Christ Centered Gamer

Then there's the other extreme. Not a Munchkin, really... but still annoying.

And that's the player who really doesn't care about their character at all, and never brings one, and is constantly rolling a replacement. As a result they don't really do much more than soak up XP which gets wasted on a character who will never be seen again.

Oh, I totally agree, story first. When I leveled it wasn't just that I took it and that was that, I asked in character, "Hey, that was cool... could you teach me how to do that?" This campaign we are in right now is actually very heavy on the role playing, which I really appreciate.

It's been a while since I've run a game (or played in one, actually), but it's something I've worried about from time to time. I've got a few contingency plans just in case - since most munchkins seem to favor combat prowress, players should expect more adventures to pop up where diplomacy and/or espionage are the key to success. Then again, in the game I ran that my players seemed to enjoy the most, the campaign was custom-built around the characters they created. Although I did have an overriding story, there were often instances where NPCs, events and settings were shaped directly by the players' actions - often in ways they weren't expecting and sometimes regretted afterward.

Thinking about my own characters I've played, I've made an amusing observation. It seems like I tend to lean towards being an "anti-munchkin," in the sense that I'll often try to deliberately hamstring or limit my character. (Such as, in the 3.5 D&D rules, making a half-orc bard - yes, the player race with the penalty to Charisma and one of the classes that needs it the most). Why? To make the character more interesting!

Fathom123 summed it up quite well. Story before stats.

Sstavix: Half Orc Bard, if you played your character as your character and did not troll the game or make the character for the sake of just being an unkind individual, I would really have fun DMing a game with a character like that. I love underdog or unique characters. On top of that, you can make him the first ever death metal guitarist/vocalist in the game. Death metal doesn't require charisma, it requires fear. If you played him right, you would own the game.

Ooh, I LOVE that idea of a death metal bard! If I recall correctly (it's been a while since I played that character) my character's main emphasis was drums and poetry - yes, kind of a beatnik bard. Very friendly... but certainly not going to win any beauty contests.

I had to assassinate a orc bard in skyrim, because he was terrible. I felt nothing.

And death metal bard would be awesome. Call him Nathan Explosion.