Winning and losing in RPGs...

[overgeeked]

Yeah. I mean, I try to respect people's feelings, generally, but I don't - quite - understand why anyone is too put out by that sort of thing (barring some sort of internalized trauma). I guess what I'm saying is, while I think that your hypothetical GM ought to show more empathy, I get why they fail at it.

Despite not getting the whole win or lose mentality, this is something I do get.

Modern players invest a lot of time and energy into their characters. Writing backstories, forming future plans, writing out their character "build" to max level, etc. And in a lot of games the actual act of character creation takes a long time. So it makes perfect sense for players to...for lack of a better word...mourn that loss.

This is also why I vastly prefer games with quicker character creation (random is best) and styles of play that don't involve incredibly intricate character backstories and all the rest. Your PC got squished? Oh, well. Roll up a new one in 5 minutes and either they were already a part of your retinue or they'll be introduced in the next room.

 

[Umbran]

Win vs. lose implies competition (player vs. GM, player vs. players).

No it does not.
Or, have you never lost playing solitaire?

 

[prabe]

It is one of the areas of misunderstanding because winning and losing inherently implies the end of the game. You haven't won or lost the game until it's over. You see it in sports all the time. A team's down and they give up. The coach has to remind them it's not over until it's over. And this only applies in those games with win or loss conditions. RPGs, generally speaking, don't have those conditions. Players can decide they "win" or "lose" if certain conditions are met, absolutely, but that's the player bringing something into the game that's not inherent to the game itself.

I think the idea that the players can decide what their goals are is one of the primary attributes of good TRPG play. Upthread @Pedantic called it something like "the players setting their own victory conditions," and I think there's a strong implication that if there are "victory conditions" there are "loss conditions." Otherwise "victory" would be meaningless, wouldn't it?

It might not be the end of the game (or of the campaign) but the PCs damn well can permanently (fail to) achieve some goal or other, which will be the end of that scenario (or situation); that is over. Some people might call that feeling "winning" or "losing" and not mean the end. Words and meanings are flexible, squirmy things, aren't they? Almost like feelings, that way. You asked what people meant by "winning and losing in TRPGs" and people told you and you at least seem to be telling them it's just their feelings and they're adding that to the game and they're wrong; that doesn't seem like what you want to mean, here.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

That's not unreasonable, really. Having your character achieve their goal/s feels a lot like winning, and having your character fail to do so feels a lot like losing, at least in my experience. But, of course, different experiences and preferences are possible.

I tend to compartmentalize the concept like this:

A character of mine may "lose" something, like a magic item, a level, or it's "life".
As a player, these in-game setbacks do feel like losing (and depending on the circumstances, may even provoke my ire). So I agree with you on how things may "feel".
I can convert these in-game "losses" into story hooks/character motivation, if I choose to make them so. I'm still in the game, the game continues, and something is lost, but not the game itself.

"Losing the Game"
As far as I'm aware, in D&D, there is no rule that describes the conditions necessary to "win" or "lose" the game.

< gripe > < tangent >
The first campaign I ever played in (2e Mystara) our group "failed" Mark of Amber, in spite of our best efforts. As a player, I knew it from the DM's reaction at the end. That adventure certainly left a bad taste in my mouth.
It was not until reading Mark of Amber, (and Castle Amber) many years later, that I understood why I didn't enjoy that adventure, and just how badly our group was set up to fail.
(Hotel California + Funhouse + Players rushed by Plotline Clock Running Too Fast = Pressure Cooker Goes Boom)
< /gripe > < /tangent >

 

[prabe]

"Losing the Game"
As far as I'm aware, in D&D, there is no rule that describes the conditions necessary to "win" or "lose" the game.

As I said, in the post immediately before yours, I think the players being able to decide on their goals is one of the primary attributes of good TRPG play, and I think not achieving those goals must be possible for achieving those goals to have any meaning, and I think achieving those goals or not is the win/lose thing that some people aren't seeing, here; I'm honestly kinda at a loss how to explain it more clearly than I have, it seems almost as if some people won't see it as much as can't.

 

[Pedantic]

I think the idea that the players can decide what their goals are is one of the primary attributes of good TRPG play. Upthread @Pedantic called it something like "the players setting their own victory conditions," and I think there's a strong implication that if there are "victory conditions" there are "loss conditions." Otherwise "victory" would be meaningless, wouldn't it?

It might not be the end of the game (or of the campaign) but the PCs damn well can permanently (fail to) achieve some goal or other, which will be the end of that scenario (or situation); that is over. Some people might call that feeling "winning" or "losing" and not mean the end. Words and meanings are flexible, squirmy things, aren't they? Almost like feelings, that way. You asked what people meant by "winning and losing in TRPGs" and people told you and you at least seem to be telling them it's just their feelings and they're adding that to the game and they're wrong; that doesn't seem like what you want to mean, here.

Yeah, loss conditions tend to be things like "the demon is summoned," "the capital falls," "our political rival is elected," and the ever present "death."

Generally, players have goals that stand in opposition to those things and become impossible thereafter, but the nature of the game lets them set new victory conditions thereafter.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

As I said, in the post immediately before yours, I think the players being able to decide on their goals is one of the primary attributes of good TRPG play, and I think not achieving those goals must be possible for achieving those goals to have any meaning, and I think achieving those goals or not is the win/lose thing that some people aren't seeing, here; I'm honestly kinda at a loss how to explain it more clearly than I have, it seems almost as if some people won't see it as much as can't.

I didn't see your post because I forgot to check for new replies...

 

[Bill Zebub]

No it does not.
Or, have you never lost playing solitaire?

Or collaborative games (e.g. Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Isle)

 

[prabe]

I didn't see your post because I forgot to check for new replies..

No worries, that wasn't intended to say you should have seen it, much more in the way of apologizing for repeating myself. Sorry if it came across badly.

 

[Pedantic]

It is one of the areas of misunderstanding because winning and losing inherently implies the end of the game. You haven't won or lost the game until it's over. You see it in sports all the time. A team's down and they give up. The coach has to remind them it's not over until it's over. And this only applies in those games with win or loss conditions. RPGs, generally speaking, don't have those conditions. Players can decide they "win" or "lose" if certain conditions are met, absolutely, but that's the player bringing something into the game that's not inherent to the game itself.

I think there's some confusion here about what "winning" is for exactly. You're focusing a lot on the competitive angle, which I agree doesn't really apply to TTRPGs outside of some really unusual table setups, but that's not the only purpose that setting a goal and checking if you've achieved it serves.

The reason you'd want a victory condition in a TTRPG is no different from a board game or videogame or whatever; you need a metric to understand/guide your decision making. Games are playful systems, they're collections of rules and restrictions and allowance that set up a network of decisions that the human players can interact with. The thing that takes such a system from a toy to a game is the evaluation; if you have a victory condition (and/or a loss condition) you can make decisions to try and achieve it.

Then you get the good game stuff people like, like looking to see what decisions could have been made better, learning about the system to make better decisions, formulating heuristics to navigate the system, finding unusual states the system can be pushed into and devising strategies to get into/out of them and so on. You can't really have all of that without evaluation. You need the metric to make the decisions meaningful.

With that in mind, competition is often a means and not an end. A lot of games use competition to to make the decisions interesting, by putting them into conflict with the other player's decisions, and it's a really easy way to render what could be a simple system into a much more complex one.