PDA

View Full Version : So what exactly IS an RPG?



TexAvery
2022-01-13, 02:36 PM
Not to clutter up @Quertus's thread, I wanted to see what people around here think does define an "RPG". This can include or exclude computer vs TT, number of players, and any other division the poster chooses; this is to slake my curiosity about opinions here, not to argue for my own as provably correct. That said, here's what I would give as the list of requirements that would define it; missing any one would make it not-RPG.


a neutral arbitrator (storyteller/ DM/ GM/ computer) controlling one side
at least one other player with imperfect information about the game state
advancement of the non-GMs' avatar(s) through the act of playing the game
non-GM avatar persistence from session to session
rules exist to determine success and failure of avatar actions
these rules include both binary success/failure and randomized results, fed into by the advancement of item 3


This means that board games such as Arkham (I forget the exact name of the one I played) don't count, as the board is entirely reset between games. Battletech's core skirmish game doesn't count, even with a double-blind moderator, until the Mechwarrior rules are included and someone is running the persistent world the players' MWs advance through. A D&D tournament module counts, though - even if the character doesn't gain a level and isn't used again, her player could keep her character sheet and use her again.

There are still some I struggle with - the newer Assassin's Creeds include "RPG element" such as levels and improvement - do the expansions and quests make it an RPG, or does the fact that sequels move to a new character make it like a traditional board game? And as I recall, Warcraft3 had the hero-characters leveling persistently from mission to mission, while the previous versions and Starcraft did not.

DCSS, by contrast, feels a hell of a lot like an RPG but fails on the persistence by my definition - there is no (official) way to persist a character while clearing the board; each character is tied to exactly one RNG-seeded dungeon and has no way of seeing anything else.

I am hoping other people will have other interesting ideas that might or might not affect my opinion.

Kurt Kurageous
2022-01-13, 02:48 PM
Ask 50 people, get 50 answers.

Mine is: And RPG is a role-playing exercise mediated by a game master in which the players determine what their avatars would do in response to the prompting of the game master. It qualifies as a game as a score is kept in some form (money, xp, items).

In video games, player responses are limited by the programmer. For that reason I say they are not RPGs, but merely simulations of RPGs.

TexAvery
2022-01-13, 02:52 PM
Ask 50 people, get 50 answers.

Since it appears it may have been inadequately clear in my OP, that was my goal, and thank you for yours! :smallsmile:

pwykersotz
2022-01-13, 03:09 PM
Any game in which the player is encouraged to make decisions as a character (or characters) that they control is my basic definition. Hence Role-playing game. The more central that premise is, the more of an RPG you have. Naturally, the concepts can mix and match. You can have RP elements in most anything, but the more the game is based around that immersion, the more of an RPG it is.

D&D, Final Fantasy, Mass Effect, Betrayal at House on the Hill, etc all count in my book.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 03:11 PM
If I had to say (I try to resist "define X" requests in most non-scientific scenarios), the key elements for me are

1. Game. It's got to be designed to be played (at least partially) for enjoyment. Roleplaying scenarios for training aren't RPGs.
2. A fictional world embedded in the product. For multi-player games, this needs to be at least substantially shared--we have to be envisioning at least partly the same fictional scenario for the activity to have meaning. Changing the fiction layer changes the outcomes.
3. Characters with identifiable "roles" and corresponding personalities. A game where you make decisions for countries is only marginally this, unless it's that "WWII, but if the countries were anime characters" anime.
4. Players make decisions for these characters based at least partially on the fiction layer and the characters.

Note I don't say anything about rules. Rules are optional. Rules are scaffolds to help people play. They're not definitional, and what's "needed" varies tremendously. I participated for many years as a child in informal "RPG" with my brother, exploring fictional worlds and scenarios. There weren't any rules, uncertainty resolution mechanics, or anything. There was just two kids, talking.

