How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love My &%$!ing Minmaxers

Minmaxers, munchkins, metagamers--easy replacements for swearwords in the GM's Dictionary.


If you're familiar with my worldbuilding, Game Mastering, and narrative work on The Owl of Lysia, you might be aware that I've run that setting in three other systems. Each system has its own crunch and way to optimize (or unoptimize) characters. And In my early days of GMing I would do a lot to unhorse the antics of my statistics-loving, crunchy, multi-classing &%$!ing minmaxers--some of which I've outlined in detail below. If you're familiar with my GMing now, you can see I've completely embraced this kind of chaos.

But something's wrong...

Specifically, this article is mislabeled. What this is actually about is the use of standardized measures of skill checks. But I think no one dragged me kicking and screaming into it better than my &%$!ing Minmaxers.


On the use of Standardized Skill Checks, this is what they taught me:

• Mechanical Consistency Lends Itself to Player Immersion
  
  
• How to Bolster, and not Punish, Your Players’ Mechanics
  
  
• How to Pace and Flow the Game

Mechanical Consistency Lends Itself to Player Immersion



Know the Task Resolution Mechanic, and get it straight with your table:

1. While D&D is a binary success or failure system, it’s a common house rule to have some amount of scaling success or failure--including natural 1’s, and baller skill successes for natural 20s. Sometimes tables recognize RAW in certain games being that natural 20’s aren’t automatic successes. Sometimes tables recognize one of the most popular house rules: Natural 20s are Automatic Successes. Some tables will not let you roll if a natural 20 would not succeed. There’s a lot of rules to break and make with homebrew, and the takeaway is this:
   
   At the end of the day, while it’s worthwhile to know the rules you are breaking(I’m a big believer in this), breaking the rules is not important. Breaking them consistently is. Whether you decide to roll 3D6 for skills instead of a D20, or think that a mountain of gifts should be given to your players on rolls approaching a whopping 30, or that a Natural 1 is a gift they don’t want: be consistent.
   
   
2. Find the logical points of reference for skills and combat, and stick to them:
   
   Expressing logic through numbers is a skill learned through trial and error, and a skill my min-maxers held me accountable for with unfailing scrutiny. I was initially resentful. I just wanted to present them with a combat I found interesting--a trial I thought would be challenging. 

Eventually, I learned a few things:

1. Rolling should not be the most interesting part of the challenge--the rolling should come as the derivative to player solutions by way of their mechanics. 
   
   
2. Creatures do not have to have the same playbook as the players, but they should have their own rules.
    
3. Mechanics May Not Reflect Reality, But They Do Reflect Immersion: While we often reference things like Riding Dragons as a baseline comparison in these games for complaints about realism and crunchiness in these games, it ultimately isn’t as helpful as just finding common ground. Min-maxers ultimately taught me how to find that common ground in the rules as written, and lean into the system that we were playing. If we were going to play this game on a weekly basis, it served them to consistently know that what they were faced with actually gave them a better idea of the world around them. This allowed for one of the most important lessons... 

Player Agency is Expressed Through Mechanics. 

As GMs we want to give players the agency narrative-wise to do what they want, to be more than their mechanics. Min-maxers may not look a gift horse in the mouth when presented to them, but will often be chafed by the idea of stepping on other character mechanics that are unearned. I learned that it isn’t right to gift players with mechanics that I think suit them better. I learned saying no early on saves you a lot of saying no in crucial moments. I learned that transparency on simply telling players their mechanics are not suitable for my game. It saves a lot of heartache, it saves them their agency, it prevents Gotcha! Moments, and it helps you do the most important thing you can do as a GM:


How to Bolster, and not Punish, Your Players’ Mechanics


I think it’s time for some high fantasy examples of when I’ve seen mechanics work against the players wielding them. I promise to be gentle.

 The names have been changed to protect the innocent.




COMMON RESPONSE: Quantum Environment

Alien’s Sigourney Weaver, the half elf bard, is actively looking for cover while she waits for the guard change to slip into a low security keep.


Cabin in the Woods’ Sigourney Weaver, the Game Master, has Ripley roll a perception check, despite thinly veiled low-key animosity toward high perception. The Director seems to have planned to ignore any attempt to use the skill to somehow punish building a character that dared to have high ranks in what she feels is too useful. Ripley fails to find cover despite meeting the hard difficulty check more than 50% of the time. She is disheartened to find that her skill only works meagerly if she rolls high enough, and that cover or useful environment doesn’t exist otherwise.


Solution: If there isn’t cover, just don’t let them roll. Tell them there’s no cover. This literally can’t be the most interesting thing you have prepared tonight, and you likely don’t have it prepared because this player went off your carefully placed rails. In addition, adjusting luck to your player’s rolls can be a dangerous endeavor. Consider that skill checks are not employed at the whims of the players, but at the agreement that the check can be made by the GM. A check should be made when there’s an interesting chance of success, or failure(and interesting isn’t related to numbers, we’re talking about real and tangible rewards and consequences in this fake-ass fantasy sci fi etc RPG). A skill check should answer a question. Most GM’s I’ve met never want to tell their players no, but if it’s a fruitless endeavor then saying yes to a check is doing a lot of work to make a locked box seem open-- and you’re accidentally teaching them that their skills need to be even higher to succeed to boot. It’s a great way to shoot yourself in the foot.



ANOTHER COMMON RESPONSE: Skill Jockeys

Second verse, same as the first. The Dark Tower's Idris Elba is playing his favorite kind of skill jockey, but the DM, Prometheus' Idris Elba, is unamused with his player’s constant success. In response, Prometheus' Idris Elba raises the difficulty checks to make it nearly to very impossible for anyone but The Dark Tower's Idris Elba to succeed, but even then it is challenging beyond reason. 9.8/10.


