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Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 06:16 AM
American Football coach Herman Edwards said it: You play to win the game.

I was talking about RPGs with a friend the other night and we concluded that the old “you can’t win a role playing game” line is bollocks.

Sure you can win and sure you can lose. It’s all about what goals you as a player have for your character and whether they are achieved or thwarted.

I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.

Kiero
2011-12-16, 06:19 AM
Uh, what exactly do you "win"?

As long as I can continue to be able to play my character (ie they're not dead or maimed beyond playability), I'm good.

Whether my character achieves their goals is neither here nor there, often in the playing of them I enjoy myself regardless.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 06:25 AM
But all games have to come to an end so whether or not that particular ending is what you want or not is the thing you are striving for in game.

I've had a lot of fun even when I've been losing and eventually lost. I'm a firm believer that losing should be fun.

Yora
2011-12-16, 06:45 AM
Well, the characters can defeat the villain and the campaign ends. But still, neither any player not the GM has won.

Mono Vertigo
2011-12-16, 06:46 AM
But all games have to come to an end so whether or not that particular ending is what you want or not is the thing you are striving for in game.

I've had a lot of fun even when I've been losing and eventually lost. I'm a firm believer that losing should be fun.
Ever played Dwarf Fortress? It's the game's unofficial catchphrase. Losing is Fun.
Amusingly, it's a game that can manage to not have a real end. Or rather, you can't win, you can only lose or give up. Many games don't have a precise goal and "end" simply due to boredom.

supermonkeyjoe
2011-12-16, 07:02 AM
Every time I come away from the gaming table having had fun, I've won the game :smallwink:

For me that's the whole objective of playing, if I achieve that then it's a victory.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 07:09 AM
Well, the characters can defeat the villain and the campaign ends. But still, neither any player not the GM has won.

I think that it depends on the players' priorities. If the villain killed my brother and my priority was to keep him safe I might have lost first. Then If I vow revenge I set a new priority and a new way to win given the changing situation. If I then get my revenge by killing him I've effectively won under my new priority which has been modified by the narrative. If I didn't feel like taking steps toward doing that would benefit my priorities then I wouldn't be doing it.

It's not just for complicated priorities like I'm into. The GM can do a dungeon crawl and tell us that we need our characters to want the prize at the end. Whether they get there or not is effectively winning or losing.

Saph
2011-12-16, 07:18 AM
I go to the park and play a game of football with my friends. My goal is to have fun. Their team scores three times and my team scores once. My team's lost, but we had fun, therefore I've still achieved my goal despite losing.

"Winning" does not mean "achieve your goals". It means "fulfilling the game's victory condition". D&D typically does not have a victory condition, therefore you can't win D&D.

You can arbitrarily decide that achieving your character's objectives counts as "winning D&D", but it's not really what most people mean by the word.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 07:33 AM
"Winning" does not mean "achieve your goals". It means "fulfilling the game's victory condition".

In the context of RPGs it does.

When the session ends we can all look back and see whether a players victory condition was fulfilled or not.

In the last game I played my goal was to save an elven princess from an illness that ravaged her body. I failed and ended up trapped in a dungeon for 200 years. I still had fun even though I lost. And there was no more game. It had finished. Forever. If I'd have done it then I would have won because that was what the game was about. The victory condition was an integral part of the scenario.


Edit: The football game analogy doesn't work because the method that you use to attain your goal of "have fun" is play football. How do you play football? You try to score more times than your opponents do. If you were playing football and you were letting the other team win then you'd essentially be griefing that game.

Kiero
2011-12-16, 07:36 AM
"Winning" does not mean "achieve your goals". It means "fulfilling the game's victory condition". D&D typically does not have a victory condition, therefore you can't win D&D.

Precisely, in most games that means concluding the game in some fashion. Very few games (according to my reading of many years of forum posts on the topic) ever reach a satisfactory conclusion, rather than simply fizzling out as people lose interest or the group breaks up.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 07:43 AM
Precisely, in most games that means concluding the game in some fashion. Very few games (according to my reading of many years of forum posts on the topic) ever reach a satisfactory conclusion, rather than simply fizzling out as people lose interest or the group breaks up.

I agree. It's preferable to have a game conclude than fizzle out.

kamikasei
2011-12-16, 07:44 AM
Yes, you can declare that your character has a specific goal that, if achieved, counts for a "win". Since a character may have multiple goals, all at once or in succession, some of which may conflict with one another, and since achieving any of them is not necessarily linked to whether you get any enjoyment out of the game, though, it strikes me as rather forced and artificial.

I agree. It's preferable to have a game conclude than fizzle out.
I think Kiero's point was that most games don't reach a point where you can say whether a victory condition was satisfied or not, and so can't be either won or lost, yet people enjoy them anyway, so it's a mistake to think winning has much relevance to RPGs. He didn't express a preference that I can see.

Saph
2011-12-16, 07:54 AM
In the context of RPGs it does.

The problem is that what you're really doing here is redefining "winning" to something that fits within a RPG, when by nature "winning" and "RPG" don't really go in the same sentence. Sure, you can arbitrarily declare that by having your character succeed at random goal X, you've "won" D&D, but you're going to get some funny looks.


Edit: The football game analogy doesn't work because the method that you use to attain your goal of "have fun" is play football. How do you play football? You try to score more times than your opponents do. If you were playing football and you were letting the other team win then you'd essentially be griefing that game.

The point is that "achieve your goals", and "winning" are different things. You can lose and still achieve your goals. Hence winning != achieve your goals.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 08:04 AM
Yes, you can declare that your character has a specific goal that, if achieved, counts for a "win".

I think that you have misunderstood me. The player has a goal. The character's motivation is informed by the player's goal. The player would not choose a goal that was not interesting.

Just to note I prefer a game that has a conflicting character goals and in that situation I as a player would be interested to find out more about each of the character's motives through play.


The point is that "achieve your goals", and "winning" are different things. You can lose and still achieve your goals. Hence winning != achieve your goals.

Winning is not the important part. The important part is that you tried.

GnomeFighter
2011-12-16, 08:14 AM
It seems to me that the problem is not so much with winning and loseing in rpgs, as the term games. If I were choseing a name today I would go for something like role play systems, which is closer to what they are. Whilst D&D may have lots of dice and numbers a more free form system, something player driven, the aim is to have a good time and tell a good story. "loosing" is not realy possible, unless you count something as subjective as a good story to be a victory condition.

kamikasei
2011-12-16, 08:16 AM
I think that you have misunderstood me. The player has a goal. The character's motivation is informed by the player's goal. The player would not choose a goal that was not interesting.

Just to note I prefer a game that has a conflicting character goals and in that situation I as a player would be interested to find out more about each of the character's motives through play.
Right back at you. I think you're oversimplifying for the sake of making reality fit in to a broken model. Both the player and the character are likely to have more than one goal. I don't go in to a game thinking "so long as I manage to do X, I'll be happy, and if I don't, I'll have 'lost'". I have a number of things I'd like to see or do in the game, and I may end the game without achieving any of them and yet be satisfied because the way things played out was enjoyable. This does not sound to me like a game I'm playing to win according to any criteria set out in advance.

I can't quite tell from your reply if I got this point across, so to clarify: when I say the character's goals may conflict, I'm not talking about intra-party conflict, I'm talking about a single character having more than one goal which interfere with one another in some way. If you have to give up one aim to achieve another, what sense does it make to say you've either won or lost?

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 08:35 AM
Well, the characters can defeat the villain and the campaign ends. But still, neither any player not the GM has won.

Well...you've achieved the goal, then. In a campaign with a clear villain and goal to achieve, the win condition is fairly clear.

On the flip side, if you get TPKed and that's the end...thats a loss.


That's a fairly reasonable viewpoint, though it does get a touch muddier in games with less defined goals.

Kish
2011-12-16, 08:41 AM
Well...you've achieved the goal, then. In a campaign with a clear villain and goal to achieve, the win condition is fairly clear.

On the flip side, if you get TPKed and that's the end...thats a loss.


That's a fairly reasonable viewpoint, though it does get a touch muddier in games with less defined goals.
More to the point, I would say, that viewpoint leads to a lot of undesirable conclusions.

Acting based on what your character would do when it doesn't bring you closer to your goal? Increases your likelihood of "losing," so it makes no sense.

Partitioning in-character and out-of-character knowledge? Why would anyone do that?

Roleplaying, at all? It won't help you "win," so why bother?

@Totally Guy: You really can't have both "You play to win the game" and, "Winning is not the important part." If winning is not the important part then winning is not what you play for. Obviously your character should attempt to achieve his/her goals; people do, and so not trying to achieve your goals is counter to roleplaying.

Totally Guy
2011-12-16, 08:47 AM
I think that you guys need to explain to me why victorious conclusion for the players is not winning.

I get to set the situation because this is one of the games that I was talking about with my friend in the original post.

Lets say we have a one shot game. The game is about stopping an evil wizard activating a doomsday device that'd allow him the conquer a kingdom. The players buy into the situation and all regard stopping the wizard as their number one priority. That's the game, to play to find out whether they stop him or not.

The players play it and they defeat the wizard and save the kingdom. One of the PCs died in the dungeon. Another lost the faith in their god. The final guy was unscathed.

And that's the end. The game is concluded. There will never be any more.

So why, in your opinion, can we not call this situation a win?

kaomera
2011-12-16, 08:51 AM
I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.

Winning is not the important part. The important part is that you tried.
The player wins by having fun - trying to have fun isn't really the important part, you want to actually have fun.

Having a character goal makes the game fun - trying is definitely the important part.

I think the issue with old-school games is that they were not thinking this deeply. You were either having fun or you left the game. Modern game theory seems to me to in large part to be about trying to have fun games (either games that are more fun or more games that are fun). A lot of ''indy'' game design (apologies if I'm mis-using that term) seems to center around creating games that will create / support a particular type of game so that there are fewer social issues getting everyone on the same page. Rather than playing (wasting) a few sessions and then deciding the game is not for you, you can just read the rules that are being used and you have much more information about how the game will play.

So I think that when old school games say that no-one wins or loses, they just mean that your character can fail to achieve their goals and you can still have fun despite this turn of events in-game. And this wasn't just because you had players who only played to win (I don't think they would have liked the wargames that D&D evolved out of if that was the case). But, in the source-material, the ''good guys'' pretty much always won. There may be deaths, or secondary goals that aren't met, other minor tragedies; but I don't think you're ever really concerned about whether the ring is going in the lava or not.It's assumed that by the end of the story the bad-guys are going to meet their end, and in this way D&D where the dice or the rules or the social interaction could spell out a different ending was a completely different animal.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 08:52 AM
More to the point, I would say, that viewpoint leads to a lot of undesirable conclusions.

Acting based on what your character would do when it doesn't bring you closer to your goal? Increases your likelihood of "losing," so it makes no sense.

Partitioning in-character and out-of-character knowledge? Why would anyone do that?

Roleplaying, at all? It won't help you "win," so why bother?

Well, presumably your goal is to fulfill your chars goals. If your party's goal is to defeat the villain, and your chars goal is to support the villain...well, either you're playing an adversarial game where someone's gonna lose, or someone made a serious error on char creation.

You win by having your char achieve his goals.


@Totally Guy: You really can't have both "You play to win the game" and, "Winning is not the important part." If winning is not the important part then winning is not what you play for. Obviously your character should attempt to achieve his/her goals; people do, and so not trying to achieve your goals is counter to roleplaying.

Sure you can. Ever seen a sports game in which one team was winning by so much that the game stopped being fun?

The same principles apply. Winning is a goal for many players, but it need not be the only goal.

Kiero
2011-12-16, 09:13 AM
I think Kiero's point was that most games don't reach a point where you can say whether a victory condition was satisfied or not, and so can't be either won or lost, yet people enjoy them anyway, so it's a mistake to think winning has much relevance to RPGs. He didn't express a preference that I can see.

Precisely. Though I do have a preference towards a "proper" conclusion, that wasn't implied in my point.

My point was merely that most games don't reach a stage where you could meaningfully assess them against victory conditions, and thus end at a "draw".

kamikasei
2011-12-16, 09:29 AM
I think that you guys need to explain to me why victorious conclusion for the players is not winning.
...
So why, in your opinion, can we not call this situation a win?
You can, though I wouldn't, but that's a pretty constrained scenario. I'm assuming, and maybe I'm mistaken, that you think any given game can be either won or lost. In the scenario you describe things are set up so that the distinction is clear, but in a great many others trying to impose a structure like that would do more harm than good.

If all you're saying is that some RPGs/campaigns have clear victory conditions and play out as straighforward challenges to achieve a single core goal, then... yeah, sure. I doubt anyone would say that doesn't or can't happen, it's just nowhere near universally the case.

A counterexample: I played a Master in a Fate/Stay Night game with seven players divided in to four pairs, with one paired with an NPC and three NPC antagonist pairs. In character, we were all opposed to one another and competing for a prize, a wish to be granted by the Holy Grail. Out of character, we had agreed that the GM would try to set us up to form an alliance against a larger, external enemy.

I had no set goals for this game. My character wanted to get the Grail, but the one thing I was sure of was that he would change his mind once he learned more about what was involved. For my part, I didn't even much care whether he lived or died in the end, so long as he didn't die too early and leave me out of seeing how things ended. So long as what happened was fun and entertaining, I was okay with it. The large goals I had were very vague, simply things like "find out what's going on", and the closest thing to a real overarching goal was largely unspecified because I didn't have enough information to identify the largest threat, or who it was a threat to, or what would be involved in stopping it. The goals I could actually list to you were small things like "defeat a particular NPC" (IC and OOC) and "set up a dramatic break of trust with my Servant" (OOC).

If I play a game with one major in-character goal which I know I intend to subvert, and no other "victory conditions" beyond what emerge in gameplay, what would constitute "winning"?

It occurs to me, too, that I hardly ever use or hear used the word "win" in connection to any non-competetive game. If I play a single-player game or a cooperative multiplayer game, where there's no other human opponent but only the computer, I might say I beat it, but I wouldn't say I "won". Talking about "winning" in an RPG, to me, suggests either a PvP contest or a players-vs-GM one.

valadil
2011-12-16, 09:42 AM
The win condition is nebulous and subjective. If you're teaching someone to play RPGs and they're approaching it as a traditional board game, at some point they're likely to ask how you win. Saying that it's not about winning is one of the most efficient ways to put that player in the correct mindset about what a roleplaying game is. I agree that there's some room for clarification and discussion though.