Board games can be stripped of their fiction layer and are defined by their rules; you can play Gloomhaven just fine without any of the fictional elements. The mechanics dictate the outcomes entirely, not the fiction layer. Hence, not as much RPG. And chess has no embedded fiction layer; even if one player adds it, it changes nothing. The other player could have no fiction in mind or a completely opposite fiction without changing anything about how the events proceed. In a TTRPG, if two players have very different mental models of the shared fiction layer, the game ends up hitting blocks and runs poorly, if at all.[1]

Is this a hard-and-fast definition with bright lines? No. It's utterly subjective and squishy. But I'm ok with that.

[1] that's one thing rules help with--they provide a common language and mental model for situations to be encountered. And good rulesets do this better (among other things) than bad rulesets. A ruleset designed for high-tech spying naturally pushes toward situations and mental models of the relevant fiction, and away from the mental model of the fiction for a medieval farming game, for example.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-13, 03:21 PM
This may help at least spark some thought.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/6517/roleplaying-games/roleplaying-games-vs-storytelling-games

kyoryu
2022-01-13, 03:38 PM
a neutral arbitrator (storyteller/ DM/ GM/ computer) controlling one side

Likely necessary, but not by definition, I think.



at least one other player with imperfect information about the game state


I'd probably rephrase this, but yes.



advancement of the non-GMs' avatar(s) through the act of playing the game


I don't think this is necessary. Spirit of the Century did not have character advancement, and is generally considered an RPG. It's common, but not necessary.



non-GM avatar persistence from session to session


This feels right, but I'm not willing to completely stand behind it.



rules exist to determine success and failure of avatar actions

Seems reasonable. Is freeform roleplaying actually roleplaying?



these rules include both binary success/failure and randomized results, fed into by the advancement of item 3


Amber Diceless RPG is a thing, and generally works as a game. So I don't think this is strictly necessary.

Advancement and randomization are common but I don't think they're mandatory.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 03:40 PM
Likely necessary, but not by definition, I think.


Neutrality isn't required either. Or even really possible--since it's humans all the way down (yes, including computers, which are programmed by people), bias will be involved. And there are "arbiter-free" RPGs out there.

Unavenger
2022-01-13, 04:13 PM
A game in which you play the role of, and role-play as, one or more characters.

Batcathat
2022-01-13, 04:16 PM
Seems reasonable. Is freeform roleplaying actually roleplaying?

While I agree that the definition of roleplaying probably requires some sort of rules (to satisfy the "game" part and differentiate it from "just" playing pretend), I'm not sure if they have to include specifically a way to determine "success and failure of avatar actions". Freeform games usually have rules, after all, (even if it's just that you're not allowed to decide what other characters do or whatever) and saying that a game that clearly involves playing a role isn't a roleplaying game seems very counter-intuitive.

I'm also unsure about point number 4. While it's true of almost any RPG, I don't think I would disqualify a game from being an RPG if it could only be used for one-shots.

kyoryu
2022-01-13, 04:29 PM
I'm also unsure about point number 4. While it's true of almost any RPG, I don't think I would disqualify a game from being an RPG if it could only be used for one-shots.

Yeah, exactly.

Or even a campaign where you played a different character every session.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-13, 04:37 PM
Functional definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based excercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how and why.

None of the six points listed in the original post are necessary for a roleplaying game. They don't even touch on the core of what people do and are supposed to do in these types of games.

Batcathat
2022-01-13, 05:04 PM
Functional definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based excercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how and why.

I think this is the closest one to my own definition so far. Brief, and covers both the "roleplaying" and the "game" parts.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 05:09 PM
Amber Diceless RPG is a thing, and generally works as a game. So I don't think this is strictly necessary.

Advancement and randomization are common but I don't think they're mandatory.
+1.

Functional definition of a roleplaying game is a rule-based excercise where a player assumes viewpoint of a character in a staged situation and decides what to do, how and why.

None of the six points listed in the original post are necessary for a roleplaying game. They don't even touch on the core of what people do and are supposed to do in these types of games. I am not sure that "rule-based" is purely true, but it's close.
Role playing games are people playing make believe with varying amounts of structure used to inform the style and genre of the imaginary milieu.
(That's the most concise general declaration that I can make as an answer).

