On Powergaming

We're gamers. We play games. The purpose of playing a game is to have fun. I have said this many, many times on this blog. That being said, there are many ways to have fun playing a game. One of those ways is to win. This is where powergaming comes from.

Powergaming is an attempt to gain every advantage possible in a game. This takes different forms depending on what game you're playing. With war games a certain amount of powergaming is to be expected. You're playing against someone, you might as well play to win. The problem comes from when that's you're only reason for playing. If you can't enjoy a well played game in which you lose, you're probably going to hate about half your games.

Powergaming while roleplaying tends to be a bit more problematic. While in theory being as good as possible at whatever your character does can be helpful to the party, in practice obsessively focusing on one part of the game can hurt other people's enjoyment. The danger here is becoming a munchkin. This can very easily start a bizarre game of one-upmanship, in which the offending player(s) constantly try to get one over on both the GM and his fellow players. This gets especially bad if the player(s) stops respecting the rules.

I've given this advice before, but it bears repeating: Don't try to cheat. You're inviting all kinds of pain on yourself when you do. Don't try to justify it, don't try and rationalize it. You will get caught, and you will get kicked out of the group. Good luck finding other people to play with. Gamers talk, especially about certain types of players.