Winning and losing in RPGs...

[prabe]

So how do you prevent yourself from just going beast mode and winning as the referee? How do you maintain that neutral arbiter that's required for these games to work?

The asymmetry of the roles helps a lot, here. Things like "winning is meaningless if I can just decide to win" and "the point of play is to see what the PCs do, what stories emerge from their actions and interactions." It helps if I feel constrained by rules--including social contracts--and it helps that I have a pretty strongly developed sense of fair play.

Yeah, that's almost completely alien to me. RPGs aren't sports or competitions, so there's zero need for scoring or winning, etc. Certainly not in any faux-objective sense. Same with "playing better." Don't think you could even if you tried. It just doesn't compute. I'm very much more on the improv and FAFO end of the spectrum. First time I saw things like the "rules" for improv and the PbtA branch of RPGs it was like a dozen things I'd had floating around in my head suddenly clicked into place. Which is weirdly also why I love the OSR so much. Gimme a dozen random tables and a table of players and let's go.

Yeah, I find the way PbtA stacks the probabilities to be deeply ... unsatisfactory. And we've gone around a time or three already about what winning and losing mean in TRPGs and whether they're possible or even exist, and I'm not going to have that discussion again. The closest other activity I can think of to how I GM is free-writing a novel (and writing a novel isn't the same as GMing, I'm well aware of that) though things like group-writing exercises and playing in garage bands come pretty close--both of which are very in-the-moment and reactive-to-others.

 

[aramis erak]

This idea keeps popping up and has for awhile now. Not sure how far back it goes as I don't remember Jon Peterson covering it in either Playing At the World or The Elusive Shift. I've never understood the idea that you can win or lose while playing RPGs. People claim that since it's a game, you can win or lose. But RPGs simply are not that kind of game.

There is a clear loss condition: It wasn't fun. That you don't understand that others see clear loss conditions speaks volumes about you, but nothing at all about the nature of RPGs.

Also: Lacking a win condition is not axiomatically a lack of loss conditions. Lacking a loss condition, however, generally also lacks a win condition, a loss without win is about pushing one's luck or skill, while a win condition without loss conditions is a simple matter of continuing until the win.
Also, Moldvay ignored the existence of RPG tournaments and tourney modules...

For a comparison: Sim City. There technically is no game defined win condition, but there is a very clear loss condition: your city gets destroyed faster than you can repair.
Or most arcade games: no defined win, but out of lives is a loss condition; to get a win condition, one needs to go beyond the rules in the program, and set one's own goals.

This has been called out in RPGs themselves for decades.

And it's been «bleep»ing wrong for decades.

One standout example is the foreword to Moldvay Basic with, "The D&D game has neither losers nor winners, it has only gamers who relish exercising their imagination." You'd think decades of lines like that would be enough, but no, the idea persists. So here we are...

Moldvay was wrong, and it was as obvious to me in 1981 as it is now.
Moldvay comes at it from a naïf perspective; a good thing for the new player to not worry about win/loss... but as logically false as the sun being green; it's grounded in a truth, but misrepresents the practical realities. Realities that humans inherently set goals, and that blackbody radiation never has green dominate the visual spectrum.

• If one's in it for the story, there are play conditions that result in an unsatisfactory story. That's a loss. Examples include
  • Illogical story
  • story is boring
  • story angers the player
• If one's in it for the push-your-luck aspects, getting your run ended is a loss. Need not even be a dead PC... a forced to return to town is just as much a loss in the classic Moldvay/Cook style...
• If one's in it for the action tactical play, i.e.: a wargamer style, both a talk-it-all-out session and a session where your character fails tactically are both loss conditions.
• If one is in it for the collaboration, for the story input, a GM railroad is a loss condition.
• Mission based play as mission success as a potential win and mission failure as an additional failure condition.

Plenty of fairly obvious loss conditions... but only a few potential win conditions. The simplest and most universal being, "did I have fun?" I've had sessions where I didn't. I've quit groups because I wasn't having fun; it felt very much like loss after loss... it was a railroad, it lacked any tactical feel of play, whether that be social or martial conflict.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know why you'd want to play a game about it at that point, better just to do collaborative storytelling outright.

