Rocks Fall, Everybody Zombies

I'm normally a very good GM, but on a couple of my recent sessions I really dropped the ball. Sometimes it happens to even the best of us.

Basically, I wrote a set of Zombie RPG rules, and they didn't work. I still think they would work reasonably well for what they're intended to do, but that wasn't what my players were interested in. They wanted to get the heck out of dodge, whereas my rules naively assumed they'd stay in densely populated areas that would turn into an undead wasteland over time.  I had chapters devoted to sieges and supply hunts, two scenarios my players did everything in their power to avoid. (And seriously, can you blame them?) They stocked up early before things got really bad, and headed out of town.


As it turns out, there's no such thing as a supply shortage during a zombie outbreak. Supply shortages like you see after a hurricane or other disaster are a function of a break down in supply lines without a corresponding significant decrease in consumption. Unless your zombies are eating canned goods, there's no shortages. Though malnutrition would eventually play a factor with a diet so restricted, any of us could survive for a very long time on a couple of cans of beans a day with no immediate ill effects. Next time you're in a grocery store, attempt to count just the canned beans in one aisle of the store. Thousands of cans.  Either survivors are rare and thus any given grocery store is several years of food for the party, or the infection rate is low and the PCs can readily avoid the zombies. Neither results in particularly tense and exciting sessions, and while everyone else seemed to be having fun, I felt my pacing was dreadful.

There was a point where I probably should have stymied their efforts to leave town, for the sake of the narrative. If I'd kept them in town, where the zombies were, I could have kept the game sharp. However, the rules I was using were intentionally very light, and assumed a strong level of PC competency, so there wasn't a particularly good way to provide an obstacle to the players that they wouldn't have a very high likelihood of getting past... at least not that early in the timeline. And since I wrote the rules, I didn't want to just hand-wave the obstacle, lest the it be perceived that my rules were intentionally light specifically to allow for unfair GM fiat.

Some time after the PCs got out of town, after many more sessions of pacing that I felt was wretched, I essentially decided to end the campaign... but I didn't decide to do so in a reasonable way, or at a decent time. I just kinda got frustrated during the final scene of a random session where they'd once again dodged a particularly slow-moving offscreen bullet. In my frustration, I had an NPC go psycho and sabotage their car. No build-up, no foreshadowing, not even a die-roll to blame it on, just pretty much "so, that psycho guy cut your break line and now you're hurtling down the hill."

I told myself I wasn't ending the campaign, I was just creating a good cliff-hanger and making the game exciting for once. What a crock. It was abrupt and unfair, and I'm lucky I didn't lose my GMing badge over it.

My players looked at the situation, and politely said "well, I think that's about enough of this campaign." And what could I do but agree. Your GM's a dick, and a hack. The very sense of engineered unfairness that I'd carefully steered clear of 5 or 6 sessions earlier, now returned with a vengeance.

I hope I haven't burned any bridges or good will there, because that bizarre turn of events was very abnormal for me. I like a good tragic ending, but this wasn't a good one, and it wasn't planned or prepared for in any way.  Nobody left angry (that I'm aware of), but it was a rather pathetic thing for me to do as GM. Sorry I let you down, folks.

What's this gray line doing here?

There's this weird vertical line running in the midst of my words on this blog. It wasn't there when I was using my old computer. Since my hard drive fried I've been using an old machine with a really old browser.

When I first noticed the line, I thought it was just that this ancient platform was misinterpreting the HTML. No big deal, I thought, since it misinterprets everything - can't figure out frames or div or java or anything involving video. This machine can barely handle posting to this blog, so I doubt it'll go well if I use it to fiddle with bloggers layout editor.

Besides, with my novel-writing (I'm at 47,010 words, btw), I haven't had much time for this place. Out of sight, out of mind.

But yesterday, I happened to need to reference something I knew I had linked to here. Sarah's computer was running, but she wasn't teleworking at that moment, so I grabbed it for a sec. I get here, and see the ugly gray line running down my text column. I haven't edited the layout here in a good 6 months. Has it been there the whole time, and my mac laptop just didn't display it? If so, I apologize. Next chance I get to steal Sarah's computer for an hour so I can hunt for the offending code, I will.