I also like the following riff on a rather infamous Supreme Court ruling about smut ... (Justice Potter Stewart)
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and {name the game involved} in this case is not that.”
Filling in the brackets is an exercise left to the reader. :smallbiggrin:

And at long last I get to this: if you go to
What is a Roleplaying Game? (a game by Epidiah Ravachol)
you find this criteria.

It’s a game you play with friends in a social setting.
It’s a chance to be someone you’re not.
It’s a celebration of sticky situations.
It’s collaborative daydreaming.
It’s exercise for your personal sense of drama.
It’s a way to trick ourselves into creating interesting things.
It’s something you’ve been doing all along.

(I found the little one pager at www.Dig1000Holes.com a few years ago).

We tried the astronaut bank robber game once but it devolved into a bit of silliness since we were already well into our cups by the time we started.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-13, 05:16 PM
Note I don't say anything about rules. Rules are optional. Rules are scaffolds to help people play. They're not definitional, and what's "needed" varies tremendously. I participated for many years as a child in informal "RPG" with my brother, exploring fictional worlds and scenarios. There weren't any rules, uncertainty resolution mechanics, or anything. There was just two kids, talking.

This is so very wrong.

Rules aren't optional for a game. Games are defined by their rules in a very straight-forward manner, because game rules are statements of how players need to change their behaviour to take part in that game. Which rules are observed and enforced is what delineates games from each other and from non-game behaviour.

I get where you're coming from, though. Tabletop hobbyists use contrived definitions of "rules" and are really, really bad at identifying and counting game rules as a direct result. They frequently only count as "rules" those things with number in them, while failing to count such massive, defining things like "let's pretend there is this fictional world".

This is also my reply to KorvinStarmast. All statements about who the characters are and what the staged situation is, are game rules when accepted and enforced as true by players.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 05:20 PM
This is so very wrong.

Rules aren't optional for a game. Games are defined by their rules in a very straight-forward manner, because game rules are statements of how players need to change their behaviour to take part in that game. Which rules are observed and enforced is what delineates games from each other and from non-game behaviour.

I get where you're coming from, though. Tabletop hobbyists use contrived definitions of "rules" and are really, really bad at identifying and counting game rules as a direct result. They frequently only count as "rules" those things with number in them, while failing to count such massive, defining things like "let's pretend there is this fictional world".

This is also my reply to KorvinStarmast. All statements about who the characters are and what the staged situation is, are game rules when accepted and enforced as true by players.

So yes, if you stretch things way out to include every possible meta rule and everything surrounding it, you can define a game by its "rules". Tautologically--you can always define anything by the set of all things that define it. But 99.999% of those boil down to "don't be a jerk" or apply to all multi-person interactions. Freeform roleplaying is just as much a game as anything formalized, and any definition that says otherwise is, with all due respect, full of it.

You don't need any formal rules to define a game. All you need is an agreement (possibly implicit) that you're doing the same thing for fun.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 05:22 PM
This is so very wrong.

Rules aren't optional for a game. Games are defined by their rules in a very straight-forward manner, because game rules are statements of how players need to change their behaviour to take part in that game. Which rules are observed and enforced is what delineates games from each other and from non-game behaviour. For a lot of games, this is true, but for role playing games that ain't necessarily so. Games are defined by their rules is that strict paradigm that Arneson (and his twin cities playing compadres) up ended as proto D&D grew and eventually morphed into what became the first published role playing game. (I think R. Kuntz has the right of it).

This is also my reply to KorvinStarmast. All statements about who the characters are and what the staged situation is, are game rules when accepted and enforced as true by players. I thank you for your response, and while in rough agreement with the broad concept behind it, I am not going to go down the semantic rat hole of what the word rule means.

EDIT: having participated in some multi million dollar DoD war games, and having been in the white cell for one of them, I can report to you that there was a whole bunch of stuff that was not rules that determined how those exercises/games went. (And in the intervening quarter of a century, JRTCC and even NTC have taken the more unstructured approach and run with it, but we are getting into a very separate topic here so I'll stop)_).

Batcathat
2022-01-13, 05:28 PM
Freeform roleplaying is just as much a game as anything formalized, and any definition that says otherwise is, with all due respect, full of it.

