How many people reading this have taken an option when building their character not because it is what they would want for their character but because it makes up for what otherwise would be a weakness with their build.
Its called ‘min-maxing’ or ‘gaming stats’ among other names, table top games suffer from most commonly, but is it something that happens in LARP games? Does it happen less? Or does it simply not noticeably happen?
Or is it something that is more acceptable in LARP? Any one who has played Dungeons and Dragons will have heard of a character having X and Y, where they get the upside of X for the downside of Y. These are usually skills that do not really affect the gameplay. Perhaps there are comparable systems in LARP.
Is this idea more prevalent in different systems? Or is it something that is more about the players their play-styles than its about the system itself and what the rules allow. Perhaps some rule systems promote this kind of mix-maxing more than others, and maybe some even have loopholes that encourage it?
Is it a way of playing the game or gaming the rules? Do some systems purposefully open themselves to this kind of application, some roleplaying games do and some even encouraged it. Are there LARP systems that do similar? What if you do this in a system that does not?
What do you think of people who play this aspect of the game? Is there a place for them in your game? Would you be comfortable in a setting where everyone played the game this way? If everyone is doing it anyway, would you just join in?
Do you make a stand? And what do you do about people who try play the game this way when it’s not welcome? If you are an organiser, how would you communicate to players that this is not an acceptable behaviour in character creation or advancement? Or perhaps you want to communicate that it is desirable when they are creating their characters?
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It happens, but my experience is that it’s more often about building on strengths, than on covering weaknesses.
It can be symptomatic of a more general problem of incompatible playstyles, and/or people trying to play the game in different ways, but it is not “bad”, per se, just different – or more specifically, different from the larp I have enjoyed the most.