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 10:13 AM
I think the point of the sentiment is not that you can't win, but that RPGs aren't competitive (by default assumption, of course you can set up a player vs. player situation by mutual consent). As cheesy as it sounds, in a good roleplaying game, everyone wins, because everyone gets to achieve their characters' goals, except for the GM who is assumed to want players to overcome the conflicts he presents them with. It's also important to separate the goals of your character, which are self-determined by the player and subject to change on a whim, from your goals as a player, which are generally assumed to consist of "have fun".

So it's less "you can't win at an RPG" and more "you can't lose at an RPG, as long as everyone is having fun". This is really important to emphasize to some people who seem to think things like pleasure and enjoyment are zero-sum and that if someone else is 'winning', that means they're 'losing'. That's true if you're playing Halo or something, but not in non-PvP roleplaying games. You are all on the same team, even the GM, and you're working together to achieve the 'win condition' of a fun game where you get to do what you want with your characters.

Jay R
2011-12-16, 10:14 AM
The thread makes the following conclusions clear.

1. The word "win" (like most English words) can have more than one meaning.
2. If we cannot agree on what meaning we're using right now, then we cannot agree on any sentence that uses it.
3. We do not agree on what meaning we're using right now.

In Game Theory terms, any game has a utility function, and each player is trying to maximize their own utility function. That can be to maximize fun, amass the most treasure, rescue the princess, whatever. If players are pure teams, then they share the exact utility function.

Last weekend, my mage/thief saved the life of another party member, helped win a major battle, put the rightful heir on the throne, and was made the Earl of Devon. Also, it was tense, exciting and fun. All were considered "winning" by the DM. But I didn't want him to be a nobleman with land responsibilities, so becoming Earl reduced the value of my utility function. The character who became a baroness likes it, so her title increased her utility function.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and came away satisfied with most of the results. But have I "won"? Only in the sense that a player who scores a touchdown, run, basket or goal has "won". He has fulfilled his immediate goal, but the game is still running, and the victory is not yet determined.

In a very small percentage of games, the utility function is defined as the value of "win" or "lose", and winning a close game of 10-9 is no better than a massive victory of 49-0.

The statement that you can't "win" D&D only means that D&D is not a game with a clearly defined game and a clearly defined victory condition. Nobody questions that simple fact.

So if you're going to argue over which meaning of the word "win" you want to use today, please recognize that that's what you're doing. There is no disagreement about the nature of D&D here - just a linguistics discussion.

DrBurr
2011-12-16, 10:16 AM
When you sit down to play DND or any other RPG then you should be trying to have fun just like any other game, but fun itself is not a Victory Condition. So if your going in to a game hoping to have fun congrats your a sane player, so that's not really a victory that simply having fun playing the game.

Now this old quote isn't referring that the group can't win the game, because they can once they defeated the Big Bad. Its actually referring to a singular player, no one person can win an RPG because the game is about working together as a team to defeat all the goblins and zombies, not for your one character to hog the limelight. RPGs are a lot like a team sport you either win together or lose together, no one player can do it alone... or at least that's how its suppose to be.

hookbill
2011-12-16, 10:37 AM
I think that's one of the benifits of playing what we play, that there is no real win/lose.. it's whatever you make out of it.

I've been in games we've stopped the evil bbeg and everything else, but there was no fun, or skill, we got lucky with stellar die rolls, it wasn't any fun at all..

and then red hand of doom, I was a cleric that got bull rushed off the bridge by the green dragon and lived, only to fall into the water (missed the rocks) thought I was ok, but then drowned down the river due to heavy armor.. best damn death I've had in a while, to me that was a win, we all had a blast and I still recount that as an exciting moment in gaming.

I don't think you can say "if I do X, I win" or "if I fail at Y, I lose"

I think that's why we all love this style of play (as opposed to checkers or whatever) cause it's whatever we want to make out of it in our minds. we're not bound by the gamemakers limits.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 10:43 AM
When you sit down to play DND or any other RPG then you should be trying to have fun just like any other game, but fun itself is not a Victory Condition. So if your going in to a game hoping to have fun congrats your a sane player, so that's not really a victory that simply having fun playing the game.

Now this old quote isn't referring that the group can't win the game, because they can once they defeated the Big Bad. Its actually referring to a singular player, no one person can win an RPG because the game is about working together as a team to defeat all the goblins and zombies, not for your one character to hog the limelight. RPGs are a lot like a team sport you either win together or lose together, no one player can do it alone... or at least that's how its suppose to be.

Oh, it's a team game, sure. But team games can be won. See also, Shadows over Camelot or whatever.

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 10:46 AM
It's a team game where one team's goal is to overcome challenges, and the other team's goal is to present winnable and entertaining challenges and appropriate rewards to the first team. I think "you can win, but you can't really lose" summarizes this situation well.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 10:48 AM
It's a team game where one team's goal is to overcome challenges, and the other team's goal is to present winnable and entertaining challenges and appropriate rewards to the first team. I think "you can win, but you can't really lose" summarizes this situation well.

Nah. It might be hard to lose, but I've seen some groups just straight up fail at things. Not exceptionally hard challenges, just extremely poor decision making.

Things like "I jump off the cliff and attack him as I fall past". DM: " You realize you're gonna splat on the bottom, right?" "Pfft, take damage stupid man!" *rolls attack*

I felt no guilt whatsoever about killing them.

Eldan
2011-12-16, 10:49 AM
There is another way in which you can, quite clearly, win.

Tournament modules. Arbitrarily hard dungeon crawls in which the goal is to get to the end in a certain time frame. I.e. the famous Tomb of Horrors.

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 10:56 AM
Nah. It might be hard to lose, but I've seen some groups just straight up fail at things. Not exceptionally hard challenges, just extremely poor decision making.

Things like "I jump off the cliff and attack him as I fall past". DM: " You realize you're gonna splat on the bottom, right?" "Pfft, take damage stupid man!" *rolls attack*

I felt no guilt whatsoever about killing them.

Character death, even in games without resurrection spells, is a temporary setback or, at most, an emotional penalty. After all, you can always make a new character.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 11:04 AM
Character death, even in games without resurrection spells, is a temporary setback or, at most, an emotional penalty. After all, you can always make a new character.

If a mere single char in that party had died stupidly, it would not have been so notable, perhaps. As it was, the whole party managed to destroy themselves. The story is still frequently retold by players in games today.

NPC walks up to group of PCs
NPC: "Hello there. You look like strong chaps, how would you like a job?"
PC: "I cast fireball. Targeted directly on him!"

I consider this a failure/loss.

Nerd-o-rama
2011-12-16, 11:06 AM
If a mere single char in that party had died stupidly, it would not have been so notable, perhaps. As it was, the whole party managed to destroy themselves. The story is still frequently retold by players in games today.

NPC walks up to group of PCs
NPC: "Hello there. You look like strong chaps, how would you like a job?"
PC: "I cast fireball. Targeted directly on him!"

I consider this a failure/loss.

Okay. You can lose on purpose.

Saph
2011-12-16, 11:39 AM
If a mere single char in that party had died stupidly, it would not have been so notable, perhaps. As it was, the whole party managed to destroy themselves. The story is still frequently retold by players in games today.

Which, from an entertainment point of view, makes it a success. :)

Entertaining losses and spectacular failures tend to be remembered longer and retold more often than easy victories. I've long since lost track of all the groups of monsters my D&D parties have steamrolled, but I can remember the details of every TPK I've ever participated in.

It's an example of how your character's goals (kill badguy X, get rich, live happily ever after) aren't usually the same as your goals (have fun with your friends, get to RP your character in interesting situations, take on challenging encounters).

Tyndmyr
2011-12-16, 11:46 AM
Okay. You can lose on purpose.

He wasn't aware that this would likely flatten everyone in the party. At least, I don't think he meant to kill everyone. In fact, Im not sure exactly what was running through his head. The one competent person in the party, the rogue, was fairly pissed, but he had evasion, so he wasn't too worried about it.

The competent one is the one I played with for quite a while afterward, and who still tells the story. He accomplished more in that party than all the casters put together, but the thing still train wrecked due to the inability of most of the players to engage in even the slightest bit of strategy.

I grant you, that's a pretty extreme example, but failure to complete due to party death does look remarkably like failure.

DrBurr
2011-12-16, 02:58 PM
Oh, it's a team game, sure. But team games can be won. See also, Shadows over Camelot or whatever.

Yes Team games can be won that's the point, but people are using this quote I believe out of context. The context it is suppose to be used in, is teaching a person an RPG and comparing it to a board game.

Now in most board games like Battleship and Life, One person will win, everyone else loses. So you want to learn to win, But RPGs aren't like that in an RPG you can't win because everyone has to work together to win. Their are no sole victories

The point is to encourage teamwork because only with teamwork can anyone win.

DigoDragon
2011-12-16, 03:31 PM
For myself as a DM, victory means coming up with a last-second simple idea to let the BBEG get away to come after the PCs another day. :smallbiggrin:
And I've been told many times that players love to hate my BBEGs.

But overall, as long as everyone at the table has fun, we all win.

Denamort
2011-12-17, 09:59 AM
The thing is, in and RPG, talking about victory or defeat is to simplistic.
Sure, you can have an obvious example. "Kill the Sorcerer, rescue the princess". Either you do it and "win" or you fail and "lose". Seems straightfoward. But that's no always the case. Let's see this scenario:
Four player party, Figther (Player 1), Cleric (Player 2), Wizard (Player 3), Rogue ( Player "I'll let you figure this one out by yourself"). Each goes into the game with diferent goals.
The Figther and Cleric are your tipical "Heroe". He want's to "Kill the Wizard, save the princess". He has a clear "Win/Lose" goal.
The rogue is planing to kill the princess, because the his father the King kill his brother. (He make his backstory with the DM, it won't be a surprise for the Master when he kills the princess)
The Wizard plans to kill the sorcerer and perform the evil ritual (that requieres to sacrifice the princess) to obtain unlimited power. The DM also knows about this, and the Wizard is actually the "real" villanin of the campaing.
Trough out the campaing this is what happens:
They reach the Sorcerer castle, they kill him, they get ready to free the princess. The rogue is reayd for the kill and just then, the Wizard betrays them. The rogue, when seeing that the wizard is willing to sacrifice a life for his own power realises how awfull his actions were, chooses not to kill the princess and defeat the wizard. An epic battle ensues, were at the end, the Figther gives his life to allow the cleric to finish a powerfull spell. The wizard is defeated.
The thing is, the players have different goals:
Player 1 didn't really care about his fighter. He "lose", because his chracter die, but for him and epic death is as much a victory as living. His goal was to have an Epic campaing, wheter his character live or die, was victorious or failed. What would happen if they reach a point in the campaing were they could have and epic death or a passable victory? He would have to choose the victory, because his character, the figther, wouldn't commit suicide just because it "looked awesome". His character and palyer goals can be contradictory. Is he then loosing on purpose?
Player 3 wanted to betrayed them. But he also wanted to lose the final battle. He didn't wanted his wizard killing the rest of the party, he wanted the villain defeated. Yet in the final battle he did his best to kill them. That's why he didn't hesitated to kill the figther. His character wanted to win, so he played it like that. But if his character had been victorious, he would have "lose", because he failed his objectives.
Player 4 had an starting objective, but he changed his mind at the end. He didn't know that the wizard was going to betray them, and he though it fitted his character well to turn around at the last moment. He had a starting goal, that was unfulfilled, and a new goal at the end, that was fulfilled.

So, you can have people whose character die, but they "Win". People that want their characters to loose. People who have an starting goal,, but change it midway. Sometimes you start the campaing with a goal that you don't fulfill at the end, but still like the ending of the campaing. Usually at the beggining of a campaing you don't know how things ar supposed to end, so you set yourself a starting goal. When the camping ends, the ending is completely diferent to what you expected. You couldn't posibly have know thing where head the way the did, so the ending cannot fit your starting goal. Sometimes you player goal and character goal ar contradcitory, so you have to play to lose (like player 3, the wizard, who played to win, but wanted to lose). Sometimes even your character goals are contradictory, and he has to choose one of them. Sometimes you don't even care about the result.

So, you have a game where you can: Set goals; not set goals; failed at them; suceed; fail at some goals and suceed at others; fail in one sesion of the game and win in others; change them midway; have goals and played againts those goals; have contradictory goals; die and suceed; live and fail; win, betrayed your teammates and have your teammates win, all at the same time; people on the same team can lose and others win, sometimes even all of the above.
What would the final result of that game be: "Well, we failed the first objective, in the first three sesions, but we won the last one... Let me do the math... I guess I was 11/16 victorious. Or 5/16 defeated, if you wan't to see the glass half empty"

Sure, you can reduce all those to "Win/Lose", but it seems simplistic and unnecessary. The point is that, when you say you can Win and Lose it's implied that you obtain the most fun by winning and the least fun by losing. In a football game you may not care if you lose, but you want to win. In most RPG there are no objectives, you can make your own or just enjoy the ride. Most importantly, you can have the same fun, no matter what the end result is. Sure, character death, specially a TPK is usually not fun. If you invest you time and care for a ahcracter and he just dies againts a bunch of kobols, that's no fun. But except in those extreme cases, the enjoyment of the game is independent from fullfiling your character objectives.

I'll end with a personal anecdote: I'm currently playing two campaings. In one I'm a Bard lvl 3, in the other I'm a Wizard, lvl 10.

In the first one we haven't lost a single time. Yet, becuase my character isn't very powerfull yet he can't add much in battle. He's good at diplomacy and has max ranks in Knowledge (Local); (Nobility); and (History). So in the first part of the campaing, when we investigated the death of an University Professor and uncover a web of spies and political intrigue, my bard was the best. But now I'm getting bored, because the best I can do in combat is Inspire Courage. I can even do magic, because we have a Beguiler that does it better and more times per day. So, we are winning, but I feel I'm doing nothing, so it's a lose for me.
In the other, we attacked an enemy camp. We are a party of five lvl 10 characters. They were 4 lvl 10 characters and 30 or 40 lvl 6 chgracters. We defeat them. Yet, I played terribly. I hoarded my spells for later, when I shouldn't have. I fainted 4 times during that battle, including a fireball to the face and being hit by 30+ arrows (A line of 16 archers, each with two attacks line up in front of me and shoot. Lukily I hit the ground before the second row of arrows hit me. In fact, I had the pleasure of killing the enemies main front line figther, who was stading behind me, inside a Darkness spell, by falling to the ground and letting him recieve the rest of the arrows. As I tell my companion, getting into mele and then falling unconscious was all part of my plan :smalltongue:). I did much worse than the Bard, but because it was so spectacular I had much more fun (The fact that a poorly use wizard probably is still stronger than a Bard does help, but that's a game balance issue and a topic for another post).

