Contradictory Gamism

[Marco]

Hey Ron,

High competition in Step On Up plus low competition in Challenge = entirely team-based play, party style against a shared Challenge, but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people, such as levelling-up faster, having the best stuff, having one's player-characters be killed less often, getting more Victory Points, or some such thing. Most Tunnels & Trolls play is like this.

After reading Brian's synopsis, I went hunting for why he thought you felt the RPG authors were delusional (a word that as far as I can tell doesn't appear in the text of the essay). I found the "There are no winners" text which you felt was contradictory.

I found that strange. "Another 'Impossible Thing,'" I mummered but I wasn't sure *why* you saw it as implicitly contradictory since I agreed with your two part breakdown.

Surely, I thought, step-on up stage resolves that issue: if we play as a team and win we're all winners. If the author is speaking about that kind of play then it's not contradictory.*

Then I got to the dials and was perplexed: Poker night *is* competition with the other players. No joke. But Baseball isn't (intra-team, anyway). Military duty isn't characterized by attempts to get better stuff than the other members of the team. A group of guys on a scavenger hunt are all working their hardest for the group--either everyone wins or no one does.

I read "but with value placed on some other metric of winning among the real people" as saying there's always gonna be competion present. That's not true to my experience nor, I think to Brian's, nor, I think to a lotta other people's.

Am I misreading? If there isn't intra-player competition then why's the text contradictory?

-Marco
* Yeah, you can read it so it's contradictory. No argument. I don't. That doesn't make it contradictory ... Bleah, bleah, bleah ... yadda yadda Impossible Thing ... yadda yadda ...

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Marco,

Because there's still "winning." The text is contradictory because it says Role-playing is not about winning, and then it says, You win or lose as a team.

I call that a textual contradiction. It's not a contradiction if you, the reader, insert the qualifer "against one another" into the first clause and "against the GM's situation" into the second. Pehaps these insertions are automatic for you, Marco, but they're simply not present in many the texts. Problems based on interpreting them differently are very common in the history of playing D&D in all of its forms, excepting the latest one.

Also, I think a great deal of intra-team competition arises during what looks like, or is officially scored as, inter-team competition. The intra-team competition may involve tangibles (who bats the best) or intangibles (who gets the best color coverage by the announcers). Does this have to happen? No. Does it, very often? Yes. That's why it's a dial in my model.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Okay: This is your quote from the Gamism article

... while board games and wargames have winners and losers, role-playing games do not. Rather than being competitive, role-playing games are cooperative. The players all work together and win and lose as a team.

Above that quote, in your article, you say that most RPG text is highly either-or. I'm down with that--if you'd said "Well, he's not acknowledging both axises of Gamism in his write up," I'd agree (but considering that you just published the article and the text is, well, pretty old, I wouldn't be too hard on him).

But you don't say that above, in your response to me: You say he's contradictory.

Now, nowhere do you say he's delusional but nowhere does he say "Role-playing is not about winning" (your quote from above).

He speaks of winners and losers in the mass-singular (i.e. wargames have winners. A wargame has a winner.) He says that play is to be cooperative. He says that players are to play as a team.

If he said "Roleplaying is not about winning--but you win as a team," then yeah, I could agree that he's being contradictory. He's not saying you don't win. He's saying you don't win singularly--and I think he's both very clear about what he means and correct if there's no inter-team competition.

So, no, I'm not automatically inserting "one against the other." I'm reading "The players all work together and win and lose as a team." I'm not fabricating "against the GM's situation." I'm reading "Rather than being competitive, role-playing games are cooperative."

I don't see how you can suggest he's being unclear (and this is your quote--I'm sure there are some worse ones ... but I am picking the one you chose).

Even more to the point: You specifically address both axises as dials. If one can be turned all the way up and the other all the way down, why is there a contradiction?

Now, you do go and say you suspect that in a team there's inter-team competion. You go and say down below that it's common but not absolute. Your impression.

A few notes:
1. Military operations are (IME) more cooperative than competitive sports. There's no evidence that a dungeon crawl is more like basketball than a fire team (even on training exercises everyone has their role to fill and they do it). The AD&D character class division may even be created to explicitly protected varied roles (a fighter has a different role than a cleric).

2. There *is* often inter-team competion within a team. A person heavily engaged in it is called a  ball-hog. In any significant quantity it's considered a dysfunction (often overlooked in the case of a super-star). The case where one member of a gaming group is avidly participating in the second form would be irrespective of the step-on-up level.

