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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9695305" data-attributes="member: 42582">I don't really see the connection between winning and feelings/enjoyment.When I play card or board games, I often lose. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy myself. In Australia, at least, we describe someone who can't enjoy a game unless they win as a "poor loser".Whether a game can be won or lost depends on how it is structured. Eg playing kick-to-kick with some friends doesn't have win conditions. But playing a friendly game of "touch" with the same group of friends does.Some RPGing is structured to have win conditions: the examples I'm thinking of are about beating the module or solving the mystery. An instance of the first: if you sit down to play White Plume Mountain, or Tomb of Horrors, and you don't get the treasure, you've lost. (That's not to say that you can't replay, even perhaps with the same characters. Replays are a common thing in games.)Another example: a few years ago I ran a freeform murder mystery for one of my kids on her birthday during a lockdown. (We had a lot of lockdowns in my city.) I adapted an old Traveller scenario: 3 family members played 3 characters, one of them also controlled her character's husband as a (largely cipher) NPC, and I played the 3 or so important NPCs. The players got all the clues, but didn't workout whodunnit. After we finished, I told them. They agreed that the clues were fair. I think that counts as losing, even if they had a good time doing it.</blockquote>

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