Winning and losing in RPGs...

Years ago I was DMing for two young nephews, and when one of them (9 y.o. at the time) was disappointed about failing a climbing check, I asked him to narrate why he failed the climbing check. He looked confused, then he he said, "Um...because there was moss on the rock and it caused me to slip!"

When I nodded and said, "Ok, moss it is," he got this look of wonder on his face and said breathlessly, "That was cool."

That's winning at D&D.

MGibster said:

For most games, there are conditions which are met that will end the game immediate. When a player is put into checkmate, or they resign, or they run out of time on the clock the chess match ends immediately. For RPGs it's a bit different in that there aren't any definite conditions that end the game immediately. My character can beat the big bad evil guy, can die, or have a myriad of other outcomes that won't necessarily result in the end of the game. Essentially we keep playing until we decide we don't want to play any more.

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Well, note that in many multi-player games, several players can lose before the game ends. You can go bankrupt in Monopoly, and the game goes on without you.

overgeeked said:

So, for the people who think you as a player can "lose" RPGs...please explain how that works.

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The best analogy I can come up with is that it's like running a marathon.

Scores will be taken. There will technically be a "winner" and a "loser". Objectively, you can look at scores and assign numeric values to how well people did. As a participant, you want to do the best you can and achieve the best ranking possible.

However, there is also an assumption that taking part in the race/game is the real achievement. Just getting past the finish line (even in last place) is a win, and even if you don't get to the finish line you appreciate the time spent trying.

The biggest thing is that enjoyment comes out of the attempt. But at the end of the attempt, you also want to now how you did. How fast did you go? If you failed, how far did you get? Can you do better next time? Will your next attempt start from a worse position, or will it be optimized?

In the same vein, we should acknowledge that's it's okay be upset by losing. If you've always passed the finish line before, it's okay to feel bad that you got injured and couldn't this time. If your score goes down, it's okay be feel sad about not doing your best. But we expect people to respond to those failures with good sportsmanship. The hope is that everyone comes back and tries again. And if someone decides it's time to quit, that's okay, too.

Deset Gled said:

In the same vein, we should acknowledge that's it's okay be upset by losing. If you've always passed the finish line before, it's okay to feel bad that you got injured and couldn't this time. If your score goes down, it's okay be feel sad about not doing your best. But we expect people to respond to those failures with good sportsmanship. The hope is that everyone comes back and tries again. And if someone decides it's time to quit, that's okay, too.

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This makes me want to 3D print some compensatory prizes to hand to people who die in my Shadowdark game....

The concepts of winning and losing are difficult in a story-based, episodic game...which most RPGs are.

My take on it: an RPG is a vehicle for different stories and missions. Your character can complete or fail those missions, but the game doesn't end when they do. So you might "win" or "lose" those individual missions, but not the game as a whole. Winning or losing implies the game is over--so what happens if the game never ends?

A lot of folks don't make a distinction between the game and the story, though. For them, the current mission IS THE ENTIRE GAME, and they need clearly defined failure modes and win conditions in order to reach a satisfying conclusion. That's not me, but I can understand that point of view.

prabe said:

You almost got there. You win, as a player, by having your character achieve their goal/s--this can be kinda fractal, goals can be nested or nearly so. You lose, as a player, by having your character fail to achieve their goals--again, this can be fractal and goals can be nested. It doesn't have to be about some single specific roll (though there's nothing to say a single specific roll won't do it). The character's goals can be inherent to them, or not; and not can be something arising from the situation/scenario/adventure, or it can plausibly be a fellow PC's goal/s. (The extent to which deciding to pursue another PC's goal makes it at least in part your goal is a question I'm not endeavoring to answer.)

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This comes close to my feelings. Winning and losing in an RPG are mostly down to the mission at hand, but success or failure are usually more applicable terms.

It's when character death occurs that it tends to feel more like actually losing the game. I've known a lot of players who have hopes and plans for particular characters, and enjoy playing those characters. If that character fails in their goals it feels a bit like a loss, but is mostly a setback in their story and that story can continue. But if and when the character dies without possibility of resurrection and the player can no longer use them, unless the player is satisfied with that being the end of that character's story, that inevitably feels like a loss. The character has lost their final battle or struggle. The player certainly feels like they've lost something, and if they can't use that character in that game anymore... they have lost something.

TPKs can feel like a genuine loss for the entire group, because they break the continuity of the story and represent the termination of all the efforts that went into that group of characters. Sometimes the group can rally and pick up the pieces / resume the campaign with a new set of PCs, but it still definitely feels like they lost, even if they do resume.

This is one reason why I find the Daggerheart death rules interesting- because they normally put the choice in the player's hands of whether to risk it or deliberately go out gloriously.

Wining and losing are what characters do; do not what players do. As a player, your focus is having fun and (I strongly hope) helping others have fun. A player does not win, unless they happen to be in an actual competition (like the Cthulhu Masters).

But players can be happy with how their character is doing, or disappointed, and if they want to describe that as "winning" or "losing", sure, why not? The only time I'd be unhappy is if a player was "winning" by making another person "lose".

In the Pendragon game I run, my players are rich barons with heirs and spares, decent armies and are in the top 10 in the land with their weapon skills. The Great Pendragon Campaign actually does describe this as "winning" and suggests the characters retire and hand over the story to their heirs.

You could make a case that getting a character to the point where they don't have any unfulfilled desired is "a player winning D&D". I have no issue with that either.

CleverNickName said:

The concepts of winning and losing are difficult in a story-based, episodic game...which most RPGs are.

My take on it: an RPG is a vehicle for different stories and missions. Your character can complete or fail those missions, but the game doesn't end when they do. So you might "win" or "lose" those individual missions, but not the game as a whole.

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Exactly. It's one reason why all this talk of winning and losing and various sports, marathon, or game analogies just fall flat for me. It's a game in the same sense that catch is a game. There's no winning or losing. You play until you don't want to any more. If you fail to catch the ball you can just pick it up and keep playing. There is no win condition nor any lose condition. It's a story that keeps going regardless of the details right up until you want it to stop.

CleverNickName said:

A lot of folks don't make a distinction between the game and the story. For them, the current mission IS THE ENTIRE GAME, and they need clearly defined failure modes and win conditions in order to reach a satisfying conclusion. That's not me, but I can understand that point of view.

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That's not me either, but I really don't get it. It just doesn't compute. It's like hearing people talk about winning or losing catch. Winning or losing a story. The concept just doesn't apply. Like at all.

Mannahnin said:

This comes close to my feelings. Winning and losing in an RPG are mostly down to the mission at hand, but success or failure are usually more applicable terms.

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Yeah. Your character can succeed or fail at a task in the game or a goal in the game, but that in no way carries over to the player winning or losing the game.

overgeeked said:

Yeah. Your character can succeed or fail at a task in the game or a goal in the game, but that in no way carries over to the player winning or losing the game.

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This is the crux of where people are seeing things differently. To the extent that the player playing well (and yes, "the player playing well" will mean different things to different people/tables) matters to the character succeeding or failing, the outcome will correlate (for some players at least) with winning or losing. Obviously that matters differently to different people, which is fine--as with other preferences it needs to be accounted for by the people at the table is all.

Brendan Byrd said:

I tend to think "win/lose" is better suited to games with "endings".
To me, a RPG is structured to be more "open-ended", so I tend to think in "suceed/fail".

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I personally have found that open ended nature to be the most useful way to explain the design/structural challenges of the RPG vs. other kinds of games. Players get to set their own victory conditions (or at least pick between several) and play continues after the evaluation of victory, generally including on loss.