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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6696474" data-attributes="member: 4937">Err... not really.  D&D quite famously doesn't have any fixed win condition.  You set your own object of play.That's because the objective of Scrabble is to win the game and you win the game when you finish with the most points.   But the objective of D&D is not 'to win' (or at least, there will be no agreement that this is true) and the person with the most XP doesn't 'win' (which is certainly true).  To be quite frank, you are now appearing to be openly disingenuous, because it's abundantly clear you don't even believe the stuff you are spouting about the objective of the game being to gain levels.Yeah, right.  And obviously the gaining of levels isn't even the particular underlying objective.   For example, if I play in a tournament scenario, which at least does have the objective of 'win', then gaining levels won't necessarily and probably won't be the measurement of success.   And if my group plays a one shot, the goal won't be to level up, but to conclude the story successfully.   And even if we are playing a normal campaign, the goal isn't to 'gain levels', but something particular to the campaign.   The point is that gaining levels is not the fundamental objective of the game, generally isn't even in the rare occasions the game is played competitively.But it's not even worth me continuing to argue that obvious fact, because it doesn't really matter.   Even if it was the underlying objective, it by no means followed that any means of obtaining that objective was good.  If I smash the evil dingus, lift the curse from the valley, rescue the captive children, slay the undead menace and return the stolen treasure to the good townsfolk, that's a very different method of obtaining XP than if I burn the town down, smash in the skulls of the children, slay the high priest of light on his own alter, and loot the town treasury.   Even amongst the usually rapacious greedy behavior generally observed in PC's, the players generally distinguish between the modes of behavior.  Nothing about the game forces characters to play in morally reprehensible ways.   Greed still wouldn't be good.  It would still matter how you got your score.  And players would care.   At the very least, it informs you that you are going to be playing evil characters in some sort of game about greedy acquisition.  Of course, that's a bunch of BS, because we both know that fundamentally that's not what D&D is about, and no one is required to a play an evil character.  Fundamentally, D&D is a role-playing game.  Fundamentally, D&D has elements of a simulation in it.   Fundamentally, D&D is about acting out a character.   Fundamentally, D&D is about playing out a role in a fantasy story of your own making.   The XP isn't what it's about, as you yourself have managed to admit through all your hemming and hawing.   If it was really true that D&D had as its fundamental objective gaining levels, then your preference of "level-ups to be no more than a side effect of ongoing play" would be just doing it wrong.   But in fact, the fundamental objective is in fact roleplaying, and the level ups are incidental.   We could switch that around for some sort of tournament scenario and say, "The only thing that matters is winning.", however that was defined for the scenario, and we could in fact ignore the characterization and by and large the story in favor of winning, but that's not the default way to play.The one player that has no PC deaths in my current campaign is the one player who is psychologically incapable of playing anything but an honest, forthright, generous, honorable, self-sacrificing character.  It drives the other players up the wall that he's not more ruthless and he ruins their 'cunning' plans by blurting out the truth.   But then, he's not died yet either and if XP was the measure of success, he'd be the leader.Monopoly is a game where you pretend to be ruthless land barons, engaging in the worst sort of rent seeking behavior, driving your competitors into destitute bankruptcy and obtaining Monopoly control over the real estate so you can lord it over your tenants as a slum lord.  So long as you keep in mind that this is not behavior we want to emulate, then Monopoly is made harmless by its frivolity.   But there isn't usually a lot of role-playing going on in Monopoly, and there is little or no capacity to get confused about what is going on here.</blockquote>

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