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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8436473" data-attributes="member: 71699">Working from your overview, it seems to me straightforward to say that infinite games can also be nested in finite games. Imagine we are playing classic Risk, and some players decide to play out the story of a cannon crew.Another way I have seen this put is as games with closure and without. One concern would be to ask how the proposed model treats the metagame? For example, in a Chess tournament I may indeed play closed games of Chess, and yet the tournament is not closed based on a given game. "Ah" one might say, "but the tournament itself is closed!" But then there is the matter of my Elo, which carries over - spanning games and tournaments.The relevant game theory terms are zero and non-zero sum, and what is described is very different from how finite and infinite seems to be being used. Win conditions don't tell us a game is closed, but can tell us the game is zero-sum. You can see that by supposing that the win condition is something so elusive, so remote, that the putatively finite game will prove to be infinite.The distinction between the player and character goes down a misleading path. In games, players always control pieces that hold their state and translate their intents into events (or attempts at events) in the game world. We still speak of the player winning. The line of argument would have it that the Rook and Queen that checkmate the King win, rather than the player! An ontological distinction between sport and game might be that player and piece are identical in sports, but then we have esports...It's an interesting area for discussion. The terms I am drawn to are zero and non-zero sum from game theory (to describe whether all that do not win must lose) and closure (to describe if the game has no consequence.) Games that genuinely have closure are rare, and generally not found to be satisfying. Most games have a metagame that gives meaning to the individual outcome.Which is where one can see that 5e is not an infinite game, but rather one where the metagame is explicit. So that a given combat has closure (at the end of the final turn of the final round of the combat), but an explicit metagame carries forward consequences.It seems to me that there is ample evidence of that mismatch being observed sans the finite-infinite games mental model. Therefore it would seem that finite-infinite might be being introduced as an explanation for that mismatch. I fear it might rather act to obfuscate. I don't need to play Chess with a goal of winning, and yet according to the model the finite nature of Chess ought to explain my behaviour... I expect you can see the problem,I appreciate you introducing this interesting mental model or theory for conversation! Above I've tried to lay out a few initial concerns that I have relating to the concept as I grasp it.</blockquote>

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