OPTIONAL TRAITS AND MIN/MAXING

In 1997, the original “Fallout” game was released on PC and went on to subsequently blow my mind and influence my life to this day, to the point that I STILL have a file I’m playing through right now.  At the time, I had grown up on a steady diet of Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs) which, though quite enjoyable, were very much an “on rails” experience: you played with the characters you were given and followed the story set before you.  Fallout was billed as a game where you could be anybody and do anything, which, of course, meant that I IMMEDIATELY built the physically strongest character I possibly could and punched everyone I met in the groin with a pair of brass knuckles.  And when I say “physically strongest possible”, I wholly mean that, because central to the character creation process of Fallout are “optional traits”: quirks you can pick that help further define your character by offering them a trait/quality that has an element of “give and take” to it.  You gain advantages in one area at the expense of disadvantages in the other.  The one I immediately keyed in on was called “Bruiser”, which was described as “"A little slower, but a little bigger. You may not hit as often, but they will feel it when you do! Your total action points are lowered, but your Strength is increased.”  Oh my goodness yes, how do I take this one twice?  I actually BROKE the system by first increasing my strength score to 10 and THEN selecting Bruiser, netting me a strength score of 12, which the game informed me was “outside the limits” (“be anything” my ass!), which I’m sure is of no surprise to my regular readers who understand my propensity to love strength AND not follow rules.  But longwinded nostalgia bloviation aside, I bring ALL of this up for us to understand that life imitates art and that we are all playing our own game of Fallout right there, and for many of us, those things that we perceive to be “flaws” are, most likely, simply optional traits. And like any good little munchkin, it’s up to US to engage in the time honored tradition of “min/maxing”.

If you knew me in 1997, or you know me now, you know I'm always picking this

Ok, so now what is “min/maxing”?  Min/maxing is the dirty trick that “powergamers” engage in where they select traits that ALLEGEDLY have flaws to coincide with their bonuses and find ways to maximize the bonuses while obviating the flaws.  In Fallout, a classic approach to this is to select the “Fast Shot” optional trait, which allows you to shoot more times per round at the expense of not being able to do targeted shots to specific bodyparts, and then specializing in big guns, which don’t allow you to do targeted shots anyway.  All the advantages and none of the consequences.  It breaks the spirit of the optional traits without actually breaking any of the rules: fully “suffering” the consequences without actually suffering.  This is why min/maxers frustrate dungeon masters and game developers, but for us, the player: we’re just looking out for number 1.

 

Which means you need to recognize WHAT your optional trait is, what the alleged “consequence” is of it, and how to obviate yourself from that consequence.  I grew up a fat kid (a fact I’ve shared often), and frequently lamented an ever present voracious appetite AND capacity for food.  I was always hungry AND whenever I ate, I could eat a LOT of food without really feeling “full”.  For those of you that remember my write-up of eating the Stellanator, a 5lb cheeseburger, in 31 minutes, this was a fantastic demonstration of these abilities, especially when considering I am NOT a professional eater, and was just a dude that showed up on a Thursday and ate a burger that over 1000 people have tried and only 70 have succeeded on.  I viewed this wholly as a curse at the time, until I got into lifting, and suddenly discovered that I had a super power.  I NEVER had to worry about recovery, the notion of “overtraining” seemed like a myth to me, and I could take on RIDICULOUS training schedules and volumes, because the amount of food I could put away at any given time was more than adequate to replace whatever the energy demands were being placed upon my body.  And this created a positive feedback loop, wherein the ridiculous training volume and intensity significantly increased my work capacity and conditioning, which allowed me to train even harder and with more volume, which drove up appetite, which permitted me to eat even more to fuel the whole process.  It was effectively the Bruce Randall story, only stopping “halfway” (more around 220lbs than 402lbs).  And, of course, I didn’t really come to understand I HAD this superpower until I got online and observed other trainees who did NOT possess this ability: their appetite and capacity limited their ability to grow and recover from their training, as they simply could NOT eat enough food to maximize their results.