My Computer's In Dry-Dock

Yar. On Friday last, I got up at the booty of dawn ('tis less southerly, and more pleasantly desirous than the dirty ol' buttcrack of dawn), hauled my piratical dictionary up'n from below-decks, and prepared to set match ta a volley of swarthy countenances that would clarly belabour both'n the cut of me jib an' the temper o' me steel. But'n, fer land's sakes, me ship just lingered there in port - the sails were mutinously refusing to unfurl. Eventually, wit' great personal effort and displeasure, I was able to make them unfurl, but even then they weren't but catchin' nary a wind. Instead of blowing out to sea, they just sat there making a gawd awful racket, like a three pence whore grindin' her holey teeth agin' the basket hilt of me cutlass.

In less flavorful terms, my computer died. I've spent nearly14 hours across the past 3 days trying every trick, system disk, and repair program I know. It won't even recognize that it has a hard-drive now. Crap.

I've got my wife's laptop to fall back on, but since she teleworks two days a week, my internet time will be a bit restricted in the near future. And since she just got her holey teeth filled (so as to not resemble a 3-pence whore), we lack the dubloons to get my 'puter's hull shored up this paycheck. It sits in drydock till some unforseen horizon, and I'm left to wrestle with a windows machine running a variety of microsoft products. Somebody'll be walkin' the plank fer that, I assurn ye.

In short, if'n yer expectin' this scurvy dog to entertain ya, or respond to any parchments stuffed in emailical bottles, yer outta luck.

Werse yet: Since that scuttled ship had all me notes, an' the newly updated but not yet printed character sheets fer the godlier part of Scion, it done keelhauled my prospects of gaming this weekend past. The cap'n get a mite bit ornery when he ain't 'ad is fix!

my childish "Ha-ha, I told you so!"

A couple weeks ago, the latest Scion PDF released. I immediately saw some problems with it, and posted here a list of house-rules I planned to implement. Then I discussed them with my play group, who agreed on nearly everything, so I posted the majority of my thoughts on the topic to the Scion forum. To put it politely, this provoked a spirited discussion - one in which it was suggested that I was too quick to judge and was only house-ruling because I (allegedly) want Scion to fail. (Which is completely false - instead I want Scion to succeed enough that a revised 2nd Edition is justified.) I've been burned by Scion's need for mid-game house-rules, and wished to nip it in the bud this time by proactively ruling on things before they came up in a session. For this, I was treated very poorly.

I now find it funny that so many others have since created threads to discuss the same problems I had identified amongst the new powers. I feel vindicated. It would seem I wasn't being paranoid about flaws in the text. I just have an acutely honed sense of what makes mechanics break down, and a solid grasp of game balance. (I think that's why I was a good Magic judge, and why I enjoy playing combo decks.) Anyhow, I found it very difficult today to not pop on to 3 different threads and say "see, I told you so!" If it's alright with you, I'll keep my smug self-congratulatory backpatting contained to this blog post.

For those of you (presumably everyone who reads this blog with any regularity) who didn't tell me my house-rules were a knee-jerk over-reaction stemming from what you interpret to be a bitter hatred of White Wolf, I apologize. You shouldn't have to sit through me saying "I told you so" again and again. Please excuse the following outburst:

"See, I told them so!" Thank you.

Grousing

It was brought to my attention today, that while I'm still bitching at the Scion Forums, I haven't contributed much quality material lately.

Partly that's 'cause we've already house-ruled all the easy-to-fix issues. What's left is the ones I don't have good solutions for.

The other factor has to do with how many house-rules we've already installed. Our campaign is so full of patches and clarifications and decisions-on-the-spot, that it's become increasingly harder to write things that are universally helpful. My campaign, with it's "generalist" PCs (at least 2 dots in all 9 Epics), and large volumes of errata, just isn't facing the same issues that new campaigns are. Sometimes I'll start to contribute something, and then realize it's not generally helpful, so I stop. Other times (like today), I don't catch myself, and then someone calls me on it. I really don't want to be that jerk who does nothing but bitch.

