>You are supposed to win games, not to be entertained.
>Sometimes the two can coincide, and it's great and inspiring when it does, but the idea that winning must be an entertaining activity only does a disservice to gamers, and hampers the progress of the players. Sometimes it's just hard practice with no fun, and it's done for the sake of winning, not for giggles.
Are you winnin' that there D&D, son?
Imagine "practicing" DnD in order to be more "competitive".
well, for most RPGs, entertainment is "winning"
a TPK can be a win, if everyone found it hilarous
treating winning, in a manner that precludes anybody elses enjoyment, as the sole goal quickly leads to munchkinism
you cant really win DnD, since outside of tourney modules like tomb of horrors, the DMs goal isnt to slog the player through extreme difficulty, but just provide a story
likewise, your typical call of cthulhu game will likely end with no survivors, and thus no winners, but everyone still happy
as for wargaming, this mindset only really applies to competitive where real money is on the line, otherwise good luck finding players willing to match up against
same goes for boardgames, have a bad "no fun allowed" attitude, and you wont have anyone left to play with
Yeah, it's really hard to apply this to tabletop.
Like, one of my self imposed "win" conditions is for my crustaceomancer to be devoured by seagulls one day.
But I'm going to try to do everything I can to prevent this, despite it being one of my "win" outcomes.
Because the crusaceomancer is terrified of being devoured by seagulls.
>Training montage of upside down situps while reciting monster manual stats
>trying to roll a specific number on dice while someone keeps hitting you with a wooden sword
>They keep shouting about how you need to learn focus
>well, for most RPGs, entertainment is "winning"
You are wrong.
That's like saying actors act to entertain themselves.
>you cant really win DnD
Excellence is winning though.
A player can excel at DnD.
Some modes of excellence involve "fun". Others do not.
Very few tabletop games stand up to competitive standards under scrutiny, which makes them really unfit for this mindset... or rather, you can play them like this, but they'll be literally never fun.
I find playing those that do to the best of my ability the best way to have fun with them, however.
David Sirlin wrote a book on this and made some excellent, competitively enjoyable tabletop games.
>training montage of people actually reading the books becomes the single most dishonest scene in motion picture history
>you are supposed to win games
Stopped reading there. Competitions have outcomes, games are just games. Games can be cooperative and totally non-competitive. Clearly define your thesis, and start again.
Yeah, who exactly wins when you play pattycake?
I have no idea.
Or "Help me hide the drugs!" Did we win, and were the bad policemen our opponents? I don't think that's the case at all, since daddy beat me regardless.
I think the whole "winning = fun" is due to a common discompception: ttrpgs don't have an endgame... wich it is false
Ttrpgs don't have a defined goal, they have a wide spectrum of goals that are more on less fitting the specific ttrpg.
In d&d we can say that the goal is to free the princess, to slay the dragon, to recover the hidden treasure, etc.. and by doing so we have defined the purpose of a game (you win if you accomplish so)
What differenciate ttrpgs from other games is the fact that they are (mainly) collaborative games, so you can play them better by being better in your collaborative skills
What parallel are you trying to draw between acting and playing DnD? Furthermore how does a actor "win"?
Role-playing and acting can be very similar.
An actor wins by acting well. The actor sets out to play a part. So too with the role-player. Both win by playing the part well.
>In d&d we can say that the goal is to free the princess, to slay the dragon, to recover the hidden treasure, etc
That's not how I usually play rpgs, and the few times that there has been such a goal in the game, it's been more as a backdrop for the characters to face their personal issues and demons, and how they handle them hasn't been as important--there's no way to win at character development--as simply experiencing the journey from point A to point B.
>backdrop for the characters to face their personal issues
This is why modern Dungeons and Dragons is trash.
Heroic deeds > Inner demons
This or something like this was in Gamers 2.
Winning the game is the game’s objective. Not all games follow this.
The point of playing games in the first place is for entertainment. Competition is not quite the same.
But they do though, fuckwit.
They also do it for the entertainment of their audience, but tabletop generally doesn’t have that, so get your half-assed comparison out of here.
The other players are the audience in a tabletop game.
