Quote from: RPGPundit;589291Yeah, there's no question to me that its a game.  Its also a hobby, and people use RPGs to pass the time. None of these things are either contradictory to one another or (at least, I used to think) in dispute.

It depends on what you mean when you say "game". I'm a big fan of words being fuzzy in definition, rather than strict, and context is everything... but for the purpose of this thread, I'm using the word "game" in its strictest sense, because what I'm discussing is the people who can *only* think of RPGs as games in the strictest sense, and who fail to grasp that many people are playing RPGs as just a pastime, and almost everyone else gets more or less game-y depending on how they feel about the situation.

And I see the many ongoing arguments about RPGs or how to play them as basically being an entrenched battle between rigid-brained people, who think RPGs must be played as games, and sane people, who don't. Look at good ol' MGuy, who chimed into this thread with the extremely brilliant observation that "role-playing game" contains the word "game", so an RPG is a game. Small wonder that MGuy is also one of the people who bitches about the lack of balance between fighter and wizard, or that some people don't optimize their characters for the best damage output.

Quote from: Ladybird;588902If they are games, then trying to find an optimal strategy for them is worthwhile. Games build towards an objective and measurable end state, and the goal is (Almost) always to be on the winning side, complete with a way of telling if you're on the winning side or not.

Who wins hacky sack?
Who wins a pickup game of basketball where you don't keep track of the score?
Who wins family board game night, where the goal is to hang out with the family and have a good time?

I don't see this distinction as meaningful.  Whether you call an RPG a game or a pastime will not impact how it's played, as people will just play it however they're going to play it regardless of the label. I don't see what purpose there is to coming up with a label.

Quote from: Mistwell;589317Who wins hacky sack?

I have no idea what this is.

QuoteWho wins a pickup game of basketball where you don't keep track of the score?

Nobody, because you're not actually playing basketball. You're playing "let's shoot some hoops"; and like an RPG, you're playing because you enjoy playing.

QuoteWho wins family board game night, where the goal is to hang out with the family and have a good time?

Nobody, because the games are being used to aid the socialising. Someone would win each individual game that you played, and someone could even win more than anyone else, but nobody would win the evening; you can't win "hanging out with people you like", because it's not a game.

If you start caring about who wins the most games, though, then someone can win that competition. But they're winning the "win the most games" game, not "hang out with people you like".

QuoteI don't see this distinction as meaningful.  Whether you call an RPG a game or a pastime will not impact how it's played, as people will just play it however they're going to play it regardless of the label. I don't see what purpose there is to coming up with a label.

Because RPG's are not games as such, coming up with ways to "win" them is a pointless endeavour. You play RPG's because you like playing RPG's; introducing win / lose elements into them makes them worse at being RPG's, and they still don't end up as good at being games as actual games do.

The problem with the "winnable game" mentality is that it's 100% metagame.  Do you win at life?  Ask Bill Gates if he's "won", he'll say he still has shit to do.  Can your characters be victorious in combat, can they win wars, can they defeat their opponents?  Sure.  But you the player don't win the game because the game has no set end unless you're playing it like a game of Magic the Gathering, which of course is what the Denners are doing.    Which is why they can't stand character death and why they play a game where the GM wears kid gloves if played RAW.

Out of interest, does anyone know when the term 'role-playing game' was first used?

It's not in any of the original booklets that I can see (OD&D). It is mentioned in 1980 Basic rulebook, but not as the name of the product (to quote; main header "Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Game", subheader "The Original Fantasy Role Playing Game"), but nowhere in the book that I can find does it explain exactly what a role playing game actually is. So somewhere after the first books and before basic, the term was taken up, and I assume gained some kind of meaning. Does anyone know more?

Quote from: CRKrueger;589392The problem with the "winnable game" mentality is that it's 100% metagame.  Do you win at life?  Ask Bill Gates if he's "won", he'll say he still has shit to do.  Can your characters be victorious in combat, can they win wars, can they defeat their opponents?  Sure.  But you the player don't win the game because the game has no set end unless you're playing it like a game of Magic the Gathering, which of course is what the Denners are doing.    Which is why they can't stand character death and why they play a game where the GM wears kid gloves if played RAW.

