What's your style: role player or powergamer?

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HOw do you play?

 

That depends...Sometimes I like to play a "Hack and Slash" game, and other time I play with nothing but spell casters and try to role play as much as possible.

 

Roleplay all the way!

 

Try to roleplay, half the time in the process though, I end up doing both.

 

I try to roleplay as much as I can but have been known to do some hack n slash.

 

Depends on the situation for me in the game. If it's a question of alignment I try to make decisions for the characters that reflect this (a lawful/good paladin I will have do the "right" thing.) In other situations I am hack and slash all the way.

 

I always attempt to roleplay. It gets harder and harder though when your party become near immortals and you start throwing around the odd Horrid Wilting spell without a care in the world.

 

Beren, it's different if you do the fighting for a purpose. But when it's only for the fighting, gaining power and items well beyond your need, then it's powergaming. Besides it's a game feature that you have to "fight your way to the top". In real life if you had an opponent that was significantly more powerful than you are, it'd take at least years of training to get a chance at them. Of course, a game is a game. But I consider it a hindrance to roleplaying if you're forced to fight like an animal for a couple of weeks simply because those couple of weeks supposedly grant you twice the amount of power you previously had. But like I said in the beginning, it's the concept that matters.

"Roleplaying" is perceived as the social type who acknowledges his surroundings, acts to bring about his character, good and bad sides. One that does not see the combat as anything but the means for an end. Sometimes of course this might be the fight and power itself.

"Powergaming" is usually seen as the type who doesn't care about the plot, character or anything such, but strives for the material good and feeling of honour and being better than another (note, the last one is a matter of an opinion, most powergamers I know have admitted to this.. I cannot speak of all of them). They fight to get as powerful as possible, they don't care about the advancement of the plot, but go to no ends for getting all of the small corners explored, every enemy beaten, every treasure and the most powerful of weapons found. Often even as far as AI- and bug-exploiting. The only purpose is to have power over others. Powergaming comes in many forms. The one who seeks to find all items and enemies is a powergamer just as much as the one who seeks to see every single dialogue option to add to their storage of information.

All that said, I fall on the "roleplayer" side. I don't feel any more important or better than others because of this. It's simply that I find it boring to just beat down enemies all the time. The social relationships, plot and everthing that happens in the story are to me far more interesting than the boring hacking and powergaining. In the end, I don't care if I can beat the boss in 1 second with the both of my hands tied behind my back and my feet stuck sideways up my arse. But I do care wether I see a stupid killing animation and end credits, or a ten-minute long graphical show with lots of text of all the little things that happened to every one of the villages, peoples and other things that I became acquainted with after the boss was beaten.

 

Roleplayer for sure, i never really understood the fun in powergaming, although i was a CHEATER until recently

 

Well, I'm a powergamer of sorts. I do like to get "all of the small corners explored, every enemy beaten, every treasure and the most powerful of weapons found". Simply put: I want to make the most out of the game for my characters and myself. After all, this game is a road to extreme power for the protagonist. I see nothing wrong in being thorough in my search.

But I also *do* care about the plot and the characters in the game. And since my style is powergaming I usually play with a powerhungry NE char as the protagonist because it fits my style so nicely.

 

Well it IS hard to draw a line, mainly because there is none. What I just said were very generic ways of seeing the difference between the two. Most actually are somewhere from between.

The exact opposite of powergamer would be one who did the minimal amount of fights possible, did not waste any time exploring beyond what was absolutely needed. He would move on with the plot as quickly as possible never bothering to check back if he'd perhaps forgotten something from a room, perhaps taken the wrong dialogue option etc. This does not make a roleplayer though, it makes a lazy player. So powergaming and roleplaying aren't exclusive in that essence. More like 2 different ways of doing the same thing.

But I'll call out a memory of my past with a certain console rpg. FFVII. In that game, it took me about 40 hours to play it through. I read every dialogue carefully, I explored the places I should have, finding some not so needed ones on the way that obviously were good to find for getting more powerful (in an action-rpg it's healthy to have at least a bit of a powergamer in you). I found that the game was a bit too much fighting, and I had some hurry to the end for I didn't like the big pauses in the character dialogues just because the game developers thought it would be prudent to force at least 3h worth of combat before advancing any further. So, like I said, it took about 40h of me.

My friend, playing for the first time, he explored everything. He didn't care that someone had just said "you need to hurry lest they're gonna die", for he knew that in a console game that would never happen. He was in the 3:rd CD after playing about 100 hours. He played over 100 more just to get the strongest of materias duplicated over and over again so he could make the most powerful combinations of materia that he dreamed of after finding out about them. When the timecounter had jumped from 99:99 to 00:00 two times, and then had 30-something on it (making about 230h, I think... it might have been just under 200 too I'm not sure, but a helluva lot it was), he went for the boss. The first attack the boss made, he died simply because of the many-many-many Knights of the Round -attacks that came as counters from his characters. So the final fight took 1 round. Each opponent. Save the last I think (winged Seph), who boosted himself or something with his first turn.

I don't know if I was a roleplayer there. You can't "roleplay" in a crpg. Roleplaying is stupid even in pc-masterpieces such as BG1&2 + the addons, because it always requires other people to be actual rp. But it was pretty clear to me that my friend there was a powergamer. The same tactics he uses for every game. If there is an experience cap, then reach it. If not, go so damn high that it's near impossible to go any further.

I have more to say, but I think at this point you already get my point. Wether you agree or not is not up to me.

 

Firgraag. Argh I can't do that. I just installed the Imoen romance mod and obviously had the last dream of her (3:rd of the custom mod, 6:th in all counting in the Irenicus -dreams), where she begged for me to hurry up. And in the mod description it actually said that you must NOT hurry to save her. I can't imagine being any faster than I have been since I have unfinished quests all over the place. And believe me, I know my way around the game so I don't waste time.

Any comments on this? Will the rest of this mod run out as quickly as the beginning lets on? For if I find getting Imoen's last speeches by the time I leave the underdark. And ToB speeches by the time I kill that stupid bhaalspawn-orc, there isn't much point to this.

 

Depends on my mood. Once, just for a joke, I made a hack character armed with the "Killsword" and popped every living thing in TOB right up to Mellisan. It was pointlessly silly, but I needed to veg out and relax by destroying everything in sight solo....(are you alright man?!)

Mostly I like the roleplaying with rubber edges to alignment.

 

Well it is neigh on impossible to really RP in a CRPG so I do as best as I can but as has been stated RP and PG arent mutually exclusive. I enjoy wandering around with an arrogant überpowerful evil character.

 

well I start out as a normal player and end up as a powergammer(Well my char anyway)

Padeen!

 

I would call myself roleplayer (as much as possible in a PC game). And the fact, that my last char (Swashbuckler, lvl 39) has AC-23, THAC0 -6/-4, and saving throw rolls in the negative area is REALLY only a coincidence Hell, as I have already said somewhere - roleplaying means putting something of your personality to the game, and in case, that there is a nifty +4 sword somewhere in a dungeon, I will go there and get it. Even that I NEVER would accept the Blackrazor, and I am dropping Viconia out of party as soon as we are out of the city.

 

Hassassin, how'd you get -23 AC? Hacking? i thought max was -10??