Winning and losing in RPGs...

[Bae'zel]

I don't think anyone has said that the win/loss conditions/states in TRPGs are the same as those found in more conventional games. I think there are people who think they aren't there, and there are people who think they are.

Thank you, that's the point I'm trying to make.

From 20+ years of TTRPG playing, I've met MANY people who have brought their competitive nature to the table. By default, their target for competition in a WIN vs. LOSE scenario is the GM, unfortunately.

Hell, the very same people found ways to be competitive with other players in fully co-op board games like Zombicide. Yes, they've made us lose more than once by going "Rambo" or scoring the most points to the detriment of the team.

It's a THING in the hobby, even if we don't want it to be.

 

[prabe]

Thank you, that's the point I'm trying to make.

From 20+ years of TTRPG playing, I've met MANY people who have brought their competitive nature to the table. By default, their target for competition in a WIN vs. LOSE scenario is the GM, unfortunately.

Hell, the very same people found ways to be competitive with other players in fully co-op board games like Zombicide. Yes, they've made us lose more than once by going "Rambo" or scoring the most points to the detriment of the team.

It's a THING in the hobby, even if we don't want it to be.

My experiences are probably atypical, because at this point the only board games my friend group plays are co-op, but when people get all win/lose at the tables I'm at, it's mostly in the fiction, and it's much more about "characters vs. scenario" than "players vs. GM." But we've been doing mostly co-op board games for like fifteen-twenty years, the worst behavior in those games at this point is some quarterbacking.

 

[Bae'zel]

My experiences are probably atypical, because at this point the only board games my friend group plays are co-op, but when people get all win/lose at the tables I'm at, it's mostly in the fiction, and it's much more about "characters vs. scenario" than "players vs. GM." But we've been doing mostly co-op board games for like fifteen-twenty years, the worst behavior in those games at this point is some quarterbacking.

It thankfully doesn't happen that frequently, but enough times to have spoiled my mood to the point that I'm always wary of such players and always try to explain some things during session zero (or when explaining the rules of a co-op boardgame).

• With one player in particular, there's no ambiguity: he LOVES competition and looks for "opponents' in every game he plays. And he also "quarterbacks" all of the time.
  
  
• Once had a player who frequently whispered plans to the others and she enjoyed giving me smug looks. When I'd ask what's up her replies were along the lines of "oh you'll see in the next fight". Like a primary school kid spreading gossip.
  
  
• Or as I was explaining the next dungeon to one group, I told them that we would start with a small trek in the jungle with a mix of encounters, not all combat, to set the mood. When the game session started, and I began my introduction of the jungle journey (and each PC's role in the expedition), a player cut me off me with "no we aren't doing any of that; I cast Flight onto the entire party". They KNEW that I had planned out a bunch of encounters and roleplaying situations but it didn't matter, he relished how he had trumped me. I congratulated them on missing out on a bunch of potentially great character moments.

So yeah... I make it very clear to my players that I'm NOT an antagonist, I'm NOT trying to defeat them, that "winning" the game means having a great time as a group, not "beating the DM".

 

[Pedantic]

My experiences are probably atypical, because at this point the only board games my friend group plays are co-op, but when people get all win/lose at the tables I'm at, it's mostly in the fiction, and it's much more about "characters vs. scenario" than "players vs. GM." But we've been doing mostly co-op board games for like fifteen-twenty years, the worst behavior in those games at this point is some quarterbacking.

I really don't think that's a behavior fundamentally related to playful competition. I met up with the same 3 friends to play 18xx games weekly, which are long economic strategy games without any random elements. We're all competing, but it's not especially relevant who wins, so much as how it happens; we're there each week to watch some new and exciting board state emerge that we can all try to navigate.

I guess I would differentiate between a desire/need to win and an agreement by the players to seek victory? It's elevating winning over the game experience, instead of using competition as a component that produces the game that seems to be the problem.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Kicking that up a bit, what about TPKs? Surely that's "losing" an RPG? Nope. The dreaded TPK is only a "loss" if the players and referee want it to be one. All it takes is a little bit of that imagination that's the cornerstone of the hobby to come up with ways to continue a campaign after a TPK.