True, but I don't think I've ever seen a freeform game that's completely without rules (even if we don't include the general "don't be a jerk" ones). They may not have rules for action resolution, but there are usually rules for what you can and cannot do (possibly we should also count defining the setting as a kind of rules, "No, you can't introduce the starship Enterprise in this fantasy world", but that's admittedly a gray area).

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 05:31 PM
True, but I don't think I've ever seen a freeform game that's completely without rules (even if we don't include the general "don't be a jerk" ones). They may not have rules for action resolution, but there are usually rules for what you can and cannot do (possibly we should also count defining the setting as a kind of rules, "No, you can't introduce the starship Enterprise in this fantasy world", but that's admittedly a gray area). My brain is remembering a convention used in Microscope for bounding how far into silly (over the silly-tolerance zone for a given participant) one can go, but as I've not had a chance to play that game with my usual group, I can't speak to that any further.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 05:34 PM
True, but I don't think I've ever seen a freeform game that's completely without rules (even if we don't include the general "don't be a jerk" ones). They may not have rules for action resolution, but there are usually rules for what you can and cannot do (possibly we should also count defining the setting as a kind of rules, "No, you can't introduce the starship Enterprise in this fantasy world", but that's admittedly a gray area).


My brain is remembering a convention used in Microscope for bounding how far into silly (over the silly-tolerance zone for a given participant) one can go, but as I've not had a chance to play that game with my usual group, I can't speak to that any further.

There are conventions, to be sure, but those aren't rules--one can't say "you're not playing freeform, because you've set rules XYZ (or haven't set rules XYZ!".

Yes, most games end up having rules, because rules are useful. But they're not definitional--that's putting the cart before the horse. Rules evolve as people play games. People were playing soccer well before there were any formalized rules for it; kids play pretend without any spoken rules at all. Often with no exposure to such things.

My belief is that the only useful definition of game is "something people do for fun, and everyone agrees that having fun is one large part of it." Yeah, it's a super squishy one. But hard-and-fast definitions just don't exist in most cases. Or are not useful when they do exist. Describing how words are used is how language works, not defining how it must be used.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 05:36 PM
There are conventions, to be sure, but those aren't rules--one can't say "you're not playing freeform, because you've set rules XYZ (or haven't set rules XYZ!".

Yes, most games end up having rules, because rules are useful. But they're not definitional--that's putting the cart before the horse. Rules evolve as people play games. People were playing soccer well before there were any formalized rules for it. Heck, people in the Twin Cities, and then in Lake Geneva, were playing {what became D&D} before there were formalized rules for it. (My DVD version of The Secrets of Blackmoor may get a final viewing tomorrow if I do not get hit too hard by this COVID booster).

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 05:37 PM
Heck, people in the Twin Cities, and then in Lake Geneva, were playing {what became D&D} before there were formalized rules for it. (My DVD version of The Secrets of Blackmoor may get a final viewing tomorrow if I do not get hit too hard by this COVID booster).

And even the formalized rules were...rather squishy...for a long time. Yet they were all playing D&D, and agreed that they were doing so. Even if the similarities were mostly notional.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 05:40 PM
And even the formalized rules were...rather squishy...for a long time. Yet they were all playing D&D, and agreed that they were doing so. Even if the similarities were mostly notional.
Bingo. The rules and norms grew in the playing, and the play's the thing.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-13, 05:42 PM
So yes, if you stretch things way out to include every possible meta rule and everything surrounding it, you can define a game by its "rules".

You don't need to stretch anything to observe that statements about who characters are and what situation they are in are game rules.


Freeform roleplaying is just as much a game as anything formalized, and any definition that says otherwise is, with all due respect, full of it.

Freeform is trivially included by the definition I gave. You don't need to convince me, a habitual freeformer, about them being games. :smalltongue:


You don't need any formal rules to define a game. All you need is an agreement (possibly implicit) that you're doing the same thing for fun.

Those statements you agree on are your factual game rules.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 05:48 PM
You don't need to stretch anything to observe that statements about who characters are and what situation they are in are game rules.

