No gaming is better than bad gaming
General Exalted Thread
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Nice sentiment. Speaking from experience, it leads to an awful lot of 'no gaming'.
- Location
- NOVA
I'm very fortunate that I can do things like that too, but it took about five years of inviting people, getting to know them, and figuring out who were problems before it became possible. I also need to take this into consideration with every new person I invite to join.
A lot of people don't know themselves well enough to know they'll be OK with things like this and will say they will because they want to play. They believe that they'd be fine, but then they spend five sessions in a row trying the same thing that only worked before because of special circumstances and become frustrated for legit reasons.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Everything you're saying is barely relevant to my post.
The point I was making is that if you are making your character good at something, you are engaging in optimization. Optimization is more than just "picking the absolute best option"; at its heart, character optimization is using the system to make the character you want. Character optimization includes making nonfunctional characters.
If you are making the character you want, regardless of how capable they are, and they have the capabilities you want them to have... You have successfully optimized your character.
That is why optimization is inevitable. The only way to actually avoid it is a completely random character creation system. Everything else is just a matter of degrees.
Sure, but "bad gaming" is a continuum. There's some delta of "Well, I'd prefer X, but I'm still having more fun than not playing at all" around my hypothetical perfectly spherical, frictionless gaming group.
***
Before we go too far down this road: we're all agreeing that different people have different thresholds of suspension of disbelief, and just explaining why something does or does not violate our personal SoDs, or the SoDs of people we happen to have met, right? Like, none of us are shocked - whichever side of the debate we're on - that there are people for whom "the enemy Dawn dies to Total Annihilation" causes the game to be fun/unfun.
Revlid Homebrew: Elloge Charmset for Exalted Second Edition
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I had a week of doing practically nothing, and decided to dig through the old dusty corners of my Google Drive. I found a Roald Dahl megacrossover, a Ripper detective story, a Fate/Stay Night x Sword Art Online crossover, and the tatty chunks of about 80% of an Elloge Charm set.
Procrastination is king, so I cleaned up the latter and pieced it together into a serviceable whole.
I doubt it will be useful to literally anyone ever, but enjoy.
Procrastination is king, so I cleaned up the latter and pieced it together into a serviceable whole.
I doubt it will be useful to literally anyone ever, but enjoy.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
I was looking for one of these... Oh, a month ago. If the opportunity for another Yozi opening is charm set again comes up it actually will. So thanks, I guess, in advance.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Hmm. I think that going by that definition of optimization makes it so broad as to have very little meaning in a practical discussion about different sorts of players. Because usually, when someone accuses (yeah, it's usually an accusation IME) a player of optimization, they don't mean "You made a character who is too similar to what your concept is!" nor "You made a character that too exactly matches what you wanted!". No, they mean "You spent hours upon hours comparing different ways of achieving a given goal until you found the most efficient one (possibly modifying your character concept as a result), and that gives you an [unfair?] advantage over those who picked their traits for their fluff value only without regard for their game-mechanical/system effects".
The term is usually thrown around to mean stuff like "refuses to buy the Ride tree of Charms because he knows that Cirrus Skiff is better" and to distinguish from "Bought all the Ride Charms because he wanted to get mounted hero imagery". That is the form of optimization that people usually complain about.
Perhaps you prefer a different term to denote it? I'm okay with continuing the discussion by using a different word if you prefer.
Note that it's not the same as munchkinism either, as the latter assumes a certain level of cheating or near-cheating.
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These are two completely different (if often related) things, @azoicennead. I optimize when I allocate my Bonus Points for maximum BP-to-xp efficiency, and choose to select traits so as to be as good as I can be in my chosen domain of competence. I minmax when I bring Intelligence to 1 so I can have Wits 5 because one is a trait I don't care about and the other is one I need for my build.
It's in the word. Min-max. It originates from D&D point buy, in which there will often be an ability that is literally useless to you and which you will lower as much as is allowed so that your ability of choice can be brought as high as legally allowable.
Notably, optimized characters are often careful not to minmax too much, lest they cripple themselves in some way (sure you don't roll Wisdom, but your class has a poor Will Save so do you really want to carry that -2 for ten levels?).
To be honest the definition you made up above is entirely useless and unique to you. Optimization has a storied history in RPGs, and your attempt at redefining into "literally the act of making a character" is just muddying the waters of the discussion.
It's in the word. Min-max. It originates from D&D point buy, in which there will often be an ability that is literally useless to you and which you will lower as much as is allowed so that your ability of choice can be brought as high as legally allowable.
Notably, optimized characters are often careful not to minmax too much, lest they cripple themselves in some way (sure you don't roll Wisdom, but your class has a poor Will Save so do you really want to carry that -2 for ten levels?).
To be honest the definition you made up above is entirely useless and unique to you. Optimization has a storied history in RPGs, and your attempt at redefining into "literally the act of making a character" is just muddying the waters of the discussion.
grommile
nasty-minded old cynic
- Location
- NERV-Mercia
- Pronouns
- Traditional/Animate
*cough* your sense of history is lacking, the term is way older than any edition of D&D in which point buy was a thing.
(In fact, it's older than D&D. It appeared in an academic paper that provided the foundations for game theory in 1928.)
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And now I know more!
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Uh, no. It's not unique to me. I literally quoted someone expressing the same idea in the post you're responding to, and literally everyone who gets into CharOp realizes at some point that optimization is an incredibly broad term, and there are a lot of levels of optimization, and the question stops being "do you optimize", it's "how much do you optimize". This is why we don't ask "are your characters optimized", we ask "how optimized are your characters".
