The Game of Thrones, right? (Actually in that particular case, given that it’s a Crapsack World, it’s in fact a negative sum game).
I like your post very much, you’re right in that these rules really seem to encourage incompetence and mediocrity. Some of the alternative you suggest feel a bit ShinkiAndWH40k, shounen-manga kind of larger-than-life… but I love that as well.
Yes, I know, but I like the Game of Thrones better: “”Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men...all will play the ‘Game of Thrones’.[...]When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. ” Hence, negative sum. Though DEFCON(i.e. Global Thermonuclear War, the Game) is on an entirely different scale, I guess.
Butbutbut in “the game of thrones” winning is an option, whereas the whole point of the “strange game” quotation is that there is no winning move at all (other than not playing in the first place). It’s not just negative-sum; it’s unwinnable.
(Whether that’s true of actual global thermonuclear war is of course a separate question.)
The Game of Thrones, right? (Actually in that particular case, given that it’s a Crapsack World, it’s in fact a negative sum game).
I like your post very much, you’re right in that these rules really seem to encourage incompetence and mediocrity. Some of the alternative you suggest feel a bit ShinkiAndWH40k, shounen-manga kind of larger-than-life… but I love that as well.
The “strange game” quotation is from the movie “War Games”. (The game in question is Global Thermonuclear War.)
Yes, I know, but I like the Game of Thrones better: “”Kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars, lords and honest men...all will play the ‘Game of Thrones’.[...]When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground. ” Hence, negative sum. Though DEFCON(i.e. Global Thermonuclear War, the Game) is on an entirely different scale, I guess.
Butbutbut in “the game of thrones” winning is an option, whereas the whole point of the “strange game” quotation is that there is no winning move at all (other than not playing in the first place). It’s not just negative-sum; it’s unwinnable.
(Whether that’s true of actual global thermonuclear war is of course a separate question.)