Those statements you agree on are your factual game rules.

In which case, no two of us are playing the same game at all. In which case it seems it's over-inclusive.

By "rules" in my initial statement, to be clear, I meant "the text of the rulebooks, if any". Ie the formal, external "ruleset".

Batcathat
2022-01-13, 05:57 PM
There are conventions, to be sure, but those aren't rules--one can't say "you're not playing freeform, because you've set rules XYZ (or haven't set rules XYZ!".

Sure, including or excluding specific rules is obviously unnecessary, but I've never seen a freeform game without any rules at all.


Yes, most games end up having rules, because rules are useful. But they're not definitional--that's putting the cart before the horse. Rules evolve as people play games. People were playing soccer well before there were any formalized rules for it; kids play pretend without any spoken rules at all. Often with no exposure to such things.

Without today's rules? Sure. But "let's kick this ball around and whoever kicks it into the goal the most times win" still have rules.

No one's saying rules can't change and evolve, that doesn't mean they aren't rules.


My belief is that the only useful definition of game is "something people do for fun, and everyone agrees that having fun is one large part of it." Yeah, it's a super squishy one. But hard-and-fast definitions just don't exist in most cases. Or are not useful when they do exist. Describing how words are used is how language works, not defining how it must be used.

While I agree that the definition of game would have to be rather broad and possible vague, this one seems far too broad to ever be useful (or accurate, by this definition me and my friends watching a movie together for fun would be a game).

NichG
2022-01-13, 06:05 PM
Not to clutter up @Quertus's thread, I wanted to see what people around here think does define an "RPG". This can include or exclude computer vs TT, number of players, and any other division the poster chooses; this is to slake my curiosity about opinions here, not to argue for my own as provably correct. That said, here's what I would give as the list of requirements that would define it; missing any one would make it not-RPG.


a neutral arbitrator (storyteller/ DM/ GM/ computer) controlling one side
at least one other player with imperfect information about the game state
advancement of the non-GMs' avatar(s) through the act of playing the game
non-GM avatar persistence from session to session
rules exist to determine success and failure of avatar actions
these rules include both binary success/failure and randomized results, fed into by the advancement of item 3



For me I think it just has to be something where there's a world you can interact with from the perspective of a character within the world. That doesn't necessarily require a neutral arbitrator, advancement, rules to determine success/failure (or even a specific framing of things in terms of success/failure), or randomization. It probably does require that both the world and the character persist.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-13, 06:11 PM
In which case, no two of us are playing the same game at all. In which case it seems it's over-inclusive.

You are doing a weird take equivalent to saying there are no two humans on this planet because no two entities are exactly the same.


By "rules" in my initial statement, to be clear, I meant "the text of the rulebooks, if any". Ie the formal, external "ruleset".

I know. I'm saying that is a bad special definition for what a game rule is. Children's games typically have no formal external rulesets written in a book, but they absolutely do have rulesets which can be observed, described formally, written in a book and then taught to other children. Informal roleplaying games are in the same boat.

What makes game rule a game rule, is agreement, observance and enforcement of a statement among game participants. Formalization is an extra step that isn't necessary.

Elves
2022-01-13, 06:11 PM
the word "roleplaying" isn't important. To me the distinction is story game vs non-story game. How primary is the tactical/puzzle part versus how primary is the narrative. It's a spectrum. On the far left are atemporal and abstract puzzles (which you can project narrative onto by using the pieces as variables or by creating a frame narrative), then games that are theoretically modeling something but where that connection is just a UI skin or at least highly abstracted (chess as warfare), then games that start to have a clearer correspondence between mechanics and story (Monopoly, Clue), then traditional RPGs, where there are formal rules but those rules are seen as being in service of story rather than the reverse -- to the extent that, as you move further right, you might even make exceptions to the rules where they don't model the story well. Then on the far right is normal storytelling.


