Winning and Losing and Winning Anyway

Look, I know that some of you (okay, maybe only one of you) think I spend too much time thinking about and playing fantasy role-playing games, but if I get a spiritual insight out of them occasionally, that's what I'm going to blog about. I'm sorry I'm not who you'd like me to be. I'm not who I'd like to be either. I'm trying to change that, and I believe these fantasy games are helping.

In past blog posts, I've explained the somewhat ridiculous system of earning XP. In case any of you have forgotten how it works, here's the whole XP system in a nutshell: Kill Monsters. You kill monsters, you earn XP. Simple as that.

Except that, recently, I've learned that there are more ways to earn XP than that. The GM (Game Master), the person who's calling the shots, can give characters bonus XP for almost any or no reason at all. When the four hobbits outmaneuvered the ring wraiths and successfully made it to Bree, they probably earned XP for that. When Merry and Pippin convinced the Ents to go to war with Sauruman, they might have earned XP for that, too. And Frodo and Sam probably earned bucket loads of XP for destroying the One Ring, even though Frodo did hardly any fighting at all. (BTW, Sam is Awesome. He did everything Frodo did, PLUS he took out a bunch of orcs and a large, monstrous spider!)

And even in the combat-oriented encounters, it turns out that you don't actually have to kill the monsters. You just have to "defeat" them. If you can sneak past them, put them to sleep with magic, knock them out without killing them, fight them off so they run away, or maybe even just scare them away, you might get XP for that. So, there are a whole lot of ways to earn XP without killing anything. The trouble is that you still have to win.

If the four hobbits had been captured before reaching Bree, they wouldn't have earned XP for trying to escape the ring wraiths' clutches. If Merry and Pippin hadn't convinced the Ents to take on Sauruman, they wouldn't have earned XP for trying. And if Frodo and Sam hadn't managed to destroy the One Ring, they wouldn't have earn all that bonus XP for completing their epic quest, because they had failed to complete it.

In most RPGs, if you lose, you lose, and you don't get any XP for trying.

So if a role-playing adventure character starts pushing on a rock, and he fails to move that rock no matter how hard he tries, and he keeps trying and failing for the rest of his life, he won't earn any XP for the endeavor, and he will never get any stronger. Thank God real life doesn't work like that.

In real life, if you try and fail, you still get points for trying. If you push on a rock, your muscles get stronger, whether the rock actually moves or not. If you study for a test, you get smarter, whether you pass the test or not. If you make a decision and learn from it, you become wiser, whether you made the right decision or not. In fact, some people say that they gain more knowledge, wisdom, and strength from failure than they get from succeeding, and that totally makes sense. If you push on an empty box and get it to move, that won't be much of a workout, so you won't gain a whole lot of strength from it, but if you push on a boulder, that could be a considerable workout, so you may get a bit stronger whether you get the rock to move or not.

Failure can be discouraging, but it can also be empowering. Learn from your mistakes and keep fighting. In real life, as long as you keep fighting, you're going to get stronger, whether you ever manage to defeat your monsters or not.