I also noticed something funny about it. Since they didn’t have a character sheet in front of them saying what their chances were of doing something, they played their characters more “realistically”. Its one thing to get into a fight with a goblin when you know you’ve got a +3 to hit and +6 to damage. It’s quite another when you just know you’re “pretty strong”, but the thing in front of you has green skin, red eyes, patchy hair, and a rusted meat cleaver.

I’ve actually had a lot of good results with an experiment I used for a PBEM, where I had the players answer questions about their character, then designed the characters myself based on what they told me. They were really basic questions about the character’s personality, motives, goals, powers, and history, but it got them thinking about the person behind the numbers rather than twinking the stats that make up the character.

It makes sense that twinking might also signal an unwillingness on the player’s part to engage with the game as presented, or a failure to accurately present the tone and style of the game on the GM’s part.

Apart from that, I don’t really have anything to add. This is one of the best discussions I’ve ever seen here in the comments on TT, bar none.

Alan De Smet: A good way of putting it.

However… I think it also needs to be aknowledged that the expectations provided by the system figure into the equation, too. A system that says it’s all about story-telling yet provides a system that rewards powergaming and building combat monsters is not doing its job. In that sense, I can’t really blame the players; assuming they can do math, they will eventually see that there are optiomal choices and suboptimal ones. Chiding them for not willingly making suboptiomal choices in order to preserve the story-telling is unfair, IMO.

As some others here have said, this is why it’s key to 1) find a system that supports the play you’re after, and 2) create characters *as a group*. Heck, then the twinkers can help the non-twinkers and everyone will be on the same page.

However, if the expectation of your game is that the PCs are roughly evenly matched, pushing the rules is a problem if not all of your players are skilled at it. The less skilled players end up being overshadowed by the skilled one.

This problem is easily solved: have the entire group work together on creating everyone’s characters. This happens by default in my groups, without any concious decision to do so. If everyone works together to craft each character, the mechanics will help bring up the cruch level of the roleplayers. If you are lucky, the roleplayers will even raise the fluff level of the characters of the mechanics. This should lead the entire party to be at the same level of power.

Fortunately, I do not (and will not) game with anyone that really pushes to the vicinity of the twink category. So I don’t concern myself too much with exactly what a twink is. If I’m asking myself if a person is a twink, then I know I’m totally uninterested in gaming with them.

For example, early into my rpg career, we played a GURPS Supers game. I played a Green Lantern-type character able to create energy constructs. Another player poured all of his points into Telekinesis, and there was no situation that came up that his character wasn’t just plain better than mine. (“We need to get the group across town! I’ll make an airplane!” “No need, I’ll just rip a section of street out and we can fly on that.” “Uhh, can I at least make the seatbelts?”)

I think I’m about to run into a related situation with the game I’m about to run: it’s a investigation/horror game set on a college campus. The first player rolled his character, and immediately stated he wanted to be in the ROTC so he had access to guns. Oh boy…

“If the expectation of your game is that there is a different focus, say on storytelling, a twink can run roughshod over that expectation.”

I had a nice long, post that covered many of the same points as Alan’s message (#11). He said it so well that anything else seems redundant at this time.

Well said, Alan. Well said.

If the entire party is uber powerful, for example (perhaps each specializing in something different), then there’s not a problem. Everyone can be equally challenged. Maybe (such as the case in Exalted) it’s damn near impossible to build a character that’s NOT god-like in some way. In these cases, the game is more like a session of rock paper scisors with Sir Meat Shield fighting the knights, Sir Thinksalot outwitting the chamberlan, and Sir Winning Smile winning over the hearts of the people and setting them all up as heros instead of king-slayers.

It’s when one character has an overwhelming advantage and your other players have no way to shine on their own that you have a problem because that one character will overshadow everyone else a good deal of the time, especially when they have to face challenges together that aren’t a challenge to one of them and that are beyond the abilities of the rest.

It depends on the focus of the game that is being run, as to whether this is a problem or not. In a typical dungeon crawl if the player twinks to combat hausness, and nobody else gets to make an attack, then that may be a problem.

If the game is more story based, or social interaction based, and the player can dominate or “force” stuff to go on with special powers, then it’s a problem. Ruining the incredibly intriguing plot point and social interaction which would require cunning and quick witted thinking, with a single roll is quite annoying. Doing it for every single intriquing social interaction just kills anything of value for that game.

In my current game, the regular “fighter haus” player built more of a conman. He hadn’t gotten much chance to use his conning skills yet, but when they encountered an island of intelligent, well read natives who wanted to be recognized as a sovereign nation (despite being less than a square mile as a landmass), he jumps in, uses his massive con artist skills, rolls a speech off his tounge (in real life) about how he is “a legally authorized represtntative of the Cyrus League of Nations, fully capable and vested to oversee and notorize the initial papwerwork needed to get you recognized as a sovereign nation. There is of course the matter of the sponsorship fee, but I’ll cover that for you personally with some collateral, how about the washed up wreckage of that boat that we came for. Let us have that, I’ll cover the fee and fill out the paperwork and get you on your way to becoming the Nation of Melos, instead of just the island.”

He rolled it, got an incredible rating through the use of multiple skills to make it happen. That was all system, and was incredibly broken, but it was what his character was made to do, and he did it in the context of the game. He didn’t just go “I roll to try to convince them they should give us the wreckage”. Even if he had just said “I want to try to roll to convince them I’m a representative of a government, and can get them their recogniziton, but I need the wreckage in return.”

I think that’s what defines whether it’s good or bad. Whether the player builds a kickass character that can do anything in one field, do they do it in context of the game. Are they breaking the game and making it no fun for the other players or GM? If not, then who cares. If so, you may need to do some retconning, or blocking off of their character so it doesn’t suck for others to play

1. If you are playing healthy gamism, then optimization (powergaming) should be perfectly acceptable (though the gamist social contract MIGHT constrain this – perhaps the goal of the game is to build the badest character that doesn’t exploit rule X). If people are uncomfortable with the results, then that would imply the game is broken, or at least is not suitable (as written) for the group at hand. If the optimization says that exactly one set of choices is absolutely optimal, and as a result, everyone plays the same character, the game may not be what people want.

2. If the creative agenda is not gamism, this kind of thing may be a result of one person NOT playing for the same agenda. I recently ran a couple sessions of Dogs in the Vinyard, which is a narativist supporting game. Afterwards, I realized that really we were playing gamist (even myself – under a critical eye, I saw that I was playing to win, to impose challenge, not to create story). From the point of view of someone wanting to play narativist, we were probably “twinking” out all over the place. Of course, since Dogs in the Vinyard doesn’t support gamism very well (and I was hoping for something different), the game turned out rather blah.

3. I guess there’s sort of a #3. What if the creative agenda is simulationism? I think that may be where the worst accusations of “twinking” come into play. Sure, the rules say X, but the world, the dream, says Y.

So Alan is correct, “twinking” is a violation of expectations. However, I will disagree with the feeling that you shouldn’t abandon a rules-set that you like just because it’s twinkable. Instead, I would suggest taking a close look at the rules, do they really support your expectations? Or are you constantly having to ignore rules because they don’t fit your expectations? If the latter, you might be better off finding a new game system. Or at least be honest, and write up a complete set of house rules that does actually describe the game you play. Additionally, when recruiting new players, be sure to be honest about your expectations, and make sure the new player understands them.

And don’t be affraid to play different games with different friends. It’s a falacy to think that your 20 year long set of gaming buddies will always want to play the same game as everyone else.

Frank