Happy Land

Happyland is a term I came up with to describe the kind of a world that a munchkin wants to play in. It’s a generic term to give a catchall idea of the qualities which munchies like to have intrinsic within the game realms they wander in whether it’s Sci-Fi like Star Wars or Fantasy like AD&D or Palladium or our favorite Science Fantasy game ShadowRun. Regardless of the world or it’s tech level, magic or it’s lack therein of. They want one simple thing “Power”, power that they may lack in their real lives or an overactive need to get everything with paying any price. But what ever problems they may have in their little lives, they are the bane of every role-player, loony and real man to ever play in a game. They either don’t realize what their quest for game power does to a game or they don’t care, I’ll illustrate. One of my previous players went and jumped ship with a couple of the other guys and started their own game, because I’m a cold-hearted opinionated bastard and I believe in the idea of ROLE-Playing not “ROLL-playing”, but that’s a different subject. I’ll elaborate on the CHOB factor later. The former sea shaman decided to play his dark-elf fireball loving combat mage because he finally had a chance to try to get to be one on the BA’s (that bad asses, son.) First a bit of background of the other game. Now they’ve got a rookie Gm, one who’s never attempted to run a game of SR in his life and from what I hear he’s pretty good for a rookie. He’s got the basics and isn’t afraid to restore what he perceives as balance. Now after a good munchie string of adventures with jobs that pay 15k to 30k a run which happen twice a week. Now remember I said, I was a CHOB (cold hearted opinionated bastard) because I only give a run once a month with a week recoup time, sometime with a bit of hospital time too and I only pay 15k to 25k per job total. Now he the decides to get his game on the ball and enter the realm of the real role-player. So he needs to take some things away namely a warehouse full on everything out of the mainbook and Street Samurai catalog except for the cyber. He implements he plan to restore things but get stopped by sheer numbers and the luck of the die. Sorry buddy better luck next time. Don’t worry you’ll get it. Now, back to example. The dark elf decides to cut himself a deal. Their Gm had previously come up with a ruling on the cash for karma idea.( Bad concept, bad FASA, bad, bad, bad!.) His idea was that one karma point was worth 500�. Personally I gagged at the idea, but hey it’s not my game and I don’t have to deal with the problems it’ll cause. Now he decides to buy himself 200 karma points. Yes I can hear the coughing from the real-roleplayers, and yes I’ve done the math 200 karma points will cost you according to the formula he’s using 100,000�. But don’t worry it gets worse. So he decides to take this karma and initiate himself to a 17th(?) level initiate. Yes, I said 17th level. Now the new Gm had no idea what his player had done and even the guy I ranted and raved about in lesson #5 was upset. (You know I may have to reevaluate my opinion from lesson #5 and see what I can do about getting Wayne Newton into the office of the Queen of England.) This yo-yo had decided to completely upset the balance of this guys campaign in his quest for power. 17th Grade initiate geez, what’s the point in even playing anymore a character like that anymore, it’s time to retire that combat mage. Now you may ask yourself, “But NightLife all you’ve done it give an example of a munchkin and no advice, how can this help me with this kind of yo-yo in my game?” Fear not the advice begins right about……Now!

Now believe it or not it’s sometimes possible to get a munchkin to reform and become a powergamer and with a tiny miracle even a real role-player. But it takes time and pressure and a rolled up newspaper ( that’s a joke son.). But, really it can be done with some of them, however it’s a sad fact just like a alcoholic they have to want to. Explain to them the reasoning behind experience and it’s associated rewards. I.E. “No, you can’t have the 100 skills points and the megadeath laser guided missile launching 50. caliber assault cannon with the hydrospanning smartlinked custom gripped ivory handle and your cake too. No really explain to them that the big guns, the big skills , and the really powerful magic/psi/phy adept powers come only from experience having them from the get go defeats the point of the game. Remind them that victory that his hard fought for is a 1000 times sweeter than victory handed to you on a silver platter with a dinner mint. Solving a problem it far more rewarding that just blasting it to smithereens. But sometime blasting it is the solution, but not most of the time. Show them if they can think their way out of the current situation that they can get a satisfaction far beyond the norm from having used had used their brains rather that their fists. Show them how to lose themselves in a character that more than just archetype but a living breathing extensions of themselves. But if all else fail and they aren’t interested in role-playing and won’t work with you or the others and he/she is causing problems and you don’t want to put up with it anymore. You can try this method to quote BlackJack

“Since the player exists in reality you can simply lecture him. And the lecture should have one aim: To make him feel like shit. Degrade the bastard. Insult his role-playing ability, because if he is playing the same bad ass all the time he’s not being all that original. Let him know he’s messing up the game for everybody else.”

If this doesn’t work try this to quote BJ again

” If he says he doesn’t care, tell him, but only as a last resort, to “Go find someone to play D&D with, you can’t handle a game as good as Shadowrun.” Make sure this takes place before or after the game so it doesn’t interrupt play. And if he still doesn’t care…tell him to go home.

That’s about it except for a couple of things. One: I’m off to GenCon! Two: I’m running two demos of SR in the Cincinnati area here in the near future. One at the Hobby Place in West Chester, OH on the 23rd of August and another at Comic Book World in Blue Ash, sometime in September. If you’re interested e-mail me and I’ll give you all the info on them and directions to get to these locations and a time for the September demo.