Dust
2011-12-17, 10:06 AM
I find myself agreeing with the original post a lot more than the other people in this thread. We're all pretty good roleplayers here, and we all know the old adage that 'as long as you have fun, everyone wins!' And I think that the extremely simplistic and base nature of his statement is turning some people off - but ultimately, I find that I'm right there with Totally Guy and that most good RPGs generally have two different types of 'winning' - the metagaming kind, where if you enjoyed the time spent that the whole experience was well worth it, and the in-character kind of victory. He's talking about the latter.

This in-character sort of 'winning' shouldn't ever be assured. After all, if there's no chance of failure for your character, the challenge is greatly diminished, and in turn, the fun (at least for a lot of players). So yes, there absolutely is 'win' and 'lose' conditions for many stories, especially on a player-by-player basis. And I feel that's where a lot of the fun of gaming comes from; a good GM reflects that the story (and often, ending) your character gets is completely dependent on your choices, your mistakes and triumphs.

Jay R
2011-12-17, 12:07 PM
There's a logical fallacy going on here. The basic misunderstanding goes like this: "I enjoy winning. So if I played a game of D&D and enjoyed it, I must have won." But that's like saying you "won" breakfast this morning if you enjoyed it.

Or maybe like this: "My goal in many games is to win. So If I accomplished my goal in a game of D&D, then I won." That's like saying you won vacuuming the house if you accomplished your goal.

"Win" has never been synonymous with either "enjoy" or "accomplished a set goal". You can win a game of football, or chess, that you didn't enjoy, and you can lose one that you did enjoy. And there are lots of activities in life you can enjoy, but cannot "win" or "lose".

You can enjoy, or not enjoy, a game of D&D. But you cannot win D&D, because there are no victory conditions. You can "win" a given scenario or episode if you have added a victory condition for that particular sub-game, just as you can win the second period of a game or "win" the opening of a chess game. But that's still not what "winning the game" means.

Skelengar
2011-12-17, 12:19 PM
I find myself agreeing with the original post a lot more than the other people in this thread. We're all pretty good roleplayers here, and we all know the old adage that 'as long as you have fun, everyone wins!' And I think that the extremely simplistic and base nature of his statement is turning some people off - but ultimately, I find that I'm right there with Totally Guy and that most good RPGs generally have two different types of 'winning' - the metagaming kind, where if you enjoyed the time spent that the whole experience was well worth it, and the in-character kind of victory. He's talking about the latter.

This in-character sort of 'winning' shouldn't ever be assured. After all, if there's no chance of failure for your character, the challenge is greatly diminished, and in turn, the fun (at least for a lot of players). So yes, there absolutely is 'win' and 'lose' conditions for many stories, especially on a player-by-player basis. And I feel that's where a lot of the fun of gaming comes from; a good GM reflects that the story (and often, ending) your character gets is completely dependent on your choices, your mistakes and triumphs.

I agree with you, but Total guy has talked about players winning far too much for me to think that this is what he was talking about. He seems to be confusing character wins with player wins. The player can have fun regardless of weather the character wins or looses, but a character win does not equate to a player win.

Incedentally, the sense that characters win is more of the sense in which you win a war than win a game.

SowZ
2011-12-17, 07:42 PM
The character can win or lose, yeah. The player can't.

Zorg
2011-12-17, 07:44 PM
But that's like saying you "won" breakfast this morning if you enjoyed it.

What if my eggs are levelled and spreads distributed using a SBL metric? Also, the bacon is made from orcs.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 11:02 AM
The character can win or lose, yeah. The player can't.

Sure I can. If my char won, did not I, as a player, win?

Winning is, of course, a different thing from having fun. I can have fun while not even trying to win, or, in a particularly bad game, not have fun while winning. Winning may be fun for you, but it's rarely the ONLY thing that's fun.

Fiery Diamond
2011-12-19, 01:01 PM
The thing is, in and RPG, talking about victory or defeat is to simplistic.
Sure, you can have an obvious example. "Kill the Sorcerer, rescue the princess". Either you do it and "win" or you fail and "lose". Seems straightfoward. But that's no always the case. Let's see this scenario:
Four player party, Figther (Player 1), Cleric (Player 2), Wizard (Player 3), Rogue ( Player "I'll let you figure this one out by yourself"). Each goes into the game with diferent goals.
The Figther and Cleric are your tipical "Heroe". He want's to "Kill the Wizard, save the princess". He has a clear "Win/Lose" goal.
The rogue is planing to kill the princess, because the his father the King kill his brother. (He make his backstory with the DM, it won't be a surprise for the Master when he kills the princess)
The Wizard plans to kill the sorcerer and perform the evil ritual (that requieres to sacrifice the princess) to obtain unlimited power. The DM also knows about this, and the Wizard is actually the "real" villanin of the campaing.
Trough out the campaing this is what happens:
They reach the Sorcerer castle, they kill him, they get ready to free the princess. The rogue is reayd for the kill and just then, the Wizard betrays them. The rogue, when seeing that the wizard is willing to sacrifice a life for his own power realises how awfull his actions were, chooses not to kill the princess and defeat the wizard. An epic battle ensues, were at the end, the Figther gives his life to allow the cleric to finish a powerfull spell. The wizard is defeated.
The thing is, the players have different goals:
Player 1 didn't really care about his fighter. He "lose", because his chracter die, but for him and epic death is as much a victory as living. His goal was to have an Epic campaing, wheter his character live or die, was victorious or failed. What would happen if they reach a point in the campaing were they could have and epic death or a passable victory? He would have to choose the victory, because his character, the figther, wouldn't commit suicide just because it "looked awesome". His character and palyer goals can be contradictory. Is he then loosing on purpose?
Player 3 wanted to betrayed them. But he also wanted to lose the final battle. He didn't wanted his wizard killing the rest of the party, he wanted the villain defeated. Yet in the final battle he did his best to kill them. That's why he didn't hesitated to kill the figther. His character wanted to win, so he played it like that. But if his character had been victorious, he would have "lose", because he failed his objectives.
Player 4 had an starting objective, but he changed his mind at the end. He didn't know that the wizard was going to betray them, and he though it fitted his character well to turn around at the last moment. He had a starting goal, that was unfulfilled, and a new goal at the end, that was fulfilled.

So, you can have people whose character die, but they "Win". People that want their characters to loose. People who have an starting goal,, but change it midway. Sometimes you start the campaing with a goal that you don't fulfill at the end, but still like the ending of the campaing. Usually at the beggining of a campaing you don't know how things ar supposed to end, so you set yourself a starting goal. When the camping ends, the ending is completely diferent to what you expected. You couldn't posibly have know thing where head the way the did, so the ending cannot fit your starting goal. Sometimes you player goal and character goal ar contradcitory, so you have to play to lose (like player 3, the wizard, who played to win, but wanted to lose). Sometimes even your character goals are contradictory, and he has to choose one of them. Sometimes you don't even care about the result.

So, you have a game where you can: Set goals; not set goals; failed at them; suceed; fail at some goals and suceed at others; fail in one sesion of the game and win in others; change them midway; have goals and played againts those goals; have contradictory goals; die and suceed; live and fail; win, betrayed your teammates and have your teammates win, all at the same time; people on the same team can lose and others win, sometimes even all of the above.
What would the final result of that game be: "Well, we failed the first objective, in the first three sesions, but we won the last one... Let me do the math... I guess I was 11/16 victorious. Or 5/16 defeated, if you wan't to see the glass half empty"

Sure, you can reduce all those to "Win/Lose", but it seems simplistic and unnecessary. The point is that, when you say you can Win and Lose it's implied that you obtain the most fun by winning and the least fun by losing. In a football game you may not care if you lose, but you want to win. In most RPG there are no objectives, you can make your own or just enjoy the ride. Most importantly, you can have the same fun, no matter what the end result is. Sure, character death, specially a TPK is usually not fun. If you invest you time and care for a ahcracter and he just dies againts a bunch of kobols, that's no fun. But except in those extreme cases, the enjoyment of the game is independent from fullfiling your character objectives.

I'll end with a personal anecdote: I'm currently playing two campaings. In one I'm a Bard lvl 3, in the other I'm a Wizard, lvl 10.

In the first one we haven't lost a single time. Yet, becuase my character isn't very powerfull yet he can't add much in battle. He's good at diplomacy and has max ranks in Knowledge (Local); (Nobility); and (History). So in the first part of the campaing, when we investigated the death of an University Professor and uncover a web of spies and political intrigue, my bard was the best. But now I'm getting bored, because the best I can do in combat is Inspire Courage. I can even do magic, because we have a Beguiler that does it better and more times per day. So, we are winning, but I feel I'm doing nothing, so it's a lose for me.
In the other, we attacked an enemy camp. We are a party of five lvl 10 characters. They were 4 lvl 10 characters and 30 or 40 lvl 6 chgracters. We defeat them. Yet, I played terribly. I hoarded my spells for later, when I shouldn't have. I fainted 4 times during that battle, including a fireball to the face and being hit by 30+ arrows (A line of 16 archers, each with two attacks line up in front of me and shoot. Lukily I hit the ground before the second row of arrows hit me. In fact, I had the pleasure of killing the enemies main front line figther, who was stading behind me, inside a Darkness spell, by falling to the ground and letting him recieve the rest of the arrows. As I tell my companion, getting into mele and then falling unconscious was all part of my plan :smalltongue:). I did much worse than the Bard, but because it was so spectacular I had much more fun (The fact that a poorly use wizard probably is still stronger than a Bard does help, but that's a game balance issue and a topic for another post).

This, so much this. I'm completely agreed on this.

Have Fun (Player) =/= Win
Achieve (Character) Goal =/= Win
Achieve (Player) Goal =/= Win

Those are the only three things that those claiming you can win have discussed, and none of them are "winning" in the sense of a game. In the sense of a war, maybe, for the second one, but that isn't what we're talking about. The fact of the matter is, there is no "win" condition that is universal to RPGs. The very existence of a "win" condition is not universal to RPGs. This isn't a game of Risk, Monopoly, of Basketball, which all have "win" conditions as part of the defined rules of the game.

Achieve "Win" Condition, as explicitly defined by the rules of the game, or as explicitly defined by common consensus of the players = Win

Mono Vertigo
2011-12-19, 01:13 PM
Sure I can. If my char won, did not I, as a player, win?
Depends.
Let's say you play a character with specific goals. You want them to be regularly challenged. In fact, you do not want/expect them to ever reach their main objective. Examples: an evil character who wants to take over the world, a good warrior who fancies himself as a Don Juan but only comes out as creepy toward ladies.
In spite of this, you know you will be greatly amused whenever your evil character is forced to help the heroes protect the world, or your womanizer uses hilariously stupid pick-up lines.
In the end, your character can technically lose, but you win because your goal was essentially the failure of your character to a degree. You expected all along your tyrant wannabe to never be able to reach a position of authority. Your warrior dies gloriously but without having ever had a lover, just as planned.
There situations pop up in roleplay more than you'd expect.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 01:26 PM
You set up the game to lose. There's nothing at all wrong with that. It's much akin to playing Skyrim with the goal of running from all combat and acting like a simple villager*. You are not winning the game by doing this...and indeed, you likely can't. However, if you're having fun, rock on.

Having fun is not winning. You can have a blast while intentionally losing a game, if the game is sufficently good.

*This is an actual youtube thing.

Kenneth
2011-12-19, 01:38 PM
I think that it depends on the players' priorities. If the villain killed my brother and my priority was to keep him safe I might have lost first. Then If I vow revenge I set a new priority and a new way to win given the changing situation. If I then get my revenge by killing him I've effectively won under my new priority which has been modified by the narrative. If I didn't feel like taking steps toward doing that would benefit my priorities then I wouldn't be doing it.

It's not just for complicated priorities like I'm into. The GM can do a dungeon crawl and tell us that we need our characters to want the prize at the end. Whether they get there or not is effectively winning or losing.

that doesn't sound like winning to me as much as it sounds like acheiving a goal.

I might be wrong here by acheiving a goal is not the same thing as winning.

Siegel
2011-12-19, 04:37 PM
Some of you ever played burning empires?

Tyndmyr
2011-12-19, 04:51 PM
that doesn't sound like winning to me as much as it sounds like acheiving a goal.

I might be wrong here by acheiving a goal is not the same thing as winning.

That's correct. Usually, winning is the "end of campaign" goal.

Yes, not all campaigns have them. A particularly sandbox campaign might have no way to win it in the same way that there's no way to win Minecraft. But, for many, possibly most campaigns, there's some sort of overarching goal for the party to strive for.

Totally Guy
2011-12-19, 04:54 PM
Some of you ever played burning empires?

I've read the book a couple of times but it looks to be too technically challenging for the whole group. We've played quite a bit of Burning Wheel though. The beliefs act as win conditions for me to challenge, I'm a fan.

SowZ
2011-12-19, 11:47 PM
Sure I can. If my char won, did not I, as a player, win?

Winning is, of course, a different thing from having fun. I can have fun while not even trying to win, or, in a particularly bad game, not have fun while winning. Winning may be fun for you, but it's rarely the ONLY thing that's fun.

Naw, your characters 'winning or losing' is not the same as you winning or losing. You can have a campaign where your character achieves their goals in game but you don't acheive your goals as a player, (having a good time/developing a good story.)

Knaight
2011-12-20, 12:25 AM
In the context of RPGs it does.
So this is the "if you can't win, redefine 'win' until you can" school of thought? If you are willing to do that, then yes, the "you can't win" argument is absurd. However, those of us behind the "you can't win" argument, or even the "in this particular subset of RPGs, you can't win" argument are unwilling to redefine win in such a way.

