Like a Marionette with Visible Strings

Allow me to start by saying, thank you Jack.  I'm touched that you're willing to get involved with my writing and efforts to enlighten about the game to this degree.  I feel very positive about taking up the cause today.

The image shown is from p. 9 of 4th Edition's DMG, How to be a DM.

Rating: mostly true

This is the 4th category of player outlined by the 4e DMG.  The description is accurate for the most part, as is the means of engaging these players and concerns for the effect they may have on the game.  However, following this advice to the letter is a bad approach for a DM, in part because it tacitly encourages the DM to act in ways that are contrary to the position's legitimacy.

For example.  Strictly speaking, as a DM, and if everyone is playing according to the rules, I'm am I to be sure the power gamer doesn't become more powerful?  Arbitrarily dictate that there are only so many power mods they're allowed to pick?  I've see that encouraged.  Or should I specifically target the power gamer in fights, so that the game's balance is maintained by beating down the most dangerous opponent?  I've seen that preached too.  There are ways to constrain the traditional power gamer, but without some specificity as to HOW to do this, I expect that most DMs will reach for the lowest hanging fruit, through unjustified and inconsistent tactics.  If a power gamer is acting within the strict rules of the game, and this leads to excessive power on the gamer's part, then the RULES need adjustment, not the gamer.  Or, alternatively, the goals, and how they are obtained, need to be of a larger dimension that can't be solved by smashing everything between the party and success.

I rarely see a campaign described, even those that purport to be "roleplay based," that doesn't fundamentally work on the Mario Bros. template.  Sure, we can stand around talking for a bit, but in the end we have to jump, stomp and get coins.  Chat chat chat, stomp stomp stomp.  As long as the stomping is going to come, the power gamer will wait patiently until that time.  And if there is no stomping, the power gamer won't be the only player who's bored all the time.

Part of the power gamer's motivation is that the chat part is so meaningless.  It's like that scene in dozens of movies, where members of the gang meet with the one member who hasn't joined yet—the most important member—to convince him to join.  And he doesn't want to join.  "Aw, c'mon.  It'll be great!"  "No, I have a wife and kid now."  "C'mon, they'll understand."  "No, they matter more to me than anything now."  And so on, round and round, when we all fucking know the guy's going to join.  This scene is BORING.  It accomplishes NOTHING related to the plot.  It wastes five minutes of screen time and it's supposed to provide us with the character's motivations, but these motivations are trite, cliche and worse, later on when the same character that was worried about his family makes a twenty foot leap from the helicopter to the train, what the fuck is going through his mind then?  Not the screenplay, obviously.

99% of RPG "roleplay" that I've seen depicted online fits into this kind of screenwriting.  Blather, blather, blather ... oh, look, we're playing now.  It's a wonder that more players don't roll their eyes when the DM decides to roleplay another storekeeper or another guard or, fuck, another stupid old fart raking leaves by the side of the road.  This nonsense is not "gaming."  It's filler.  The power gamer is the player around your table that knows it, isn't silent about it, calls you out on it and makes you get the fuck on with it.

That's why you hate the gamer.  Because you thought the leaf-raker was a cool idea and the gamer is pissing on your ego.

If you want to make the power gamer care about some other part of the game beyond combat and treasure, you cannot rely on "good feelings" to be the only reward associated with roleplay.  Roleplay must have rewards that are just as concrete as those rewards that arise from combat.

No, no.  This does not mean giving experience for roleplay.  That is just another arbitrary means of DMs overstepping their authority, by inconsistently giving out gold stars whenever the players perform in a manner that makes the DM generous.  Gawd, what a terrible conception for a rule that was, or is—I haven't heard anyone preaching that one lately and I hope it has died the grungy death it deserved.  But probably not.  One thing about a really bad idea that doesn't work; it never really goes away.

 A "concrete" reward need not be the same rewards—they should be rewards that can be gained through roleplay and ONLY through roleplay.  This will cause the power gamer to get interested in role-play, as it is another access point towards improving and strengthening their character.  This transforms the game from "Blah blah blah cool" to "Cool cool cool cool."

"But Alexis!  What would these concrete rewards be?"

It's right there in the description above:  "Stress story element rewards ... facilitate access to new options and powers ... include encounters that facilitate attributes."  Yes, I have dropped some words from the original text, because the writers are in the ball park but they're standing on the wrong side of the foul line.  Let's do a rewrite:

• Add story elements that require making friends and diffusing enemies.
• Facilitate options and powers that rely on the presence of allies.
• Include encounters that emphasize the players' attributes, rather than the character's.

