This time I will be discussing dealing with interpersonal conflicts and problems that arise from Power Gamers. In my experience Power Gamers are one of the greatest sources of conflict at a table, but there is a way to fit Power Gamers into most groups. Full disclosure, I am a bit of a Power Gamer. Not entirely, because people do not fit neatly into categories, but I often min-max and try to build characters that push the limits of a system. To start with what do I mean by Power Gamers?

What is a Power Gamer?

Once again, I am working off of Robin Law's list of gamer types. This list is not perfect, but it's pretty well known and generally useful. A Power Gamer is someone that makes their character as powerful as possible. They are not happy being a noble warrior, but want to be the best knight in the land. To do this they may seek out the mathematically best options and find quirks or loop-holes in the rules that let them be more powerful. They tend to downplay the roleplaying portion of the game in favor of getting the gear with the biggest bonus or combining traits to get some great power or combo even if it doesn't make sense. They are sometimes also called min-maxers, munchkins, twinks, or cheating jerks, depending on how insulting you want to be. Some bad behaviors that Power Gamers often exhibit are: making the game a competition, hogging the spotlight, rules lawyering, a single-minded focus on the mechanical, and min-maxing.

Let's examine those behaviors.

Competitiveness: Power Gamers often turn the game into a competition between themselves and the other players. They want to have the biggest numbers and be the best, which means they have to show up the other people at the table. They can be judgmental of other people's characters or brag excessively. When the group gets in-game rewards, they will try to take the best stuff for themselves. There is an undercurrent of insecurity in this attitude.

Hogging the Spotlight: A good roleplaying game gives everyone a chance to shine and participate, but with a Power Gamer the balance can be thrown off. This keeps other players from engaging with the game and can turn them into audience members rather than participants. Hogging the spotlight can be done maliciously as part of the competition they've created or it can be an outgrowth of the mechanical efficiency of their character. If the Power Gamer built a superhero using ten different powers and a third party option that let's them instantly gain a +100 to any skill, the character with the +17 to a variety of skills is going to be superfluous, whether or not the Power Gamer means to rain on their parade.

Rules Lawyering: This is interrupting the game for excessive debate about the rules and their implementation. With Power Gamers, this is almost always done to gain some mechanical advantage. They might argue that the rules as written allow something even if it doesn't make sense or it's clear that the rule was not intended for the current situation. Sometimes this can reach an absurd level, for example, "Well, the rules don't say I can't cast spells when unconscious!" Regardless of the actual merits of the rules lawyer's arguments, it takes up a lot of time, preventing other people from enjoying themselves, and it can be a tool for hogging the spotlight and trying to "win".

A Focus on Mechanical Play: Power Gamers can focus on the mechanics (the rules and numbers) of the game to the exclusion of everything else. This leads to rejecting building any sort of story, playing in character, or engaging with the game in any way beyond trying to accumulate power. Whether or not this behavior is a problem depends on the rest of the group and whether they want story and character development in the game. At the extreme you can end up with Murder Hobo behavior, where the player is just traveling around and killing things to take their stuff. For example, the group meets a little orphan playing with a trinket. Is the trinket magical? Then the Power Gamer kills her and takes it. It might give them a +1. If the rest of the group wanted to help the little girl, there's going to be conflict.

Min-Maxing: Also called optimizing. This is when the you try to minimize a character's weaknesses and maximize their strengths. When done in moderation, this is a normal part of the character creation process. If I want to play a mighty warrior, of course I'm going to increase their ability to fight things and minimize the chances that other things can hurt them. The problem is when this is taken to the extreme to push the game mechanics beyond what was intended. Often this is done by pumping up disadvantages that will not apply in order to net benefits, such as taking a -100 to the sailing skill in a game set in desert city (+20 skill points!), a phobia of the ocean (+5 points!), a weakness to shark bites (+7 points), and an inability to navigate by the stars (+3 points!). It can also be done by taking lots of disadvantages that are centered in roleplay that the player does not intend to actually engage with or else that the player intends to use to derail gameplay, such as taking social penalties to all interactions and a prejudice against every ethnic group in the setting (for a big bonus) to justify why the character just kills people on sight. This is bad sportsmanship and it enables the other bad behaviors.

