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Indeed. There's nothing about "winning" or "losing" at TRPGs that inherently means "play ends." That seems to be one of the areas of misunderstanding.

Yeah, definitely. Crome's the 900-pound gorilla, right? Someone using Microsoft's current browser is probably an Edge-case. (heh)

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...

Given those are both Webkit, I wouldn't expect a site broken in one to work in the other. That might be your point.

I think either will feel pointless, but I don't feel they'll feel like the same kind of pointless.

That's not unreasonable, really. Having your character achieve their goal/s feels a lot like winning, and having your character fail to do so feels a lot like losing, at least in my experience. But, of course, different experiences and preferences are possible.

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...

Maybe. I can see an argument that either you're thinking about it or you aren't, though it might not be your top priority and/or you might not be all that good at it. I certainly wouldn't want to play with someone who can't/won't stop quarterbacking, or with someone who can't/won't stop...

The only quibble I'd have, here--and it's a minor quibble, I'm not looking for an argument--is that I think the distinction is the extent/frequency to which "optimal tactical decision" is a criterion: Someone who intentionally never makes the optimal tactical decision is probably optimizing for...

While it can be a lot of work, it's part of the gig. Where I worked, the narrators didn't get paid to fix things, it was on them to get things right the first time if they didn't want to work for free to fix them. I have no idea what sorts of policies are in place elsewhere.

You're correct. The GM doesn't work for their own ego at all, their own fun. They work to make the game fun for everyone at the table. I'm sure this is your top priority, anyone who's read your posts knows it to be true.

My inclination is that as you move negative on the axis, you aren't making intentionally bad choices--making an intentionally bad character is, after all, arguably a form of optimization; it seems to me you'd just be putting less thought into the mechanics of your choices: picking abilities...

That seems like a perfect way for Strahd to die.

See, "knowing your character" doesn't seem like "optimizing" to me. I mean, maybe "use your character better, tactically" is close, or at least pointing in the direction of a kind of optimizing. Just knowing the rules that apply to your character, though--that just seems like knowing how to play...

That seems like a matter of personality or behavior, and not strictly about optimizing. I mean, it's at least as much a failure to fit with the table as someone wanting strong character-focused narrative/s when the rest of the table is there for a dungeoncrawl. (Which isn't snarking on...

It had its moments. Did a bit of a number on my reading for pleasure (which I've relatively recently gotten back) and utterly ruined me for audiobooks and podcasts. Which is more about "listening to someone talk" being "work" than any aesthetic judgment. Also, because we only got to read in like...

Fictional names/words ... yeah, they might not be able to find a good source. Real-world names and words, though, there are good sources for practically everything if you're willing (or required) to put in the effort. The company I worked for that recorded audiobooks did so under contract from...

I've seen--and done--that sort of thing in Supers play, though point-buy Supers TRPGs are their own various fishkettles. I have a druid character in in a campaign I'm running who's doing much more in the way of control/set-up stuff than direct damage; he's not being any kind of purist about it...

I was presuming this was someone competent--knowing how to play their character, maybe knowing the rules more broadly, just choosing not to optimize as hard as the other people at the table. It does say something about the attitude of a lot of self-professed optimizers, I guess, that you jumped...

Serious question: Have you ever seen a player who was the lone non-optimizer at the table, and how did they react to being asked to optimize more? Another: How far does a player have to go in the way of engaging with the mechanics before you define them as an "optimizer?" Is it in starting...