[D&D4E] Some WOTC encounters
Callan S.:
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But if I'm reading right, you don't - both A and B and everyone else chooses by the method you describe.
Nonsense. I said nothing of the sort, and nothing that even be contstrued as saying that.
I was stuck - if I assumed your just describing a player A and B (who both seem identical, so I don't know why there is an A and B) as choosing a certain way - I don't understand how this says anything in particular about the method of game engagement I'm describing? That interpretation seemed pointless. Some people do what A and B do...okay? Is there a third interpretation I missed - charitably I skipped the seemingly pointless one. Alot of regular debaters would just latch onto the worst interpretation they could find and flog that.
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But if you are willing to acknowledge that people do actually have content preferences, than I suggest again that describing all conflicts over content as originating from "scrub players" is self-evidently mistaken.
If it's intended to be played to win, then it's not mistaken. If it's meant as a themepark sort of game, I wouldn't bring up the play to win thing as it's not actually part of the design.
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But what if he is? Can you give an example of someone playing a game (in the context of this discussion) who does it without interest in the activities comprising that game?
Ok, comprising, not compromising. My mistake.
Your simplyfying things a bit. Someone with a nar interest, for example, could enjoy narrativism first, but as a secondary desire enjoy strategic sword moves. So they might play riddle of steel. The important thing is is that if they miss out on the secondary desire because of the first, that's okay because first comes...well, first!
Okay, play to win. You want to play to win as first priority, but as a secondary desire, maybe you like X. You sign up for a game with the first priority in mind and that has X. But then maybe you miss out on X. Shock! Horror! But no, it's fine if the first priority is being met. There is no problem.
As far as I can tell this is different from what Gareth is describing to me, which is people who, first and foremost, signed up for X but then miss out on it because of how others play.
Anders Gabrielsson:
Callan, I'm not sure I understand your position correctly so I'm going to ask a couple of questions to see if I can make sense of it. This is not meant as a provocation or an attack on your position; I'm just trying to figure out what you're saying to see if I can bring the discussion forward.
1) If a game has explicit winning conditions, do you think anyone is justified in playing to win by any means within the rules as written even if the (whole) group of players have explicitly added other restrictions? What if the restrictions are implicit?
2) Do you think winning conditions added by the group of players but not present in the text has any value? If not, in what way are they different from the ones in the text? Specifically, if a player is introduced to the game without himself having read the rules and everyone else in the group is playing with the added winning conditions, is his experience any different from that of a player who has read a version of the rules where those winning conditions are present?
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on August 10, 2011, 01:53:07 AM
If it's intended to be played to win, then it's not mistaken. If it's meant as a themepark sort of game, I wouldn't bring up the play to win thing as it's not actually part of the design.
Yes, it is mistaken, because the content is a separate and different issue to playing competitively. Right? One doesn't imply anything about the other.
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As far as I can tell this is different from what Gareth is describing to me, which is people who, first and foremost, signed up for X but then miss out on it because of how others play.
No, I'm saying they are orthogonal, that they are not ordered in a priority, that they occur simultaneously.
Callan S.:
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1) If a game has explicit winning conditions, do you think anyone is justified in playing to win by any means within the rules as written even if the (whole) group of players have explicitly added other restrictions? What if the restrictions are implicit?
First I'll add a note about semantically vague wording (weasel words). This is wording, which, if you ran a survey and showed them to a thousand people, you would not get the same interpretation each time, or even over 95% of the survey.
Anyway, assuming the restrictions aren't those, this new restrictions simply make a new game and are as the maker of this new game intended it to have. In other words, these rules become the 'the rules as written'. And so anyone is justified in playing to win by any means within the rules as written, as before. Unless weve just simply given up on playing to win for some reason.
If the rules are implicit? That could either be weasel wording, or it could be so clear cut (ie, 1000 readings, 1 interpretation) and identical in each head that it may as well be a written rule. It's certainly written into their heads. So with the latter, why bother calling it implicit (except if you bring in a new member and, while you can remember these rules when they come up, you can't remember them in serial form to inform them in advance of when they come up - then that's a prob)
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2) Do you think winning conditions added by the group of players but not present in the text has any value? If not, in what way are they different from the ones in the text?
If you came to play game X and it's winning conditions, then clearly the difference is your not doing what you set out to do.
If you don't really give a stuff, it doesn't make much difference. But I think people who don't give a stuff generally don't do much at a table, either.
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Specifically, if a player is introduced to the game without himself having read the rules and everyone else in the group is playing with the added winning conditions, is his experience any different from that of a player who has read a version of the rules where those winning conditions are present?
I'm not sure if above you meant adding extra winning conditions?
My problem in the thread has been that there are no initial winning conditions to begin with? Not having some win conditions built in already and then adding more on top.
Anyway, with your example, it depends if they start treating their added win conditions as more important than the ones in the game. If so they have ceased playing the game and invented a new one and are playing that, while denying to themselves (and especially to the clueless newbie) that they have. It gets rather complicated.
Gareth,
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Yes, it is mistaken, because the content is a separate and different issue to playing competitively. Right? One doesn't imply anything about the other.
Not at all. Play to win does even more than imply, it points it's finger at content and in the voice of god says the content comes second. Indeed I think Sirlin even wrote an article about playing streetfighter, but hypothesizing a version just using bounding boxes - no graphics at all. To really consider distilling it right down.
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No, I'm saying they are orthogonal, that they are not ordered in a priority, that they occur simultaneously.
Well, for your A and B, maybe they do? By and large?
contracycle:
Quote from: Callan S. on August 10, 2011, 10:02:10 AM
Not at all. Play to win does even more than imply, it points it's finger at content and in the voice of god says the content comes second. Indeed I think Sirlin even wrote an article about playing streetfighter, but hypothesizing a version just using bounding boxes - no graphics at all. To really consider distilling it right down.
No, because as I have pointed out, that doesn't explain why people choose streetfighter over space invaders or vice versa.
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Well, for your A and B, maybe they do? By and large?
For everyone. To borrow from the music analogy, you can't assert that a musician drawn to rock is less committed than one drawn to jazz and vice versa.
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