Looking at those behaviors, you might notice a trend. When Power Gamers are a problem, it's because they are selfish and do not care about other players' fun. That is a theme for almost all bad players, regardless of play style.

Playing with Others

Power Gamers can cause a lot of friction in groups. They tend to have the biggest issues with the Method Actor and Storyteller type players, because what those two want from the game is completely different from the Power Gamer. This is especially true for Murder Hobo players that will just trounce any attempt to roleplay or develop a character with violence. Method Actors and Storytellers are the player types that tend to be the least interested in the rules, so the drawn out rules debates are miserable for them. Power Gamers can also be actively antagonistic to these styles of play, seeing them as inferior or stupid.

Power Gamers will clash with Specialist players if they happen to be playing the same character type, because the Power Gamer is going to turn it into a competition to see who can be the best black-ops elf. If they are playing different character types, it is hit or miss whether the Specialist and Power Gamer get along. Power Gamers have the least difficulty with Butt-Kickers and Tacticians. Butt-Kickers are happy to get on board for some random violence and the Tactician is often happy with the Power Gamer's ability to contribute to the group winning.

Power Gamers also tend to clash with GMs. Because their characters are out-of-line with the rest of the group when it comes to capability, Power Gamers make it difficult for GMs to set up challenges that work for the group as a whole and can ruin lots of work the GM has put into preparing. They also make it difficult for the GM to direct sharing the spotlight. The disregard for the story or game world can leave the some GMs unable to enjoy the part of the game they like best.

How the GM reacts to the Power Gamer can also be a problem for other players. If the GM can't balance encounters, it can leave other players being completely ineffective. It can also mean that the GM stops putting work into a story or the roleplaying part of the game, because the Power Gamer's just going to wreck it anyway. This means that the other players in the game don't get to engage with these elements. Power Gamers also encourage GMs to railroad. So even if you don't have a problem with the Power Gamer directly, they might still be ruining your game.

But Why?

The above is what they do, not why they do it. If we really want to solve issues you have with them as players, figuring out the motivation is going to be key and Power Gamers are actually a pretty eclectic group. As far as I can tell there are five Motivations for Power Gamers:

1. Power Fantasy Gamers- These are players trying to indulge in a power fantasy. They want to feel bad ass and crush their enemies. They build a very powerful character so that they can be awesome. They want to win and will be unhappy if they don't.

2. The Fearful Gamer- This is a Power Gamer that acts in reaction to other Power Gamers. They have played in one too many games where they made a sensible character and other people brought optimized builds using twenty different books they didn't even know existed. They do not want to be overshadowed in the game, end up as someone's lackey, or be an audience member. The key thing to realize when dealing with a fearful Gamer is that they don't think of themselves as Power Gamers and would actually be much happier if you can get them out of the competitive mind-set.

3. The Calculating Gamer- They look at the game and see the mechanics and rules as the whole game. They realize that some things are just better than others and it bothers them not to take those options. Their trained warrior knows that greatswords are mathematically better than any other weapon, why would they pick something else? Why does the game even include two fire spells if one is better in all situations? They don't like having to pick bad choices, because it feels like an insult to their intelligence or breaks their suspension of disbelief.

4. The Pillager- Many games employ reward mechanics that reward players for various behvaiors and this is the type of gamer that engages very heavily with these mechanics. They really like to get loot and want to level their character every chance they get. They like when the numbers on their sheet get bigger and finding more rewards means more enjoyment. They optimize their character, because having a powerful character means they can more effectively get rewards.

5. The Creation Gamer- This type of player gets lumped in with Power Gamers, but doesn't seem to fit to me. They don't enjoy playing powerful characters. They enjoy making powerful characters. They see the character creation process as a mini-game. This is the sort of person that makes twenty different characters, even if there is no game starting just to see what they can get away with in the system. They may not make a character that's super powerful, but it could mess with the rules in other unintended ways. If the game has some way to get an infinite number of skill points in underwater basket weaving, they will find it.

So what do you do?

Next time, I will talk about how you approach talking with Power Gamers to try to get them to modify their behavior and changes you can make to your own playstyle to reduce friction. Also, a disclaimer here, I realize that this column may seem to put the blame entirely on Power Gamers, because I have highlighted issues they create. It is not the case that Power Gamers are uniquely problematic; as I get to other player types, it should be clear that everyone causes issues and that being respectful goes both ways.