Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 ytterbium_dragon May 03, 2009 11:32:16	A discussion started in another topic about how the competitive mindset can be applied to Dungeons and Dragons. This thread is to continue the discussion without derailing a separate topic. In order to participate in this topic, I strongly recommend reading Playing to Win before contributing. It's a free book whose entire transcript can be found here: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw This book is often read as another extension of Sun Tsu's The Art of War as it recontextualizes many of its points into modern day practice. However, both books can be read as abstractly and be applied to almost any topic, which transforms the book from being merely about becoming better at tournament play to being a book about self-embetterment. Keep this in mind as you read.
#2 tyrandor May 03, 2009 12:04:46	How do you define being better at D&D? Is it having the best possible character? Is it being so immersed into your character that you can actually bring tears to your eyes and a quivering voice when his in-game brother dies? Or is it just being a cool, easy going, all around nice person that makes any group that has you as a player/DM better simply because you're just that cool to hang out with? Who's the better player? Who needs to improve? If anything, people who think being the best is only about having the best possible character are essentially D&D scrub - since they've put arbitrary rules on themselves and only strive to excel in one fashion. Ironic uh? >_> Granted, the same goes for the guy who use D&D has an exercise in method acting and nothing else - he's missing the point equally. Keep in mind that at its core, D&D is a cooperative game. Many of the thing sirlin (or even Sun Tzu) said simply don't apply, on account that the goal of all party involved is the same and there is no winner or loser.
#3 lightdragoon May 03, 2009 12:46:40	I do a lot of lurking and rarely post, but here are my two cents. @tyrandor - I completely agree, and I'll add that in his book, Sirlin mentions that his ideas do not apply to games that are just for fun, such as games that cannot have "reasonable tournaments" made from them (paraphrased: read Sirlin's section "How Far Should You Go to Win?," especially the third paragraph). tl;dr version of the rest: D&D is not a competitive game. Sirlin's book does not apply. Play with a group that complements your playing style, apply whatever ideas are acceptable in that group, and have fun. No D&D game is wrong if it is fun. To elaborate, I cannot classify D&D as a reasonable competitive game because I cannot find competing sides that have access to the same tools. If the DM is really trying to compete with his players, and he uses all avenues available to him that do not artificially constrain him, he is nearly guaranteed to win. For example, nothing stops the DM from throwing endless waves of encounters at the characters without an extended rest except his own desire to see the players have fun. Sure, the DM has a guideline for when to grant an extended rest, but it's not a hard rule, so why would the DM use it if he's competing with the players? The Akuma rule doesn't really apply, as you would have to apply it to dozens of possible DM actions, perhaps even completely banning the DM as an entity :D . Frankly, this shows that the game is not designed for competition. You can argue that you want the best possible companions to accompany you on your adventures, but that brings up other questions. Does every striker and defender have to be a battlerager fighter, as they are great at both jobs? Does every leader have to be a taclord because that appears to be the best to some people? Should you take a controller at all? No, I believe D&D is a game that Sirlin would call "just fun." It is balanced to be playable using suboptimal choices as a player, and even if the players choose optimally, they will not defeat a DM determined to "win." I don't believe Sirlin's book applies to this at all, whether you agree or disagree with his points about competitive games, simply because D&D is not reasonably competitive. Of course, some groups want the DM to push them tactically. They want to compete in the sense that they must make the best characters in order to survive. Perhaps they want the DM to disregard all encounter guidelines and keep throwing multiple solos per encounter at their group, or they want to go 10 encounters without an extended rest. I have no problem with these groups. Have fun and play your own way among people who want to play that way. Don't try to push your ideas on players in a noncompetitive environment. D&D is all about having fun.
#4 tyrandor May 03, 2009 12:59:24	And while a Battlerager fighter is arguably the most powerful character class out there... What if your dm decide to run a social game, filled with social heavy skill challenge and after 6 gaming session (say... 5 hours each) your party has been in a grand total of 2 fights? Oh, and one of them was an ambush during a masked ball, so you had to leave your armor and weapon outside and all the fighter could do was punch stuff while the Divine and Arcane class could easily snuck in their rods, holy symbols and wands and fought at full effectivness. Your battlerager fighter, who dumped his Cha to 8, is basically a glorified luggage transporter for the Bard, Fey Lock, Insp Lord and Sorcerer. Now a DM who runs such a game when there's a Battlerager with 8 cha is basically an ass. Especially if he didn't tell anybody what kind of game it was. But that's assuming it is a cooperative game. If the DM is truly out 'to get you' - he has no reason not to screw you over every occasion he gets. And since he's essentially in control of everything, he can win every time if he so wishes.
