If you can't win, it is not a game

This is a translation of a post originally published in 2017. More posts in English here.

 "No one wins in a role-playng game" is a phrase very popular when you need to explain the medium to newcomers, but it is actually a lie.

Well, more than a lie, it's more like shorthand for "no individual player wins, we collaborate to achieve a goal (except the DM): it isn't PVP, we play against the machine". Which is good and just... until you add "you win if you have fun".

I always found that phrase a bit like feel-good mumbo jumbo, as it would be the only type of game where the winning condition is having fun. Do you only roll ones in a board game? Doesn't matter, you win because you laugh with it. You can't bounce the ball, much less get it to the basket? Don't worry, you are playing basket with your friends.

I don't think fun is something you have to achieve, fun should be the default state if there are no other external factors and the game (and in the case of RPGs, its avatar the DM) is at least half good.

So, problem solved: in a half decent RPG with a somewhat skilled DM the usual thing is that you are having fun, hence, you are usually winning. Therefore, the first statement was true: no one wins in an RPG because we all win.

Except, that I disagree. A game, to be called such, needs victory conditions. I don't think less of activities that don't have them (like improv), but they are not in the same category. On the other hand, yes, I know there are many things called "game" (like playing hosue) don't have victory conditions, but I am using the term in a narrow way here.

Then, RPGs dont't have victory conditions? Is role-playing a game? On the contrary, RPGs do have victory conditions, but they are not explicit. Usually there's nothing that tells you "if you get X and Y, you win", but there are implicit conditions, usually stablished by the players themselves. These are, of course, their characters motivations.

Imagine, if you will, a game title "Arabian Nights the RPG", where there are there players with only one motivation each:

• Hakim, who wants to be rich as a sultan.
• Umar, who wants to break the spell that keeps her sister in the shape of a gacele.
• And Farah, that wants to get revenge on the Caliph of Bagdad for executing her father.

The three of them get together with an objective that satisfies the three motivations: stealing the great ruby from the Caliph. It is very valuable and it has verses from the Quran inscribed, so it would have divine power able to lift the spell of Umar's sister. And then they will be able to sell afterwards!

I think that the victory condition here is clear: realise the motivations of the players. If they don't get the ruby, they have lost that attempt to "win" the game (or the campaign). But they can always try again in a different way, or change their goals (=victory conditions) on the fly.

But there is a goal that most games share: given that a player can change the victory conditions more or less as he wishes, there is an unescapable one: your character must not die. If your character dies, you lose.

This can be hard to see because RPGs are continuous games where, once you win, you can always stablish a new victory condition (now that Hakim has sold the ruby and he is rich, he wants to become a magnate in Damascus, for example), so new challenges are concatenated. After all, ther very first RPG was designed with this in mind, using a system of gold/experience to stablish a progression. But the fact that you keep on playing it doesn't mean that you have not won.

And in the same way, when you lose (=your character dies) and you can simply start by zero, it also mades the fact that surviving is a victory condition harder to see. But the the fact that you keep playing doesn't mean that you didn't lose.

Therefore, mechanical differences between systems aside, almost all roleplaying games have those two victory conditions: accomplish your character motivation and don't die trying.

After all, isn't that the idea behind the term "campaign"? A series of encounters, some you win, some you lose.

What is then the function of the DM besides playing as the NPCs and the world? Keeping the thing from being too easy. The DM has to make sure that he the challenge is fair, no matter the motif of the game, even in one where no weapon is ever drawn. Making sure that you deserve to accomplish your PC motivation, that is, winning.

If there is no real challenge, if you don't have the right to lose, anything you accomplish is a lie, a power fantasy. It's like playing in god mode: funny at first, but it gets boring with time.

Why else is a DM necessary in most games, and, in those that she is not, she is replaced by systems that allow the players to impose difficulties on themselves or with rules that do just that? Because if there is no challenge, there is no fun. And if you can't lose, there is no challenge. In the same why, too much challenge is like playing in lunatic mode: you get a good laugh at first, then it feels like you are getting undeservedly beaten up.

And with this I don't want to say that winning is the most important part of the game, nothing further from my intention: having fun is still the most important part and it is possible to have fun even if you lose (or do players of Monopoly all cry in the end?). Because, after all, fun does not depend so much of winning or losing (although winning rocks) as knowing that you have done with it with fair rules where there has been true risk.

Although it is true that having a character killed after investing a lot of time and feelings in them sucks, the risk of losing it is what made it important in the first place, isn't it? That's part of the "punishment" that comes from losing and, even if it hurts, one should take it with deportivity.

And, finally, a question: are then RPGs only those 100% narratives whre players have full freedom and there are not victory conditions? The answer is left to the reader, who has already had enough of me for the day. Thank you for reading. Valmar Cerenor!