I'm tempted to go post my recent Knacks, but I'm not prepared to defend them (since, despite my calling them "recent", they were composed over 2 months ago), and more knacks ain't what the game needs. *sigh*

I am NOT Rebecca

I am writing this post, so that I can just link to it whenever somebody thinks I'm someone else (at least, one specific someone else). A few minutes spent now will save hours over time...

I am Rolfe B Bergstrom, NOT Rebecca S Borgstrom.

Rebecca Sean Borgstrom authored the Nobilis RPG, which is a very good game and a beautiful book. She penned it under the name R. Sean Borgstrom, which I presume she did to mask her gender on the covers of her earliest books in the largely male-dominated gaming industry. That's just a guess, though, as I've never met her. Could be she just really likes her middle name. In any event, her name appears frequently as R. S. Borgstrom, and shows up in enough different variants that some fans don't memorize her exact name.

It turns out she's also written some books for White Wolf in their Exalted game line. Exalted is the spiritual (well, at least mechanical) ancestor of Scion.

I've been posting on the Scion Forums and Wiki in the past few months. And I set up my account as r_b_bergstrom, to match my email, my blogs, several work-related accounts, etc. I had no idea Rebecca had written anything for WWP at the time I created my white-wolf account. Not that I'd automatically have done otherwise if I'd known - my name is my name, after all.

(As an aside: See the angry dude on the phone with the nasty scar on his shoulder? That's me. I hope, for her sake, that Rebecca looks nothing like me.)

As a result of this quasi-homonymic similarity, people keep calling me Rebecca when they respond to my posts on those forums, no matter how often I correct them. The last time I had this many feminine pronouns aimed at me was a Halloween party in '91.

I've even received a few posts and private messages from people who wanted to say something along the lines of "it means so much to me that a writer as talented as yourself liked my house rule" or "I've been a fan of your work for years" and chances are that few (if any) of them were referring to my little part of a book from Atlas Games or my old Amber pages from back in the day. And when I reply and shatter their misconception, I'm always worried that I come off as insult -ed/-ing.

Changing my profiles to list more data about me didn't help, as it turns out we both live in Seattle, and were born within 24 hours of each other. (Thanks to wikipedia for enlightening me about the parallels.) You'd think Gender would be enough, but people apparently see only what they want.

While the main point of this post is to end confusion, the secondary goal is to serve as multiple apologies.

Rebecca, if you are aware of any of this (which seems unlikely, but ya never know) I hope you find the situation mildly amusing, and don't think it's been in anyway intentional on my part. If you are aware of it, and it has vexed you, I'm sorry. I promise I've done nothing to promote this case of mistaken identities, and should our paths ever cross I hope you'll share a laugh with me about it instead of telling me to go somewhere unpleasant.

I'd also like to apologize to those who feel confused or misled. You're not alone in making this error, so don't feel too embarrassed. I'm certainly not insulted by your mistakes - 'cause frankly Nobilis rocks and I wish I had something that cool amongst my authorial credits.

And I'll try not to giggle the next time this happens. Instead, I'll just refer you to this post.

Hindsight is 20/20 and Amber-ranked

Counting off the top of my head, I've run 5 Amber Campaigns and 1 Amber-Everway CrossOver Campaign (and 5 one-shot ThroneWars) since first being exposed to the game in '92. Campaign #2 of 6 was pretty much the best campaign I've ever been involved in, or even heard of - and, with 5 years of gamestore retail under my belt, I've heard the details of more campaigns than you can shake a big glass dice cabinet at! That one had intense long-term plotlines, intricate mysteries, and character-development that transformed how individuals approached familial relationships in the real world.

Interestingly enough, the two most recent of those 6 Amber-related campaigns were the weakest. I've run excellent campaigns on either side of them, so I'm not sure why I'm having the issues I've been hitting recently. Perhaps I'm all-Ambered-out?

The Amber Campaign I ran in Albuquerque in early- to mid- 2007 was a major let-down after the Continuum campaign that went before it, and in hind-sight not at all the style of game I should have run just before moving away from that group of friends. I also did a very bad job of controlling the pacing. It was intended as a 6-session mini-campaign, but bogged down into 13 or 14 sessions and never wrapped up the major plot point. But, apparently it wasn't all bad, all the time. What Silence posted this list of memorable quotes from the game. Follow that link to read a few of the better moments.

