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Wag
 
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Marios (4/13/2008)
and asserting that martyrdom is _better_ than victory (even in the passive "better for me" sense) is liking saying "Oh I wanted to lose all along".
If I understand what you're saying correctly, I think your mistake is to assume that winning IC is the same as winning OOC, which for many players it isn't. A cool death is difficult to beat as a moment in the spotlight, as Ian makes clear. The act of being killed can be more fun than the act of killing, even if you were trying your damdest to be the person who comes out on top.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Champion
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I do a lot of thinking about this particular dilemma, because in one game I play a character who is (to all intents and purposes) functionally immortal. This character was designed and built for the purpose of killing other people's characters.
Maelstrom lets you play Angels/Demons which cannot be killed by ordinary means. I decided that it would be fun to play an Angel of Vengeance, and devote my game to killing any and all other characters who had committed murder IC.
I thought that this would be relatively fair and balanced, as I would only ever be going after characters who had killed somebody else's character. I wouldn't be hanging about on paths and killing people at random, and anyone who received a visit from me would have signalled their willingness to participate in messy PVP action by killing someone else's character first...
However, this didn't quite work out. Firstly a whole bunch of innocents would insist on throwing themselves in front of the murderers I was trying to kill, often with hilarious or deadly consequences. Secondly, in spite of the fact that they had already killed someone else's character (and therefore in my opinion didn't have a leg to stand on) some of the people that I killed were upset because they couldn't prevent my character from killing them by killing her.
I've always had some guilt about killing other people's characters. It makes me feel like a mean kid who has taken away someone else's ball so that they can't play any more. Ironically I much prefer my characters to be killed by other players, as it always feels way more meaningful to me to die as part of someone else's game than just to fall victim to a random monster.
In spite of all the people who tell me that they love to be assassinated by other characters for good IC reasons, and in spite of this being my own favourite way to die, I always feel mean when killing someone else's character. In fact in some other systems, I suffer dangerous attacks of conscience and cowardice that have prevented me from killing other people's characters even when it was tantamount to suicide not to.
I have however always managed to rationalise this guilt to the characters in question. It might be easy for an avenging angel to kill people left and right, but ordinary humans have to sleep at night. Unless I'm playing someone with serious psychological problems, killing people should not be anything to do easily or often. Of course this can make it tricky to fight NPCs, but that's the way I like it 
Internet Redcap: Don't make me put the hat on
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Heroic Knight
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Marios (4/13/2008)
"Oh I wanted to lose all along". On the face of it, it may seem sporting "See - you haven't made me feel bad!", but actually you've denied them their victory. It's not 'sportmanlike' and, insofar as you enjoy the sport and want it to continue, you have to be willing to be sporting - i.e. finding a position between "Fuck! I wanted to win, not lose! Damn you!" and "Victory means nothing at all. To me. Nothing at all." - which I think comes down to (1) you played well (i.e. if you played worse, I would have won - but you didn't) and (2) I'm glad we played.
I may be taking this worng but it seems that your saying if you get killed and then go no bigy dyign was fun or part of the game and i enjoyed the experience that your demning hte other persons kill, but as one of the other threads went into surviving isnt always the win of the game. In a fight you can get beaten by a better fighter but if your are completly happy that you were beaten and it want down well and you enjoyed the run up the fight and the end theres nothing wrong with it is there?
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Eos: Sornasian: Gregory Patell Club Secretary Heroes and Heroines
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (4/13/2008)
Marios (4/13/2008)
and asserting that martyrdom is _better_ than victory (even in the passive "better for me" sense) is liking saying "Oh I wanted to lose all along".If I understand what you're saying correctly, I think your mistake is to assume that winning IC is the same as winning OOC, which for many players it isn't. A cool death is difficult to beat as a moment in the spotlight, as Ian makes clear. The act of being killed can be more fun than the act of killing, even if you were trying your damdest to be the person who comes out on top.
If winning ('achieving your IC goal' for people who don't like the words like 'win'/'lose') isn't more enjoyable than losing - even for those who have deliberately engaged with that aspect of the game - then I think there are problems because your OOC goals aren't lining up with your IC goals.
It's like saying you prefer losing at chess - but then saying that you'll give the game a really good go, nonetheless, because you enjoy losing to someone playing their hardest. Why should I have to be the person who plays their hardest (to achieve their IC goal!) if you're not going to match me? Why do I have to be the shit so you can be the martyr?
I think it's as unsustainable as saying "I just want to fight the bad guys - I don't like killing characters". I'm not saying it's invalid as a motive - if it's what you enjoy, it's what you enjoy - but I think it's dangerously inconsistent to say (1) My game relies on X (2) I don't like X. If your game relies on the killing of characters, you should be extolling that whether or not it's something you personally engage in. I think the point is saying merely "I prefer to be killed, because I don't like killing players" is not a neutral statement with regards to the killing of players - anymore than it's neutral about whether people enjoy being killed. I'm not saying that you can't clarify that it's a personal failing - but that if you don't, normal "murder is wrong" ethics asserts its ugly head and people will default to the "It's good to have martyrs in a game, but better if we can do it without anyone having to be a murderer".