#5 lightdragoon May 03, 2009 13:25:24	And while a Battlerager fighter is arguably the most powerful character class out there... What if your dm decide to run a social game, filled with social heavy skill challenge and after 6 gaming session (say... 5 hours each) your party has been in a grand total of 2 fights? Oh, and one of them was an ambush during a masked ball, so you had to leave your armor and weapon outside and all the fighter could do was punch stuff while the Divine and Arcane class could easily snuck in their rods, holy symbols and wands and fought at full effectivness. Your battlerager fighter, who dumped his Cha to 8, is basically a glorified luggage transporter for the Bard, Fey Lock, Insp Lord and Sorcerer. Now a DM who runs such a game when there's a Battlerager with 8 cha is basically an ass. Especially if he didn't tell anybody what kind of game it was. But that's assuming it is a cooperative game. If the DM is truly out 'to get you' - he has no reason not to screw you over every occasion he gets. And since he's essentially in control of everything, he can win every time if he so wishes. Exactly. D&D is as fun as a group wants to make it. The DM and the players have to cooperate for anything worthwhile to happen. On the other hand, the fun of competitive video games, like Street Fighter and Arena play in WoW, is in not cooperating. You don't stand still and let Ryu fireball you to death, or just stop healing in WoW because some player says "it's not fair I can't kill you!" The point of those games is to strategically outplay one another. Sirlin's ideas have application in those environments. While a few very general principles *might* spill into D&D, it is not usually the correct environment to "play to win" in Sirlin's sense.
#6 kirindave May 03, 2009 13:38:42	What makes it difficult to apply Sirlin's work to D&D is that D&D does not have clear, unambiguous metrics of success for those who play it. When you play Street Fighter (or any explicitly competitive game), the metrics of success tend to be clearly defined so as to identify the winner of the game unambiguously. Sirlin is simply saying his metric of success in Street Fighter was exceptionally clear: win the match. And any strange social mores against playing the game in any particular way are superfluous and nonsensical (within reason: no elbowing at the console for example). In a more technical sense, Sirlin is telling people that their behavior is not stable in a game theory sense. In game theory, only a few solutions of cooperation (don't use so-called "cheap" moves) and double-crossing (using them) actually produce "optimal" results, where people can't do any better. Sirlin says it's unreasonable to expect people to adhere to your mores if that puts you at a disadvantage in a competitive sense, and that behavior is not "stable" in a game theory sense. In D&D though, if people don't "always cooperate" the entire game breaks down. The DM can arbitrarily kill anyone, players can frequently find holes in the game that they can exploit to become unkillable (its inevitable that a simulation game with the scope of D&D will have holes that need to be read by intent and applied judiciously, even the designers of the game don't take a legalistic approach!). And even if these holes didn't exist, saying D&D is "competitive" in any serious way that Sirlin's "scrub" notion applies to is hard to justify. What is the goal? For some it will be an unkillable character, for some it will be to have a character die in an epic fashion, for some it will be to become a just king, for others a godlike arcane tyrant. Some simply want to have some heroic exploits and really don't care about the degree of success. All of these are entirely reasonable, and result in fairly different "optimal" characters. In the forums, we like to hack on the tactical combat system. In this regard we can have a lot of fun making monstrously strong characters for particular kinds of combat encounters, and if that's your goal then we can start talking about things like when to take an 8 in a stat or which feats to take or when to put your character concept aside for a better class feature. But in the original thread someone said, "I don't like characters with an 8 in a starting stat" because that wasn't the kind of character he wanted to play. This is not being a scrub, this is placing something besides character combat higher in the spectrum of priority for a player's interest. To argue that unless he does what the original poster wanted he was a scrub, and to invole Sirlin's article to do it, is a gross mistake and misapplication of Sirlin's work.
#7 lord_byron1 May 03, 2009 14:04:05	I don't think the competetive mindset can be applied to DnD. The idea of the game is that it is a communal story, at least that's what I think. To say you can win at DnD is like suddenly calling out at the end of a film and saying, 'I win!' Win what?