Character Class

Playing with Power Gamers

The Pillager Roleplaying games often give players rewards for performing certain actions, like killing monsters gives you gold and XP. People respond to incentives it's why they are there, but some people respond very strongly and it's a primary driver for their engagement with the game. They really want to get loot because it's a rush and they know the way to get that rush is to kill monsters. So they build characters that are optimized for killing monsters and are not interested in the rest of the game. Why should they talk with an NPC? That's time that could be spent killing monsters and getting rewards. You've got to have the +9000 megablast sword, otherwise you can't kill monsters fast enough to keep the rewards coming at a steady pace. You can try switching rules to find a game that incentivizes things you enjoy, such as roleplaying, but this often causes a new problem, a player that is now engaged in the part of the game you enjoy but solely for the purpose of getting it to spit out rewards for them. This is rarely a satisfying experience. A much better approach is to just severely limit or remove entirely mechanical rewards from the game, so that the player can engage with the other parts of the game without the distraction of trying to hit the reward button as often as possible. That's frequently not an option since by the time you realize that the player pulling the gold teeth out of the everyone you meet and killing anyone that protests is a problem, the group has already chosen a set of rules and the GM has already set up a reward scheme they will be reluctant to abandon.

Instead, start by getting this player to track the group's inventory. That way they are seeing everything being added to the sheet and get the thrill of gaining stuff. This needs to be a group inventory. Why? Because then you have externalized pressing the reward button to also involve the rest of the group, which means the player is going to be more invested in everyone else (though this may be entirely focused on your ability to kill monsters and acquire things). Also, find other ways for them to track things for the group, especially less tangible things like clues, your standing with different political factions, etc. If possible have some sort of scale or ranking, so the player can see things advancing.

Next, if you can, find something non-mechanical without an in game monetary value to make socially valuable in the game. Maybe it's trophies or a little dirt from every place your characters have been. Work this stuff into your character's story or into the setting if you can. Maybe convince your GM to tie some of these things to specific achievements or to just roll randomly for worthless junk worth practically nothing for the player to excitedly collect and sell. Then there is cool swag that the player can collect, but it can't be acquired by just buying it or building a super powerful character that kills a bunch of things. Also, because these items don't have mechanical effects, they won't play hell with the setting and rules dynamics the way it would if the player acquires an arsenal of magic weapons and has gotten the best armor in existence ten levels early because they realized that they could slaughter every NPC in the city and sell their belongings at half value to the innkeeper.

The group handwaving the looting can save a lot of time and reduce frustration for everyone involved. Rolls to search bodies, appraisal checks to determine something's worth, strength checks to pry each individual nail out of the door to sell as scrap metal, determining how to transport the fifty sets of goblin rags and daggers, etc. takes time, but is anyone actually enjoying it? The power gamer driving it doesn't really want to play this stuff out, it's just a roadblock on getting to write down 50x Goblin Loin clothes on the inventory sheet. Most other players would rather move on to the rest of the game. Some GMs think the way to curtail the "steal everything that's not nailed down mentality" is to make these activities harder as a sort of punishment. This is a terrible passive aggressive idea. If you notice a GM doing this ask them to stop and address the behavior directly.

The Creation Gamer This person enjoys making characters. Consider letting them help you make a character so that everyone in the group can be the same level of rules bending awesome. Remember, they don't actually need to play a powerful character, so they are the people who are most likely to respond well to being asked to tone it down. Just make sure that you complement their cool creations while you are asking. "Hey it's cool you can kill a million orcs at level one by clapping your hands, but that's going to make it pretty hard to run the game or for the rest of us to shine. Can you build something that's less vicious." It's important that you acknowledge the cool thing they've done, because the thrill for them is finding those insane combos and having other people see their cool creation. If you just veto it or try to argue about whether its rules legal in the first place or if the rules were intended to work that way, you're missing the point. You're not going to win a rules argument with them and they don't care about the rules as a means of making the game function. The rules are boundaries for the character creation mini-game. That game is over once the character's created, acknowledge that they won and then ask them to start with new boundaries.

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