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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9209361" data-attributes="member: 29398">Winning is one and the same: it has value, and it's fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I don't recognize that, because I don't think that most people do feel that way.This entirely depends on why the journey is being made, and we could jump off from here into all sorts of philosophical meanderings that don't interest me all that much.  In the case of D&D, while the journey can sometimes be enjoyable in itself the real reason for doing it is and remains the payoff at the end.The failure states in a puzzle come either a) on the realization that the puzzle is outright beyond the solver's ability to solve, or b) on the realization that the puzzle itself is somehow incomplete (e.g. a missing piece in a jigsaw, or insufficient information in a logic problem, etc.).This analogy falls apart if-when one eschews cheating.  Using a teleporter (or a bicycle) to win a running race is clearly cheating, while using the 5-MWD as a means of succeeding in D&D play is fully within the rules.A better analogy might be one where in a long-distance running race I'm wearing different shoes from everyone else, shoes that give me a bit more bounce in my step thus making me run a bit faster while reducing fatigue in my legs.  There's no rules against it, I still have to run the distance, yet it gives me a better chance of winning.And as that sense of self-preservation in all likelihood very closely reflects the thinking of the characters in the fiction and is thus what those characters would reasonably try to do, I can't possibly argue against it.That's where having a game-state reward for individual risk-taking comes in: it provides a counter-incentive to that self-preservation mantra and (hopefully) a choice whether to go high-risk high-reward or low-risk low-reward.I conflate enjoyable with valued because to me they're pretty much the same thing: the value is the enjoyment, even if that enjoyment might be slightly delayed.  In D&D, that means some things you might see as tedious (e.g. careful resource management) are enjoyable due to the enjoyment of the later payoff.Same is true of "grinding" in a video game - the enjoyment comes from the later payoff.Except - and D&D is a good example - you're inevitably going to hit situations where "fun tasks" and "valuable things" are diametrically opposed; and then what do you do?  For example, tracking resources might not be a fun task but without having put in that work the end payoff isn't nearly as valuable when it arrives.WotC-era D&D has, I think, largely gone the route of skipping over or negating the task side while promoting the valuable-things side.I disagree with this claim.  When [I forget which sports coach it was] said "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing", he wasn't speaking in a vacuum and was, I think, speaking for the majority when it comes to things like sports and games...of which D&D is one.When I played M:tG I was, by these definitions, a failed Timmy/Johnny combo (all my brilliant ideas only worked in my head, crashing and burning as soon as they saw real play); and was never anywhere near good enough to be Spike.What I disagree with is the implied assertion that D&D-Spike optimizes all the fun out of the game - and I say this as, myself, very much a non-optimizer when it comes to things like "character builds".  Further, the characters having and using a sense of self-preservation in the fiction in no way falls under "optimizing the fun out of the game", and I say that as a long time player-side risk-taker who has sacrificed many a character on the altar of "in for a penny, in for a pound".</blockquote>

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