POLL: Backstabbing

[spoon]

Originally posted by gravey101:
Even the most vicious of backstabs would not stop me playing with a player again. In fact, I might adnire him all the more for it :-)

Note to self: Get Gravey.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Stone Mill:
You insist that you enter the game with a clean slate. I submit that it is not entirely possible. You are human, after all. Most of this will be subconscious.

I don't think you understand how fully I RP a race.

I make decisions -- reactions, responses, etc -- relative to the other players, based PURELY, solely, and exclusively on the character and personality of the Role I have assigned to that race.

My emotional responses barely (if at all) enter into the equation. I take the role, and the situation; I put them together, and examine how the two would interact. From those, I select the course of action that (a) best exemplifies the chosen role, and (b) best serves that race's interests. In that order of priority, mind.

I don't just play RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, I also "GM" (stands for "game master" -- think "referee, movie director, mediator, rules guru, casting director, and everything else off-camera").

Now, in some games, I've GMed villains whose actions woudl make me literally sick to my stomache to contemplate actually being done -- by anyone. I've had to, as a result, learn to divorce my sense of "Self" from my sense of "role"; IOW, to keep role and self apart.

You probably don't have esp, so I don't understand how you can possibly enforce your expectations on other players, or know whether the players in your game will live up to your standard. You are setting yourself up for a lot of difficulty. Creating a hot button for someone to push.

I can't, and if I could wouldn't, enforce my standards on anyone else (some of the roles I assume would, and gleefully ... but I would never do so).

Nor, of course, can I know the characetr of a player save by observing them.

However, just as I seperate MY self and my role, I don't let what players do in the role of their in-game persona influence what I think of the player. The two are different, completely so.

...

I suspect you've never played face-to-face, non-computer RPGs, or at least, haven't done MUCH of that. This isn't something that's easy to explain to someone who doesn't "get it" at the first pass, but after a quarter-century of D&D ... it's instinctive to me; I don't even have to THINK about it anymore.

Clean slate is my policy, but I won't be naive and expose myself to the same mistakes against a same player twice. My guess is that you won't either, but you really can't visualize it as you are posting.

LEt me put this in simple terms for you:

If the role I have selected for a race has a weakness, and I encounter someone who I, the player, know will take advantage of that weakness if and when he detects it ... I will do nothing differently. The Role controls what is or isn't done; I don't change that Role simply because I could "win" better by doing so. The race, the Role, has to learn itself, sometimes.

Example: I, the player, may easily see that a player is being duplicitous in his dealings with me. However, the Role might be a naive, overly-trusting one ... so, I the player don't alter the Role to suddenly see through deceptions it was not supposed to see through. Whatrever I might know or see, the Role doesn't neccessarily know or see through.

In the terminology of D&D: it's a matter of refusing to succumb to metagame thinking. IC information and OOC information are not always identical; in fact, RARELY are they even passingly similar.

I myself could, with some time and effort, construct working firearms of various types and purposes, propellant included, if dropped into a medieval setting.

But that doesn't mean every peasant's-son-turned-warrior-hero FROM such a setting, whom I happen to be playing as a characetr, knows how to do so.

That is the defining difference between in-character (read: in-game) and out-of-character (read: out-of-game) knowledge being kept seperate.

[Pax]

Originally posted by DavidG:
No you lost. You may have had fun but you lost. It's going to be pretty hard to have a relevant discussion if you are going to make up your own definitions for words.

I refute that. Again, define "win" -- for you, seemingly, it must mean "make everyone else lose".

I don't play like that, and don't generaly enjoy playing with people who DO.

To me, someone wins if they get out of a game, exactly what they WANTED to get out of it. I don't have to be declared the victor by the game code, to enjoy myself.

And enjoying myself is my ONLY goal. So, if I have a good time playing, I win ... no matter the final scores.

That may not be winning for you, but that's the beauty of the way I see it: everyone chooses their own goals, their own "victory conditions" ... and it's entirely possible for everyone to "win" in terms of achieving their goals.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Pax:

quote:

---

Originally posted by DavidG:
No you lost. You may have had fun but you lost. It's going to be pretty hard to have a relevant discussion if you are going to make up your own definitions for words.

I refute that. Again, define "win" -- for you, seemingly, it must mean "make everyone else lose".

---

Do you not own a dictionary? Are you unaware of the victory conditions option in the game? If you play a game of chess and lose your king you have lost the game. You may have had fun doing it but you lost. If you are playing a game of Se4 on Last man standing rules then yes the object is to make everyone else lose. This does NOT mean you are trying to make the game no fun for them. Why are you trying to turn a desire to win into something evil and nasty? It is the object of the game in most SE4 games I have played.

[Gryphin]

Win = Have Fun
Win = Two Hav Phun (My Preferance)
Win = Concour the quadrant
Win = Enjoy concouring the quadrant

We can all look it up in the dictionary.
Here we define it for ourselves.
At that point there is nothing to discus.

I guess when all is said and done it comes down to:
If your ally broke a treaty
Would you feel it was wrong or just part of the game?
Will you ever trust them again in another game
Will you try to get even in another game

About the best I feel you can do is agree in advance how to cancel treatys. If the other player will not agree, (in which case you can't trust them), or if they break the agrement you pretty much have your answer.
Since I have not been and don't think I will be in this situation
Is This all idealistic spectulation?
or
An Unbiased suggesiton?

I susspect many will think I have over simplyfied.

[DavidG]

Win = Have Fun
Lose = Have Fun
Therefore: Win = Lose

I apologize if it seems like I'm going on a rant here but I don't understand why some people seem to want to vilianize a desire to win. Most games have rules that define who the winner is. You won't see the Maple Leafs losing the 7th game of the Stanley Cup 10-1 and then have the ref say 'oh wait they had more fun so they win'

In SE4 the rules often say the Last empire alive wins. So I try to make this my empire. Is that really a bad thing?

Personaly I think everyone trys to win in SE4 even if they won't admit it to themselves. I've played the Prirates in a P&N game which is pretty tough to win at (and I didn't) but I still tried to win. Yes I had fun but I did not win the game.

[Chronon]

Has anyone here ever played Avalon Hill's Diplomacy? Now there is a game that truly rewards backstabbing (it's almost impossible to win without backstabbing at least one player in the game). It used to be my favorite game, but I don't play it anymore because too many of my friends took it personally when they got backstabbed, and it started to carry over into real life. In comparison, I find the group of players on PBW quite honorable and forthright. Yes, backstabs do happen, but in my experience Partnerships really mean something in SE4. I find that very refreshing.