Jayabalard
2011-12-20, 01:55 PM
I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.Because you, the *player* cannot win or lose the game. Your character can be successful or unsuccessful at various activities, but that has nothing to do with the player winning or losing the game.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-20, 01:59 PM
Naw, your characters 'winning or losing' is not the same as you winning or losing. You can have a campaign where your character achieves their goals in game but you don't acheive your goals as a player, (having a good time/developing a good story.)

I can play a game of scrabble, win, and not have a good time or develop a good story. In fact, this is pretty typical of the times I've played scrabble. God, I hate that game.

Knaight
2011-12-20, 02:04 PM
I can play a game of scrabble, win, and not have a good time or develop a good story. In fact, this is pretty typical of the times I've played scrabble. God, I hate that game.

Yes, because scrabble has a victory condition, which boils down to "more points". However, given that D&D doesn't have a victory condition, it makes just as much sense for "good time" and "good story" to be substituted as it does for "sufficient degree of success".

Fiery Diamond
2011-12-20, 02:09 PM
Yes, because scrabble has a victory condition, which boils down to "more points". However, given that D&D doesn't have a victory condition, it makes just as much sense for "good time" and "good story" to be substituted as it does for "sufficient degree of success".

Those of those saying you can't win are saying: "If it doesn't have a victory condition, you can't win. Period. Why are we still arguing?" :smallconfused:
:smallsmile:

Tyndmyr
2011-12-20, 02:27 PM
Yes, because scrabble has a victory condition, which boils down to "more points". However, given that D&D doesn't have a victory condition, it makes just as much sense for "good time" and "good story" to be substituted as it does for "sufficient degree of success".

D&D does not have a victory condition. Campaigns very well might.

RHoD, for instance, has a victory condition baked in.

Nepenthe
2011-12-20, 09:46 PM
This has been said, but I'll join the consensus. You can accomplish goals. You can complete modules. You can finish a campaign. But you can't "win" D&D any more than you can "win" Legos.

I think the real issue here is that people equate "not winning" with "losing" and we have an entire generation that simply can't comprehend failure (see: the 99%). Therefore they're forced to invent some way to "win."

Knaight
2011-12-21, 01:13 AM
D&D does not have a victory condition. Campaigns very well might.

RHoD, for instance, has a victory condition baked in.

So you can win RHoD. That doesn't mean you can win D&D.

Cerlis
2011-12-21, 01:21 AM
American Football coach Herman Edwards said it: You play to win the game.

I was talking about RPGs with a friend the other night and we concluded that the old “you can’t win a role playing game” line is bollocks.

Sure you can win and sure you can lose. It’s all about what goals you as a player have for your character and whether they are achieved or thwarted.

I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.

Sorry, but i disagree with this tarquin-esc theolgy. When you become that vague, then it goes on to prove stuff like "A sheep is a dragon, if you have the right point of view".

I guess to SOMETHING(like pikmen) a sheep COULD be a dragon. but it really isnt.

I think it also falls into the real of deciding to race to the Car, and declaring yourslef the winner, even though no one aggreed to any terms and there was no one you where playing against. So there could be no "winner"

Emmerask
2011-12-21, 01:40 AM
If you mean by winning succeeding then sure you can succeed against the reasonable odds the dm throws your way.

If you mean winning in the sense of a competition then the only reason why you could ever win would be that the dm did not compete in that competition which makes the "win" pretty pointless.

Totally Guy
2011-12-21, 05:20 AM
So you can win RHoD. That doesn't mean you can win D&D.

Yeah lets go with that.

D&D is a pile of books.

RHoD is a game that is played.

As long as the players are doing things in the game that they're playing then there is intent. That intent is the spark that I'm trying to describe.

That intent may coincide with winning a scenario (rescuing the princess, saving the kingdom, avenging your brother, etc.).

It's not unhealthy to intend to do well, whether you actually manage to do well or not.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 05:26 AM
Yeah lets go with that.

D&D is a pile of books.

RHoD is a game that is played.

As long as the players are doing things in the game that they're playing then there is intent. That intent is the spark that I'm trying to describe.

That intent may coincide with winning a scenario (rescuing the princess, saving the kingdom, avenging your brother, etc.).

It's not unhealthy to intend to do well, whether you actually manage to do well or not.

Some scenarios are unwinnable. Sometimes, it is entirely about what you do along the way before you lose horribly. Some scenarios are impossible to lose, which is effectively a reflection of the same thing. Some scenarios simply don't have anything that even vaguely approximates an actual victory condition, and can't be won or lost. As for "intent", that is an entirely different subject. All that means is that people have individual goals that they may or may not fulfill, that likely have little to do with the game and scenario per se, but nonetheless help with the quality of said scenario.

Saph
2011-12-21, 05:37 AM
Yeah lets go with that.

D&D is a pile of books.

No, D&D is a role-playing-game.


RHoD is a game that is played.

Again, no. RHoD is a campaign module.


It's not unhealthy to intend to do well, whether you actually manage to do well or not.

Of course it isn't, but that doesn't mean that "you play to win the game".

Totally Guy
2011-12-21, 05:44 AM
Some scenarios are unwinnable. Sometimes, it is entirely about what you do along the way before you lose horribly. Some scenarios are impossible to lose, which is effectively a reflection of the same thing. Some scenarios simply don't have anything that even vaguely approximates an actual victory condition, and can't be won or lost.

Those things do not matter. The important part is that you tried.

Even if you had to interpret what you thought the desirable outcome was, you tried to bring it.


No, D&D is a role-playing-game.

A game is only a game if it's being played. If it's not being played then it's rules and accessories. I can't play to do anything if we're not playing.

Siegel
2011-12-21, 05:54 AM
Right now you can't really win in DnD because of three reasons.

There are no victory conditions

You play with the GM (he DM is trying to create a story with you, not to win against you)

There are no rules for the GM (he can just go and send level 31 monsters against 3 level characters and there is nothing stoping you from that. There are guidelines but no hard and fast rules of what you can and can't do.)

On the other hand let's look at burning empires

There is a victory condition (for every phase and for the whole campaign)

You really play against the GM (if the Vaylen win, you loose)

The GM has to obige to the same rules (and a few of his own) to oppose the characters.


You can win RPGs, but not a lot of them because they are not designed like that.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 06:18 AM
Those things do not matter. The important part is that you tried.

Even if you had to interpret what you thought the desirable outcome was, you tried to bring it.

Sure. Let's call that the important thing. It being important does not allow one to simply redefine winning. "It's important, ergo, doing this is winning" makes no sense at all.

Totally Guy
2011-12-21, 06:34 AM
Sure. Let's call that the important thing. It being important does not allow one to simply redefine winning. "It's important, ergo, doing this is winning" makes no sense at all.

I'm not saying that trying to win is winning.

I'm saying that trying to win can be an important part of the game.


Maybe, at the very end you can look back and say, "hey, we won". Maybe you won't. I know from experience that players sometimes say things like that at the end of a campaign.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 07:17 AM
I'm not saying that trying to win is winning.

I'm saying that trying to win can be an important part of the game.
What you were saying is that trying to succeed is an important part of the game. Succeed and win are not synonymous, as success merely requires a goal, where winning needs a specific victory condition. Moreover, winning implies the existence of a loss condition, where success doesn't have an anti-goal.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 08:14 AM
So you can win RHoD. That doesn't mean you can win D&D.

Neither I nor the OP claimed that every campaign was winnable. So...you're right there with the rest of us.

Now, when someone wins a scenario in a board game(many of which have many scenarios...see Arkham Horror), they are generally said to have won the game, correct?




As for the sheep/dragon/pikeman thing...I don't see what would prevent a awakened sheep from taking levels in Dragon Disciple. I'm just saying.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 08:18 AM
The Claim

Neither I nor the OP claimed that every campaign was winnable. So...you're right there with the rest of us.

Now, when someone wins a scenario in a board game(many of which have many scenarios...see Arkham Horror), they are generally said to have won the game, correct?
The Opening Post

American Football coach Herman Edwards said it: You play to win the game.

I was talking about RPGs with a friend the other night and we concluded that the old “you can’t win a role playing game” line is bollocks.

Sure you can win and sure you can lose. It’s all about what goals you as a player have for your character and whether they are achieved or thwarted.

I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.
I'd argue that between an overt "You play to win the game", outright stating that the other idea is "bollocks" and stating "Sure you can win and sure you can lose" with no qualifiers, with a statement of confusion as to the very existence of the opposite notion basically states that every campaign is winnable. I'd argue that only a specific subset of campaigns/one shots/tournament modules/whatever are winnable, and for the most part "you can't win a role playing game" is very much an accurate assessment.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 08:29 AM
I'd argue that between an overt "You play to win the game", outright stating that the other idea is "bollocks" and stating "Sure you can win and sure you can lose" with no qualifiers, with a statement of confusion as to the very existence of the opposite notion basically states that every campaign is winnable. I'd argue that only a specific subset of campaigns/one shots/tournament modules/whatever are winnable, and for the most part "you can't win a role playing game" is very much an accurate assessment.

The conversation has been further clarified since the opening post. Note that while he claimed winning and losing are possible, he never said that they were ALWAYS possible.

I would state that basically all printed campaigns are winnable. Let us take the example of White Plume Mountain...you're there to get Blackrazor. Get out with that, and it's a win. There are secondary objectives(the other two weapons, not losing people, etc) that anyone would agree makes you more successful if you achieve them, but there is an overarching goal. Failing to achieve that means not winning the module.

Return to Castle Ravenloft? Kill Strahd, yadda, yadda.

Now, a completely sandboxy campaign with no metaplot at all might not be winnable or losable, strictly speaking, but these are the exception. The vast majority of campaigns have goals.

Roderick_BR
2011-12-21, 08:46 AM
My two cents: You can't "win" or "lose" in D&D, for the simple fact you are not competing.

If you and your group DO decide to make a competition, then yes, you can set win and losing conditions. But if not, you, as player, can't win or lose anymore than watching something on TV.

Take Hero Quest, for example, it's a D&D-like board game where two sides actually fight each other, with a group of players on one side, and one player controling the minions, within a specific set of rules, plays the other. You could also compare it with that Interpol game, where one player competes against a group.
Or even comparing it with videogames, where the computer is programed to challenge the players and even defeat them, with a TPK being the classic "lose" condition and destroying all the computer controled enemeis being the classic "win" condition.

But on a typical D&D game, where the DM is more of a mediator than an opponent, there's no win or lose clauses. Just as that.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 08:55 AM
My two cents: You can't "win" or "lose" in D&D, for the simple fact you are not competing.

Arkham Horror is a team game. It can be won or lost. This is not at all unusual for team games.

Knaight
2011-12-21, 09:00 AM
Arkham Horror is a team game. It can be won or lost. This is not at all unusual for team games.

For instance, there is Pandemic, which can be lost, and can theoretically be won.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 09:08 AM
Curse you, madagascar. Curse you.

Disclaimer: The above is from the online game. Hopefully it's less terrible in the board game.

Thane of Fife
2011-12-21, 09:16 AM
The first two definitions for "win" in the closest dictionary are, in essence, "to come in first in a contest" and "to succeed through effort."

You're thinking of the second definition. When people say that you can't win an RPG, they normally mean the first definition.

Totally Guy
2011-12-21, 09:18 AM
I'd argue that between an overt "You play to win the game", outright stating that the other idea is "bollocks" and stating "Sure you can win and sure you can lose" with no qualifiers, with a statement of confusion as to the very existence of the opposite notion basically states that every campaign is winnable. I'd argue that only a specific subset of campaigns/one shots/tournament modules/whatever are winnable, and for the most part "you can't win a role playing game" is very much an accurate assessment.

I'm saying that the "you can't win a roleplaying game" thinking is flawed as there is a specific subset of games that are winnable.

I'm then saying that I don't understand the general perception that this subset does not exist.

I used the Herman Edwards quote as I think that it's particularly insightful and applicable to more than it's original context. I'm not saying that everybody has to do things that way. Just that you could conceivably do it. It's not a bad thing.

Perhaps I should have qualified more but I was unaware at the time that the "you can't win a roleplaying game" line seems to instead mean, "you can't win a roleplaying system". I agree with that.

Saph
2011-12-21, 10:24 AM
I would state that basically all printed campaigns are winnable. Let us take the example of White Plume Mountain...you're there to get Blackrazor. Get out with that, and it's a win.

Yes, but that's your definition, rather than the module designer's. I haven't read White Plume Mountain, but I doubt there's an underlined paragraph somewhere on the front page saying "The PCs win if they get Blackrazor, they lose if blah blah blah."

Similarly, you can say that you "won" Red Hand of Doom by getting X many victory points, but I'd consider that a bit of a weird statement. (If you won, who lost? Did the DM lose? If a player was more interested in RPing than in scoring VPs, does that mean they shouldn't be in the group?) If you're going to insist that you "won" I won't contradict you, but I think it's a misleading way to talk about a campaign.

Now you can say that your party succeeded at their goals, but "succeed" and "win" aren't the same. "Win" typically implies a competition, and there are lots of people out there who don't treat RPGs as a competition.

Edit: This is why people are getting annoyed at the OP's blanket statement that you "play to win the game", because it implies that if they're not trying to "win" their current RPG then they're Doing It Wrong.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 10:34 AM
Yes, but that's your definition, rather than the module designer's. I haven't read White Plume Mountain, but I doubt there's an underlined paragraph somewhere on the front page saying "The PCs win if they get Blackrazor, they lose if blah blah blah."

You are explicitly hired to get Blackrazor. It's a very clear overarching goal.


Similarly, you can say that you "won" Red Hand of Doom by getting X many victory points, but I'd consider that a bit of a weird statement. (If you won, who lost? Did the DM lose? If a player was more interested in RPing than in scoring VPs, does that mean they shouldn't be in the group?) If you're going to insist that you "won" I won't contradict you, but I think it's a misleading way to talk about a campaign.

You win by defeating the hoard. Yes, victory points are the mechanism to do that, usually, but that's merely a means.

If you lose, generally that means the BBEG won. Sometimes though, it's just a loss.

Just because someone wins doesn't mean someone has to lose. In games such as Shadows Over Camelot that are team games, it is entirely possible for everyone to win. Or for everyone to lose. Or somewhere in between.


Now you can say that your party succeeded at their goals, but "succeed" and "win" aren't the same. "Win" typically implies a competition, and there are lots of people out there who don't treat RPGs as a competition.

Winning, in game terminology, does not require a competition. Sure, it often does, but team games are a fairly normal thing now.

