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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7918722" data-attributes="member: 87792">The thing is that I'm not sure that an RPG that declares competitive integrity as its apex priority would ever make for a good RPG. Almost all PvE games have different mechanics for the two sides (and many of those that don't in theory do in practice). And with competitive games with a top down view, very limited time pressure, and strict integrity you're going to end up with a game that's as dry as chess. The more you add expression being directly meaningful and asymmetry to the game the more you weaken how fair the competition is.This doesn't mean that you can't make almost fair competition a major part of a game - both 4e and oD&D do it in very different ways (challenging encounters with 4e and a push-your-luck style of dungeon crawling in oD&D) and I'd argue that having competition in whatever way makes the stakes and so the play much more meaningful and so more intense and evocative. But it's the competition and desire that matter far more than whether the competition is even claimed to be fair. And the competition and challenge being meaningful is far more important than whether it's actually fair. I'm once again going to come back to professional wrestling to illustrate this. As mentioned, it was an open secret from the 1930s onwards (if not earlier) that pro wrestling was fake - but people still watched it despite many of them knowing that, and many of those who didn't remaining deliberately ignorant. That's because there were parts that were highly real; all those stunts they carry out are real and the whole thing is done live. They are combination actor/stuntmen playing the parts of athletes competing for a belt, and the whole thing is more real than most reality TV.This degraded over the 90s (those who care can look up the Curtain Call - I'm not going to go into it) - and in 1997 came the big event that was the Montreal Screwjob in which, the official story is, that Bret Hart was told that he was going to retain his title going into the match despite the fact it was public knowledge he was going to the rival WCW soon while HBK and the referee were both told HBK were going to win - and that it would have to be done via a fast count. Anyway this happened and Bret Hart hit the roof, furious after the event and going to the papers with the story of how he was screwed out of his title.You'd have thought that the open admission that pro wrestling was fake would have killed pro wrestling - but it did the opposite. Everyone knew that pro wrestlers were actors and stuntmen, but they now knew that pro wrestlers were actors and stuntmen who cared enough about the title to screw each other for real and it suddenly became about a thousand times more compelling. And the WWE became a reality TV show about a particularly muscular backstabbing acting troupe. The competition was rigged but it was there and taken seriously by everyone. Competitive integrity wasn't a thing (Mr. McMahon (the character) as the evil boss was the biggest villain the wrestling world had ever seen) but the WWE thrived by having a way it could have genuine competition and tangible examples of people truly caring even when the game was openly acknowledged to be utterly rigged.Meanwhile the WWE's rival through the 90s, the WCW, put the biggest nail in their coffin two years later with the Fingerpoke of Doom. Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash were (in character) friends - and Nash held a championship Hogan wanted. So come the match Hogan poked Nash, Nash lay down for Hogan, Hogan "pinned" him, and match over. Along with any sort of possibility the wrestlers actually cared about the championship. So what were they doing there other than muscular pairs gymnastics? And if they didn't care about the prize why should the audience?The WWE claims to be about wrestling, but since 1997 at the very latest anyone with a clue has known it really isn't. But it's at its best when they treat it as if it's about wrestling and winning the championship even if it's about actors playing those parts? Is this deceitful? No more than the briefcase in Pulp Fiction being deceitful when it was what everyone wanted but it was just a briefcase with a yellow light in it.On the other hand (and this is turning into a ramble) RPGs need to show what they do on a meta level. You at least need to show a bit behind the curtain.On the ... what am I? An octopus? It isn't remotely false to say that wrestlers want belts and championships and are competing to get them. The belt is respect, fame, and money. If you pitch pro wrestling as being about athletes training and competing to win championship belts every word of that is true. It's just the field of competition that's slightly different. Is this dishonest?And I'm rambling and think I finished with my point several paragraphs back. But which parts of competition matter and what honesty in an artificial environment are is an interesting question.(And no I didn't mean to imply that I dislike chess - just that it's dry and abstract compared to e.g. League of Legends or Smash Ultimate, or even any RPG).</blockquote>

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