Minmaxing is an extreme end of the optimization spectrum. It's extreme optimization, typically to accomplish a single set of tasks at the detriment of the ability to do other things.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
It's not minmaxing if you don't have to pay with a Min for getting more Max.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
It's a behavioral descriptor, not a rigid definition.
By that definition, literally every character is minmaxed, because there is no physical way to not minmax a character in a RPG. You won't be able to buy every skill, and in Exalted at least it's physically impossible to have every attribute at the same. So Least Optimal Character Ever is 'minmaxed.'
Not really? The term isn't well defined, and I can remember long arguments on other boards about their definition. And it's not like the other 'definition' is something rigorous. It's pretty much someone taking offense to more optimization than they are comfortable with in a given situation. It's also really specific on a given situation: I've read many, many threads where the problem was basically that someone was upset with a 'optimized' character that was significantly worse than a 'unoptimized' character, generally in 3.5 dealing with the caster/noncaster power difference.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
That's not a definition that goes in both directions.
Buying Wis 15 and Dex 5 and everything else at 10 instead of all at 10 is a step towards minmax (whether it's a big or small step I am not the one to judge). But somehow getting Wis 15, Dex 15, and everything still at 10, and no extra drawbacks lacks the 'min' part of minmaxing.
How would you call "finding a way to achieve the same level of result in a more efficient way, or a more powerful result at the same cost"? An easy Exalted example is using the Cirrus Skiff instead of a Phantom Sometimes-Flying Horse. A GURPS 3e example would be buying Eidetic Memory if you want to spend too many points on Mental skills (because back then, Eidetic Memory had a flat cost but doubled the effect of all skill points spent on Mental skills, effectively paying for itself).
There are of course more complicated Exalted examples, 2.0e Paranoia calculations being one of them.
Neat stuff as always.
Question though.
Self-Synonym Futility, among the other things it does, let's the Infernal count as a separate person for the purpose of Elloge Charms. Does this side step the restrictions of the Excellency that prevents you from using it to aid in open personal interaction?
Vypraveni, the Dragon Who Lies Exsanguinated
Demon of the Second Circle
Escapist Soul of the Conventicle Malfeasant
Newborn, the worm Vypraveni burst forth in the bloody spittle of Lilunu as newfound Ellogean words spilled from her lips. His ichor flows from his splitting veins, straining to escape the chains of his paralysed, useless flesh. And that it does. Though his marble-white, limbless form is prone and useless, his blood takes form in the shape of his imagination, shaping itself to his poetry and songs. The crimson pool around his pale form boils with fantastic life, acting out vistas and dramas for all to see. His attendants must wade through the knee-deep ichor to care for his flesh - something he only reluctantly permits them to do. When he tires of their presence he envelops them and leaves nothing behind. Sometimes their form is seen among his figures hereafter.
The Dragon Who Lies Exsanguinated lies and dreams. He longs for escape. He longs to be free. He strains against the metaphysical sterility of his greater self and pretends that the ichor-mannequins he plays with are demons he makes. Sometimes he forgets that they are not and in those times he is the happiest. When he does not dream, though, he is insightfully cruel and throws the dreams and hopes of onlookers in their faces through mockery and pastiche. He scorns Lilunu most of all. His play-spectacles when she is around depict her dreams that she tells no one else, the stories she tells herself of how things will change - and the nightmares of memories left behind by the alien minds of the Yozis that she would forget. Already she cannot stand his presence and has cast him unto a deep well in a secret garden where the green sun's light will not reach him, but she cannot stop herself from coming to it and listening to his songs which echo from the deeps
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
So, now WW made an entity that is a pun on game masters, and you made one that's a pun on STs, likely those who remind PCs of past bad stuff and bring subtle secrets to the forefront, and yet players come back to them? ^_^
- Location
- Ottawa
Neither optimization nor min-maxing is strictly defined. Arguing over the real meaning of the words is futile.
For some reason, I always parse this phrase as "there isn't any gaming that's better than bad gaming".
For some reason, I always parse this phrase as "there isn't any gaming that's better than bad gaming".
Noctum
Dual Paradox
- Location
- Under the Skies Above
I'm starting to notice a pattern between Revlid Charmsets and Reclaimation aligned Yozi in Kerisgame.
...I've probably binged on the Elloge charmset and started using Vessel of Desire.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Yeah, we went on a tangent with the definitions.
Back to the original issue (okay, one of the issues of a low-generation brood):
Exalted seems to be a game line that strongly encourages going for "do game system research in order to get as much of the Max without having to pay for it with significant Min" (whatever word would be used to denote that action), because the cost of failure is quite high, the edge between steamrolling the opposition and losing everything seems rather narrow, and the 'trap builds' (i.e. ways of wastiing experience, freebies and motes) are numerous and not necessarily obvious. This atmosphere alone is rather unwelcoming and anxiety-producing. When combined with "all opposition must be built in accordance with getting all the Maxes without any of the Mins, with near-infinite XP and all that", it gets even more so.
It's no surprise that the game becomes ultra-lethal when both of those issues are in play. Combining them produces the EvE Online of RPGs . . . without the mind-backups and ready-to-use clones!
So I think I get Fenrir's point.
What a strange coincidence.
It's probably Keris' fault somehow. Most things are.