And hey, even in traditional sports, there are corner cases with multiple winners or losers. Look at ties or multiple disqualifications. Rules vary a lot on how to handle those, but in some cases, multiple winners or no winners are possible.

Saph
2011-12-21, 11:22 AM
You are explicitly hired to get Blackrazor. It's a very clear overarching goal.

Exactly. It's an overarching goal, not a win condition. Win != goal.


You win by defeating the hoard.

According to who? Most people who've played the module wouldn't define it in terms of winning or losing. They'd say that they finished or didn't finish the campaign, or that they had a good or a bad time, or that Brindol fell or survived. Because for most people, RPGs aren't about winning or losing.

Jayabalard
2011-12-21, 02:58 PM
Now, when someone wins a scenario in a board game(many of which have many scenarios...see Arkham Horror), they are generally said to have won the game, correct? No, when they complete the objectives listed under "winning the game" or "victory conditions" then they've won the game. If the game doesn't have a section in the rules that spells out how the game is won, it isn't winnable. D&D is one of those games that isn't winnable.

Achieving an objective (even a campaign objective) in D&D is equivalent to winning a trick in hearts. Neither of them have anything directly to do with winning the game itself. In both cases, there may be really good reasons for a player to not to want to win that particular objective.

In hearts the object is to avoid scoring points. The game is ended by someone reaching or going over 100 points, and the winner is the player with the lowest score at this point.

Axis and Allies has a specific set of win conditions that I'm not going to repeat (mostly because I can't rattle them off from memory).

D&D, as a game, lacks such victory conditions. Even campaign objectives don't qualify.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-21, 03:21 PM
No, when they complete the objectives listed under "winning the game" or "victory conditions" then they've won the game. If the game doesn't have a section in the rules that spells out how the game is won, it isn't winnable. D&D is one of those games that isn't winnable.

So, any game that does not explicitly include the word "win" in the instructions is not winnable?

That covers...a lot of games. It's fairly common now for games to have very well laid out, basic instructions with sections like "how to win", but that's not really a function of every single game. Plenty happen to state them under headings like "Objective" or other words that clearly delineate what you're supposed to do, but don't happen to use the exact word "win".

That's ok. I understand what a synonym is.

I know that "checkmate" means the game is over, and the person who said it just won. English is like that. There's no need to be pedantic over which particular word was used.

Jayabalard
2011-12-21, 03:52 PM
So, any game that does not explicitly include the word "win" in the instructions is not winnable?No, the word "win" isn't required... but any game that does not explicitly spell out a win/victory* condition in the rules of the game is not a winnable game. D&D does not, so it is not a winnable game.

*insert whatever synonym you want here, but it has to be an actual synonym, not an over generalization that doesn't actually mean the same thing.


That's ok. I understand what a synonym is.I'm not all that convinced. You're equating objective with win, and they're very very different words, certainly not synonyms.


I know that "checkmate" means the game is over, and the person who said it just won. English is like that. There's no need to be pedantic over which particular word was used.This is not analogous to a game of D&D. The rules of chess explicitly spell out the win condition. The rules of D&D do not.

Infernalbargain
2011-12-21, 05:23 PM
Alright, to make things painfully obvious let us use a reasonable campaign situation. You are in a nation that is on the verge of a civil war. How does one proceed to win?

Jayabalard
2011-12-21, 05:30 PM
Alright, to make things painfully obvious let us use a reasonable campaign situation. You are in a nation that is on the verge of a civil war. How does one proceed to win?I'm not sure who this is aimed at, but I think the obvious answer is "You don't".

Jay R
2011-12-21, 06:19 PM
So, any game that does not explicitly include the word "win" in the instructions is not winnable?

...

I know that "checkmate" means the game is over, and the person who said it just won. English is like that. There's no need to be pedantic over which particular word was used.

It's not a question of being pedantic, but of being accurate. From the World Chess Federation Rules of Chess, 1.2: "The player who achieves this goal is said to have ‘checkmated’ the opponent’s king and to have won the game."

You can win a game of chess, because the rules of chess say that if you checkmate the opposing king, then you win.

You can win a game of baseball, because the rules of baseball say that if you're ahead at the end of nine (or more) innings, you win.

You can win a game of football, because the rules of football say that if you have scored the most points when the time runs out, you win.

You cannot win a game of D&D, because the rules of D&D do not establish a condition in which you win.

I have not seen a module that has a rule for winning, either. One may exist, but I don't know about it. All the modules I've seen have some version of what you get if you accomplish certain goals, but I haven't seen one that says you win the game.

If somebody has such a module, please quote the rule with the word "win" in it from the rulebook.

Totally Guy
2011-12-21, 06:26 PM
If somebody has such a module, please quote the rule with the word "win" in it from the rulebook.

What if I homebrew it? :smalltongue:

Jay R
2011-12-21, 06:46 PM
If somebody has such a module, please quote the rule with the word "win" in it from the rulebook.What if I homebrew it? :smalltongue:

Unfortunately, you will still not have proven the statement "You can win a game of D&D."

Instead, you will have proven the statement "I can change the rules of D&D so that you can win a game of the changed version."

If you can find one in print, you will also not prove the statement "You can win a game of D&D." But you will have proven that "Somebody has published a D&D module that has changed the rules for that module to turn that module into the kind of game you can win."

olthar
2011-12-21, 07:49 PM
The thread makes the following conclusions clear.

1. The word "win" (like most English words) can have more than one meaning.
2. If we cannot agree on what meaning we're using right now, then we cannot agree on any sentence that uses it.
3. We do not agree on what meaning we're using right now.

In Game Theory terms, any game has a utility function, and each player is trying to maximize their own utility function. That can be to maximize fun, amass the most treasure, rescue the princess, whatever. If players are pure teams, then they share the exact utility function.
....
In a very small percentage of games, the utility function is defined as the value of "win" or "lose", and winning a close game of 10-9 is no better than a massive victory of 49-0.

The statement that you can't "win" D&D only means that D&D is not a game with a clearly defined game and a clearly defined victory condition. Nobody questions that simple fact.

So if you're going to argue over which meaning of the word "win" you want to use today, please recognize that that's what you're doing. There is no disagreement about the nature of D&D here - just a linguistics discussion.

You have won this thread. The fact that in the 2 pages after this post nobody recognized this (or even addressed the awesomeness of this summary) is distressing. You've basically said everything I have to say, but I'm going to say something anyway.

By inconsistently applying different definitions of the word "win" to different scenarios you can make any argument you want. Dictionary.com lists lots of definitions for win but everyone here is much using the intransitive ones only, so I'll ignore the transitive.
Win:
1. To achieve victory or finish first in a competition.
2. To achieve success in an effort or venture

Roleplaying games are not competitions except in specific circumstances. In those circumstances (e.g. pvp games, certain one-shots) there is a competitive element which makes winning in the definition 1 sense possible. Otherwise, winning in this sense is not possible.

In contrast, achieving success in an effort or venture is very possible in roleplaying games. The effort or venture being undertaken is, arguably, having fun. So, if you had fun, then you won. If you did not have fun, then you did not succeed and, by definition, did not win.

Campaigns may have objectives (e.g. kill the evil wizard) that can be broken into smaller objectives (e.g. find where the evil wizard lives). To call completing these objectives winning would require that the purpose of the game be to complete the objective. Since you usually don't even know this information until after you have sat down to play, how can the purpose of the game be to complete the campaign objective? The must more sensible purpose of the game is the one that you had when you decided to pull out the "game" in the first place, which in the case of RPGs is fun.

The obvious counterpoint to what I've said is that people play board games to have fun, which would mean they win as long as they had fun, even if by the rules they lost. The equally obvious response is that in those circumstances winning the game and winning the venture are independent and should be treated as such. Playing and having fun means you succeeded at your venture. Winning the competition means you won the competition (definition 1).

Fiery Diamond
2011-12-22, 12:43 AM
You have won this thread. The fact that in the 2 pages after this post nobody recognized this (or even addressed the awesomeness of this summary) is distressing. You've basically said everything I have to say, but I'm going to say something anyway.

By inconsistently applying different definitions of the word "win" to different scenarios you can make any argument you want. Dictionary.com lists lots of definitions for win but everyone here is much using the intransitive ones only, so I'll ignore the transitive.
Win:
1. To achieve victory or finish first in a competition.
2. To achieve success in an effort or venture

Roleplaying games are not competitions except in specific circumstances. In those circumstances (e.g. pvp games, certain one-shots) there is a competitive element which makes winning in the definition 1 sense possible. Otherwise, winning in this sense is not possible.

In contrast, achieving success in an effort or venture is very possible in roleplaying games. The effort or venture being undertaken is, arguably, having fun. So, if you had fun, then you won. If you did not have fun, then you did not succeed and, by definition, did not win.

Campaigns may have objectives (e.g. kill the evil wizard) that can be broken into smaller objectives (e.g. find where the evil wizard lives). To call completing these objectives winning would require that the purpose of the game be to complete the objective. Since you usually don't even know this information until after you have sat down to play, how can the purpose of the game be to complete the campaign objective? The must more sensible purpose of the game is the one that you had when you decided to pull out the "game" in the first place, which in the case of RPGs is fun.

The obvious counterpoint to what I've said is that people play board games to have fun, which would mean they win as long as they had fun, even if by the rules they lost. The equally obvious response is that in those circumstances winning the game and winning the venture are independent and should be treated as such. Playing and having fun means you succeeded at your venture. Winning the competition means you won the competition (definition 1).

Very eloquently stated. Clearly, then, those who claim you can "win" D&D are only correct so long as they acknowledge that "having fun is winning, since that's what you meant to do" is a true statement, and that "winning" in this sense is largely unrelated to whether you achieved campaign objectives or not.

Case closed.:smallbiggrin:

Infernalbargain
2011-12-22, 01:09 AM
Aye, constantly changing definitions of terms to make your point always right is an intellectual black hole.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 08:59 AM
Unfortunately, you will still not have proven the statement "You can win a game of D&D."

Instead, you will have proven the statement "I can change the rules of D&D so that you can win a game of the changed version."

If you can find one in print, you will also not prove the statement "You can win a game of D&D." But you will have proven that "Somebody has published a D&D module that has changed the rules for that module to turn that module into the kind of game you can win."

Er...playing through a module sort of is playing a game of D&D.

The idea that winning is only used for competitive games has already been shown to be false. That is one correct use of the word, yes. Not the only one.

Will you accept use of the word "Victory" as a synonym for win? If not, then a lot of board games who used "victory conditions" are now not winnable. That seems silly. They are frequently used in conjunction, and achieving victory == winning.

Also, Red Hand of Doom explicitly uses the term victory. I don't recall if it uses win specifically, but I know it refers to victory.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 10:21 AM
Also, Red Hand of Doom explicitly uses the term victory. I don't recall if it uses win specifically, but I know it refers to victory.

That still only proves RHoD - victory condition and win condition are functionally interchangeable. I'm honestly not familiar with the modules to a degree where I could call this typical - though of the modules I've looked at for other games, there is a certain scarcity of victory conditions.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 10:35 AM
Eh, I'm not going to go through the list for every possible synonym. Ya'll get the idea. Some campaigns can be won. No need to argue pedantically over every last one.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 10:38 AM
Eh, I'm not going to go through the list for every possible synonym. Ya'll get the idea. Some campaigns can be won. No need to argue pedantically over every last one.

Some certainly can. I'd argue that they are a minority from what I've seen, and as such stating that one can win RPGs, as opposed to saying one can win some RPGs is questionable, with stating that one plays to win even more questionable. I'd be willing to bet that a large majority play to socialize first and foremost.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 10:58 AM
Some certainly can. I'd argue that they are a minority from what I've seen, and as such stating that one can win RPGs, as opposed to saying one can win some RPGs is questionable, with stating that one plays to win even more questionable. I'd be willing to bet that a large majority play to socialize first and foremost.

Those two statements are basically the same. He said you can win RPGs. Not that you can win all RPGs under all circumstances.

Why people play? That varies as much as people do. I'm not aware of any recent surveys on this topic, so I won't pretend to have any better info on this than anyone else. It's all anecdotal.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 11:45 AM
What if I homebrew it? :smalltongue:Then your particular game has a win condition, but that at point, most people will argue that you're no longer playing <insert base system that you've homebrewed>




Er...playing through a module sort of is playing a game of D&D. But, that's not what he's responding to.... he's responding to someone who's talking about homebrewing in a win condition to the game. That's not playing a game of D&D



Also, Red Hand of Doom explicitly uses the term victory. I don't recall if it uses win specifically, but I know it refers to victory.So, you're saying that the campaign has a victory condition. I'm saying that even if this is true, the game still lacks it. The victory condition for RHOD = the victory condition for winning a trick in hearts... it's not equivalent to a victory condition to the game of D&D.


Those two statements are basically the same. He said you can win RPGs. Not that you can win all RPGs under all circumstances.No, he really is making a general statement saying that you can win all of them. His statement "I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from." clearly shows that he thinks there aren't any RPG's where the game cannot be won. If he thought there were any RPG's that couldn't be won, he wouldn't be confused as to where that notion comes from.

Totally Guy
2011-12-22, 11:54 AM
No, he really is making a general statement saying that you can win all of them.

No, I'm not.

I'm confused as to where the belief that no roleplaying game is winnable comes from.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 11:59 AM
No, I'm not.To me, this just looks like you are backpeddling to an easier position to defend; it's fine if you want to do that.

If your point was really that a tiny fraction of a percent of RPG's actually have win conditions and can be won (especially ones that you've homebrewed to include one)... well, I suspect noone would have responded beyond a "yeah... what's your point" sort of remark.


I'm confused as to where the belief that no roleplaying game is winnable comes from.Oh, that's easy: it's because almost none of them have an actual win condition in the rules of the game. They're so rare, that I have never played an RPG that had one, and I've played games in dozens of systems over 30 years.

truemane
2011-12-22, 12:01 PM
Most of what needs to be said here has been said. I'll just want to toss in a tiny additional wrinkle. There's a difference between Finite and Infinite Games. Finite Games, as the term suggests, have a pre-defined duration, at which point they are done. Whether that's 90 minutes, 3 periods, 9 innings, 8 ball in corner pocket, or what have you. The point is that, at the end of that pre-defined duration, the game is over.