I can win battles without winning a war. I can win over a few people at a party without declaring the end of it. I can win multiple times at Call of Duty and not quit for the day.

Krueger your definition of win includes ending the game and you can do that in DnD. When you beat the last bad guy and the campaign ends you can call that the win and end state of the game. "Winning" can mean a lot of things. I'd say Bill Gates is pretty much "winning" at life pretty fuckin' hard. The fact that he keeps playing is that the game of life doesn't end because you win.

There are a lot of "win" conditions in RPGs. You "win" if you survive the dungeon, you win if you go up in level, you win if you experience immersion with your character, etc.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;589698There are a lot of "win" conditions in RPGs. You "win" if you survive the dungeon, you win if you go up in level, you win if you experience immersion with your character, etc.

RPGPundit

No, those are "personal triumphs", not "win conditions". If you survive a dungeon - for example - you haven't beaten anyone. Your character hasn't died, and you've got something that you wanted from the session, but you're not going to stop playing; what happened was what happened, an event in the life of your character. If you hadn't survived, you wouldn't have lost, you would have died... and that's what would have happened. Without deliberate permission from the GM, RPG's do not stop, they just keep on going. The campaign world keeps on existing, life keeps happening.

Compared to other types of media, RPG's are probably closest in some respects to games (Due to all those damn rules), but they're still very different. Shackling them (And by extension, their players) to the concept of "win" and "lose", as CRKrueger points out above, means that players have to think about "winning" and "losing", rather than "playing" and "immersing". Make it all about the play, though, and you're free from that; you can concentrate on the character, and play that character as hard as you can. It doesn't matter if they would make a non-optimal decision, for example; the concept of "optimal" doesn't even exist if you're playing simply for the sake of play. You do something, because it's the correct thing to do, it's what the character would do. You, the player, might know they're making a horrible mistake... but if you wanted the characters to act in perfect ways and always get what they want, write a book. RPG's are the wrong medium for that.

(Competitive RPG play is... different, and interesting, and a bit wierd. I approach it as a chance to play an RPG with a bunch of strangers, and my personal goal is "not feel like I would have better spent the weekend cowering in a ball in my hotel room". So far I've came out of it okay.)

Amusingly, the dictionary definition of game is:

"an amusement or pastime"

To Win.Number of definitions applicable to various things you can do in an RPG, or life, over and over again.

Quote from: RPGPundit;589698There are a lot of "win" conditions in RPGs. You "win" if you survive the dungeon, you win if you go up in level, you win if you experience immersion with your character, etc.

Quote from: Ladybird;589721No, those are "personal triumphs", not "win conditions".

I'd be willing to call them "ad hoc win conditions". What I commented on was the absence of built-in, "hard" win conditions that cause the game to end. The important distinction between that and an ad hoc win condition is that players pick ad hoc goals, can have multiple win conditions, and can abandon a goal at any time. "Screw it, this dungeon is too hard. Let's hire ourselves out as caravan guards and come back to this one later." Or: "Forget about killing the vampire, let's make a deal!"

The munchkin is a particular example of someone who doesn't get that. Munchkins try to "beat" the dungeon and the other players because they've mi-identified something as a "hard" win condition, in other words, no deviation from that goal is allowed, and other goals/other people are to be ignored. So they kill all monsters for the XP instead of figuring out what to do, grab the best magic items for themselves, and go PvP as soon as possible.

Oh, and as usual, MGuy is wrong.

RPGs are a pastime to me. Most of the time I spend with RPGs does not involve playing them. It's usually spent reading about them, shopping for them, and preparing for my online games. I bet I spend about 15-20% of my time actually playing.

Quote from: talysman;589756Oh, and as usual, MGuy is wrong.

Yup because going by actual definitions of the words being used are indeed wrong.

"It's just a stupid game."

No where does the dictionary definition of "game" say that a win condition that ends the game is a requirement for something to be a game. It's a total red herring.