Laugh it up: we could honestly all learn a few lessons from Fred Dukes

But there’s a downside right?  Not feeling full until you’ve eaten a lot of food is pretty much WHY we have an obesity epidemic right?  Yes, that certainly CAN be a consequence, IF one does not employ min/maxing.  Because I’ve learned that my strength in the realm of eating ALSO makes it that I’m one of the few people out there that can successfully employ eating one meal a day while STILL meeting whatever protein threshold I have in order to spare/build lean tissue.  Because, again, one meal a day, in and of itself, often has the consequence that attempting to employ this manner of eating prevents people from eating adequate nutrients because they simply don’t have the stomach capacity or appetite to eat enough food to fuel hard training.  But tapping into my optional trait, I’m able to leverage my strength in a manner to obviate my flaw, sitting down to one meal and putting away enough food and nutrients to satisfy whatever demands I have.  And because of the timing of eating AND the foods that I’m choosing to eat, I find a way to quell the voracious appetite portion of the optional trait while still leaning into the “near unlimited capacity” for food element of it.  I’ve become a dirty powergamer.

 

And once again: life imitates art.  In Fallout, pretty much each optional trait had its dualistic counterpart.  For Bruiser, it was “small framed”, wherein one had an extra point of agility at the expense of how much weight they could carry (THIS trait was ripe for min/maxing, and a popular choice for powergamers), and in the realm of physical transformation, we’ve seen my opposites: either the people that have no natural appetite OR the people that can eat massive quantities and NOT put on weight.  I interact with these people frequently on the internet, as I have always been a fan of the prospect of transformation by way of eating big, training hard and growing, and look to encourage it whenever possible.  And, in turn, the min/max strategy I convey to these individuals is always the same: they have ZERO concern of ever getting “too fat” in a gaining phase, because they have the superpower of effortlessly existing/achieving leanness that, as soon as they are ready to get BACK there, all they have to do is get back to being “normal” and it’ll happen.  For so many OTHER trainees, the prospect of a cut is terrifying because it sounds like existing in a state of perpetual willpower and denial (which, I’ve written on many occasions, is the sign of a dysfunctional diet, but among the calorie counters and IIFYM crowd, it’s the ONLY way they know how to lose weight).  This prospect is so terrifying that these trainees will try to engineer the gaining phase in such a manner that there IS no follow-on cutting phase: they only gain “pure muscle” the entire time and, when it’s done, can just transition to maintenance.  Yeah, that NEVER works, and they just end up spinning their wheels the entire time because they’re too afraid to eat to grow.  Which is why, for these alleged “hardgainers”, I inform them that their optional trait is that they can “full send” in the gaining phase, drinking heavy cream mixed with melted ice cream mixed with ghee in order to get in the calories and REALLY live the Bruce Randall story, because they’ll very easily achieve the SECOND arc of the Bruce Randall story where he lost half his bodyweight to become one of the most jacked men on the planet.  And meanwhile, DURING that gaining phase, these dudes are going to be absolutely CRUSHING their workouts, because their effectively going to have rocket fuel running through their bodies through the sheer amount of calories put down, with no doubt whatsoever that they’ve consumed enough energy to maximize protein synthesis and achieve full muscular development.  Yeah yeah: science has determined that we don’t need “that much” in order to grow…but isn’t it awesome when you have NO doubt whatsoever that you’ve hit that mark?  THAT is your min/max: now YOU’RE a powergamer too.

Bruce Min/Maxed so hard it honestly looked liked cheating

And there are SO many more optional traits that can be discussed in this regard.  Anatomical structure, food preferences/aversions, sleep habits, etc etc.  The point is, in an era where kids will legit upload photos of themselves online to have their “genetics” evaluated while asking if they have any hope of a future in the pursuit of physical transformation, let’s take a step back and appreciate these optional traits for what they are.  They were put into the game to give a little character to our character: make them stand out beyond simply being the guy with the gun.  And they DO give us character, they DO make us unique, but they are also RIFE for exploitation by those who are willing to be creative IN a game where we are TOLD to explore our endless creativity.  Find your optional trait and find ways to min/max it, so that the rest of the world playing the game normally can get upset with you for being a powergamer while you coast toward the next level up and perk.