This game is not even slightly reflective of how anything would plausibly work in reality, and nobody has any idea of how fun game design or accurate simulation-game design works, and they are playing a game that would be cooperative in real life as if it is a competitive one, and it is occurring to Keltham for literally the first time that they may not even consciously know the difference between positive-sum and zero-sum games, which sure would explain why simple words for that don't seem to exist in Taldane, or why no Chelish book or Chelish person has ever happened to use the terms around him yet.
Right. This is fine. Everything is fine.
"All right, let's stop there," Keltham says, trying to maintain the same calm demeanor that a Watcher would have in this situation. "I think this game isn't playing out the same way it would play out if Chelish governance was running a heritage-optimization program; do you have any ideas what went wrong and how you should modify the game?"