Alright, this is probably going to be my final contribution to the thread.
This. 1000% this.
@Manbearcat Your entire argument is based on treating D&D as a competition. It seems to me that a majority of people on both sides of the argument reject this idea.
I might just mention that, as a classic nerd, I absolutely loathe competitive sport (I thought I had made that clear already), so even without the basic invalid assumption trying to use a sports-based argument is going to fail with me!
Let's do like Inigo Montoya and go back to the beginning.
This is what you said:
Then you need to explain, because I simply can't see what else social mechanics can bring to the game.
I mean, "skill challenge". The clue is right there in the name. It's turning a social situation into a competitive situation.
And I have to say, I don't see anything wrong with wanting to play that way. You seem to be the one who thinks a competitive rather than social game is somehow lesser.
Now that initial statement that I responded to looks a hair different than what you've posted above. Initially it was "I don't see anything wrong with wanting to play that way (a competitive gaming environment)" and now its "I loathe competitive sport" and "a majority of people on both sides of the argument reject this idea."
But this is all an aside...because its mostly an incorrect understanding of what I'm trying to convey with my intellectual snobbery. I'm going repost the first part of my initial response to you and then I'm going to stay as far away from sport as possible since you've said above that it makes you see red (and people who are seeing red don't do their best communicating or considering).
Manbearcat upthread
Did you get a chance to look at my play excerpt upthread of a Dogs in the Vineyard social scene I GMed? It’s located here for you to take a look if you missed it.
I’m going to answer your question using the ethics of “competitive integrity.” Now at first glance your instinct might be “but Manbearcat…you’re supporting exactly what I’m saying! That can only mean that you’re interests lie in a social pillar where winning and losing is the point of play!”
I can understand that thought, but it’s a misapprehension of one of, if not the, foundational aspects of the ethics of competitive integrity in any arena but specifically in TTRPGs. What it means for that particular excerpt that I’ve linked above is the following:
I, as GM, and my players know with certitude that (a) this particular change in gamestate and (b) the attendant nature of this PC and this NPC and (c) the related trajectory of play driven by this moment is not the product of one participant’s (the GM’s) deployment of their unique capacity as mediator of the fiction and the gamestate. Put another way, this allows both party’s (player and GM) to “play to the hilt” and simultaneously find out what happens and find out who both of these characters are and what comes next (rather than outright deciding it/dictating it).
So let me try something different. Let us try
the effects of division of labor in your standard workplace.
You know how the structure of a work environment fails when one person has too much placed upon them while another has too little (yet their compensation is roughly the same)? You know how this in turn undermines both the chemistry of the workplace and incentive structures toward individual hard work + pursuit of excellence and collective hard work + pursuit of excellence?
That is an example of the competitive integrity inherent to a system failing.
The actual agency and responsibilities toward excellence and production of an individual is disconnected from how the workplace model purports to divide those things among a collective of folks (a collective of which that alleges to pursue excellence in both (a) the chemistry of work environment and (b) whatever product the collective is putting out).
So singular individuals become disincentivized both toward competing internally with themselves to improve their capabilities and to compete as a cohesive unit toward achieving the idealized version of their unit's capabilities.
This is all due to a loss of integrity at the division of labor/agency level, individual responsibility level, and shared responsibility level. Therefore, incentive structures collapse and dysfunctional individual behavior ensues and a dysfunctional collective emerges (that simultaneously becomes intolerable to work in and fails in its effort to compete toward and then achieve their idealized version of themselves).
This is what I'm talking about. Its when meritocracy becomes totally dysfunctional. There is a marketed idea of what the workplace culture, division of labor/agency, and incentive structures is supposed to look like...and then there is the corrupt, dysfunctional version that has actually emerged (because of a host of reasons). The integrity of interpersonal competition and intrapersonal competition and team competition (toward both achieving their "best individual self" and toward outcompeting the marketplace) collapses.
One last attempt.
Imagine a game Ouija. Everyone's hands are on the planchette. Imagine we're supposed to secretly not secretly kinda take take turns guiding the planchette so we can each contribute to the creepy story of the spirit we're connecting with.
Except...
One person keeps applying too much pressure to the planchette and forcing repeated responses toward their own designs on this "spiritual interaction." Instead of us all contributing relatively equally to this (likely incoherent) creepy story, one of us has an outsized influence on the creative propulsion that produces the whole experience.
We're now having a bad time and we don't give a crap where the planchette goes or what creepy ghost story emerges. We're not going to put forth our best creative effort. We're not going to work hard to build off of what came before. Hell, one of us (or more) might make overt efforts to screw up the whole thing (acting very forcefully with the planchette or saying silly, genre-bending nonsense when they wrest the planchette from the player who has been overwhelmingly controlling it).
Roughly the same concept.
This is not saying this is what all D&D play looks like.
This is not saying this is what your (or others) D&D play looks like.
This is trying to demonstrate the concept and how things can go wildly pear-shaped because of extreme integrity loss.
www.enworld.org
