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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8232089" data-attributes="member: 75787">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.</blockquote>