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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5646373" data-attributes="member: 42582">But does everyone - or, even, anyone - take that foreword seriously?Gygaxian D&D is about promoting, and rewarding, "skilled play" (see the discussion in the last few pages of Gygax's PHB, and scattered throught his DMG). Does anyone think that there's not competition here?Here are some passages from Tunnels and Trolls (which I cribbed from <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/21/" target="_blank">here</a> - I haven't got my book ready-to-hand):Every time your character escapes from a tunnel alive, you may consider yourself a winner. The higher the level and the more wealth your character attains, the better you are doing in comparison to all the other players.  . . As long as a character remains alive - regardless of how many adventures he or she participates in - you are "winning." If ill fate befalls the character, or if you overextend yourself in playing your character's capabilities, the character dies and it is your loss. Of course, these games allow you to play any number of characters (sometimes referred to as a "stable of characters") and some will survive and advance, and everyone wins in the end. I don't think that T&T was taking some radical new approach to dungeon delving here. I think this is how a lot of D&D was played. And how some D&D - especially in the OSR - still is played.Wittgenstein, in his Philosophical Investigations, uses the word "game" as the starting point for his attack on the notion of essence ("true categorization"). From para 66:Consider for example the proceedings we call "games". . . What is common to them all? . . . For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. . . Are they all 'amusing'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. . . Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared!Even if one puts to one side the competitive dimension of much D&D play, I think it is very obviously a game. (I don't think that that precludes it also being a means for the production of aesthetic value.)</blockquote>

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