To Munchkin or not to Munchkin...

Munchkining… That's the theme for todays Daily 90 (seconds).  

For those of you that don't know, that's the fine art of knowing the rules of the game you're playing so well that you can play numbers games to make the most extreme, powerful, almost ridiculous character that you can.  Actually sometimes it's not consider munchkining if it's NOT ridiculous.  "+5 battle-axe of slaying everything I don't like"?  I have two of them.  "+9 Chainmail of boisterous invulnerability," awesome.

Ok, now to the point.  Why not?  I know that there is one group that says that making characters like that makes the game unbalanced.  Either the enemies have to be hard enough to be a fair fight for uber dwarf and they slaughter everyone else, or most the players have a fair fight and cousin Rockbeard just wades through the enemies like a kiddy pool full of jello.

That's true, it is more work for a game master… Come on, game masters know GMing is work, get used to it.

Other side of the fence is how I feel, let 'em do it.  The game is all about fun.  Everyone should be enjoying themselves, and if some players feel the they can only enjoy the game if they TOTALLY ROCK, then go for it, just hope the GM is creative enough to give everyone something to do.  Remember, Super-ultimate-awesome soldier man with sword and axe skills unseen since the turn of the millennium is really pretty useless when negotiating with a King.

So the moral of today's Daily?  It's one I've said before.  HAVE FUN!  Try to encourage your munchkins to be a little more balanced, but just try and find a way for everyone who's playing to leave every session smiling, or really damn pissed at you… because THAT is the real job of the GM.

See you soon!