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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3506041" data-attributes="member: 4937">Oh, I read them, I just didn't think that they made alot of sense, but didn't see the point of highlighting that.  Either, "all games are all about power. I'm trying to beat you. It's locking horns, humiliating rivals, practicing for war, the whole nine yards.", or else, "Oh yeah, some games may be about something else completely the opposite."  You can claim that you can reconcile those two positions - that a game is all about being competitive but also it can also be about being cooperative - but if you want to claim that, there isn't much point in responding to that claim.Now that you mention it, I could use a drink.Well, you do realize that normally, winning does mean 'to the exclusion of all other participants' or at least 'to the exclusion of the other side' (in a team sport).  Despite what they might teach you in Kindegarden, you can't all be winners in a competitive endeavor.  That 8th place trophy means you didn't win.  Playing to win except 'at the exclusion of other players' is not to be playing to win at all in any normal sense of the word 'win'.  The game can't be fundamentally competitive and fundamentally cooperative at the same time, because those two things are the opposites.    Well you can describe it that way, but you can't 'just as well' describe it that way because there is a fundamental shift in meaning here.  In fact, saying that 'players want thier moment to shine' is a much better way to describe a cooperative game than 'players want to win'.  We can describe the reason why players want to play cooperative games and competitive games as both 'wanting thier moment to shine', but we can't describe both as players wanting to win.  RPGs are marked by not having a victory condition, and so players set thier own standards for what winning means (all of which have to do ultimately with 'having fun').  The point that I'm trying to make is that players don't necessarily define winning as 'getting a big sword' or 'casting big spells', as was previously claimed in this thread.I didn't say I never felt that enjoyment.  Obviously, when I play competitive games, that's part of the attraction.  I will say that if that was the primary reason I played RPGs, I'd not DM, because its very hard for a DM to 'prove himself'.  All the odds are stacked in your favor to begin with, because you get to stack the deck.  As a DM, much of my enjoyment comes from other players 'proving themselves'.  You've known me long enough.  Since when do I ever shut up?  Some times I just feel the thing should speak for itself for a while, because sometimes people I debate against inadvertantly make my point more elegantly than I could.</blockquote>

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