I long for the old days...

I'm getting annoyed with my gaming group again.  Well, let me be more specific.  Two things are annoying me about the gaming group.  One is that one person who's bound and determined to ruin any game that's not run to her exact specifications.  Can't do much about that except 1) ignore her, 2) quit going to the game.  I'm doing my best to do 1 right now.    The other thing is that I come to these moments where I'm just sick to death of the method of play at my gaming group.  It's not that it's bad.  The DM is great: a really nice guy who does what he can with the time he can dedicate to the game to come up with stuff for us to play every week.  I appreciate the work he does.  I just don't agree with all his rules.

I'm not going to open up a discussion/can o' worms about things like level limits or alignment behaviour.  But I heard from the DM this week that he gives human characters a +1 on any one stat when they're created, because, as he's not using level limits, he wants to give an incentive for players to choose humans, who don't have special abilities.

In my opinion, the game is about humans.  The original game.  The original idea.  Humans form the backbone of the civilised world.  The demi-humans form the fringes around it.  Dwarves want to stay in the mountain and mine.  Halflings want to stay in the shire and do halfling things.  Elves want to stay in the forests and frolic.  It's the oddballs of these races that come out to be player characters.  (And at the same time, I love humanoids as PCs.  In the setting I'm working on I'm replacing traditional demi-humans with animal men, who ought to operate by the same rule, but I'd love to see them get out into the world as PCs.  I'm so conflicted.)

Humans like to get into everything.  Humans are curious by nature.  We like to know what's over that next rise, or why this-or-that happened in such-and-such a way.  Humans are natural adventurers.  The other races, not so much.

I find myself longing for classic gaming, for the old days, for the Old School Revival kinds of games, the games that one annoying person at my game despise.  Roll 3d6, pick a class, buy armour and weapons and a pack and a torch or whatever, use less than one side of a piece of notebook paper, and we're off.   No split stats.  No NWPs.  No WPs.  No out-of-character spell lists that take several splatbooks to contain.  No pile of splatbooks that purport to give you more options but really restrict your options.  Ever tried making something really unique in Second Edition Skills  & Powers? I have.  I always run up against something that doesn't quite work.   Sometimes I think S&P is designed for people without imagination.  They want the game company to do all their thinkin' for them.

So I want to go back to those old days, before Tieflings (blech) and five-foot steps and Disadvantages and Character Points and all.  To that end, I have in my little brain the idea to run some short sessions of Moldvay/Mentzer D&D, possibly after the chaos of the holidays has passed and there are players available.  I'm feeling rather ranty tonight (no, REALLY?)  so I'll save the details for another post.

The pressure to min-max: struggles with new/old school styles

Zak mentioned this little gem today on his blog:

-Litmus test. How to know a player is lame:
Player discovers Option A (with x flavor) is objectively, mechanically, more powerful than Option B (with y flavor--totally different).
+
Player chooses Option A, doesn't see why you wouldn't.
+
Player is not 12 years old
=
Suck

At my regular game I fall prey to this mindset, that being the one belonging to the ruthless min-maxer. Our group has a couple min-maxers and I feel the pressure to go with the group. We're playing 2nd Edition Skills & Powers, possibly the most convoluted set of rules since 3e. That makes sense somehow. The more I get into the OSR stuff the more the endless lists of options and points and traits and disadvantages and bonuses and abilities oh my annoys the crap out of me. Yet when creating my character for our most recent game, I took the extra rolls the DM offered, squeezed every last drop of ability out of those scores, and min-maxed my character for the ultimate potential in being awesome at table, for fear of having a dumb character who can't do anything interesting in comparison to the min-maxed PCs of my fellows.

I dislike myself for falling prey to this again and again. Each time I make a character I try to make an interesting one, not just one who can do stuff like 'OMG did you *see* that?!' You don't need to be the most awesome to make a memorable and/or enjoyable experience. I do know this. I fall prey to peer pressure, even of the unspoken kind. If everyone at table is wearing a purple hat and you insist on wearing a pink one, you're going to stand out. Now, these people are my friends and no one is going to yell at me for not min-maxing. But I fear I will have a sub-par experience if I don't min-max like the others do.

I once made a kobold priestess who was originally intended to be a kind of comic relief. I was going to play her for her personality, not for her ability to be the damned medic (side note: I hate being the medic. Clerics do not always have to be the medic. Probably why my last cleric was an evil specialty priest of the god of storms. I didn't have to feel obligated to heal the party - my character looked out for herself first!). The first version I rolled up, well before I was ready to switch characters, had a slightly above-average Wisdom. By the time I was ready to run the character, I had re-rolled her and given her an 18 Wisdom. Why? Because I have to be GOOD at stuff! Everybody else at table is GOOD at stuff! If I'm not I'll look lame and suck and I won't have fun. That's what I probably thought at the time.

I suppose I'll just have to take the plunge one day: make a character as if I'm playing in a good old B/X or Advanced game and try my best to have fun with it. I've considered bringing back the kobold priestess, but I still don't want to play the cleric. Maybe a kobold thief... I like the idea of being this scuzzy little reptile who speaks broken Common, eats rats, and doesn't comprehend the strange concept called 'bath'. I could do the same kind of thing with a more standard race, but in S&P there are a heap of race choices, so why not play the critter I like the most? And most importantly, why do I feel this need to munchkinly min-max?