Solution: We have DCs as a measure of how hard to weight tasks. Difficulty checks are already negotiated as static. The players decide how consistent they are outside of unnatural circumstances(true sight, alarms, traps, etc.). Minmaxers are regularly trying to introduce a level of consistency to their characters in a gameworld otherwise guided by chaos. It’s a two-faced metric. Not only are they telling you the skills they are interested in exploring, as blazing past them guides them into your narrative, but they are also expressing what they don’t want to be bothered by those same things. They are effectively communicating to you that they DO want to be bothered by the skills and stats that are lacking for them. Spells do this all the time. They are a shortcut to an objective.

The GM has the control of universal ennui, the world and every decision of every npc. Micromanaging mundane or trained tasks specifically to make something unnaturally difficult for someone who excels at it according to their sheet can seem a little petty in this regard.



A FINAL COMMON RESPONSE: The Locked Box

Once Upon a Time in Mexico’s Salma Hayek has gone above and beyond in preparing plot threads for her masterpiece of a game. Despite the base high skill checks of her players, Dogma’s Salma Hayek, Frida’s Salma Hayek, and (how could we forget) Wild Wild West’s Salma Hayek, they simply do not roll high enough to find any of the threads and go home empty-handed. Once Upon a Time in Mexico's Salma Hayek plays with the houserule in D&D 5e that natural 1's in skill checks are automatic failures. The big encounter falls away, back into the box for another day.


Solution: If you need players to find things, chance can take a hike sometimes. It's the strongest form of DM lament, and it's entirely avoidable by taking the reigns of your game in hand. Even people with ridiculously high skill checks fail, and 5% of the time isn't a laughable amount. A game that relies on chance to determine either success or failure for things to happen is subject to chance. Remember to play to find out what happens, and good things will follow.






How to Control Pace and Flow of the Game

I can say without fail that if anything was certain it's that focusing less on them succeeding or failing on checks did the following for me:

• My narrative became more compartmentalized, and believably so.
   
• I was able to focus more on the narrative--not only did letting them nab their successes increase their agency in storytelling, but also mine. This was also helpful for anxiety and the dangers of over-planning.
  
  
• Checks are not always needed. Reward or penalty for interaction alone is valid, moves things along, and rewards for interest. These things can scale, as well. My favorite thing to run is mysteries, and a base amount of knowledge necessary to solve the mystery is paramount to running them effectively. My general advice in Mysteries is that presence gets you information, skill checks get you icing.
  
  
• Checks are not the encounters themselves--they're the thing that create either more questions and rewards. Treating them like tools helped me create more interesting narrative and tangible rewards that players seek more so than simply succeeding on the rolls(which becomes the reward when you vie for power with a minmaxer over skillchecks).
  
  
• I learned how to compound my narrative into winnable moments for the players, and successes or failures helped to mark the story we told along the way.

To really put their mettle to the test, have those &%$!ing Minmaxers teach you what they can do. Have them also tell you what they would like to be challenged on. Most of all, create exigency. Make the things they need to do as a last resort important, and good gaming will follow.



THE CROSSING THE CHASM TROPE.


Perhaps the GM is attempting to fill time by letting the players guess how they should be crossing the chasm? Perhaps they didn’t prepare enough? Prepare more, help your players find other avenues to explore, or create an exigency to do the otherwise meaningless skill checks. Most players would rather lose their characters to an interesting plot mechanism or in the throes of battle than rolling too low at a jump they didn’t need to make, especially if the game was sold to them as narrative-driven. (Some players think this is funny and like jumping into chasms. Let them do it in that case. They probably just want a new character.) Anyway.


If they have plenty of time and the materials on hand to make the cross, consider exploring that with them as the GM(friend). Bring the shared nature of the game to full light. If they do not have the time to make that cross, because they are being pursued relentlessly by a remorrhaz burrowing the already narrow pathway to bits and widening the already challenging chasm, that seems like the appropriate time to employ that skill check as the GM(foe).


What the plan becomes? Riding that &%$!ing Remhorrhaz right across the chasm.


You may notice that:


Min-maxers may claim to have made their strengths and weaknesses, but they never use them!

• Punishing them for their high skill checks, or getting even, or however its internalized, is easy, and no replacement for challenging their weaknesses.

• Logically they aren’t going to put themselves in that situation where they’re not as effective, so explore ways to do it with them.

But my minmaxers are rules lawyers!

• Of course they are. They crave consistency. Houserule consistently. Often times they’ll be able to give you an itemized list of how your house rules snowball into other mechanics across the game, and that level of dedication is a wonderful, if not an "omg it's 2am why are you texting me about this" trait.

They’re ruining my game!

• If they’re ruining your game for real, ask them politely, yet firmly to change their behavior or leave. Them not enjoying your game is not grounds for ruining it via their mechanical play. (Just like you not enjoying their character’s mechanics is not grounds for ruining the game for them mechanically.)

  Kai Antony is an Operator for the Phantom Rollbooth and the GM for upcoming projects. You can follow him on Twitter @KaiAntoni for news about all of his creative endeavors, including art, homebrew, and livestreaming updates. His partner, the other Operator on The Phantom Rollbooth is here @ColinItLikeISee. You can also join the community on the Phantom Rollbooth's Discord for topical discussions on Roleplaying Games and Culture, and Creation. For Other Contact, you can e-mail us @ phantomrollbooth@gmail.com