I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’d started writing this rant to end, once and for all, every dumbass argument Game Masters online get up to about min-maxing and character optimization, but I then abandoned the rant to instead talk about Player Motivation Models. I did threaten to eventually finish the rant, though.

Guess what? Eventually is today.

Yes, I’m finally finishing the argument to end all min-maxing arguments and I expect it to be just as successful as my previous argument-ending rants about shit like metagaming and whether Game Masters are players. After all, no one ever argues about that crap on any social media platform ever. That’s thanks to me. I fixed it.

You’re welcome.

Anyway, let’s get into this…

Shut Up About Min-Maxing!

There are certain topics gamers — especially Game Masters — never frigging stop arguing about online. I once dubbed such topics screaming gamer herpes. Why? Well, because those topics never really go away, they just go quiet for a while. Everything will be perfectly fine and you’ll totally forget they exist and then, one day, you’ll check X or Reddit or D&D Beyond or log into some Discord server and everyone’s suddenly pissing and bitching about it all over again.

Flare up!

I also call them screaming gamer herpes because the topics — and the arguments — are really awful and because no one wants to have sex with the sort of people who involve themselves in such arguments. Sorry. It’s true.

The min-maxing argument is a great example of screaming gamer herpes. Once in a while, totally out of the blue, some asshole will suddenly post a stance on min-maxing and then it’ll be all anyone in the online gaming community talks about for a few weeks. Recently, the whole min-maxing thing flared up online and, because I like any excuse to scream at people and because it’s not like anyone’s breaking down my door for sex anyway, I waded in.

Except I didn’t choose a side. I took the stance that each and every Game Master who had any stance at all — anyone thinking min-maxing is even an issue at all, let alone that it’s worthy of taking a stance on — sucks at Game Mastering and needs to be quarantined from the community with extreme prejudice lest their mental crotch rot infect anyone else.

You know what? I’m going to drop that screaming gamer herpes thing. It’s starting to even ick me out. Sorry about that.

Before I can explain why you — a presumably sensible Game Master — should be the equivalent of Switzerland when it comes to the min-maxing argument — why you should have zero opinion at all — I should probably clarify just what the min-maxing argument actually is for anyone who is fortunate enough never to have witnessed a flare up.

The Min-Maxing Argument Summarized

The terms min-maxing and min-maxer are actually the gaming equivalent of slurs. They’re not polite things to say and they’re not meant to be. They refer to a specific approach to character creation in tabletop roleplaying games that some people find offensive. Back in my day, we used the term Munchkin for folks who min-maxed. Meanwhile, polite, reasonable people use the phrase optimize or optimizer.

Min-maxers — I’m going to keep using the slur because I think the idea that it’s a slur is completely frigging stupid — min-maxers build their characters to be as mechanically effective as possible. That’s it. That’s the crime. They try to make good characters.

Now, some dumbass is going to try to infect my comment section with screa… with that illness. They’re going to say something like, “No! Min-maxers don’t just try to make good characters! They try to win the game in character generation by making game-breaking characters!” Don’t worry. By the end of this rant, you’ll be inoculated. You’ll know that that dumbass is actually motivated more by irrational, personal, intolerant bias than by anything based on actual fact. In fact, you can probably already see where the argument breaks down. Especially if you’ve been reading my bullshit for a while.

The difference between someone trying to make an effective character and someone intentionally making a game-breaking character just to win the game relies more on assuming motives — and bad faith — on a player than it relies on any firm, bright, clear line that divides broken characters from merely effective characters.

Man, I can do a whole thing on how stupid the word broken is and how gamers use it way too frigging much and how any Game Master who says broken unironically is themselves broken and absolutely should not be listened to by anyone ever.

But I digress…

The point is, the min-maxing argument comes down to this…

There exist players who treat character creation as a challenge to create the most mechanically effective character possible. Such players are playing roleplaying games wrong and are ruining roleplaying games for everyone and they need to be stopped by any means necessary.

That last part, by the way, ain’t just my patented brand of hyperbole. It really, truly is the final conclusion in the min-maxing argument. People literally say, “We, as Game Masters, should not tolerate min-maxing at our tables or in the community because it makes gaming worse for everyone.” Actual, living, breathing people who are allowed to run games for others. I shit you not.

Now, there’s no such thing as a one-sided argument. Well, except for the ones I pose, but those aren’t really arguments, they’re facts. I’m never wrong.