In more upbeat news, all the throne wars have been immensely enjoyable, including 3 that had a dozen or more players. (If I recall correctly, participation was 12, 17 and 24 players at those three events, with 1, 3 and 4-and-a-half GMs respectively, myself being Head GM each time) I handled the crowd control and pacing elements just great those times.

I'd planned on running another large Throne War at the store before I moved, but I was so burned out from beating my head against that campaign (and in denial about moving until it was too late) that I just missed the opportunity. I really regret that. I was the biggest fish in Albuquerque's very small pond - here in Seattle, I have yet to establish myself outside a very select (and thus: small) group of friends.

Side-Effect of Continuum

While I generally love the Continuum RPG, and must acknowledge the impact it's had on my thinking and joke-cracking in my Yet, I have one caveat...

Beware the effect Continuum has on your ability to pace a game. You journal every moment and detail of a characters life in Continuum, so you can span back to moments you'd already experienced, or rather to avoid doing so. But that mode of thinking ruined my next campaign. I had actually temporarily lost the ability to think in the midst of a game "should I just jump ahead to the next important plot point now?"

Everyone loved my Continuum campaign. Everyone (myself included) hated the Amber campaign that followed it. I kept subconsciously trying to keep the players "level" in time, which meant that if one PC was off doing something interesting, everybody else had to live through the doldrums. Even when they were all together, I think I only said "a few days later" once. Instead I smashed the bloody pulps of a plot together into a single loaf and very rarely cut scenes off of it. Sorry about that, guys.

After GMing Continuum, start your next campaign "In Media Res" with the PCs already knowing each other and involved in something big. (I started Scion with a battle sequence.) Then jump ahead to a new scene. Only show the important parts. Don't sweat the details.

Paralysis Sucks

In case there's anyone out there that hasn't figured this out yet: Paralysis sucks!

The Scion game system is packed with powers that paralyze, delay, or limit actions. Serpent's Gaze, Overt Order, Charmer or Center of Attention can be taken by any PC for approximately 1 session's worth of experience. They're just as acccessible to the NPC badguys, but be careful. Here's a precautionary tale of powers gone bad...

In an early session of my Scion Campaign, my PCs fought a Medusa. In Scion, Medusas don't turn you to stone when you look at them, but they do cause supernatural fear that can paralyze you or make you flee. I didn't think it'd be a problem, 'cause the fight was planned to be staged in a multi-room suite, and making someone flee to the next room or stay transfixed till the Medusan left the room would be no big deal. But instead, the players didn't really understand the power being used against them, so they slammed the doors between the rooms closed and barricaded them. Which left a paralyzed PC in the same room as the monster. He was effectively out of the game for over half and hour because of the other player's tactical decisions, but for the most part he took it very well.

"I'll never let that happen again," I said loudly at the start of the next session. "If I ever use a paralysis -based power again, I'll make sure there's an easy way out, like spending a willpower to cancel it." (Such a provision is written into the default rules of Scion, by the way, but it's specifically overruled in the write-up for Medusas - you can only spend the Willpower if you beat the Medusa's roll). I gave him an XP bonus for taking it so well that night.

Several sessions later, the PCs were up against Chupacabra, and thier boss the Luchacabra.
I gave the Chups the Serpent's Gaze power, which captivates and effectively paralyzes a PC while the Chupacabra is looking at them. However, a PC can spend a Willpower point to break out of it after missing a single action. (That rule is NOT overwritten in the creature I made). PCs usually start with around 8 WillPower, and have a few ways to get WP back in middle of combat, so it shouldn't have been a problem.
There were two chupacabra encounters set up: one against a lone chupacabra, and one against a group of them. The first was a test - if it went poorly I'd trim the second encounter back significantly.

Chupacabra pops up, zaps a PC. Before that one action has gone by, the other 2 PCs throw everything they have into killing the Chupacabra. It dies in 3 ticks, without the "affected" PC every actually missing an action, but of course I'd narrated that he'd looked hypnotized for a moment. In fact, since initiating the Serpent's Gaze had cost the chupacabra an action, it really was the same effect as if the PC had stunned the chupacabra and not the other way around.