To me, the only thing you need is the task-resolution mechanic because collaborative storytelling is duller than dirt. You need something to break the deadlocks and inject chaos into the game. Given their druthers, most gamers would simply narrate themselves winning all the time with zero obstacles, challenges, or consequences. No thanks.

Plus the rules are kind of the point; it should be fun to use them and know about them. If it's not, then they should be different.

Exactly. That's why I prefer absolutely minimalistic rules. Beyond a page or so, they're just boring to use at the table. They get in the say rather than help facilitate play.

I like rules; if there aren't really any and I'm just making stuff up, then it's kind of a waste of the "game" part of the activity.

Paradoxically, I'm also a system-head. I love reading new systems, figuring out the rules, and seeing if there's anything new to grab. Seeing different ways the bits and pieces fit together. They're inherently interesting as a thing unto themselves. But they're also almost universally boring as hell to try to use at the table. They're a distraction. A barrier to actually playing the game. It's being a system-head for 40+ years and having hundreds of systems stuffed into my meat-computer that's lead me directly to abandoning most mechanics as superfluous.

It's like you're driving a car down the street and the green light ahead of you changes to yellow...so you pull out the driver's manual and look up what you're supposed to do. Put the book down and drive the damn car.

The important thing, to me, is keeping the game moving. Not getting the rules exactly right. Once you have that resolution mechanic, you're set. The rest is just details.

 

[prabe]

To me, the only thing you need is the task-resolution mechanic because collaborative storytelling is duller than dirt. You need something to break the deadlocks and inject chaos into the game. Given their druthers, most gamers would simply narrate themselves winning all the time with zero obstacles, challenges, or consequences. No thanks.

If they're unwilling to accept the possibility of losing, I wouldn't call them "gamers." They're certainly not willing to play any sort of actual game. If you want to just narrate things happening, go ahead and write that novel--and find out that "winning all the time with zero obstacles, challenges, or consequences" doesn't work for that, either.

 

[overgeeked]

The asymmetry of the roles helps a lot, here. Things like "winning is meaningless if I can just decide to win" and "the point of play is to see what the PCs do, what stories emerge from their actions and interactions." It helps if I feel constrained by rules--including social contracts--and it helps that I have a pretty strongly developed sense of fair play.

Exactly. If you have the ability to simply declare yourself the winner, winning and losing are irrelevant. So if you can simply declare your own goals and decide when you've achieved them and that's how you define winning and losing...

Yeah, I find the way PbtA stacks the probabilities to be deeply ... unsatisfactory.

It's not the success ladder that's the draw for me. It's almost everything else. Play to find out. The principles, the agendas, the fronts, the clocks, fiction-first, fail forward, etc. If I could rewrite the success ladder it would either be the full spectrum of "yes, and..." or something like 1-3 no, and; 4-6 yes, but. Or, honestly, just use the proposed Yes, And system from that Adventure Time game that never happened. Brilliant bit of design that.

And we've gone around a time or three already about what winning and losing mean in TRPGs and whether they're possible or even exist, and I'm not going to have that discussion again. The closest other activity I can think of to how I GM is free-writing a novel (and writing a novel isn't the same as GMing, I'm well aware of that) though things like group-writing exercises and playing in garage bands come pretty close--both of which are very in-the-moment and reactive-to-others.

For me it's closer to catch or improv. You're simply reacting to the other participants up until you decide to stop. Whether that's stop for the pizza, stop for the session, or stop forever. It's just a perpetual action-reaction loop. To me, that's the game. The numbers on the sheet and gibberish in the books are superfluous.

 

[prabe]

Exactly. If you have the ability to simply declare yourself the winner, winning and losing are irrelevant. So if you can simply declare your own goals and decide when you've achieved them and that's how you define winning and losing...

Clearly we are looking at the asymmetries differently. As we are with so much else.

It's not the success ladder that's the draw for me. It's almost everything else. Play to find out. The principles, the agendas, the fronts, the clocks, fiction-first, fail forward, etc.

