issues via characters in game, but I can't think of coming across a security blanket player who was that way on their own, rather than being that way from bad experiences.

I think its a general tendency towards risk aversion that can be amplified by either or both of bad GMing and/or system whose character building mechanics aren't a good fit for its lethality.

For examples, here are two extremes where system risk aversion isn't very common.

First, old-school D&D didn't have it because character creation was literally roll dice seven times (six for attributes, once for hit points), slap a race/class onto it, grab some basic equipment and go. When I was in middle school and ran games I could throw together AD&D characters for players in two-minutes and when someone died I just repeated the process and dropped them back into the game a few minutes later. People don't get risk averse when a death puts them out of the fun for no more than 5 minutes and you often don't even name your PCs until they've actually built up enough experience to NOT be so easy to kill (fun story if you're unaware... the famed D&D wizard Melf; as in "Melf's Acid Arrow" was one such character... his name is literally just the result of his original player putting Male Elf into the name slot).

On the other extreme, HERO/Champions has an extremely complex and in depth character building system that can take hours to make a single PC, but risk aversion behavior is much lower (at least in my experience with the system because the game mechanics are such that while PCs may be commonly knocked unconscious, actual death is extremely rare.

By contrast, a system without a whole lot of build options but low lethality often becomes tedious because there's little room to expand your character meaningfully and you're probably going to be stuck with them for awhile.

Conversely, who wants to spend an hour taking a PC through a detailed lifepath character building system only to be subject to instant death from a single bad roll? (I'm looking at you... various Mechwarrior RPGs)

And the fact of the matter is that V5 does fall quite a bit into that latter category. While in some ways simpler than V20 in raw mechanics (there's a lot less fiddly bits with freebies and backgrounds and merits and flaws and less playing with your attribute and skill ranks), V5 has added a lot of extra detail in the form of touchstones, relationship maps and the like that makes it a lot harder to just throw a fresh PC together if something goes sideways (i.e. high investment in character building). Now add mechanics where a starting character probably only has 5-6 health, but attacks deal the DIFFERENCE between your skill check and theirs (plus weapon damage less armor) and can easily be aggravated and you could quite literally be one-shotted if your PC isn't combat focused and ever runs into a combat monster.

It's gritty and realistic... and zero fun if you're on the receiving end of it because all that work you put into your touchstones, relationship maps (including to the other PCs) just gets flushed down the toilet and you have to do that work all over again.

And the best way to avoid having to do that? To hold onto this character you spent so much time building? You build a combat monster who's less likely to die and make you have to do all that work again.

And that's just with a GM who's playing rules as written, not even trying to go after the PCs. Unless you KNOW going in that the GM is a softy who hates physical conflicts, the mechanics alone would be enough for risk averse types to go the power gamer route. V5's stripped down combat mechanics downright encourage the behavior.

[Penelope]

I didn't say empowerment was a bad thing, I am saying that the term empowerment has been co-opted to use as a title/social shield, often without the individual gaining actual power or control. I know it is a splitting hairs distinction, but I feel it is an important one.

As for the loss of your pet, you have my sympathies.

Thank you.

[Haquim]

hi everyone,

So I was talking with my players about playing VTM in the new year. One of my players (usual one i talk about, the "eat the pope" guy) said the following when I was redesigning a character he made so it made mechanical sense. example: he used "blade mistress" as a melee skill, i asked him and he said knifes. so i changed it to knifes.

about making characters, his exact message to me when I sent the updated character to him was:

"Dude thx but no thx I build character based on an idea I have in mind at the time sometimes they built to abuse the system some time it for pure flavour"

when I read the "built to abuse the system" bit. in my mind that raised a few red flags. when making characters encase he wants to use guns or pick one up after a fight, he picks Rapid Reflexes from Celerity purely so he doesn't have to have the minor action of reloading the gun and doesn't suffer a dice pool penalty due to lack of cover.
any advice on a player that wants to "abuse the system"? or is it worth having that character subtly get curb stomped into Torpor and sitting out until their character gets awoken again? (a sort of time out) the core book does say:

"Build the character in your mind’s eye with the dots and numbers of the Storyteller System as the skeleton, not as the soul. Don’t try to create the “best possible” character – not only does that defeat the purpose of drama, it’s also impossible to have more dots than a whole city full of predators, much less a whole World of Darkness."

Here's the thing: whatever he does you can do, MORE. If he does something stupid, like murdering right and left or insulting the prince in front of the court let things play logically. No matter how powerful his character is, as the ST you have more powerful options at your disposal. If he does things that make the powers that be react, send out hounds, scurges and even archons. He'll learn to behave (or at least act smart) or he'll die and it will only be the logical effect of his choices.