Later, the 2nd Encounter happens. 10 chupacabra vs 4 PCs and 6NPCs. The PCs were sure to break free easily (and breaking free makes you immune vs that chupacabra), and since it took an average of 2 attack rolls (not 2 hits, 2 attacks) to kill a chupacabra, it should have been fast and painless. The idea was that the Chups would look really scary for about 5 ticks (ie: 1 action or 1 round of combat) and then as soon as I prompted a PC that they could spend a willpower to be immune, the tension would go out of the scene.

Paralyzing for 1 action cost the chupacabra an action and 1/4 their Legend resource. Mathematically, the only way the PCs could be out of the fight was if 8 out of 10 chupacabras managed to make eye contact with them in succession and the PC never did anything to gain Willpower, and that wasn't going to happen since 5 out 10 chups were busy holding the NPC followers hypnotically hostage.

No real danger. A slaughter, but in a good way: The PCs couldn't lose that fight.
It was going to be fun.

Instead, I had a rebellion on my hands. Players actually said "we should just quit for the night and go home" and that wasn't a strategic statement of what their characters should do. Fear of the unknown just jumped in. No matter what I said, they seemed to assume the scenario was rigged to kill them.

What blows my mind, is this wasn't a random convention game. These were people who've played my campaigns for years. I rarely kill characters, less than one a year on average, and when it happens it's due to major plot points not random mooks. I've never "scored a TPK". And we were playing a game that's mostly about making the PCs look hot. They should have trusted me. Worst case scenario, if the dice had hated them, would have been waking up later in a cage the chupacabra had built and having to figure out how to escape.

I just don't know what happened. Suddenly, I was paralyzed. It got so out of hand I actually shouted "I need to take a 5 minute break right now or I'm going to start killing characters!" I don't say things like that, not in the last 10 years anyway. I felt like I'd fallen through a rift to 1987 and was gaming with my fellow 13-year-olds from across the street. There's some serious soul-searching ahead of me, I suspect.

To my friends: I'm sorry I over-reacted. Sometimes I get too invested. This was one of those times. But sheesh, next time, please try to lighten up too. I'm not out to kill your characters, I'm out to make them look good. It is Scion, after all.

To those who design point-based character creation systems...

Here's a lengthy rant. It was recently provoked by Scion, but I first noticed this issue in the 7th Sea RPG. Truth be told, the problem is as old as gaming itself.

My rant will start with number crunching, but get into design theory and philosophy before I'm done. The part where numbers turn into theory will be marked by a picture of Odysseus amongst the stars - why, 'cause it's a picture I can conveniently upload. And it gives a visual clue to those who want to skip the parts of my rant that deal with math and the specifics of the Scion RPG experience system.

Where it begins: Some RPGs use point-based character creation systems. In the abstract, it's my preferred character gen ideology, since it gives so many options to the player. However, sometimes the execution has problems...

Often times that problem is that the system uses a different type of point for character creation and character advancement. If it was just semantics, two functionally identical points with the same name, it would be perhaps a tad silly but not troublesome. The issue comes when the points work differently.

Let's look at Scion, a game I love and am having a blast GMing/Storytelling. In Scion, you get multiple types of points. First there's "dots" that you get in various categories, such as Attributes and Epic Attributes or Boons. Then you get "bonus points" that can be used to buy things from any of those categories at the end of character creation. And later you get "experience points" at the end of each session. Even later, if you become a Demigod, you get a second round of "dots" and additional "bonus points". Dots vary by category and occasion, bonus points come in a cluster of 15, and xp arrives about 4 to 6 per session.

Raising an Attribute from level 2 to 3 costs 1 dot, 4 bonus points, or 8 xp.
Raising an Attribute from level 4 to 5 also costs 1 dot or 4 bonus points, or it costs 16 xp.
Note that it's the same cost in dots or bonus points, but double the cost in xp.
Conclusion #1: Mechanically, you're encouraged to raise your most important attributes only at character creation and ascension to Demigodhood. But the attributes that only matter a little to your character concept you can put at really low during character creation and then bump up to mid-level with xp.
Conclusion #2: Effectively you get a price break if you focus heavily at character creation and then use xp to just cover your self-inflicted weaknesses. If you had to choose between having three attributes at 2, 2 and 5 or having them both all at level 3, you're better off going with 2, 2, and 5. It will save you xp in the long run.