Infinite Games, by contrast, have no such pre-defined end period. And therefore, almost by definition, an Infinite Game cannot be won or lost, since there is no point at which the game ends so that such a determination can be made.

The default state of D&D is 'Infinite.' It can be played as a Finite game, sure, but when someone says you can't 'win' an RPG, what they're saying is that you can't 'win' an Infinite Game and an RPG is generally assumed to be Infinite in nature.

But you could, conceivably, play baseball without teams or innings (everyone just has an at bat and then goes back out to the field). That game would be Infinite and could not be won, regardless of whether you kept score or not.

Similarly, a game of D&D can be Finite if it played with a defined duration. Such a game could be won if there were some manner of pre-defined criteria (first one through the dungeon, last PC alive in the arena, whoever finds the MacGuffin).

Also, everything Jay R said.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 12:03 PM
Oh, that's easy: it's because almost none of them have an actual win condition in the rules of the game. They're so rare, that I in fact have never run into an RPG that had one, and I've played games in dozens of systems over 30 years.

I've seen a handful. That said, most people are familiar with maybe two systems, both of which are an edition of D&D, so it is entirely understandable.

Totally Guy
2011-12-22, 12:08 PM
There's a difference between Finite and Infinite Games.

That's a good post. I hadn't thought of that.

I guess I hadn't considered an infinite perspective. I like to change games every so many session to something completely different. When I GM I usually try to give a rough estimation of how many session it'll go on for.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 12:09 PM
I've seen a handful. That said, most people are familiar with maybe two systems, both of which are an edition of D&D, so it is entirely understandable.

This assessment of people's breadth of experience is...unfortunately...probably true.

Nimdyd...all campaigns come to an end, though. Some are preplanned, and some are not, but in actual practice, all campaigns have a finite length. That said, there is nothing that stops a game from an indefinite ending period(like, say "we get bored with playing baseball") from having a winner. In the specific example of baseball you picked, you could play indefinitely, but whenever you do quit, whoever got the most points would be the person most people would describe as the winner.

truemane
2011-12-22, 12:16 PM
Nimdyd...all campaigns come to an end, though. Some are preplanned, and some are not, but in actual practice, all campaigns have a finite length. That said, there is nothing that stops a game from an indefinite ending period(like, say "we get bored with playing baseball") from having a winner. In the specific example of baseball you picked, you could play indefinitely, but whenever you do quit, whoever got the most points would be the person most people would describe as the winner.

Right, but the moment you end the game, and decide it's over (as opposed to just abandoned) it's now a Finite Game and can be won (not not necessarily). it sounds like splitting hairs, but the two kinds of games are different in nature. The fact that one cane become the other doesn't change that.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 12:18 PM
This assessment of people's breadth of experience is...unfortunately...probably true. Meh, if people enjoy their gaming experience, I see nothing all that unfortunate about it. I find the notion that people who stick to things that they like are somehow "doing it wrong" more than a little repugnant.


Nimdyd...all campaigns come to an end, though. Some are preplanned, and some are not, but in actual practice, all campaigns have a finite length. That said, there is nothing that stops a game from an indefinite ending period(like, say "we get bored with playing baseball") from having a winner. In the specific example of baseball you picked, you could play indefinitely, but whenever you do quit, whoever got the most points would be the person most people would describe as the winner.There's no actual game rules requirement for them to do so.

To me, this sounds the same as saying that the set of integers is finite because noone will actually ever count them all.

And again, you're mixing up campaigns and RPGs; they're not synonyms. Whether a campaign is finite, or has a victory condition doesn't have anything to do with whether the RPG is finite, or has a victory condition.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 12:19 PM
Right, but the moment you end the game, and decide it's over (as opposed to just abandoned) it's now a Finite Game and can be won (not not necessarily). it sounds like splitting hairs, but the two kinds of games are different in nature. The fact that one cane become the other doesn't change that.

Technically, both can become the other. Ever gotten to a "win condition" in a game and decided "screw it, let's just keep playing"? It's no different.

The line is fairly arbitrary, and if all games eventually become finite games in the end, I see little value in making the distinction.



And again, you're mixing up campaigns and RPGs; they're not synonyms. Whether a campaign is finite, or has a victory condition doesn't have anything to do with whether the RPG is finite, or has a victory condition.

Because playing a campaign is equivalent to playing a round of something else. Yes, we understand that when you say you won the baseball game, you only won that particular match. Not all baseball forever under all rules. There's no need to state that.

Likewise, when you play D&D, you're not playing all possible permutations of D&D. You are playing an actual campaign(or one shot or whatever). You win or lose that, but it's still a game of D&D.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 12:22 PM
Technically, both can become the other. Ever gotten to a "win condition" in a game and decided "screw it, let's just keep playing"? It's no different. No, the game is still finite, and it ended. You're now engaged in an activity modeled on the game, but you're no longer playing that game.


The line is fairly arbitrary, and if all games eventually become finite games in the endExcept that they don't.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 12:27 PM
Yes, we understand that when you say you won the baseball game, you only won that particular match. Not all baseball forever under all rules. There's no need to state that.Apples to oranges. Baseball is a finite length game with a win condition. D&D is not.


Because playing a campaign is equivalent to playing a round of something else.Yes, it's not the game. The game can continue after the campaign, and it can predate the campaign. Winning the campaign doesn't mean that you've won the game any more than winning initiate means that you've won the game, or that having more points in a particular inning means that you've won the game.

Relating that back to the point of whether player should play to win... In hearts, there are plenty of reasons not to play to win a particular trick; likewise, it's often the case that a player in an RPG wouldn't want to play to win that particular objective (even the campaign). So it seems clear why people would disagree with someone in an RPG who's focused on "winning the game"

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 12:28 PM
No, the game is still finite, and it ended. You're now engaged in an activity modeled on the game, but you're no longer playing that game.

The game that is played is "the game".

Otherwise, nobody actually plays D&D, they all play house ruled games that bear some resemblance to D&D.

That seems really wordy though. It's easier to just say "I play D&D".

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 12:31 PM
The game that is played is "the game".

None of this has any bearing on whether the game is infinite or not. If you continue to play baseball after a win condition has been achieved, you're no longer playing the game of baseball. You're partaking in an activity modeled on baseball. You can call it baseball it if you want, but that doesn't make it so.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 12:39 PM
None of this has any bearing on whether the game is infinite or not. If you continue to play baseball after a win condition has been achieved, you're no longer playing the game of baseball. You're partaking in an activity modeled on baseball. You can call it baseball it if you want, but that doesn't make it so.

A casual or informal game of baseball might not bother with the nine innings rule at all, but people will still refer to the game as baseball. It's pretty common, actually.

Why the strict upholding of this particular rule as definitive of what the game is? What gives it priority? LOTS of people play games while ignoring or changing certain rules.

Zeofar
2011-12-22, 01:54 PM
The main idea behind "You can't win D&D" is that the players and the DM aren't adversaries. The thought it's supposed to provoke is "If the point of the game isn't to defeat the DM, then I shouldn't try to do that". It's meant to discourage cheating or building uber-characters just so you can "win" by destroying all the monsters and eliminating all challenge from the game; it's nothing more than a simplistic answer to why Munchkinry isn't good.

You can question whether this is the best way to present that idea, but constructing situations in which it can shown to be "wrong" by misapplying a one-dimensional statement is meaningless. If you've done that, you've really corrupted the intent and missed the point entirely.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 01:57 PM
The main idea behind "You can't win D&D" is that the players and the DM aren't adversaries. The thought it's supposed to provoke is "If the point of the game isn't to defeat the DM, then I shouldn't try to do that". It's meant to discourage cheating or building uber-characters just so you can "win" by destroying all the monsters and eliminating all challenge from the game; it's nothing more than a simplistic answer to why Munchkinry isn't good.

Yet again, noncompetitive games can be won. Starting with almost every single player video game.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 02:10 PM
A casual or informal game of baseball might not bother with the nine innings rule at all, but people will still refer to the game as baseball. It's pretty common, actually.Again, those people are partaking in an activity based on the game of baseball. They aren't actually playing baseball. Any deductions based on observations of their actions are not useful when discussing what is and isn't part of the game of baseball.

Zeofar
2011-12-22, 02:21 PM
Yet again, noncompetitive games can be won. Starting with almost every single player video game.

So, you don't like the presentation of the idea? See the second paragraph. I think we can all agree that the point of D&D (in most cases) is not to defeat the DM. Playing Pun-Pun doesn't make you win just because you've gained control of the game. If you can extract the meaning behind the statement, then it has served its very narrow purpose. Trying to do something more broad with it isn't a good idea.

You'll also note that I never said that noncompetitive games can't be won. You've made a rather far-fetched inference, there.

But, still, that's beside the point. You're getting hung up on the fact that you can take the word "win" and use it in another sentence without retaining any of the intended meaning and show that something broke. That's not productive.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 02:30 PM
So, you don't like the presentation of the idea? See the second paragraph. I think we can all agree that the point of D&D (in most cases) is not to defeat the DM. Playing Pun-Pun doesn't make you win just because you've gained control of the game.

You'll also note that I never said that noncompetitive games can't be won. You've made a rather far-fetched inference, there.

The argument you presented basically came down to "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it cannot be won." The existence and ubiquity of noncompetitive games that can be won invalidates that statement. Regardless of what is intended to be presented by the statement that "D&D isn't competitive and as such can't be won" the statement is a non sequitor. It's like saying "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it isn't a breed of strawberry", both statements in that are true, but they are also unrelated.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 02:34 PM
Again, those people are partaking in an activity based on the game of baseball. They aren't actually playing baseball. Any deductions based on observations of their actions are not useful when discussing what is and isn't part of the game of baseball.

I ask again, since you have again failed to answer this.

Why is this the defining trait of what baseball is?

And why do you get to define it as such, in the face of common usage of the definition?

Zeofar
2011-12-22, 02:50 PM
The argument you presented basically came down to "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it cannot be won." The existence and ubiquity of noncompetitive games that can be won invalidates that statement. Regardless of what is intended to be presented by the statement that "D&D isn't competitive and as such can't be won" the statement is a non sequitor. It's like saying "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it isn't a breed of strawberry", both statements in that are true, but they are also unrelated.

I'm explaining the meaning of a statement that is apparently difficult to understand because the words it uses aren't really suited for the purpose it is trying to achieve. I'm not saying that it is true in a broad sense or that it stands up to scrutiny.

Can you point out that there's a logical fallacy in it? Sure. Does the fallacy really relate to the idea presented? No. Does pointing it out help anyone understand the statement? Not really.

If someone walked up to you and said "It's no good to cheat in D&D!" and you replied with "Noncompetitive games can be won", it'd make no sense. It's really the same situation. The whole of the idea that it's supposed to impart is that cheating or steamrolling encounters in D&D isn't terribly fun. If you agree with that (as I assume you do, since you didn't attempt to refute it) then I must persist in saying that the only part of it you don't like is the presentation.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-22, 03:06 PM
I'm explaining the meaning of a statement that is apparently difficult to understand because the words it uses aren't really suited for the purpose it is trying to achieve. I'm not saying that it is true in a broad sense or that it stands up to scrutiny.

Can you point out that there's a logical fallacy in it? Sure. Does the fallacy really relate to the idea presented? No. Does pointing it out help anyone understand the statement? Not really.

If someone walked up to you and said "It's no good to cheat in D&D!" and you replied with "Noncompetitive games can be won", it'd make no sense. It's really the same situation. The whole of the idea that it's supposed to impart is that cheating or steamrolling encounters in D&D isn't terribly fun. If you agree with that (as I assume you do, since you didn't attempt to refute it) then I must persist in saying that the only part of it you don't like is the presentation.

Er...he's speaking in strict logical terms. He's right. He's countering your implied logical argument, and if you do not, in fact, have a logical argument implied there, it's a non sequiter.

You(and others) are implying that D&D cannot be won because it is non competitive.

Showing examples of noncompetitive games that can be won invalidates that logical argument. His argument makes sense because it's adhering to logical structure.

Jayabalard
2011-12-22, 03:15 PM
Why is this the defining trait of what baseball is? That depends on what you mean by "baseball"

The defining trait of any game, baseball included, is the specific rules that you're playing under.

So, if you're talking about the game of baseball, then the defining trait are the specific rules of that game.

If you're talking about an activity that people often refer to as baseball, it has different defining characteristics, but it isn't really relevant when discussing things specific to the game of baseball. Observations of that activity do not allow you to draw conclusions about the game, since they're not the same thing.

So your example of casual "baseball" players aren't actually playing the game of baseball, and the fact that they don't have a win condition does not say anything about whether the game of baseball has a win condition.

Likewise, an example homebrewed game based on D&D that has a win condition built into it doesn't say anything about whether the game of D&D has a win condition.

Siosilvar
2011-12-22, 03:32 PM
Yet again, noncompetitive games can be won. Starting with almost every single player video game.

One could argue that single-player video games are competitive. You're just not competing against another player; instead, you're competing against the computer and the rules of the game.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 03:36 PM
If someone walked up to you and said "It's no good to cheat in D&D!" and you replied with "Noncompetitive games can be won", it'd make no sense. It's really the same situation. The whole of the idea that it's supposed to impart is that cheating or steamrolling encounters in D&D isn't terribly fun. If you agree with that (as I assume you do, since you didn't attempt to refute it) then I must persist in saying that the only part of it you don't like is the presentation.

Several ideas are being conflated here. "D&D can't be won" is a completely irrelevant side point, that doesn't follow from "D&D is a cooperative game". The relevant argument appears to be:

1. D&D is a cooperative game.
2. Cooperative games are played to have fun.
3. Detracting from the fun is a bad thing
4. Competitive attitudes in cooperative games detract from the fun.
5. Min Maxing is the result of a competitive attitude.
Therefore, Min Maxing is a bad thing.

Note that whether or not D&D can be won is completely tangential to the actual argument presented there, and as such bringing it up is worthless. Given that the thread is about winning the game, the presented argument is tangential to the thread.

Again, the original post isn't analogous to "It's no good to cheat in D&D!". It's analogous to "It's no good to cheat in D&D, because the citrus content in pine needles is too high for them to be digested by martians." The two claims have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and that should be pointed out.

Kallisti
2011-12-22, 04:38 PM
It has been said already, but I do think it bears repeating: the issue here is how we're defining victory conditions.