Thing for me is, I got to much of the GMing stuff on my own, though by often circuitous paths.

For me it's closer to catch or improv. You're simply reacting to the other participants up until you decide to stop. Whether that's stop for the pizza, stop for the session, or stop forever. It's just a perpetual action-reaction loop. To me, that's the game. The numbers on the sheet and gibberish in the books are superfluous.

And again, we see things approximately opposite. If you're playing a game, the rules have to matter.

 

[overgeeked]

If they're unwilling to accept the possibility of losing, I wouldn't call them "gamers." They're certainly not willing to play any sort of actual game. If you want to just narrate things happening, go ahead and write that novel--and find out that "winning all the time with zero obstacles, challenges, or consequences" doesn't work for that, either.

Eh. If given the chance gamers will optimize the fun out of the game. The fun part is generally the challenge and risk of losing. Playing better and playing to win necessitate minimizing risks generally and the possibility of losing specifically. So with that in mind, the "best gamer" would be the one who plays in such a way that there is no risk of losing because they've played so well that they've completely removed it.

 

[prabe]

Eh. If given the chance gamers will optimize the fun out of the game.

Only if they think the game is boring. (Seriously, this is a crap line and I'm sick of seeing/hearing it.)

The fun part is generally the challenge and risk of losing. Playing better and playing to win necessitate minimizing risks generally and the possibility of losing specifically. So with that in mind, the "best gamer" would be the one who plays in such a way that there is no risk of losing because they've played so well that they've completely removed it.

There are real fundamental differences between someone who is playing to win and someone who is playing not to lose. In a TRPG it's possible to encourage the former and discourage the latter.

 

[overgeeked]

Clearly we are looking at the asymmetries differently. As we are with so much else.

And again, we see things approximately opposite. If you're playing a game, the rules have to matter.

Yeah. That does seem to be the trend.

Thing for me is, I got to much of the GMing stuff on my own, though by often circuitous paths.

Same. As I said above, I had a lot of that in my head already but a lot of things clicked when I encounter improv and PbtA.

Only if they think the game is boring. (Seriously, this is a crap line and I'm sick of seeing/hearing it.)

Well, it's true. Video game devs have been seeing it and talking about it and analyzing it for years. They've advanced to the point of having to design games around players optimizing the fun out of the game with various push/pull mechanics and directly rewarding play they want to see and punishing play they don't. It's wild what the "I must win" mindset will cause people to do. Play in the most boring and optimized way possible just to win.

There are real fundamental differences between someone who is playing to win and someone who is playing not to lose. In a TRPG it's possible to encourage the former and discourage the latter.

Given that it's not possible to win or lose an RPG I don't see how.

I hope you take that last with the good humor it was intended.

 

[Pedantic]

To me, the only thing you need is the task-resolution mechanic because collaborative storytelling is duller than dirt. You need something to break the deadlocks and inject chaos into the game. Given their druthers, most gamers would simply narrate themselves winning all the time with zero obstacles, challenges, or consequences. No thanks.

This is... Strange. Like, the reason systems are interesting is to present challenges that can be honestly engaged with. If you're not going to do that, you're not playing a game at all, and the whole point of the activity is different. Plus, why would you want the "gamers" there if you're not going to play a game?

Exactly. That's why I prefer absolutely minimalistic rules. Beyond a page or so, they're just boring to use at the table. They get in the say rather than help facilitate play.

This is just absolutely alien to me. Rules can't "get in the way" unless maybe they're poorly implemented/designed. They might be fiddly, but they ultimately are the structure of the thing. Getting them out of the way is also not to do the thing. I can understand a preference for simplicity, but that's an expensive design requirement and constrains the space you can build gameplay in.

The important thing, to me, is keeping the game moving. Not getting the rules exactly right. Once you have that resolution mechanic, you're set. The rest is just details.

I think my position is maybe best understood by attaching RPGs to the same spectrum board games live in. I think of them as different in quantity, presenting more board states, unbounded play and so on, but not findamentally different in kind. It's still a surprise to me how often the understanding of "game" in the field is coming from improv or theatre instead. It feels increasingly to me that's the angle designs and often players approach from.