Epic Attributes do the same thing:
Epic level 0 to 1 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp
Epic level 1 to 2 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 4 - 5 xp.
Epic level 2 to 3 costs 1 dot, 4 - 5 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp.
Conclusion #3: Conclusions 1 and 2 also applies to Epic Attributes.
Conclusion #4: Since getting to 1 from 0 costs more xp than getting from 1 to 2, you are also encouraged to take at least one level in any Epic you plan on ever being interested in. Doing so saves you 4-5 xp, which is about an entire session's worth.
Conclusion #5: At the end of character creation, each Epic should be rated at 0 or 3, rarely at 1, and never at 2 (0 if you'll never be interested in it, 3 if you plan to use it at all, and 1 only if you really wanted it at a 3 but ran out of points to get there).

But there's this other category of powers called Boons.
A level 1 Boon costs 1 dot, 4-5 bonus points, or 4 - 5 xp
A level 2 Boon costs 2 dots, 8-10 bonus points, or 8 - 10 xp
A level 3 Boon cost 3 dots, 12-15 bonus points, or 12 - 15 xp
Note that while dot cost remains in ratio with bonus point cost and xp cost.
Conclusion #6: Conclusions 1 through 4 don't apply to Boons. There's no way to get an effective xp break on Boons. If you had to choose between three level 1 Boons and one level 3 Boon, either is an equally good choice from a point of xp. So, you'd choose based on personal desire for one big flashy power or the versatility of multiple little powers.

Now's where it gets interesting. Epics and Boons come out of the same pool of Dots. Let's compare them:
Epic level 0 to 3 costs 3 dots, 12 - 15 bonus points, or 20 - 25 xp.
A level 3 Boon cost 3 dots, 12-15 bonus points, or 12 - 15 xp.
Note the same cost in dots or bonus points, but Epics cost nearly twice as much in xp / Boons cost just over half as much in xp.
Conclusion #7: Mechanically, your best move is to spend all those dots on Epics. Leave the Boons for your experience points later. Provided you eventually get them all to the same level, doing so saves you 8-10 xp (nearly two session's worth) for each Epic you buy at character creation instead of a Boon.

So, conclusions paraphrase: Your best call during character creation is focus on a few high Attributes and a few high Epics. Leave everything else at their starting/base level. You should never buy Boons with dots or bonus points, only with XP.

Conclusion #8 (Drawn from that paraphrase): Focused, narrowly specialized characters will eventually be much better than jack-of-all-trades generalists. They have vulnerabilities if the opening sessions of the campaign, but they will compensate for them much faster (for fewer xp) than the generalist evenly spent PC will be able to catch up with the specialists best moves and powers.


(For those who scrolled down to this picture to start, what you missed is an in-depth analysis of the Scion RPG experience and character creation systems, some quirks in said systems, and how to maximize your character by drawing conclusion from those quirks) The rest is observations, theory and philosophy...


In my experience, players will generally fall into one of three categories:
Category A: "I made those conclusions the first time I looked at the Scion rulebook. My character is all the better for it. I'm here to game."
Category B: "I made those conclusions at some point, but had a cool character concept that was fun to play even if it meant a few suboptimal decisions at character creation. I'm okay with lagging behind in XP because my character does really neat things right out of the gate and is a lot of fun to play. I'm here to roleplay."
Category C: "I'll never notice. All this math isn't my thing. I'm here to have fun."

Now, I wish everyone fell into category B. Oh, the games we'd have then! But my experience is that the real distribution amongst gamers is 45% A, 30% C, and only 25% B. And that's after years of gaming and self-selecting my gaming groups.

Back when I was in junior high, and only 3 people in town role-played, it was a very clear 33%A, 66%C, 0%B breakdown. For the record, I was group C. And when I figured out that one person in our little clique was Type A, I was pretty rude to him. "Point Weasel" was I called him, but I think "Munchkin" and "Twink" are the accepted (but no less harsh) terms these days.