Minor point of order - players OR referee, not players AND referee.

If either doesn't want the campaign to continue past the TPK, that campaign is over, and I've seen both situations.

In fact, in a 2E campaign I ran, it came down to one player - he created a situation which lead to a TPK, he made sure the other players didn't surrender when NPCs offered it, and he insisted on fighting to the death for no compelling reason (it wasn't that kind of conflict!), and then, when I had a friendly NPC (with whom they had an established relationship) steal their bodies from the baddy and resurrect them (nowadays I'd just have them wake up in the dungeon or something), the same player was like "We wiped, we deserved it, I don't want to play this campaign anymore!" . Even though it kind of seemed to me like the other three or four players (I forget) did want to, he was sufficiently bossy/persuasive that they went along with it. Ego is a hell of a drug, I guess (this was the same guy who we fired as a DM because of his overuse of GMPCs!).

 

[prabe]

I really don't think that's a behavior fundamentally related to playful competition. I met up with the same 3 friends to play 18xx games weekly, which are long economic strategy games without any random elements. We're all competing, but it's not especially relevant who wins, so much as how it happens; we're there each week to watch some new and exciting board state emerge that we can all try to navigate.

I guess I would differentiate between a desire/need to win and an agreement by the players to seek victory? It's elevating winning over the game experience, instead of using competition as a component that produces the game that seems to be the problem.

In the case of TRPGs--and relevant to what @Bae'zel said just upthread--what I tell the people at the tables I'm GMing at is that they don't have to wrongfoot me as GM to wrongfoot their opponents in the game/fiction, and if they have some weird edge-case thing they want to do, they'll probably get better results if they talk to me about that before they deploy it. This at least seems to point to what you're saying about the difference between "trying to win" and "seeking victory."

 

[Bill Zebub]

That may be true of D&D, and many other traditional RPGs. But, there are RPGs that have an explicit end point.

Scum and Villany, for example, is designed for a campaign to run for a dozen to twenty sessions, and then be done.
Deathmatch Island canonically has the PCs working their way through three islands, and then the game is done.
Ten Candles, as I understand it, runs for a single session of play, and then is done.
Always/Never/Now, a game I'm playing through now, has a fixed set of scenarios, and then is complete.

So, "the game has no end, and so has no win/loss" may be common, but is not categorically true.

Deathmatch Island, specifically, has explicit end states that pretty solidly map to traditional win/loss scenarios: Only one player wins, all players win, or all players lose.

I'm not sure that really changes my argument, though, because those end state conditions aren't really related to success/failure. You could play a game of Tag where everybody agrees that after 10 rounds you are done, but there is still no success/failure state at the end. When mom asks, "Did you win?" there's not really an objective answer.

 

[Pedantic]

In the case of TRPGs--and relevant to what @Bae'zel said just upthread--what I tell the people at the tables I'm GMing at is that they don't have to wrongfoot me as GM to wrongfoot their opponents in the game/fiction, and if they have some weird edge-case thing they want to do, they'll probably get better results if they talk to me about that before they deploy it. This at least seems to point to what you're saying about the difference between "trying to win" and "seeking victory."

Yeah, I put the blame on the traditional insistence on loosely held rules. It's quite difficult to trust the same entity with playing the opposition and handling resolution fairly. It's easier in a world without rule zero and clear resolution systems to not worry about it. Failing that, you really need to be on the same page as your GM.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, I put the blame on the traditional insistence on loosely held rules. It's quite difficult to trust the same entity with playing the opposition and handling resolution fairly. It's easier in a world without rule zero and clear resolution systems to not worry about it. Failing that, you really need to be on the same page as your GM.

Are you generally a competitive person? And have you ever run RPGs?

 

[messy]

The only way to lose an rpg is by saying “huzzah.”