Can you 'Lose' a hobby?

Recently, I went through an experience that soured me to one of my hobbies. I'm at the very least taking a break from it, if not stopping it entirely. But there's a voice in my head, one that tells me that if I don't go back, then the people who soured it 'drove me away' and they 'won.' Which, by extension, means I lost.

Can you lose a hobby? I mean, you can lose one in the sense of it going away and being unable to find it. But can you lose otherwise?

I should clarify a bit. The hobby is a type of roleplaying. Not the sexy kind, but the nerdy kind. Like D&D. When I first started playing that, way back before my age was in double digits, the thing that appealed to me most about it was that you couldn't win. It was impossible. You couldn't really lose, either. You could only enjoy it.

That's what I've always liked about roleplaying. And when someone tries to force a final resolution, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like having to compete against the people running the game. I don't like zero-sum-games. I hate that there has to be one winner and one loser. I'd rather it be something we can all have fun doing, and that way, we all win. Mutually Assured Delight, a far better MAD than that other one.

But what do you do with those people that need to win? What do you do with the ones that want it to be "I win, you lose"? One solution is what I'm doing: walking away. If they want to play that way, fine. But I don't, so I won't play with them anymore.

But that's not the best way. In fact, I'd say it might be the second worst. (The worst being going back and beating them at their own game, thus becoming the thing I hate most).

The best way is how we did it in college. I was thinking back to that game recently, and I noticed that there was a culture to that game unlike any other I've ever seen.

Characters died, yes. In that sense, people could 'lose.' But they were never killed randomly. They were given a resolution to their character's story. Maybe not the happiest resolution, but a resolution they could all be content with. And they would try, as hard as possible, not to kill anyone. IF there was no way around it, then fine. But there's almost always a way around it, and the players in that game managed to find it most of the time.

The one time I can remember someone actively pursuing another character's death, twisting things so as to be able to kill them (rather than twisting so they didn't have to), the entire game reacted with disgust. That player was ostracized (for a little bit) and told that what he did was 'not cool.' We moved on from there, but the fact that we did it at all is an important thing.

Maybe I'm remembering with rose tinted glasses. Maybe people are just assholes, moreso now than before.

Or maybe I just never noticed before.