But I wasn't being fair. (And wherever you are, dude, my apologies) The game system we were using had the same flaws, I just couldn't see them yet. He did, and he took advantage of it. The books were (and generally are) written to reward you for figuring out the math behind the systems, but that math is almost never (in the books) put into language that could possibly make a Type C player get it. That language, in Scion, would have been something along the lines of my 8 conclusions, above. Just conclusion #8 and the paraphrase directly preceeding it would have done it. 2 extra paragraphs added to a 330-page book would have benefited hundreds of gamers.

The same thing is what contributes to the main criticisms of D&D 3.x and the OGL. All those feats and prestige classes and 3rd-party supplements mean you min-max and penny-pinch or tweak your character for days.
The Category A's think there's nothing wrong with it, and the rulebooks clearly agree with them. For a subset of this Category, figuring out how to get the most out of the system is part of the fun.
The Category C's often think it's cheating, and many get as rude as I used to about it. Even if they don't call it cheating, it'll often rip the fun out of the game for them, because they don't want to crunch numbers, they want to play and socialize.
The Category B's can go either way. Some will be happy with a character that's fun and unique, and others will slowly grow resentful of their Cat A buddies till it wrecks the group.

Nowadays, I'm pretty clearly in the B category. Concept is most important to me, but I'll analyze a system to make sure there's nothing that's really holding my character back. If I notice something (like the above 8 conclusions) before character creation is done, I'll point them out to the rest of the group.

After character creation, it's a lot less useful, but I still get pretty offended at the subset of Category A players who horde the secrets of the system to themselves. Sometimes it's about ego, they want to have the most powerful PC at the table. Sometimes it's about not trusting the GM, pulling a fast one because your so fearful the GM will kill your character.

But the thing I need to keep in mind is that most of the time, for most of the Cat A's, it's a much more innocent reason: "Huh, that looks like it might be better. I'll try it out. If it proves to be really broken, everybody will notice and the GM will house-rule it. But if turns out just a little better than my other options were, then nobody gets hurt and it's all a-o-k. Next time we're making characters, since I'll know how well it works by then, I can tell everybody about it."

The game that opened my eyes was 7th Sea. We were several hours into character creation for the first time, and everyone was nearly done but me. We were all really tired. I was trying to decide whether or not I really could stretch my points to be both a Swordsman and a Full-Blooded Mage. Weighing it in my mind, I decided to look at the XP charts to see how long it'd take me to regain things I might cut from my character sheet to make room for it. Suddenly I realized that the base Swordsman and Mage placeholders were all I needed, that and the Attribute called Panache. All the Advanced Knacks dropped off the character sheet, 'cause I'd get them all cheaper by experience a couple sessions down the road. Sure, I'd roll less dice in the first few combats, but since Panache let me act so quickly, it'd be sure to hit at least once a round. It was late, I was tired, and I didn't think to explain this to my fellow players, who had already finished their characters.

Three sessions later people were pissed at me (And here's another apology, for a different group of people: Sorry I didn't speak up the night we made our characters, I really should have) because I got twice as many actions as them, had made up for most of their initial dice lead, and had Magic and Swordsman tricks too. I felt horrible, but it was too late to do anything about it.

My advice to game designers and developers: the lessons to be taken from this are ones that Monte Cooke has already called out a couple years back. I'm mostly seconding what he said. We need to step down from our Ivory Towers and meet the people. We need to make sure the character creation sections of our rulebooks include simple approachable statements about the math behind our game systems. We need to ensure it's possible to get the most out of your character without 2 hours of math and multiple thorough reads of the rulebook.

Don't worry too much about losing those for whom the dissecting of the rules is a big part of the fun. We can still debate the merits of whether an low-damage area-effect power is better than a high-damage single-target ability. And you can make the high-end powers (that starting characters don't get) have all the depth and subtlety that requires analysis - by the time a player gets to worrying about those they're pretty invested in the game and already know what they're doing.

Make sure the most basic math of your system is spelled out where (and in a way that) the non-scientists can get their hands on it. It'll improve everyone's first experience with your game. Thanks.