Anyway…

This min-maxing thing ain’t a one-sided argument. There is another side. According to that side, roleplaying games are, in fact, games. Games present players with challenges. Character creation is part of the game. You, as a player, know your character is going to face challenges — often life-or-death challenges — and therefore, making an effective character just makes good strategic sense.

But roleplaying games are also team sports. You don’t overcome challenges alone — you can’t — but as part of a group. Your party is counting on you to help them win. If you don’t maximize your own character’s effectiveness, you become a liability to your team. You’re effectively sabotaging the group. It’s thus your duty to make as effective a character as possible.

To put it another way, the other side of the min-maxing argument — let’s call it the xam-nimming argument — the other side of the min-maxing argument can be stated thus…

There exist players who treat character creation purely as an exercise in creative self-expression and roleplaying and thus often end up — either unintentionally or purposely — creating ineffective characters and thereby limiting their party’s ability to overcome the game’s challenges. Such players are playing roleplaying games wrong and are ruining roleplaying games for everyone and they need to be stopped by any means necessary.

Spoiler Alert: This Whole Thing is Really Stupid For Really Obvious Reasons

Below, I’m going to talk about real issues that can sometimes arise because different players take different approaches to character generation and I’m going to tell you how reasonable, rational, adult Game Masters who don’t have brainborn genit… a mental disorder address those real, actual issues when they actually come up. But I first want to address the simple and obvious fact that this whole argument is completely frigging stupid and that anyone who gets involved in it for any reason other than trolling the gaming community for shits and giggles — like me — is a complete and utter waste of perfectly good arms, legs, and dice.

The problem is that both the min-maxing and the xam-nimming arguments are predicated on the idea that there’s a giant-ass population of players who take the most extreme approaches to character generation possible and also that it’s reasonably easy to create a character that’s either so hyperpowerful or so totally incompetent that it can completely destroy a game for six people.

In other words, it’s based on broad and utterly ridiculous generalizations.

Am I saying that players can’t take an idea to extremes? Of course not. Am I saying it’s impossible to create a character that’s somehow disruptive to the play dynamic if you really go out of your way? Of course not. Extreme behaviors exist and they absolutely need to be reigned in when they actually do affect the gameplay experience for others.

But that’s not what the min-maxing argument is about. It’s not about recognizing that any extreme approach should be dealt with. Instead, it claims that a certain approach will inevitably lead to extreme behavior and the approach itself — the motivation that drives it — is invalid and can’t be tolerated.

Notice that, really, the min-maxing argument and its counterpoint both pretty much claim that one extreme side of the coin is okay. It’s good. The other is bad. It’s evil. Optimization is a bad approach, anyone who doesn’t optimize is good, and the more you don’t optimize, the better you are. That’s real roleplaying.

Alternatively, failing to optimize is failing to be a team player. You must make an effective character or else you’re bad and the people who make the most effective characters are the best teammates and the best players.

If you can see how ridiculously idiotic all of that is — because it is — that’s your hint that min-maxing and xam-nimming aren’t actually the problems here. They’re not really anything. Certainly, they’re not anything worth a Game Master having any kind of a say about.

But hold on to that thought because I will get back to it.

If you watch these arguments — if you have the stomach for this shit like I do — you’ll see certain themes come up over and over. Specifically, you’ll see themes about who is actually roleplaying correctly or playing the game correctly. It’s all down to an argument over what roleplaying games are — or should be — actually about. Does that sound familiar? It should. This is where I lost control of the rant a couple weeks ago and wrote that whole long thing about Player Motivation Models…

You Keep the Game In Your Own Way and Let Me Keep It In Mine

A few weeks ago, I talked about these things called Player Motivation Models. They’re psychological models based on actual research that help explain why people like the games they do. Remember that shit? Yeah? Well, I don’t believe you. So let me do my standard Angry Recap.

Every player plays games for slightly different reasons and those reasons can be understood in terms of specific psychological needs. Some people want games to challenge them, some people want games to take them into fantasy worlds, some people want games that let them shut off their brains and just experience some low-effort stimulation, some people want games so they can be part of the group, and so on.

Except everyone actually has all the same needs it’s just that people’s brains weigh those needs differently and some needs are easier for people to meet than others and people’s needs fluctuate and they change over time. I compared it to all those meters in The Sims that tell you whether your sim is feeling hungry or lonely or really needs to pee and how each of those meters feeds into an overarching mood state.

