Tension (Photo credit: chimerasaurus)

I suspect a lot of A to Z challenge blog posts will use victory as their theme. I want to explain how victory figures into roleplaying games.

Many board games or card games are competitive. You’re trying to defeat other players. Roleplaying games like Pathfinder or Dungeons & Dragons are collaborative. Victory comes when you defeat your enemies—but maybe only temporarily until you face the UBG (Über Bad Guy). I think that’s something people unfamiliar with roleplaying games have difficulty understanding. There’s no win or lose.

Granted, some gamemasters have an adversarial attitude toward their players, and may consider they’ve won when they achieve TPK (total party kill), but I don’t think that’s much of a victory.

Here’s to mutually assured victory!