Every time it's come up in my games, it's either been in the hands of an awesome player, or in the hands of a total newbie who honestly didn't know how to write a decent Shadowrun background.

Most of the time, munchkins will avoid this flaw, since it gives the GM free rein to mess with them.

IMO, you're doing it wrong. Backgrounds should be available to the whole group to read, in my experience. For example, my group have our own domain, wiki and message board with which we keep tabs on all of our characters for all of our games. Entire histories exist for characters and universes that we've played in. Granted, this spans multiple systems and has information from the past several years, but it's still awesome having that stuff there. I always enjoy reading other character's backgrounds to see what they've come up with. It's fascinating at times, and it can often lead to a jumping off of ideas.

The only time we have super secret squirrel backgrounds is when there's something in the past that it's better the other players don't know about.

This is your problem. You feel a need to shaft someone. Your other option is to let them have a good time, which is your job -- to make sure people are having a good time.

Possibly, but I think his point was more about how the way a character's played is more important than writing an essay.

I have no idea how a character is going to turn out until I've played him a bit. It might turn out that the guy who was going to be a stony faced mercenary actually plays better in the group as a fast talking ex-commando who's trying to go straight.

Or whatever. Writing reams of background before you've even taken the car for a drive has always struck me as odd.

Whenever I write backstory I tend to keep it very personality light and focus much more on the characters history. It gives me a time investment into the character (That keeps my constant need to play new characters at bay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohplease.gif) ), and also helps me define how I intend to play the character. But I wont actually decide how he might actually act ingame untill I have interacted with the other characters at the table.

An example is my Starwars D6 Jawa Engineer. At first he was going to be played as an irritating little brat who stole every bit of tech he could get his mits on. Instead he ended up being a stoic little bastard who stole every little bit of tech he could get his hands on.

It is interesting you've had that experience. Mind has been that munchkins and combat wombats flock to this Quality like flies to shit.

Your logic is sound, but I think the old adage of "laziness pays off now" is what's driving them. They can get 10BP for no thought whatsoever. It doesn't change their skill allocation, attributes, etc. It just means their past is a blank slate. "Yeah man, sure I just want to shoot guns and blow up shit."



Ahh you're from the "GM-is-not-a-person-so-his-enjoyment-does-not-matter" camp. I see.


- J.

Munchkinism is a Darwinian world. Many have learned that if you have a flaw the GM can screw you with, they will do so, especially if they don't like your character. Their tendency is to go for flaws that can't turn around and bite you, like Incompetent: Spellcasting on a mundane.

At any event, most of the munchkins I've seen do write out their character backgrounds, if only to make sure that there's no wiggle room for the GM to screw with them. The few times I've seen Amnesia come into play, it's been in the hands of a player who trusted me enough. Munchkins usually have an adversarial relationship with the GM, so they don't trust them. YMMV, of course.

No, I'm from the "it's the GM's job to make sure everyone's having fun, and therefore he is no less or no more important than any of his players" camp.

I agree with the first part. Most of the time. A kamikaze build, for example, wouldn't care though. If the basic premise of the build is that you start as fucked as possible and is simply going about to screw the GM's carefully laid metaplot (screw-laid, get it? ok, lousy pun) he's got nothing to lose by using Amnesia. In fact, the more effort you put into screwing with him through Amnesia, the more you are playing into his hands (key in evil mastermind laughter here...)

The line I underlined however, I disagree. They do trust the GM, they trust him to do whatever necessary to make their characters' lives a living hell, they are always looking for the worst case scenario and how to overcome it. Munchkins tend to be the great survivors of the gaming world, if they cannot survive whatever the GM is throwing at them, none of the other player characters are likely to do so.

GMs can have fun without screwing the players' fun.

In fact, a good GM friend of mine ran a Paranoia one-shot. We all had our secret missions and mutant powers and everything...

Come to the end, the Communications Officer was asked to hand over the recordings of our mission, the higher ranked members of the team (Orange? I was still Red) convinced our debreifer that our mission was so awesome all of Alpha Complex should see the tape (I had no say in this). She hadn't made the recordings.

So I handed her this tape I had, said, "Don't worry, I did it for you."*

Debreifer sticks the tape in, hits play.

Victorian music blares out all across Alpha Complex. Communications Officer executed for treason.

Me: "Secret Mission complete."**

*This is the point at which the GM burst out laughing maniacally for 2 minutes.

**I was the only one to complete my secret mission and one of the 5 or so (of 14 players) to still have clones left.

i have a larger problem with the cheap 5 point flaws than the large gm bugger me buttons like amnesia.

Sure your lazy player might use it to avoid needing to think hard, but they get only 10 points and can have no contacts, lifestyle or gear they cannot carry.
The 25 point version lets the GM design the character entirely. If you don't feel like making that effort then just tell your player this, and have them make their own character.

Incompetence is the worst flaw imho. It can be stuck in skills the player has no intention of using, and has a very definite area of application. Far more likely to be preferred by munchkins.

Sure they can. And that can be even more creepy.

Personally, that's why I would even allow the Trust Fund quality.

I noticed there is a sort of "having fun vs. writing essays" dichotomy rearing its head in the discussion, and here are my 2 cents.