Remember that?

Now, the wonderful thing about games — and especially about tabletop roleplaying games — is that they satisfy lots of motives all at once. Thus, a group of players can sit down and have a great time even if they’re all coming to the table for different reasons. Even if every player at the table thinks roleplaying games are about something completely different, they can still play together.

Of course, roleplaying games are social activities. Consequently, there’s going to be some compromise involved. If Adam likes to be challenged and Beth just wants a passive distraction from the stresses of her workday, there are going to be times when Adam is super-engaged and Beth is super-not. And vice versa. But it’s still a net win for both of them. Especially when you consider how their other needs — because everyone’s got multiple needs — figure in. If Adam really digs exploring new places and Beth loves losing herself in an imaginary world, they’re both going to be vibing most of the time on most of the game even if Adam sometimes checks out during the dick-around-doing-nothing parts and Beth’s a little overtaxed by the challenge parts.

See how this shit works? How it has to work? Because you will literally never, ever find a group of five people with completely identical and totally synchronized sets of motivation meters. That’s just not something that ever happens in life.

Now, I told you that, as a Game Master, your gameplay motivations are irrelevant because you’re not a player and so you can’t understand the motivation to run games using Player Motivation Models. But that’s a ridiculously stupid thing to say. I said a ridiculously stupid thing. It was — and remains — a true thing, but it’s also ridiculous and stupid. You wouldn’t invest hours into running games for your friends if you didn’t get pleasure from gaming yourself. That means you too have gamer motivation meters in your head. You have preferences and leanings and opinions about what makes some games good and other games crap.

Honestly, it’s important that you do because you’re going to run your best game if you’re running a game you’d be happy to play. Every Game Master secretly wishes that they were playing the game they’re running. At least sometimes. I wouldn’t trust any Game Master who claimed otherwise. I run the games I wish I could play. You should too.

But you also have to compromise. Yes, you’ll run your best game if it’s a game you want to play, but you aren’t playing and the game you’re running is one you’re running for them and not you. Sometimes, that will mean doing shit that’ll make them happy even though it wouldn’t make you happy. I like a lot of a Challenge and I hate that passive Subjugation bullshit, but I’m running a game for Adam and Beth and that means I have to make them both happy. That’s my job. If I can’t do that, I don’t belong behind the screen.

Of course, I can exclude anyone who doesn’t want to play the kind of game I want to run. It’s my table and my game and my time. No one has a right to any of that. The seats at my table are mine to give away however I want to. But if I’m too narrow and demand my players be mini-mes, I may not find enough people to fill those seats and, eventually, I’ll kick everyone out because no one who isn’t me will ever be good enough to pass the test of being me. Likewise, if I’m designing an adventure or a system for publication, I can design whatever I want, but if I make a game that literally can’t please anyone but me, the only person who’ll buy a copy will be my mom and she’ll only do it to convince me that she really is proud of me for chasing my dream of making games about pretending to be an elf for the internet instead of using the $40,000 accounting degree I worked so hard for.

It’s important to remember all of this shit because Game Masters get really fucking strident about what roleplaying games are supposed to be about and what the whole point of roleplaying games is on the internet. But all they’re really doing there is just saying, “Any motives and preferences other than mine are invalid.”

Look, again, at the min-maxing argument. What it really comes down to is a claim that treating the game as a challenge and treating character generation as part of that challenge is an invalid way to play. Anyone who approaches a roleplaying game as a challenge is wrong.

It’s just the same with the xam-nimming argument. That’s just saying that anyone who treats the game as an exercise in fantasy and self-expression is totally wrong. Roleplaying games are about teamwork and challenge and everything else is secondary.

Do you see how that’s just taking your own mix of motivations and preferences and treating them like they’re actually the objective definition of roleplaying games?

Do you see now why that’s so wrong and stupid and toxic? Yeah, that’s pretty obvious. But there’s a more insidious form all this shit takes that has to do with how your preferences bias what you see as extreme.