(1) "I hate PKers, they ruin my game" -> Only bad people play tennis
(2) "I hate PKing, but I love being killed" -> Only bad people win at tennis
If you want there to be lots of games of tennis, then I think it's necessary to assert that winning tennis is better than losing tennis. I don't think it's sustainable situation to say "losing tennis better than winning, but you must still play to win!".
All things being equal, if winning tennis isn't generally more fun than losing tennis then I think there's a problem with the game that needs fixing (in general, larp games do often have a problem with the 'wages of sin' being surprisingly poor as well as OOC 'levelling by bitching').
Marios
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Wag
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Bacon (4/13/2008)
It makes me feel like a mean kid who has taken away someone else's ball so that they can't play any more. Ironically I much prefer my characters to be killed by other players, as it always feels way more meaningful to me to die as part of someone else's game than just to fall victim to a random monster.
I think it's important to distinguish 'fear of being shouted at' from 'guilt' (insofar as we can do that!). Guilt is what you have when your conditioning coincides with what you actually think is bad - i.e. you feel guilty about stepping on someone's foot, but you're afraid to speak your mind in a room full of lots of angry people. Fear isn't necessarily irrational - if 60% of the people you kill bless you, but 40% scream and shout and cry and curse you OOC, is the 60% of the people whose game you improved worth the amount of shit you had to wade through? If it isn't, then that's probably something that needs attention.
AnthonyK (4/13/2008)
I may be taking this worng but it seems that your saying if you get killed and then go no bigy dyign was fun or part of the game and i enjoyed the experience that your demning hte other persons kill, but as one of the other threads went into surviving isnt always the win of the game. In a fight you can get beaten by a better fighter but if your are completly happy that you were beaten and it want down well and you enjoyed the run up the fight and the end theres nothing wrong with it is there?
I think you're failing to make the distinction between "I'm really glad we had this game/this contest of wills - it was very close, but you won it" 'sportsmanlike handshake' and "I always planned to lose to you because I don't like killing. Obviously, you shouldn't take my moral judgement to apply to you.". A sportsmanlike response asserts that playing was much, much better than not playing - without suggesting that winning wasn't something you both equally desired. I don't think you can say "Only you actually wanted to win this conflict" without it sounding like a moral judgement (whether it's to someone's face or express it as your personal sentiment).
Marios
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Heroic Knight
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| I don't think equating dying as a win condition with games such as tennis or chess, indeed any game where the intent is merely to be first, works. Those chaps at Thermopylae are a prime example of 'winning' by dying, alright they might not have thought so at the time, but prior to actual death I'm fairly sure they must have realized they weren't going home and it was better (a win) to die that to leggit or surrender. JC would perhaps have not had the impact on religion if he hadn't been nailed to a cross, but instead had quietly beavered away, as a carpenter and preached a bit on suindays but mostly kept his head down and died of old age. Joan of Arc, James Dean, there are lots of examples of people who have 'won', from an external perspective by carking it dramatically and tragically, rather than quietly at home in bed. They have achieved as close to imortality as is currently available, not that they can appreciate it I don't think. As players in a game we can appreciate it, experience death in totality and gain the same buzz that people get from merely reading about Leonidas, made even better if it's a good death. I don't think anyone will go yay! I got stabbed up by a random mugger, but I would allow them the grace to say they did, if it made them feel less crap about it. Also, if you have perhaps set quite impossible goals for your character, from an OOC perspective; actually turning the New world into a theme park etc, could be construed as daft but if your character believes it then why not go for it and see how far you can get? it's not like you're not playing hard, it's just that you (player) are unlikely to achieve your (character's) goals, I don't think that automatically means you are short changing the bad guys.
~Lex malla, lex nulla.~
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Wag
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Bacon (4/13/2008)
In spite of all the people who tell me that they love to be assassinated by other characters for good IC reasons
What's a 'bad IC reason'?
Marios
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Prodigal
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| Personally I'd rather remove the distinction between PC and NPC. Killing a character (we could use the term 'person') is killing a character. Most sane people don't resort to violence, especially lethal violence, as their first means of conflict resolution. Most societies also frown on it. Obviously this isn't going to apply in all cases (a machine or a spirit which doesn't conform to human psychology at all), but is going to apply to most. This should be reflected in characterisation. At dragonbane we had one player who wanted to play a short tempered murderer who killed anyone who got in this way. He was told that character concept was not appropiate to the setting or any of the (three) cultures included in the game. Sticking to the maelstrom example started by Bacon, characters (pc or npc) have generally done something by choice to initiate PvP - often that is physical violence, but also includes other behaviour that civilsed society regards (and is known to regard) as beyond the pale - infernalism, rampant blashphemy, treason against their head of state, etc. Assuming you don't allow people to create 'random muggers' or murderers like the above example, PvP normally only happens because someone stuck their head up, knowing the risks. One of the reasons my CamUK character got killed by PC elders was because he gained too much political and social power. I knew the risks when I started going down that route.
------ PD: St. Legion the blessed, ' "If you're a loyal eidolon, where were you when we killed the first-born?" RW: Ketta Sheng "Girls are evil. They break your heart, and then your spear, and then they get killed" EOS: Hasib Suran: "Yes, older brother, it's your choice. I only advise you." TNN: Druid Coran: "Do not heckle me, witch!"
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