Writing a background should not be a literary endeavour. Sure I expect some material to work with, but in over 17 years of role-playing, I've never seen a need for writing more than a paragraph or two. Of course my players can write a fragging novel if they feel like it, but I'm not rewarding them for it, so it's all at their own discretion. I do object to players taking qualities without knowing why, but my players understand my reasons, they know I use their background in my story design, and most importantly, they're cool with it. When they do figure out why they need to be amnesiac, or to live on Borrowed Time, or to serve as Infernal appetizers, they know it will come up in the game, that they will get to hug the spotlight now and then, and they like it!

Of course, this is our table. Yours can play differently, and if you ask me, it's totally cool. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I suppose I might clarify... a bit.
I have little problem with "vauge" backstorys. One of my current players doen't really have one: Raised into the Vory, is a leg breaker, does crime for a living, no family worth speaking of. He's not interested in his backstory and is playing a monster, as a result (which I discussed with him over a beer) we agreed I am free to toss more or less anything I want from a "has a VERY shady past" perspective at him with minimal warning. This over time will range from angry widows seeking vengance (during runs) to old favours cropping up to be payed (giving the group runs or forcing him to be elsewhere during a run) to the hard jawed maverick partner of the Interpol officer he killed in front of his family 2 days before his retirment (while he's in the bath or otherwise inconvinienced). All this can happen becaue he has no back story - he has gamed with me a fair bit and knows what hes getting into when he leaves me with an open field.

The flaw amnisia used soley to get points for this disinterest in backstory (this charater having amnesia would change very little aside from awarding points and the various curveballs I toss making sence when they start) seems silly to me. Why am I giving him points to make his charaters life this awesome for him?

My problem with flaws like this is not so much the laziness of the player (though I can see why that annoys a GM and depending on player could annoy me too because it undermines my efforts to have fun role-playing). My more recent problem is when players take it knowing full well that they are inviting trouble, but relying on the GM to not provide it. Essentially planting a big "DESTRUCT" button on their character's head and daring the GM to press it and ruin the evening's game. There are too many variants of that, but it's particularly likely in Shadowrun where stats take such a back seat to planning, trust and careful distrust.

Munchkins die because they force the GM to play hardball. If PCs are built to hurl grenades and wield LMGs, then I can't send them on milk runs, I have to send them against tough opposition. Who kill them.

Flaws like Amnesia, or far worse, Incompetent(Etiquette), are too often forcing the GM to either ignore them and thus give the player free BP (which is what the munchkin is after) or press their DESTRUCT button and say "Bang - you're dead". Or something like that, anyway.

Knasser's comment at the end of his post made me realize I wanted to clarify something else. When I talk about messing with players, I don't think it necessarily means going out of my way to kill them. It could just mean an amnesiac character learning mid-campaign that he owes A LOT of money to a crime syndicate, that he's a corporate Manchurian candidate, etc. In other words, if I'm gonna mess with a character's life, the least I could do is make sure the character still has a life for me to mess with in the first place! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Just to be clear, I also like messing with my player's heads, but in a friendly, enjoyable way. What I object to is players forcing your hand by hitting your game with every tweaked number they can, yet expecting you to be gentle with them and give them an ego-stroking power-trip.

It just seemed to me that the sort of player buying Amnesia for "free points" was putting the GM in the same position as mine with their "I'm going to kill Yakuza with an LMG, but live in a squat with no security where the local gangs can all identify me". They want the good stuff without consequence, always looking for a loophole that will let them get it.

QFT.

Again, my lovable GM of awesome upon hearing that one of the players has a junkyard man as a contact (we needed a van) at a high loyalty (5ish) but the player hand't fleshed the contact out--no name, race, or gender.

The GM made it a gay troll, who hit on me (an elf).

I very quickly made myself unseen (yay chameleon gear!).

The troll did not give us as big of a discount as he might've if I'd gotten into bed.

I'm not homophobic or anything, but my character wasn't into that kind of thing.

If someone picks amnesia from me, I'll make them a free spirit who doesn't know they are a spirit...and they don't know who has their formula.

Just get the poor squatters precious LMG stolen by one of the other squatters around... -problem solved-

Depends on your definition of a munchkin though. I'd say that most players with munchkin tendencies would avoid such Qualities, because it is not controllable and is likely to bite them in the ass. When faced with such characters, I run my game normally. Sooner or later, it will come into play and they... will suffer the consequences. They might survive it, they might not.

Why would you possibly take amnesia as a munckin when moderate allergy (uncommon) gold is right there in the book.

Or better yet Geas "Wearing a shirt"

I mean come on.

Incompetent (Aircraft)
Incompetent (Spacecraft)
Incompetent (Seacraft)

Good news... says the face as he comes in after the Johnson talked him into the next set of runs. (and it didn't take much talking to convince him).

Sand Sea and Sun.... we're going to investigate some small islands in the pacific. And the Johnson even threw in some jet skis for everybody.

It can and will come back to haunt you.

Oh, come on now.

The true Munchkin buy is:

Incompetent: Compiling
Incompetent: Registering
Incompetent: Decompiling

on a mundane.