How would you win if I employed you to be entertained by roleplaying games?
The goal is having fun :)
That's the 'win' condition
What the fuck are you talking about.
It's a collaborative story. If you wanna make these literally nonsense comparisons all the players are actors and the GM is the guy in the crowd throwing out improv suggestions
It’s cooperative though. There is no audience, it’s like the cast is doing improv with guidelines and scenarios set by the game and GM.
>It's a collaborative story.
In which every contributor is also an audience member.
So in your analogy the actors are also the audience?
So basically it makes no fucking sense and doesn't really work as an analogy?
That’s not how improv performance works.
Okay, okay, let's got through your retarded "actors" analogy:
>actors act in order to entertain audience
>if the audience is entertained, the actors win
>in case of roleplaying, the audience is other players
>so RPG players' win condition is entertaining the other players
>or, if we abstract it from separate players to the entire group, the goal of an RPG group is to entertain its own members
>the win condition of roleplaying is for the group to be entertained
Now, let's look at your original claim.
>>well, for most RPGs, entertainment is "winning"
>You are wrong.
How does it feel you've just proven yourself wrong without even trying?
An actor can give birth to a good performance without entertaining the audience though.
This is all more complicated than we thought I think.
>An actor can give birth to a good performance without entertaining the audience though.
How can you judge that? Performance is always judged subjectively. Without audience, you can't judge whether the performance is good or bad.
You can trace all modern spectator sports back to the abstract, rule-less games they evolved from.
No it’s not, the instigator is just a jackass.
>How can you judge that?
A sharp knife still cuts well even if no human observer is present. A robot could be wielding it for example.
I notice you are shifting metaphors when your previous one suddenly loses water.
And you can give the same performance to two different audiences, and one will cheer, while the other will jeer.
Just the same as you can run an ERP campaign with two groups, and one will indulge in it, and the other leave in 30 seconds.
There is no objective quality to an actor performance beyond that of technical acting.
But of course, in roleplaying, there is no such thing, because the system crunch takes care of all the technicalities, allowing the players to indulge in the core activity of roleplaying - entertainment.
Also, your metaphors are shit. Fuck off.
Yeah, one of many cringy moments in a decidedly cringy movie.
The supposed 'rules lawyer' gets hit with sticks by fellow rules lawyers while reciting the rules.
However, his actual character is a rather ineffective Half-Elf monk. Because, you see, the DM doesn't have either in his worlds, but because they're in the rulebooks, they're legal for him to play.
Meanwhile, the person who's never played before makes a charisma-based character who apparently exploits some feats to be combat-OP.
....fuck that movie.
>the same performance to two different audiences, and one will cheer, while the other will jeer
All the more reason to discount audience reaction while evaluating the worth of a performance. I might also add that reception changes with time.
>All the more reason to discount audience reaction while evaluating the worth of a performance.
Wrong. Knowing your audience and judging them effectively is part of the performance, thus, it is part of the criteria to be judged under.
Thanks for playing.
This is literally something actors do for fun. The difference is, they aren't concerned as much with the story or believability of their character's actions, their concerned with doing good improvised acting.
You're so wrong.
>In d&d we can say that the goal is to free the princess... (you win if you accomplish so)
Then how does the GM win? If the GM wins in the same way that the players win, the game is over in 5 minutes. If he wins if the players fail, rocks fall and he wins. If the win condition of the GM at all has to do with the specific contents of the narrative, then the GM wins. That's why it's silly to say in the first place that success at playing TTRPGs has anything to do with anything but telling fun stories.
>you can play them better by being better in your collaborative skills
Doesn't fit with your own narrative.
>yfw that one homo that keeps playing kingmaker instead of actually playing to win
One of my all-time favorites. Does a better job at capturing what tabletop games are about than any game that actually bears the name of a tabletop game.
>All the more reason to discount audience reaction while evaluating the worth of a performance.
What? Why? It was just demonstrated that the worth of a performance is subjective and you took it as a demonstration of it's objectivity? Rather, how do you disagree that a performance's worth IS how it moves the audience? How can there be a way of evaluating a performance's worth while discounting audience reaction?