You have one set of people, including the OP, saying that a given player defines his victory conditions by establishing his goals--since D&D contains no explicit win condition, unless the campaign sets one up (kill the Necromancer and you win the campaign) it's up to the player to decide what 'winning' means.

Then you have a set of people who say that if there's no intrinsic win condition, then there's just no win condition--unless the game itself or the campaign define winning, you can't win.

The trouble, in my view, stems from the fact that both viewpoints are equally valid, and really a matter of personal understanding of what it means to 'win'--usage of the term, and even the strict definition, are vague enough not to preclude either stance (at least in my mind), so there cannot be a right or wrong answer here.

That said, I personally subscribe to the second view point, but with the caveat that achieving the win condition is not always the goal--the example of the Skyrim villager is a good one; he literally cannot win the game, but that's not the point.

Mantarni
2011-12-22, 05:00 PM
[May have been said already, since I would rather not read every page and skimmed the first ones] The best wording I've ever found for my preferred style is from the discworld books.

I play to not lose.

To avoid semantics, loss being defined as death, things not going well, falling behind; in general leaving the session with an unpleasant feeling about how something went or is going in regards to my character. Winning may be inclusive in this any amount of the time, but on its own is irrelevant. Whatever position in some arbitrary ranking is fine, provided I am at a relative level of satisfied with my own bearings/progress. Screw others view of "win" or "lose," screw egoranking. :smallcool:

Thane of Fife
2011-12-22, 05:23 PM
The argument you presented basically came down to "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it cannot be won." The existence and ubiquity of noncompetitive games that can be won invalidates that statement. Regardless of what is intended to be presented by the statement that "D&D isn't competitive and as such can't be won" the statement is a non sequitor. It's like saying "D&D isn't competitive, ergo it isn't a breed of strawberry", both statements in that are true, but they are also unrelated.

This isn't actually correct. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "win" as "be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict)."

I think it's a perfectly valid argument that both contest and conflict imply competition, and that therefore something non-competitive cannot be won (at least not by that definition of the term).



Yet again, noncompetitive games can be won. Starting with almost every single player video game.

For example, I'd disagree with this. Certainly, some single-player video games can be won, but most, I would say, are completed, not won. You wouldn't say that you won a jigsaw puzzle, would you?

Knaight
2011-12-22, 05:26 PM
This isn't actually correct. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "win" as "be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict)."

I think it's a perfectly valid argument that both contest and conflict imply competition, and that therefore something non-competitive cannot be won (at least not by that definition of the term).

For example, I'd disagree with this. Certainly, some single-player video games can be won, but most, I would say, are completed, not won. You wouldn't say that you won a jigsaw puzzle, would you?
There's a reasonably good expectation that you can complete a jigsaw puzzle, eventually. Video games you can just lose, though that is arguably a set back more than anything. The board game examples from earlier in the thread (Pandemic, Arkham Horror) also prove the point solidly, and those are entirely cooperative games that you can (and with Pandemic almost certainly will) lose.

Infernalbargain
2011-12-22, 08:31 PM
#1 In order to win at a game, some victory condition(s) that is predefined by the game must be achieved.
#2 Nonexistent conditions cannot be achieved.
#3 D&D has no predefined victory conditions.

Ergo you cannot win at D&D.

My argument is structurally correct. Therefore one of the premises must be argued against. Premise #2 is trivially true. Premise #1 certainly applies to all games that we classically think of as winnable. Three facts of premise #1 are important to note. First, the victory condition is not required to be known by the players. Second, the victory condition(s) are defined before the game starts and therefore cannot be changed during the game. Third, this predefinition of the victory conditions does not prohibit them from having a logical structured gated by in-game events (needed this to deal with milles bornes and similar games).

Now all the work to be done is in premise three. It is the predefined nature of the victory conditions that excludes D&D. Look in the rulebook, there is no mention of the game ending anywhere. Since victory conditions end games, it is quite clear that D&D has no victory conditions.

Thread over.

Mantarni
2011-12-22, 09:04 PM
{Scrubbed}

Fiery Diamond
2011-12-22, 09:11 PM
This isn't actually correct. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "win" as "be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict)."

I think it's a perfectly valid argument that both contest and conflict imply competition, and that therefore something non-competitive cannot be won (at least not by that definition of the term).




For example, I'd disagree with this. Certainly, some single-player video games can be won, but most, I would say, are completed, not won. You wouldn't say that you won a jigsaw puzzle, would you?


There's a reasonably good expectation that you can complete a jigsaw puzzle, eventually. Video games you can just lose, though that is arguably a set back more than anything. The board game examples from earlier in the thread (Pandemic, Arkham Horror) also prove the point solidly, and those are entirely cooperative games that you can (and with Pandemic almost certainly will) lose.

You're bolded statement completely misunderstood the other bolded part. Thane of Fife is saying that "completed" and "won" are not synonymous. You can complete a jigsaw puzzle, sure. You can't "win" a jigsaw puzzle. I'm not sure why that wasn't clear, since Thane of Fife was using that as an example to illustrate what was meant by the statement directly prior about many single-player games being completed rather than won.


#1 In order to win at a game, some victory condition(s) that is predefined by the game must be achieved.
#2 Nonexistent conditions cannot be achieved.
#3 D&D has no predefined victory conditions.

Ergo you cannot win at D&D.

My argument is structurally correct. Therefore one of the premises must be argued against. Premise #2 is trivially true. Premise #1 certainly applies to all games that we classically think of as winnable. Three facts of premise #1 are important to note. First, the victory condition is not required to be known by the players. Second, the victory condition(s) are defined before the game starts and therefore cannot be changed during the game. Third, this predefinition of the victory conditions does not prohibit them from having a logical structured gated by in-game events (needed this to deal with milles bornes and similar games).

Now all the work to be done is in premise three. It is the predefined nature of the victory conditions that excludes D&D. Look in the rulebook, there is no mention of the game ending anywhere. Since victory conditions end games, it is quite clear that D&D has no victory conditions.

Thread over.

I agree with this.

Thane of Fife
2011-12-22, 09:19 PM
There's a reasonably good expectation that you can complete a jigsaw puzzle, eventually. Video games you can just lose, though that is arguably a set back more than anything. The board game examples from earlier in the thread (Pandemic, Arkham Horror) also prove the point solidly, and those are entirely cooperative games that you can (and with Pandemic almost certainly will) lose.

I disagree about the board games. Co-op games can be compared to Descent, which is clearly competitive. Just because the game itself takes the role of one or more of the competitors doesn't mean that the game isn't competitive.

Also, maybe you're playing Pandemic on hard mode, but in my experience it's very winnable.

Knaight
2011-12-22, 09:19 PM
You're bolded statement completely misunderstood the other bolded part. Thane of Fife is saying that "completed" and "won" are not synonymous. You can complete a jigsaw puzzle, sure. You can't "win" a jigsaw puzzle. I'm not sure why that wasn't clear, since Thane of Fife was using that as an example to illustrate what was meant by the statement directly prior about many single-player games being completed rather than won.

The point is, winning becomes a more applicable term than completion in many cases due to completion often implying an inevitable state. One completes things that they were going to do anyways, winning involves uncertainty. Moreover, even if one discards that example, there are enough others that conclusively disprove the point I was targeting in the first place.


I disagree about the board games. Co-op games can be compared to Descent, which is clearly competitive. Just because the game itself takes the role of one or more of the competitors doesn't mean that the game isn't competitive.

Also, maybe you're playing Pandemic on hard mode, but in my experience it's very winnable.
The game isn't a player, and in the examples given (and I think in Descent, but I haven't actually played that) all the players are on the same side.

As for Pandemic, I was playing up it's reputation for humor. It's winnable, though on hard mode you are dealing with an uphill fight.

Thane of Fife
2011-12-22, 10:18 PM
The game isn't a player, and in the examples given (and I think in Descent, but I haven't actually played that) all the players are on the same side.

In Descent, one player is the overlord, which is basically the GM, but with the very explicit goal of killing the players as much as possible. It's basically a game where the players and the GM are in direct competition (obviously, the GM in Descent is much less powerful than the GM in most role-playing games).

In games like Pandemic or Arkham Horror, even though all of the players are on the same side, they are still definitely competing with the game. Beyond that conflict, there is nothing to either game.

In contrast, in most RPGs, there is no "meta" conflict. There may be conflict within the game, but the game is not a conflict in and of itself. (Normally,) there is nothing that is actively trying to thwart anything else: the players are not competing and neither the game nor the DM is personally opposed to them.

Fiery Diamond
2011-12-22, 10:47 PM
The point is, winning becomes a more applicable term than completion in many cases due to completion often implying an inevitable state. One completes things that they were going to do anyways, winning involves uncertainty. Moreover, even if one discards that example, there are enough others that conclusively disprove the point I was targeting in the first place.


The game isn't a player, and in the examples given (and I think in Descent, but I haven't actually played that) all the players are on the same side.

As for Pandemic, I was playing up it's reputation for humor. It's winnable, though on hard mode you are dealing with an uphill fight.

Ah; you were merely heading in a different direction rather than misunderstanding. Makes more sense. I would disagree, however, with use of the word inevitable. Inevitable does not mean "will probably happen," or even "is the sole expected conclusion" (especially since a game can easily lack a conclusion, unless you count 'ragequit' and 'lost interest' as conclusions), it means "will happen." Many people give up on jigsaw puzzles out of frustration, never to try again. Buildings are sometimes only partially constructed and never finished because someone ran out of funding that they expected to be there. A game that, at its expected end, has only one type of ending (which is what I think you meant by inevitable) is no more inevitable a result than a game which has two (or more) types of endings.

Also, there are in fact many single-player games of both kinds: ones you might say you won at and ones you say you completed. I disagree with your stance, however, that you cannot be competing against a system. You can compete against something that isn't "a player" quite easily. Heck, you can even compete against yourself. A fighting video game, for example, would be a game that you could "win," but you are competing against the computer. A game like Legend of Zelda, you complete, not win.

Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to "complete" rather than "win" a game that has uncertainty. Say there's a game where you must do a set number of tasks within a time limit. If you succeed at that goal, you complete the game. If you fail, you don't. Like this game here I found the other day. (http://www.kongregate.com/games/z3lf/five?acomplete=five) I wouldn't say I won when I completed it, but it is certainly possible to fail to complete it. Just like you can die and have to start from a save point in a Legend of Zelda game. Or in the original, before saves existed, you had to start all over. So in a way, you can say that it was possible to lose and possible to complete, but I certainly would never say I "won" a Legend of Zelda game.

Bastian Weaver
2011-12-23, 05:51 AM
Um, okay. My two cents.
Sure, roleplaying games aren't about "Kick the evil posterior, get the girl, save the day". I mean, they aren't JUST about that. Those are character's goals, and of course it's nice when the character manages to do all that.
The player's goals? Have fun, sure. But getting a little appreciation is even better than just having fun. Even if your character didn't do anything that he planned (or that you planned for him), but the other players tell you that boy, the way you played it was just plain awesome - I consider it a win. Even better if some sort of award for good roleplaying follows, like XP bonus or Karma bonus in MSH system - it's not something my character had accomplished, it's my own achievement.
So yeah, I play to win the game. That's what I always do. Am I wrong?

Emmerask
2011-12-23, 06:57 AM
Er...he's speaking in strict logical terms. He's right. He's countering your implied logical argument, and if you do not, in fact, have a logical argument implied there, it's a non sequiter.

You(and others) are implying that D&D cannot be won because it is non competitive.

Showing examples of noncompetitive games that can be won invalidates that logical argument. His argument makes sense because it's adhering to logical structure.

Though his deduction would be correct if his examples actually where noncompetitive... but they are not, you compete against the game (its rules and random chance if you will) which has fixed rules on its behavior, very similar to a computer game in fact.

D&D on the other hand has a lot of fluid rules, the dm decides whom to attack for example and can make countless other decisions which makes the game harder or more easy ie it doesn´t have these fixed rules that are actually needed for a "win".

Tyndmyr
2011-12-23, 07:39 AM
It has been said already, but I do think it bears repeating: the issue here is how we're defining victory conditions.

You have one set of people, including the OP, saying that a given player defines his victory conditions by establishing his goals--since D&D contains no explicit win condition, unless the campaign sets one up (kill the Necromancer and you win the campaign) it's up to the player to decide what 'winning' means.

Then you have a set of people who say that if there's no intrinsic win condition, then there's just no win condition--unless the game itself or the campaign define winning, you can't win.

The trouble, in my view, stems from the fact that both viewpoints are equally valid, and really a matter of personal understanding of what it means to 'win'--usage of the term, and even the strict definition, are vague enough not to preclude either stance (at least in my mind), so there cannot be a right or wrong answer here.

That said, I personally subscribe to the second view point, but with the caveat that achieving the win condition is not always the goal--the example of the Skyrim villager is a good one; he literally cannot win the game, but that's not the point.

The game of Skyrim is still winnable. He has merely chosen not to win it.

There is nothing wrong with this choice, mind you, but his choice to not win does not make the game unwinnable.


This isn't actually correct. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "win" as "be successful or victorious in (a contest or conflict)."

I think it's a perfectly valid argument that both contest and conflict imply competition, and that therefore something non-competitive cannot be won (at least not by that definition of the term).

That is the first definition. It's slightly disingenuous to only list one of nine definitions and gleefully trounce the other side for not matching the one you selected.

Let's look at all the definitions of the Oxford dictionary.

1. To achieve victory or finish first in a competition.
2. To achieve success in an effort or venture: struggled to overcome the handicap and finally won.
v.tr.
1. To achieve victory or finish first in.
2. To receive as a prize or reward for performance.
3.
a. To achieve or attain by effort: win concessions in negotiations.
b. To obtain or earn (a livelihood, for example). See Synonyms at earn1.
4. To make (one's way) with effort.
5. To reach with difficulty: The ship won a safe port.
6. To take in battle; capture: won the heights after a fierce attack.
7. To succeed in gaining the favor or support of; prevail on: Her eloquence won over the audience.
8.
a. To gain the affection or loyalty of.
b. To appeal successfully to (someone's sympathy, for example).
c. To persuade (another) to marry one: He wooed and won her.
9.
a. To discover and open (a vein or deposit) in mining.
b. To extract from a mine or from mined ore.

Look, a LOT of these do not require competition, and are applicable to many games, including many RPGs.


