"a game without a winner or even an ending"

"The adventure 'The Giant's Bag,' for example, contains dozens of lines of dialog, exchanges that would simply have no place in [traditional war-gamer Tony] Bath's considered reflection on the passage of fictional history.  The story itself follows the attempts of a greedy wizard (presumably played by Gygax's son Ernie) to con a churlish but canny giant out of its rucksack -- without violence, merely with trickery.  In fact, the magician first allies with the giant to acquire a sunken treasure, and only after trying to take advantage of his oversized companion's feeblemindedness does he get his comeuppance.  Gygax's examples show more problem solving than carnage, less warfare in a political context than simple plundering of any wealth in plain sight.  The accounts of Dungeons & Dragons ignore the fate of nations and focus instead on the episodic unfolding of a fictional life, that of a person, and thereby created something new: a wargame without wars, a miniature game without miniatures, and a game without a winner or even an ending."

-- Jon Peterson, Playing At The World