3. If you're willing to concede that the author is *very* clear that he intends the play to be wholly cooperative--that *that's* what he's talking about: pure team play--without dysfunctional ballhogs--then I think you come to one of two conclusions:

a) He's talking about your top dial: 100% step-on-up. 0% competion. He's not contradictory--and  your model does, IMO, describe it.
a) he's dreaming. It'll never happen. No group involved in step-on-up will be free of competition. And therefore, while perhaps not contradictiory, he's ... y'know ... maybe a bit delusional?

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Marco,

All the text is right in what you're quoting, from Zody.

Zody writes, "... while board games and wargames have winners and losers, role-playing games do not."

Pause. Full stop. Breathe deep.

Zody then writes, "... the players all work together and win or lose as a team."

Can't be both, man. First phrase says, "No winning/losing here." Second one says, "This is how you win or lose here."

You wrote,

nowhere does he say "Role-playing is not about winning" (your quote from above).

This is me, staring at you. You quoted the exact phrase in which he says that very thing. Your mass/singular distinction is inserted by you, as a reader. I think it's a correct insertion, i.e., what Zody probably means, but it's not actually present in the text.

I am getting aggravated by your patient explanations to me about what people mean with such text, both here and also regarding the Impossible Thing debates. Marco - quit it. I get what they are trying to say, and always have. I'm claiming they don't say it, and that what they do say leads a lot of people into trouble when they play.

Also, you seem to be thinking that I consider high-cooperative, no intra-team competition Gamism to be impossible. This is incorrect on your part, and again, quit trying to explain to me why it's possible. I state it's possible and fun right there in the freakin' essay. Just like your military op. Just like that.

Again, and again, you ascribe outlooks and goals in writing to me that are not present. You are not talking to me. You are talking to a construct whom you perceive, who is saying things that I am not saying.

I'm not really interested in persisting with a dialogue like that. I have to play both ends - trying to address your widely-off-target point, as well as trying to get my actual point into your field of view. It's exhausting.

Here's my response, then: "H'm. Interesting point. Thanks for reading the article, and keep on role-playing!"

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

"No winning/losing here."

...

This is me, staring at you. You quoted the exact phrase in which he says that very thing. Your mass/singular distinction is inserted by you, as a reader. I think it's a correct insertion, i.e., what Zody probably means, but it's not actually present in the text.

Here's my response, then: "H'm. Interesting point. Thanks for reading the article, and keep on role-playing!"

Best,
Ron

Alright, alright ... I'm about ta let lie but but consider this:

You got two choices from the first line--two ways to read it:

1. He's made a hard statement that there is no winning at all in RPGs.

2. He's contrasting single-team RPG play to single-winner board games.

Both might seem to work. Maybe he could mean either one?

Then there's two more lines that mention team play and cooperative play--and winning as a team.

Still Contradictory?

Alright ... if that's what it's gotta be.

-Marco

[Jack Spencer Jr]

Contridictory may be a little strong a word. Confusing is better. In one sentence, Zody says that RPGs do not have winners or losers. A sentence later, he says that RPGs do have winners and losers. The gist of the intervening sentence is the distinction that in RPGs the players can will or lose as a group rather than individually. Meaning that could be arrived at with some minor rephrasing without the possibility of confusion.

The point is, if you say something does not have X but spend the next two sentences expaining how it does, in fact have X is contridiction. A simple addition would have fixed this:

... while board games and wargames have winners and losers, role-playing games do not in the same sense. Rather than being competitive, role-playing games are cooperative. The players all work together and win and lose as a team.

Or some similar addition.

As written, it requires a leap in logic to understand. Some can make this leap easily. Not everyone can or is familiar enough with the subject matter to do so.

[BPetroff93]

I think that the key you guys are missing here is that Ron is saying that it is a TEXTUAL controdiction, not a CONTEXTUAL controdiction.  The TEXT has a controdiction, ie: the exact words are logically inconsistant.  He is not saying that he thinks that the meaning is controdictory.  The problem is that while you and I and Ron may infer that the author is changing the subject in midthought (from individual to group), he (the author) does not state that, and other people may interprit differently than we do.  Context and meaning are subjective, and that TEXT-U-AL controdiction can be a big problem.  It is a controdiction, by definition, but only in the TEXT, the meaning is up to you as the reader.....and THAT is the problem.

Roleplaying =A
about Winning = B
as a Team =C

Roleplaying is not about winning
A is NOT/NEVER B - period, no qualifier

Roleplaying is about winning as a team
A IS about B, in C

so we have 1) A is NOT/NEVER B and 2) A IS B, as C
these are logically controdictory

Now you as the reader can insert: "between players" = D

A is NOT/ NEVER B, in D
however
A IS B, in C

now that is not controdictory, but YOU had to make that insertion, what if you didn't?  There is nothing in the TEXT that says you should.  That, my friends, is wherein lies the rub.