If you want to break this spectrum into categories, the breakpoint with the most in-game significance is the one where you agree that "drown healing doesn't work because it's not realistic" (rather than just because it's unbalanced) -- IOW where you care about the subject more than the model. How gross of a deviance it takes for you to correct the model is a sub-spectrum.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-13, 06:15 PM
I know. I'm saying that is a bad special definition for what a game rule is. Children's games typically have no formal external rulesets written in a book, but they absolutely do have rulesets which can be observed, described formally, written in a book and then taught to other children. Informal roleplaying games are in the same boat.

What makes game rule a game rule, is agreement, observance and enforcement of a statement among game participants. Formalization is an extra step that isn't necessary.

I'm not actually defining what a game rule is, I'm merely cabining what I mean by "games don't need rules and aren't defined by their rules" to use the subset of "game rules" that we actually mean when we talk about them on these forums, namely the ruleset printed in the books. That's all I mean. Those other rules exist and are vitally important to actually playing, but are outside the scope of what I was talking about.

So we're in agreement--games have rules (read broadly) that can be observed. But the formal ruleset (read narrowly) doesn't define them and games exist without formal rulesets.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-13, 06:25 PM
My overarching point for two or three threads now is that "what we mean when we talk about rules in these forums" is bad and actively contributes to inability to, say, agree on the simple fact that freeform roleplaying games are roleplaying games. :smalltongue:

Composer99
2022-01-13, 06:45 PM
Off the top of my head, I'm inclined to say that the key distinctions of RPGs - or the games one might qualify as tabletop RPGS (rather than computer/console game RPGs) are:

(1) Each player plays/portrays one or more possibly persistent characters in a possibly persistent fictional world.
(2) The ruleset, which may be more or less structured (including almost entirely or entirely unstructured), is capable of being open-ended.
(3) The decisions of the players are mediated by the fictional positioning of these characters and the game mechanics in order to determine what the characters do or are capable of doing within the fictional world at any given time.

I'd like to think it establishes that most games you'd likely think are some kind of TTRPG are, in fact, RPGs, while establishing that most games you'd likely think weren't some kind of TTRPG aren't.

kyoryu
2022-01-13, 07:07 PM
EDIT: having participated in some multi million dollar DoD war games, and having been in the white cell for one of them, I can report to you that there was a whole bunch of stuff that was not rules that determined how those exercises/games went. (And in the intervening quarter of a century, JRTCC and even NTC have taken the more unstructured approach and run with it, but we are getting into a very separate topic here so I'll stop)_).

Kriegsspiel vs. Free Kriegsspiel. Everything is a cycle...

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 07:20 PM
the word "roleplaying" isn't important. To me the distinction is story game vs non-story game. Wrong thread for this assertion/position. Both styles can be role playing games.

TexAvery
2022-01-13, 07:28 PM
Thank you to everyone for your answers! They are as different and interesting and thought-provoking as I'd hoped.


I'd like to think it establishes that most games you'd likely think are some kind of TTRPG are, in fact, RPGs, while establishing that most games you'd likely think weren't some kind of TTRPG aren't.

The really funny thing is most of the definitions offered are quite different, but most of us agree, in the end, on what we mean when we say "RPG".


Wrong thread for this assertion/position. Both styles can be role playing games.

Please don't; if that's a part of his definition it's a perfectly valid part of this thread.

Elves
2022-01-13, 07:51 PM
Wrong thread for this assertion/position. Both styles can be role playing games.
The problem with the thread is you can roleplay in a lot of games that aren't traditional RPGs. Even if a game is hard to roleplay in, you can create a framing story, with the tactical portion of actually playing the game being the equivalent of combat encounters in D&D.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-13, 07:52 PM
Please don't; if that's a part of his definition it's a perfectly valid part of this thread. I read your OP, and no, I don't think that we need this bun fight erupting in this (so far) interesting thread.

To me the distinction is story game vs non-story game.
That is a separate topic to the base definition for an RPG that you have asked for answers to. While that opinion may be worthy of it's own thread, it is a derail from your OP, and in my opinion a detraction. I am so far enjoying the thread and am selfishly advocating that the thread remain enjoyable.

