Optimisation in PC building

[pemerton]

The purpose of a roleplaying game (or at least the ones we eternally talk about) is to have fun. So overall, people play to have fun, and that's why many people will say role-playing games have no win condition, and essentially I'd agree with them.

I play Moose in the House with my kids to have fun, but Moose in the House absolutely has a win condition (have the fewest moose in your house at the end of the game!). So I don't see any reason to correlate playing to have fun with no win conditions.

Even a cooperative game like Forbidden Island has a win condition and loss conditions.

D&D is very strong in equating a fun time with successful resolution techniques; it lacks rewards for failure, meta-currency, success-at-a-cost, and most other modern systems that make it an enjoyable experience for your character to fail at resolution.

I agree with this.

Also, the more that successful resolution involves playing the fiction - which is a real thing in (say) Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel, whereas is hardly a thing at all in (say) Cortex+ Heroic and is a very different thing in (say) 4e D&D - then the less the mechanical aspects of PC build are determinate. Or at least they come into play in quite a different fashion.

 

[Emerikol]

I admit I don't get the obsession some people have with balance which I suppose drives these win condition discussions. If the group had fun, then the players are winners. If they did not have fun then they are losers. I've had players who are obsessed with maximizing their abilities and get a lot out of thinking they are the best at something. I also have players who could care less about that and are focused on some other aspect of play.

So when someone says a "win" condition, are they not implying they are beating someone else? At what? kills? Who cares. I don't. My group doesn't. Maybe those who are obsessed with being uber keep count for their own pleasure but the rest of us just don't care.

 

[jasper]

never mind off topic

 

[Umbran]

I admit I don't get the obsession some people have with balance which I suppose drives these win condition discussions. If the group had fun, then the players are winners. If they did not have fun then they are losers.

If you're into blaming the victim and washing your hands of the thing, sure.

If you're into helping your players have as much fun as they can, maybe there's a more constructive way of approaching the topic. People's fun can be ruined by things outside their control - like the actions of other people - and just labelling all of them "losers" when that happens doesn't make anyone's game better.

So when someone says a "win" condition, are they not implying they are beating someone else?

No. Have you never played solitaire? There's plenty of solo games out there.

 

[Emerikol]

If you're into blaming the victim and washing your hands of the thing, sure.

I was speaking of the one who lost. It was not a judgment like someone saying "you are a loser". It was merely an observation that if no one had fun then everyone lost. If they all had fun then they won.

If you're into helping your players have as much fun as they can, maybe there's a more constructive way of approaching the topic. People's fun can be ruined by things outside their control - like the actions of other people - and just labelling all of them "losers" when that happens doesn't make anyone's game better.

Well my observation is that if you care about optimization and being one of the most powerful PCs then you do certain things and you care about certain things. My point was that not everyone engages in that game and they don't need to engage to have fun. The people who have played rogues in my games in older editions definitely had weaker PCs in combat. Some people just don't care. If you care and can't get what you like then of course you are not going to have fun. My observation is that not everyone is obsessed with whether their character performed better in combat than someone elses. YMMV.

No. Have you never played solitaire? There's plenty of solo games out there.

Fair enough. You are playing against the game itself. I don't see typical D&D games as having that sort of nature. My groups had fun and those who cared about certain things pursued those things but others could care less. If everyone had fun that is the goal.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

I play Moose in the House with my kids to have fun, but Moose in the House absolutely has a win condition (have the fewest moose in your house at the end of the game!). So I don't see any reason to correlate playing to have fun with no win conditions.

Even a cooperative game like Forbidden Island has a win condition and loss conditions.

Absolutely -- I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I did not mean to equate "play to have fun" with "no win condition", but meant to say that for roleplaying games at least, "playing to win" is a secondary criterion, with "fun" the more general one. So for some people and some systems, you can not care about winning and have fun. I think it's those people who point out that you replaying games don't have a win condition, and overall it does seem that it's as valid a position as those who do think need to have a win condition to have fun.

For board games the emphasis is different, definitely. They overwhelmingly define their fun in terms of competition. However the recent rise in co-op games, and especially legacy cop-op games, shows that even for a genre defined by adversarial resolution, that more and more people just don't see that need anymore.

D&D has its roots in adversarial wargaming, so it's not surprising that it still defines fun via defeating enemies, winning challenges, etc. But it's an interesting question as to whether the hobby as a whole feels that that is a defining part of roleplaying. Given the dominance of D&D, it probably still is fair to say that it's the most usual expectation, but I think we do need to concede that the minority position that you don't need to win to have fun is held by a sizable minority.

 

[Bilharzia]

...

 

[Fenris-77]

If you look at the breadth of available games the vast majority of them have combat as some kind of key component. The vastness gets even more stark when you take sales into account. I think that answers the question posed above.

 

[pemerton]

If you look at the breadth of available games the vast majority of them have combat as some kind of key component. The vastness gets even more stark when you take sales into account. I think that answers the question posed above.

Sorry, which question?

 

[pemerton]

Well my observation is that if you care about optimization and being one of the most powerful PCs then you do certain things and you care about certain things.

<snip>

My observation is that not everyone is obsessed with whether their character performed better in combat than someone elses.

When you refer to a character being powerful are you meaning powerful in combat?