Rule 0 or Playing Within the Spirit of the Game

wadenels wrote: Also, in Republic of Rome you aren't really trying to save Rome. You're trying to win. In Dead of Winter survival is the ultimate goal and even if you can't win you can help others win, which would be a horrible way to play Republic of Rome. Archipelago is somewhere in between two, which is probably the reason some people have so much trouble wrapping their head around it.

I'm not sure what game you got in your box of Dead of Winter, but in mine, there's a winner or group of winners, and there is a loser or group of losers, and the winners are ahead of the losers. There is no such goal as survival, or the "colony win", or any other bullshit. There's winning, and there's not-winning, and each person can have one of those two outcomes.

I have a long-standing belief that there is an order of victory that goes something like this:

Solo Victory > Shared Victory > Shared Loss > Solo Loss

Other people may disagree with that - but my definition of doing my best to play to win involves moving as high on that ladder as possible. If that means I drag everyone else down with me, then I've moved up from a solo loss to a shared loss, which is an improvement in my state relative to everyone else. If everyone else doesn't like that, then maybe they should play in such a way as to prevent me from doing that. The folks I play with seem to share this standard, although we've never really stated it - it's part of why we have yet to successfully complete Tomorrow. Everyone starts throwing nukes when they find themselves mathematically out of it.

This whole discussion only makes sense in relation to DoW as long as there's no betrayer. If there is, tanking is stupid, because you just possibly handed him/her the game.

madwookiee wrote:

wadenels wrote: Also, in Republic of Rome you aren't really trying to save Rome. You're trying to win. In Dead of Winter survival is the ultimate goal and even if you can't win you can help others win, which would be a horrible way to play Republic of Rome. Archipelago is somewhere in between two, which is probably the reason some people have so much trouble wrapping their head around it.

I'm not sure what game you got in your box of Dead of Winter, but in mine, there's a winner or group of winners, and there is a loser or group of losers, and the winners are ahead of the losers. There is no such goal as survival, or the "colony win", or any other bullshit. There's winning, and there's not-winning, and each person can have one of those two outcomes.

I have a long-standing belief that there is an order of victory that goes something like this:

Solo Victory > Shared Victory > Shared Loss > Solo Loss

Other people may disagree with that - but my definition of doing my best to play to win involves moving as high on that ladder as possible. If that means I drag everyone else down with me, then I've moved up from a solo loss to a shared loss, which is an improvement in my state relative to everyone else. If everyone else doesn't like that, then maybe they should play in such a way as to prevent me from doing that. The folks I play with seem to share this standard, although we've never really stated it - it's part of why we have yet to successfully complete Tomorrow. Everyone starts throwing nukes when they find themselves mathematically out of it.

This whole discussion only makes sense in relation to DoW as long as there's no betrayer. If there is, tanking is stupid, because you just possibly handed him/her the game.

I'm not even sure that the situation you describe in your last paragraph (there is a betrayer) changes too much. As far as I see it, losing to the betrayer is still in the "Shared Loss" category, which is better than "Solo Loss". More precisely, it's a choice between losing the game to many others or to a single player, and I can see how some would see the former as more humiliating. Not to mention that throwing the game is only a potential win for the betrayer.

To me it's the biggest problem with semi-coops like this: there is a big disconnect between the win/lose conditions of the game and the real life setting they try to depict. In reality, no-one in their right mind would consider surviving the zombie apocalypse (without fulfilling some random personal goals, even if others did fulfill theirs) worse than dying (as long as all the others die as well).

Frankly, I'm not sure what (if anything) could be done about it. The best idea I can think about is the following: before the game, buy twice as many bottles of fine beer (or whatever treat you collectively agree on) as there are players. If the colony survives, everybody in the colony (except the betrayer, if there's any) wins, regardless of the fulfillment of their personal goals: they all get one bottle each. Those, who fulfilled their personal goals get to share the remaining bottles between themselves as they see fit. If the betrayer wins, he/she gets three bottles, and the rest is put away for the next game. If no-one wins, put away all the beer for the next game.

Alternatively, take all the beer that was not won, find the closest homeless person, and give them to him.

Gambling, as Kingput said, would induce the true spirit of the game if players played in a non-meta fashion.

Same is true with poker. Ever played poker for non-money stakes? Lots of crazy shit happens but as soon as you introduce each person putting up 30 dollars you almost immediately start to see real, strategic, poker.