In Descent, one player is the overlord, which is basically the GM, but with the very explicit goal of killing the players as much as possible. It's basically a game where the players and the GM are in direct competition (obviously, the GM in Descent is much less powerful than the GM in most role-playing games).

In games like Pandemic or Arkham Horror, even though all of the players are on the same side, they are still definitely competing with the game. Beyond that conflict, there is nothing to either game.

In contrast, in most RPGs, there is no "meta" conflict. There may be conflict within the game, but the game is not a conflict in and of itself. (Normally,) there is nothing that is actively trying to thwart anything else: the players are not competing and neither the game nor the DM is personally opposed to them.

Competing against the game? In what context? In Arkham Horror, the game does not work solely against you. It offers you ways to gain an advantage at times. You are no more in a conflict with the game than a player is in conflict with the game in D&D.

Thane of Fife
2011-12-23, 10:03 AM
That is the first definition. It's slightly disingenuous to only list one of nine definitions and gleefully trounce the other side for not matching the one you selected.

Look, a LOT of these do not require competition, and are applicable to many games, including many RPGs.

It was not my intent to "gleefully trounce" anybody. Knaight said that

Regardless of what is intended to be presented by the statement that "D&D isn't competitive and as such can't be won" the statement is a non sequitor.
and I was arguing against that. If the very first definition of win implies competition, then that statement is not a non sequitor. I'm aware that there are other definitions; I referenced one earlier in the thread:

The first two definitions for "win" in the closest dictionary are, in essence, "to come in first in a contest" and "to succeed through effort."

You're thinking of the second definition. When people say that you can't win an RPG, they normally mean the first definition.

Apologies if I was unclear.


Competing against the game? In what context? In Arkham Horror, the game does not work solely against you. It offers you ways to gain an advantage at times. You are no more in a conflict with the game than a player is in conflict with the game in D&D.

Ehh, sort of. The rules are basically impartial, but the game itself (the cards and monsters and such) are inherently hostile. Certainly, there are good cards, but a human player would probably make mistakes that could be taken advantage of, and these can be sort of treated the same. But in the end, Arkham Horror is 100% about the players trying to achieve one objective, and the game basically working to stop them. Without that conflict, there is nothing.

In contrast, (most) RPGs don't have that. There probably is conflict, but no conflict is the end-all be-all of the game. In Keep on the Shadowfell, or whatever it's called, the players are assumed to be working against the evil priest, but they don't have to. They could try to join him, or leave, or just run around finding treasure, or whatever. That conflict isn't necessary to the game.


In general, though, I don't really care if you (generally, not you specifically) want to say that you "won" D&D. But when people say that you can't win a role-playing game, they almost always mean that the game isn't competitive. If I can quote the 2nd Edition AD&D PHB:

Another major difference between role-playing games and other games is the ultimate goal. Everyone assumes that a game must have a beginning and an end and that the end comes when someone wins. That doesn't apply to role-playing because no one "wins" in a role-playing game. The point of playing is not to win but to have fun and to socialize.
....
Remember, the point of an adventure is not to win but to have fun while working toward a common goal.

The point is that there's no competition between players. There's validity in comparison to co-op games like Arkham Horror or Pandemic, but most people are not familiar with those games, and saying that "No one 'wins' in a role-playing game" is a good way to vocalize that the players and the DM aren't working against each other. There's no end-of-game Who has the Most Money? segment.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-23, 10:11 AM
It was not my intent to "gleefully trounce" anybody. Knaight said that

and I was arguing against that. If the very first definition of win implies competition, then that statement is not a non sequitor. I'm aware that there are other definitions; I referenced one earlier in the thread:

Apologies if I was unclear.

Surely you accept that all these definitions of win are acceptable English? And thus, since winning a D&D campaign makes perfect grammatical sense by several of these definitions, it's a normal and reasonable statement?


Ehh, sort of. The rules are basically impartial, but the game itself (the cards and monsters and such) are inherently hostile. Certainly, there are good cards, but a human player would probably make mistakes that could be taken advantage of, and these can be sort of treated the same. But in the end, Arkham Horror is 100% about the players trying to achieve one objective, and the game basically working to stop them. Without that conflict, there is nothing.

Nah. There's things like equipment that are pretty much all good things. This is remarkably like D&D. Yes, the monsters in D&D are mostly hostile. The equipment is mostly good. A typical campaign will have them use the latter to face the former.

Same, same.


In contrast, (most) RPGs don't have that. There probably is conflict, but no conflict is the end-all be-all of the game. In Keep on the Shadowfell, or whatever it's called, the players are assumed to be working against the evil priest, but they don't have to. They could try to join him, or leave, or just run around finding treasure, or whatever. That conflict isn't necessary to the game.

Well, there has to be SOME conflict, or it's not really an RPG. And almost all RPGs tend to have some sort of story involved, so the goals are decidedly unequal in importance, and an overarching goal is quite common.


In general, though, I don't really care if you (generally, not you specifically) want to say that you "won" D&D. But when people say that you can't win a role-playing game, they almost always mean that the game isn't competitive. If I can quote the 2nd Edition AD&D PHB:

Why not say that instead, then? It's a lot clearer, and it's not really that long to say "D&D is a cooperative game". Just because an old edition of the game used a particular set of words is little reason to insist on continuing to use the same verbiage.

Thane of Fife
2011-12-23, 10:47 AM
Surely you accept that all these definitions of win are acceptable English? And thus, since winning a D&D campaign makes perfect grammatical sense by several of these definitions, it's a normal and reasonable statement?

Sure, it is certainly grammatically correct. But if you said win to a person, I think most people would expect some sort of conflict to be involved.


Nah. There's things like equipment that are pretty much all good things. This is remarkably like D&D. Yes, the monsters in D&D are mostly hostile. The equipment is mostly good. A typical campaign will have them use the latter to face the former.

Same, same.

You're right. What I should have said is that the game's actions are basically hostile. Getting items and similar is normally a result of the players' actions. In contrast, when the game does something, it is normally like opening a gate, spawning a monster, moving monsters, or similar. These actions may individually favor the players, but they are generally aimed at defeating them. (Admittedly, Arkham Horror is somewhat inept, and wins very rarely, barring use of the expansions).


Well, there has to be SOME conflict, or it's not really an RPG. And almost all RPGs tend to have some sort of story involved, so the goals are decidedly unequal in importance, and an overarching goal is quite common.

Yeah, but the goal isn't the game. In Chess, or Arkham Horror, or Pandemic, all of your actions are aimed at winning (this is especially true in Pandemic). In an RPG, there is much more to the game than just the conflict.


Why not say that instead, then? It's a lot clearer, and it's not really that long to say "D&D is a cooperative game". Just because an old edition of the game used a particular set of words is little reason to insist on continuing to use the same verbiage.

I'm not claiming that it's the best way to say it, just trying to explain why they say it.

olthar
2011-12-23, 12:03 PM
That is the first definition. It's slightly disingenuous to only list one of nine definitions and gleefully trounce the other side for not matching the one you selected.

Let's look at all the definitions of the Oxford dictionary.

1. To achieve victory or finish first in a competition.
2. To achieve success in an effort or venture: struggled to overcome the handicap and finally won.
v.tr.
1. To achieve victory or finish first in.
2. To receive as a prize or reward for performance.
3.
a. To achieve or attain by effort: win concessions in negotiations.
b. To obtain or earn (a livelihood, for example). See Synonyms at earn1.
4. To make (one's way) with effort.
5. To reach with difficulty: The ship won a safe port.
6. To take in battle; capture: won the heights after a fierce attack.
7. To succeed in gaining the favor or support of; prevail on: Her eloquence won over the audience.
8.
a. To gain the affection or loyalty of.
b. To appeal successfully to (someone's sympathy, for example).
c. To persuade (another) to marry one: He wooed and won her.
9.
a. To discover and open (a vein or deposit) in mining.
b. To extract from a mine or from mined ore.

Look, a LOT of these do not require competition, and are applicable to many games, including many RPGs.

Competing against the game? In what context? In Arkham Horror, the game does not work solely against you. It offers you ways to gain an advantage at times. You are no more in a conflict with the game than a player is in conflict with the game in D&D.

I already tried this and it failed. That being said, the transitive definitions do not make sense because they make D&D the direct object, which is something that nobody has really done here. Yes, D&D can be used as a direct object, and many people have done so, but for the purposes of this discussion D&D is the subject making win the intransitive verb that modifies the subject. Sorry to assault you grammar.

As for your discussion of competing against the game. This also returns to something I said earlier.
By inconsistently applying different definitions of the word "win" to different scenarios you can make any argument you want.
If you look at your definitions, then winning a game of arkham horror or pandemic clearly qualifies as the second intransitive definition of win (i.e. achieve success in a venture).

Since that second definition is the only one that makes sense, this whole discussion boils down to how do you define the venture of D&D? I'd argue that the purpose of D&D (i.e. the reason you sit down and play) is having fun, so success is defined as having fun. I'd argue this because, as has been stated by many others, there are no definitive ways to go about the game. In any given situation you can do pretty much anything so the game cannot have objectives that you can define success around.

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if those who argue you can win in D&D are players or DMs who pretty much stick to the rails, while those who argue that winning is having fun have more experience with the players who do random/unexpected stuff. If you've never played a game where the PCs decided to join the evil cult leader to destroy the village, or (even more enjoyably) joined the evil cult leader to supplant him and summon the demon lord under their direction rather than his, then it is much easier to say that D&D has a win.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-23, 12:13 PM
As for your discussion of competing against the game. This also returns to something I said earlier.
If you look at your definitions, then winning a game of arkham horror or pandemic clearly qualifies as the second intransitive definition of win (i.e. achieve success in a venture).

Since that second definition is the only one that makes sense, this whole discussion boils down to how do you define the venture of D&D? I'd argue that the purpose of D&D (i.e. the reason you sit down and play) is having fun, so success is defined as having fun.

Fun is also the reason I sit down to play Arkham Horror.

So, what's the difference?

olthar
2011-12-23, 01:15 PM
Fun is also the reason I sit down to play Arkham Horror.

So, what's the difference?
I'll just refer to myself

The obvious counterpoint to what I've said is that people play board games to have fun, which would mean they win as long as they had fun, even if by the rules they lost. The equally obvious response is that in those circumstances winning the game and winning the venture are independent and should be treated as such. Playing and having fun means you succeeded at your venture. Winning the competition means you won the competition (definition 1).
You're talking about two orthogonal concepts. You can have fun in a baseball/football/hockey/arkham horror/risk game and lose. The "venture" of having fun in those games has nothing to do with the venture of the game.

In D&D there is no purposeful venture to compare against. You can sit down and spend four hours roleplaying the discussion between your party and a bunch of npc's who are having a drinking contest.

Tyndmyr
2011-12-23, 01:16 PM
I'll just refer to myself

You're talking about two orthogonal concepts. You can have fun in a baseball/football/hockey/arkham horror/risk game and lose. The "venture" of having fun in those games has nothing to do with the venture of the game.

In D&D there is no purposeful venture to compare against. You can sit down and spend four hours roleplaying the discussion between your party and a bunch of npc's who are having a drinking contest.

You *could*. But that's not normally the overarching purpose of a campaign.

You also could sit down, open arkham horror, and spend the next two hours throwing the pieces at each other(I have a LOT of younger siblings).

Neither is typical.

Gamgee
2011-12-23, 01:41 PM
American Football coach Herman Edwards said it: You play to win the game.

I was talking about RPGs with a friend the other night and we concluded that the old “you can’t win a role playing game” line is bollocks.

Sure you can win and sure you can lose. It’s all about what goals you as a player have for your character and whether they are achieved or thwarted.

I’m actually quite confused as to where the other school of thought even comes from.
A role playing game hypothetically keeps going until something causes it to stop. If your win condition is to be there until the game dies, then sure. Get your trophy with everyone else.

Unless your goal is to break apart the game and cause as much strife as possible among players until the game ends, or until you get kicked out. Sure. If everything goes well though, there is no winning. It's like saying your winning at life. I mean congratulations for you having such a positive attitude, but it's kind of pointless because it doesn't ever stop. Or if it does, everyone participated. There's no metric to judge a player and how much of a "winner" he is other than personal opinion.

Once you start judging the player himself you've moved beyond the scope of the game into real life. So it's not a valid comparison. I don't get how that line of thought exists in a collaborative effort.

GolemsVoice
2011-12-23, 01:50 PM
Building on what was said about finite and infinite games, I'd say it's the difference between winning a game of baseball, and winning baseball. You can "win" a campaign in D&D (though even that is debatable, I wouldn't say that I've won even when everything goes perfectly well), but you can't win D&D, the set of rules which form the role-playing game. Just as you can't win World of Warcraft, for example. You can get a good item, you can get that difficult achievement, and you can clear a dungeon, but you didn't actually "win".

olthar
2011-12-23, 04:35 PM
You *could*. But that's not normally the overarching purpose of a campaign.

You also could sit down, open arkham horror, and spend the next two hours throwing the pieces at each other(I have a LOT of younger siblings).

Neither is typical.

Your comment, besides being a rather poor strawman for my side of the discussion, violates the maxim of relation. Regardless, I'll address it.

You wouldn't refer to that as playing arkham horror any more than you would call throwing minis around the room as playing D&D. If you spent the two hours of the game moving the pieces and trying to kill the other characters, that could be called playing arkham horror. The result of doing so would be losing when the great old one awakens and kills everyone. You would refer to four hours of roleplaying as playing D&D.

ORione
2011-12-23, 05:45 PM
You have won this thread.


Wait a second. What were the victory conditions of this thread?

It had to be asked.

Siosilvar
2011-12-23, 07:57 PM
Wait a second. What were the victory conditions of this thread?

I'm not sure, but it looks pretty competitive to me. :smallwink:

olthar
2011-12-24, 01:10 AM
Wait a second. What were the victory conditions of this thread?

It had to be asked.

No! That's how awesome Jay R's post was. It won the unwinnable! That post would have won D&D, no it would have won Call of Cthulhu!



I've been waiting for someone to ask / say something like this since I posted that.

Roxxy
2011-12-25, 01:05 AM
It's a team game where one team's goal is to overcome challenges, and the other team's goal is to present winnable and entertaining challenges and appropriate rewards to the first team. I think "you can win, but you can't really lose" summarizes this situation well.Pretty much. Even when your character gets epically curbstomped, the RP itself can still be very fun.