Nomenclature: min/max, optimization, theorycraft, etc.

[NiteCyper]

What the boards call min-maxing is now called theory-crafting in other, nascent gaming-communities (e.g., Diablo 3). Definition has been known to shift, particularly with pejoratives as in munchkin, roll-player, and power-gamer. We've made arguments that each one means a certain something. Let's discuss this. Not necessarily the subjective differences between the terms, but all or anything about them.

In particular, I'm wondering about the current term "theory-craft" and the best term for the whole bunch. I have a hunch that the best term is business-related. Characteristics would be being recognizable to any (English) demographic, and readily able to be crafted into analogy and word-play for explanation.

(click to show/hide)

"I play for fun."

A sentiment that can be attributed to a casual style of gameplay, but the particular quote is most commonly employed in a disparaging manner against the "play to win" play-style. So, "playing for fun" an example of a bad term. I guess another characteristic of a good term is one that is nigh impossible to sully in such a way.

I'd be more comprehensive, such as compiling a list of as many terms as possible, with links to thesaurus entries, antonyms, etymology, etc., but this is a new idea and I decided that I'd get it down to get the ball rolling and come back to it later, because I usually regret not making the forum post ASAP. But you can think of it as another half-baked idea.

Sample questions:
What are all the names that you've heard for this practice? Related terms?
I think the first term that I learned was optimization, what about you?
What's the most common pejorative you hear ascribed to what we do?
Which term do you prefer? Why? How would you define it to Joe or Sunshine Schmoe?

The Munchkinmaxer Fallacy by Libertad is relevant.

[Arturick]

The first term I encountered was Min/Maxxing, and it was explained as "maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses."  It took on a pejorative meaning when applied to "broken" combos that didn't make sense from a narrative perspective or outright cheating.  I took umbrage with a player who brought me a 2E swashbuckler with unarmored AC of -1 at first level.  My complaint was that his swashbuckler, described as swishy and fair featured, had the perk "Thick Hide."

I later encountered "munchkin" and "power-gamer," generally still focused on people who broke narrative sense or cheated.

I was exposed to the term "optimization" and "CharOp" through these boards.  I found "optimization" to be the best term, from my perspective, for a character creation approach that emphasizes efficiency without necessarily breaking narrative sense or the group's Gentlemen's Agreement.

If I had to describe "optimization" to a new player, I would tell them, "It's an approach to character creation where you decide what you want your character to be able to do, then you take the options that will give you the best chance to do that on a regular basis.  It's basically statistical analysis of the options."

[Unbeliever]

Theorycrafting generally refers to more of the side hobby of coming up with character builds.  This is semi-distinct from actually playing the game.  One who theorycrafts a lot ends up making up various builds for games that he doesn't really intend on playing, or perhaps is unlikely to play. 

Much of the activity on the min/max parts of this board would probably qualify as Theorycrafting, though it's not a perfect fit.  The Handbooks, and things like them, are actually less Theorycrafting and more just practical helpers and complications of information for people. 

Note that I think the term Theorycrafting really came out of aRPGs and similar games where creating a characters takes like all of 9 seconds.  There's less of a strong distinction between Theorycrafting and just playing D&D (and most other RPGs) b/c the default level of investment in just creating a character is much higher.  And, also, in games like Diablo, et al. the mechanics of the game are quite opaque.  So, Theorycrafting there involves unearthing mechanics through experimentation and documentation.  Obviously, that's not the case with a pen and paper RPG, or at least not nearly to the same degree.  The point is that there's a sharper division between playing the game and Theorycrafting in Diablo -- in the latter case you're opening up the combat reporter and doing various tests, etc.

Min/Max and Optimization pretty much mean the same thing.  The problem is that Min/Max has often been tainted with negative connotations, which is what I believe led to the CharOp/Optimization terminology.  Though I think the more recent nomenclature does sound a lot better. 

Overall, I wholly support Arturick's definition:  I generally view optimization as "tell me what kind of character you can play and we figure out how to realize it at the table."  If your character is supposed to be agile and accurate, let's make sure that comes out according to the rules, if he's supposed to be doughty and tough, let's do that.  That sort of thing.

[Jackinthegreen]

Having come from a theorycrafting community (WoW's Elitistjerks forum) before participating in active D&D discussions, I can say that what they do on EJ with rigorous statistical analysis doesn't happen quite as often here.  There are different mindsets between D&D and WoW, even among those who optimize/theorycraft mostly because they are very different games that have very different ways of going about things.

I would love to see more of the Iterative Probability work we were trying to do but got bogged down with because people couldn't cooperate.  One of the things I like about EJ is they don't take shit, and that serves to generally keep the work quality high.

I think it has a lot to do with how we create and perceive characters.  The perception is that a character needs to have flaws to be interesting, and thus creating a character who minimizes flaws is not interesting and probably shouldn't be played in a roleplaying game.  Not only that, but if we have the power to create everything about the character like with what D&D tries to do then oftentimes we feel obligated to add flaws or quirks based more on what the character can't do than can.

That's possibly a reason "minmax" becomes pejorative.  "Optimizing" likewise has a bit of that context because we tend to focus more on the negative things.  Oftentimes we want a negative trait in its own right rather than as a product of what's left of the positive traits

"Theorycraft" has less of those connotations because of the base words in it: crafting theories.  It's all about creating theories (more like hypotheses in many cases, but hypothesiscraft doesn't roll well) as to how something works, and it's through learning how something works that we can build upon and improve it.  Not only that, but forming theories is better accepted because it implies the weight of a scientific community behind it that does rigorous work to come to its conclusions.  By that definition, we aren't there yet because the exhaustive research either hasn't been done or fully put together yet.

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19869122/Optimization_By_The_Numbers is closer to theorycraft for example, but of course is optimizing too.

[RobbyPants]

I started playing during the 2E days. Min/maxing was usually frowned upon, but only to a certain extent (which varied person to person). It was expected for you to put a high score into Str and a low score into Cha for a fighter, for example, so no one had a clear definition on when it became "too much". It was often something that was hypothetically joked about (rolling PCs with 5 18s and a 3 in Cha, despite there being no such way to generate stats like that). I learned terms like "optimization" and "power gaming" at the WotC forums. I think I picked up the term Munchkin there, too, but I could be wrong.

That being said, the most common pejoratives IRL I hear are min/maxing, and maybe power gaming.

Personally, I don't see the term power gaming as a pejorative; it basically means "to make powerful characters", which may or may not offend different gamers. I prefer the term optimizing, mainly because I haven't had any negative experiences with it.