Say I’m not into challenge. I’m one of those people who needs very little testing from a game to feel satisfied and if a game pushes me too hard, I’m done. Consequently, I really don’t understand the appeal of games as challenges. But I do try to be reasonable. “Look,” I say, “Some amount of optimizing is okay — expected even — but if a player gets too extreme, I’ve got to stop them before they wreck the game. I have to intervene.” Well, my sense of what counts as extreme is going to be pretty skewed. It’ll be easy for me to convince myself that someone who takes a particular combination of Feats that I read online once is broken — there’s that frigging word again — someone who takes a feat combination I think is broken is obviously a threat to my game. I might even assume they’re one of those min-maxers who won’t be happy with anything less than an extreme challenge and they’re a totally bad fit for my game. Even if they insist they took the Feats just because they fit their character’s image of a master swordsman who dedicated his life to his blade, I might assume they’re lying and creating their character in bad faith.

Your preferences bias you even if you’re totally aware that your preferences are preferences and even if you do your level best to be as tolerant as possible. That’s how your brain is wired. Remember, the extremes aren’t the points too far from the reasonable middle ground, they’re just the points too far from you. If you’re off-center to begin with, the extremes shift with you.

But, Come On, Min-Maxing Can Be a Problem, Right?

Now, I did already admit that players can — intentionally or otherwise — make characters that unbalance the game to a problematic degree. Roleplaying games are complicated creatures and the longer they’re out — and the more sourcebooks get published — the more potential exists for unexpected interactions and unintentionally unbalancing combinations. I don’t deny that.

Neither do I deny that players can — intentionally or otherwise — make characters that are so ineffective that they become liabilities and thereby affect the teamwork dynamic to a problematic degree. I’d be stupid if I did say otherwise.

I do think it takes a hell of a lot to do either one and Game Masters are way too frigging twitchy about issues like balance and teamwork and need to calm the hell down. This is precisely why I don’t think Game Masters should take any stance at all on the min-maxing or xam-nimming issue. Game Master’s stances are more likely to cause problems than extreme player behaviors are to even arise.

You have to understand, though, what I mean by stance. I don’t mean Game Masters shouldn’t have personal preferences about what makes roleplaying games fun. Every Game Master has an opinion about how much optimization should be expected and how much is too much and what players should prioritize when making their characters. But those are just preferences. They’re personal and subjective and they work only for the Game Master in question.

What I mean when I say the Game Master shouldn’t take a stance is that they shouldn’t impose rules, set policies, or make judgments about the right and wrong ways to make a character. If a player makes a legal character according to the rules of the game using whatever options the Game Master has tacitly or explicitly allowed, the player is doing it right. It doesn’t matter what their motives are and the Game Master should not attempt to pass judgment on the end result in terms of whether it fits their preferences for what a character should be.

But what about the extreme behaviors? What about those groups where one min-maxer crowds out all the non-optimizers and dominates every challenge and no one’s having fun anymore? What about the ones with one wholly incompetent character made by a xam-nimmer who thinks the most interesting characters to play are the least effective ones and consequently sabotages her party in challenge after challenge?

Obviously, as a Game Master, you step in when those problems arise, but that’s got nothing to do with whether min-maxing or xam-nimming is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. The problem is there’s an extreme mismatch in the players’ motivations and it’s causing a conflict at the table. The Game Master needs to resolve that conflict by imposing some kind of compromise so everyone can have fun playing the same game. That’s one of the things Game Masters do. It doesn’t matter whether the conflict’s over an approach to character generation or interpersonal interactions or scheduling issues or whatever.

Everyone at the table has the right to create any legal character they want for any reason and to play that character however they see fit. Everyone at the table has to accept that everyone else also has that same right. If people get twitchy because they think Beth’s a little underpowered, they need to be told to shut up and sit down. Beth gets to make Beth’s character however Beth wants. As long as Beth isn’t spending every fight dead and the party isn’t spending all their resources carrying her ass, there is no problem.

Likewise, if everyone thinks Adam’s a little too effective compared to everyone else, they need to be reminded that Adam made a legal character as is his right and he made a good character. Unless Adam wins every fight alone before anyone else gets a turn consistently, there isn’t actually a problem.

The same goes for you. Until there is an actual, observable problem actively happening at the actual table, you, the Game Master, need to chill the hell out. You also need to hold yourself to an extremely high standard of evidence when convincing yourself there is a problem. You need to point to actual stuff happening at the actual table and to consistently unhappy faces on your players and you need to explain clearly and completely how you link that shit to an actual behavior before you take action.

And you absolutely must not favor any player just because they like games the same way you do. Because what you think the game should be about? That’s just, like, your opinion man