The Losing Edge, or How to Get Good at Failing

[JCurwen3]

I watched the South Park episode The Losing Edge the other day, and it got me thinking... how might one get really good at intentionally losing / failing / sucking?

The Denver Little League team in the episode accomplish this feat, actually having trained even to bat themselves out! They are competing against the South Park team, that also is playing to lose, but assumed just not training and playing badly would do the trick.

If I wanted to represent high skill at failing at a skill challenge (like a baseball game) intentionally and exceptionally (probably most relevant for games), how'd you do it? My first thought was one (or more) technique(s) based off of the relevant skill, but I wasn't sure that would make sense as the goal and methods are totally different. Should it be a separate skill?

Just musing, curious how you'd model it. Thoughts?

[Ji ji]

It could be a X skill-based acting roll.

Sport (tennis) 14 [dx+3]
Acting 12 [iq+1]

Failing a service on purpose 14 +1 =15
Foiling your observers, bringing them to believe that you failed involountarily is a quick contest of your roll vs Body Language +5 or Detect Lies +3

[Maz]

As also seen at the London Olympics womens badmiton qualifications: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKOfbLgJYqg

Chinese and Korea playing against each other both deliberately trying to loose.

I agree with Ji ji that it should be acting based. After all, anyone can simply "fail", to be good at failing doesn't mean you fail worse (not hitting the ball cant' be done good or bad). Being good at failing must be being good at failing, while looking like you try your best!

I haven't seen the south-park episode but the two badminton teams in the video I linked clearly haven't spend points in acting. It is very obviously they are loosing on purpose. Which is why they got disqualified.

[Blood Legend]

Can...someone explain what I just watched. (the olympics one..)

[bcd]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Can...someone explain what I just watched. (the olympics one..)

Due to the way in which the competition was organized, the loser of the match would face easier opposition in the rest of the competition. Therefore there was an incentive to lose that particular match if your team was pretty confident that it could win its other matches. At least that was my understanding of the situation. Losing in this case is rational and beneficial, but not very good sportsmanship and, worse yet in the Olympics, terrible showmanship.

[Maz]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Can...someone explain what I just watched. (the olympics one..)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVz4wOs1xWY <<this video explains it.

(I found that one first when trying to find a video of the situation, but wanted to find another one where you could see the actual live pictures... sadly it was in Chinese. Sorry about that).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by bcd

Losing in this case is rational and beneficial, but not very good sportsmanship and, worse yet in the Olympics, terrible showmanship.

I've seen it compared to teams that have locked a playoff berth keeping their stars out of late season games, or a racer pushing just hard enough to prevent elimination in the first few rounds.

But both of those situations are about entering the part that counts in top form (heck, the playoff situation is a genuine positive gain even aside from protecting your key, and probably nearly worn out, players, since giving the down-roster players some experience in front of a crowd they might not otherwise get is a good thing), not about manipulating the system to change the tournament structure in your favor.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by RyanW

I've seen it compared to teams that have locked a playoff berth keeping their stars out of late season games, or a racer pushing just hard enough to prevent elimination in the first few rounds.

But both of those situations are about entering the part that counts in top form (heck, the playoff situation is a genuine positive gain even aside from protecting your key, and probably nearly worn out, players, since giving the down-roster players some experience in front of a crowd they might not otherwise get is a good thing), not about manipulating the system to change the tournament structure in your favor.

I'm firmly of the opinion that such comparisons are valid. It's the job of tournament organisers to prevent perverse incentives or at least do as much as possible to avoid them.

Having a grand strategy aimed at winning a tournament is valid sportsmanship, even if that means resting key players for certain games.

[whswhs]

Being able to "lose" convincingly in a fight would seem to be Stage Combat. So I would think you could define a family of comparable skills for various sports.

Bill Stoddard

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Being able to "lose" convincingly in a fight would seem to be Stage Combat. So I would think you could define a family of comparable skills for various sports.

Bill Stoddard

Awful skill bloat, especially while Physics and Economics, respectively, remain single skills.

I'm aware that some real skills are super-narrow in specialisation, but since GURPS has drawn playability lines somewhere in the past, I think we kind of have to hold to them. A family of new skills to play sports badly while appearing to try hard is probably not the way to go.

I'd use Stage Combat, on the theory that sports are mostly stylised hunting or combat scenes anyway. Obviously, a completely different set of familiarities, but no less different than party clowning vs. acting in a TV Shakespeare production (both Performance). Defaults to the actual sport at -2.

I could be persuaded that a new specialisation of Group Performance applied, though. I'd have the same one work for all group sports, though. The need to be familiar with all the aspects of the sport would obviously lead to most of those who'd use the skill having at least a point of the Game or Sport skill involved, but it's probably not mandatory.