[Marco]

I took a long hard look at this.

I think the "rub" is that the paraphrases that are being used to distill the meaning of the text are *way* less ambiguous than the text itself ("There's no winning here." Okay, case closed. Yeah, but that's not what he said.)

After looking it up, I believe that "winners" is a count-noun and therefore it's proper grammar to say "while board games and wargames have winners and losers, role-playing games do not."

That places him as either speaking in the mass-singular or the plural.

I see no way to tell the difference from that one sentence in a vacuum.

So it boils down to grammar. To argue that it's contradictory you've *gotta* argue that the use of the mass-singular is incorrect. It may be--I wasn't able to find any evidence to that effect.

If you can't do that the closest you get is unclear and then you have to explain yourself for the rest of the passage. Which everyone agrees makes it pretty clear.

-Marco

[ross_winn]

I think that the point that he could be making (and that we could be missing) is where the payoff actually is. If he feels that the payoff, or reward if you prefer, is in  group entertainment then we could 'win' as a group; but not 'win' in individual play.

does that make sense?

[BPetroff93]

Marco, I'm not sure I understand exactly what your argument is, perhaps you could clarify.  You seem to be disagreeing with the argument that the text is contradictory.  Is this your intention? What exactly is your position in regards to this text and your disagreement with Ron's statement?

[Marco]

Exactly: my disagrement is with the statement that "the text is contradictory."

The first sentence is ambiguous: Zody may be saying "no one wins in an RPG" or he may be saying "there is no single winner in the sense of a board game."

When he says 'board games have winners' he may be refering to the plural (a boardgame has many winners) or the mass-singular (a board game has one winner).

It's not clear which he means. To argue that it *is* clear which he means, I think you have to argue against the existence of the mass-singular case in the English language or that "winner" may not be properly used in such a case (which it can be, as a count noun).

The fact that there is no clarifying clause in the first sentece does *not* make it contradictory.

It makes it ambiguous

Until you get to the next two sentences.

At which point it's crystal clear.

-Marco

[Jack Spencer Jr]

The discussion has become an arguement over semantic. Pity.

[Marco]

The discussion has become an arguement over semantic. Pity.

Kinda.

I think a whole lot of what gets discussed here is based on a semantic interpertation of rule-book text. Did anyone really think that Zody's passage, taken as a whole, wasn't pretty clear?

-Marco

[Gordon C. Landis]

I think a whole lot of what gets discussed here is based on a semantic interpertation of rule-book text. Did anyone really think that Zody's passage, taken as a whole, wasn't pretty clear?

To be blunt - I find the passage very unclear, and I find it to be very illustrative of one type of unclear communication about the nature RPG play - an unclear communication that I've encountered many times.  Cause/effect?  Who can say for sure ?  But (for me) problematic, at the very least.

The passage *is* clear about drawing a distinction between wargames and RPGs, and that that distinction has something to do with "winning" and "losing" in those two endeavors.  It is entirely UNclear about the nature of that distinction.  I have no trouble seeing it as, in fact, contradictory, though if you want to argue that it doesn't *have* to be *truly* contradictory - OK, fine, I agree.

Of course, I find the use of "competitive" and "cooperative" as mutually exclusive opposites to be inaccurate - competition and cooperation can and do happen at the same time most all the time, by my understanding.  Maybe that means my understanding is so far divorced from Marco's that that understanding says more about why I find the passage unclear than anything about the text itself does.

But - I don't see why Ron finds this particularly annoying, as it all looks pretty much like par for the course to me (as good as the Gamism essay is, IMO, "winning", "losing", "competition" and etc. have proven themselves to be problematic concepts worthy of a little nit-picking - again, IMO).  But I'm definitely with the "requires a leap of some kind in order to make sense out of it" analysis of the passage.

Gordon

[Marco]

Hmm ...

Well, blunt you were but I've still got some questions. It's not that I see competion and cooperation as two complete opposites that could never co-exist. It's that to me he makes it clear that all the players are on the same team. I *do* read the first sentence as a contrast between board-games and RPG's--and an important point to make to people familiar with only the former.

Take me through it sentence by sentence:

Do you read the first sentece as "no winning or losing here" and then get confused by the last two?

Does the middle one (competition vs. cooperation) just not parse for you ("They're not exclusive!?")?

Does the last one make no sense ("if we win, the game is over!")?

I'm honestly curious.

How would you, in 3 sentences or less, describe to someone familiar with, say, monopoly and team-sports, the concept of playing as a team and winning in a traditional AD&D (or whatever) game, y'know, without specialized jargon?

-Marco