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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8435641" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>Many are more or less told that it's not possible to "win" RPGs, and I suspect that the pushback against any notion of "winning" in RPGs comes at least partly from a conflation of two different senses of "winning."</p><p></p><p>In one sense, "winning" means a thing <em>ends</em>. There is a final, clear victor. E.g. the World Series has a clear win condition: the first team to win four games is the winner of that year's World Series. In this sense, no one "wins" D&D because its ending is generally not related to winning per se, but to the opportunity to play, or the narrative structure. A philosophical commitment to "you can't win D&D" thus becomes, when fully spelled-out, "You can't <em>end</em> D&D play purely through some kind of metric of wins."</p><p></p><p>In another sense, "winning" just means "finding success." E.g. winning a combat, winning a drinking contest, winning someone's hand in marriage, etc. In this sense, D&D is full of winning, and indeed the whole point of playing is to win, to achieve your goals.</p><p></p><p>D&D isn't alone in this. One cannot "win life," as in, there is no victory condition for being a living person. But people do speak of "winning <em>at</em> life," finding superlative success in all of one's endeavors. So, perhaps it is useful then to say, "One cannot <em>win</em> D&D, but one can <em>win at</em> D&D"?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8435641, member: 6790260"] Many are more or less told that it's not possible to "win" RPGs, and I suspect that the pushback against any notion of "winning" in RPGs comes at least partly from a conflation of two different senses of "winning." In one sense, "winning" means a thing [I]ends[/I]. There is a final, clear victor. E.g. the World Series has a clear win condition: the first team to win four games is the winner of that year's World Series. In this sense, no one "wins" D&D because its ending is generally not related to winning per se, but to the opportunity to play, or the narrative structure. A philosophical commitment to "you can't win D&D" thus becomes, when fully spelled-out, "You can't [I]end[/I] D&D play purely through some kind of metric of wins." In another sense, "winning" just means "finding success." E.g. winning a combat, winning a drinking contest, winning someone's hand in marriage, etc. In this sense, D&D is full of winning, and indeed the whole point of playing is to win, to achieve your goals. D&D isn't alone in this. One cannot "win life," as in, there is no victory condition for being a living person. But people do speak of "winning [I]at[/I] life," finding superlative success in all of one's endeavors. So, perhaps it is useful then to say, "One cannot [I]win[/I] D&D, but one can [I]win at[/I] D&D"? [/QUOTE]
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Respect Mah Authoritah: Thoughts on DM and Player Authority in 5e
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