Force the power gamer, and the other players beside, to acknowledge that the world is too big and too dangerous, and the rewards are generous enough, that it ceases to make sense to see every exploit as a bunch of lone wolf idiots heading out into the wilderness.  Make them see that they need friends, and that loyal, reliable friends exist in the game universe.  Not just those who directly march with the party, but officials, tavern keepers, locale gameskeepers or whatever, who will continue to do their jobs but will also be a resource for information and aid when needed.  Make the party understand that if they don't learn to handle these associates respectfully and responsibly, they can turn into enemies, who will be there to add additional obstacles in the party's path, making the world bigger and even more dangerous because the players are too stupid to realize they can't do everything by themselves.

If we take it for granted that Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf are "the party" (though some will chafe with me on Gandalf, but take it for granted for the sake of the metaphor, okay?), we understand the choice to go around and free Theoden from the influence of Saruman is not so Theoden can be a member of the party.  Nor is it much of a quest.  They ride to Rohan, knock back a few of the guards, free Theoden and we're done.  But Theoden offers additional power for The Quest, plus knowledge, plus other associates that can be counted on, plus the outing of an enemy from their midst ... all things that require role-play but have concrete rewards.  More friends, more power, more options for what the party can do—even additional toys if the DM wants it that way.  These are real reasons to roleplay, not some meaningless palaver with a shop clerk.  If the stakes are high enough—if the power gamer is made to understand that going into the lair alone will mean certain death without help—then the power gamer WILL roleplay as that will be the power-yielding option.

DMs I see go out of their way to make sure the players know the dungeon is absolutely inside their abilities, deliberately causing the players to treat NPCs like a bunch of spectators, or fodder that can be spent, because hell, we never really needed that fodder anyway.  This is precisely the way to make the power gamer feel confident and willing to treat the other players like lackeys, because hell, in a sense, they are lackeys.  Where the power gamer is concerned, they aren't pulling their weight, and anyway, the DM is going to fudge the die, balance the monsters and we're going to be fine anyway.  At least I get the pleasure of doing phenomenal damage every hit.  That's something.

Putting the players in the position of now finding themselves faced with a king who has regained power in his kingdom, who is still going to be a King and not an ingratiating poppet who will hand over all his kingdom just because the party rescued him, forces the players, not the characters, to draw on their abilities to convince this king that a) they weren't part of the conspiracy that enslaved the king in the first place; b) their cause is just; c) the King is as threatened as they are; and d) there's something for the King to gain if he helps the party.

Again, DMs subvert this dynamic all over the place.  These are things the power gamer needs to answer, that his or her powers can't achieve.  The power gamer, like all the players, is bound by what wits are available to the collective mind of the party.  But often they don't have to accomplish any of these things, because DMs utterly fail to think like the King of a Kingdom, and instead trip over themselves using the King to pile unearned power and support onto the party, no matter what the party says or does.  "The King is so grateful that he doesn't remotely question the party's motivations, he gives all he has to the party to help them fulfill their quest."  Apparently, the King has read the filmscript and already knows the party's cause is just.  The King doesn't remotely need to conserve his resources for himself and his own people, because he's protected by DM plot armour and anyway, if the enemy attacks Rohan, it will survive depending on what the DM thinks, not by virtue of what resources it has or keeps.  So, sure, open the doors, pour out wealth and weapons on the party, take it all, Rohan doesn't need it!  We absolutely don't need to roleplay any of this!  The king is obviously on your side, you've saved him!

Note how it does not go like that in the book.  Theoden is not magnificently generous.  He needs to be convinced.  He needs to be informed.  He is his own man.  He is not a dupe excuse for the DM to power up the party so they can go on being lone wolves.

Power gamers act as they do because DMs, stupidly misunderstanding the role of NPCs in the game world, push players to act in their own stead—a stead that is usually contributed to by a DM who doesn't understand what "roleplay" means in the game context.  This is because most DMs are terrible, awful storytellers.  It's remarkable that the same DM who will argue vociferously that "D&D is about storytelling," will never write a story longer than five pages, has never written a novel, and if they were to try and do so, the writing would be so execreble that the novel would be unreadable.  Tell me again how D&D is about storytelling when the one thing the DM can't do is credibly write one story that a learned person would want to read.

NPCs are not puppets.  They run everything, they have everything, they stand in the way of everything.  If a power gamer is put in a world where no matter how much power that gamer has, he or she continues to feel they need friends, they will embrace roleplaying because it will get them what they want.

More power.

This series continues with Combat vs. Story