You play to win the game

[Totally Guy]

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]

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]

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]

Well, the characters can defeat the villain and the campaign ends. But still, neither any player not the GM has won.

[Mono Vertigo]

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]

Every time I come away from the gaming table having had fun, I've won the game

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

[Totally Guy]

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]

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]

"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]

"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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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;

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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.