TexAvery
2022-01-13, 07:54 PM
The problem with the thread is that you can roleplay in a lot of games that aren't traditional RPGs. Even if a game is hard to roleplay in, you can create a narrative frame story, with the tactical portion of actually playing the game being the equivalent of combat encounters in D&D.

Why do you think that is that a problem with the thread, rather than a space the discussion can explore?

I was wondering if someone would bring up Doom or Quake. Or Oregon Trail. I wouldn't call those RPGs, but I was curious if someone would.

Does being able to role-play in a non-RPG make it an RPG? If you can role-play in a game, is it definitionally an RPG? If I drive a Camry across a field is it an off-roader?

Hell, is there even a game that's impossible to do some level of role-play in?

TexAvery
2022-01-13, 07:56 PM
I read your OP, and no, I don't think that we need this bun fight erupting in this (so far) interesting thread.

That is a separate topic to the base definition for an RPG that you have asked for answers to. While that opinion may be worthy of it's own thread, it is a derail from your OP, and in my opinion a detraction. I am so far enjoying the thread and am selfishly advocating that the thread remain enjoyable.

Again, please don't gatekeep my thread - if that's the poster's line for RPG, it's valid.

Batcathat
2022-01-14, 02:22 AM
Does being able to role-play in a non-RPG make it an RPG? If you can role-play in a game, is it definitionally an RPG? If I drive a Camry across a field is it an off-roader?

I would say no. I think that a car would have to be built specifically to drive off-road to be described as an off-roader and a game created specifically to roleplay to be described as a roleplaying game.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-14, 04:12 AM
The problem with the thread is you can roleplay in a lot of games that aren't traditional RPGs. Even if a game is hard to roleplay in, you can create a framing story, with the tactical portion of actually playing the game being the equivalent of combat encounters in D&D.


Why do you think that is that a problem with the thread, rather than a space the discussion can explore?

[. . .]

Does being able to role-play in a non-RPG make it an RPG? If you can role-play in a game, is it definitionally an RPG?

Elves is succumbing to the basic fallacy that the ability of people to do something outside a game's rules somehow challenges functional definition of a game. In practice, very few non-roleplayers ever think to try roleplaying in non-roleplaying games because nothing in those games says it's a thing you could or should do, and those who do typically realize that by creating and adding new stuff to their game they are actually changing the game being played. This realization is how wargames evolved from strategy games and how roleplaying games evolved from wargames in turn.

Or: statements about who characters are and what situation they are in are game rules. If, in order to roleplay in a game, you have to add those statements in because the game normally lacks them, then this means you have to add new rules and thus the game becomes different.


I was wondering if someone would bring up Doom or Quake. Or Oregon Trail. I wouldn't call those RPGs, but I was curious if someone would.

1st person shooters are not considered roleplaying games for the simple reason that they're focused on the shooting to near exclusion of all else. Same reason why we don't call laser tag, airsoft, paintball or buhurt live-action roleplaying games, despite obvious overlap. If you try, you may be able to squeeze some 1st person shooters under umbrella of roleplaying games (System Shock and Deus Ex come to mind), or some laser tag (etc.) games under live-action roleplaying, but such examples typically only make the distinction more apparent because of how they differ from other examples in their genre.

Can't say anything about Oregon Trail due to not having played it.


Hell, is there even a game that's impossible to do some level of role-play in?

Yes. For example, zero player games such as Conway's Life, where all player inputs are made at the start and all other states are algoritmically derived from them. For another example, games of pure chance. Their rules do not give you characters, they do not give you situations, they do not ask you to assume any viewpoint other than your own and even if you did assume such a viewpoint, it would make no difference for progress of the game.

Life is a particularly hilarious example, because it is Turing complete. This means creating a cell pattern is equivalent to programming. With the right cell pattern, Life can theoretically simulate any program a general computer can run, including all possible computer roleplaying games. Such a simulation could even technically emerge from random noise, it's just too unlikely to ever happen.


If I drive a Camry across a field is it an off-roader?

Is "off-roader" a statement of action or a statement of structure? Because the answer is "yes" if the former and "no" if the latter, the ambiguity and the question only exist because of equivocation.

For contrast, if I use a screwdriver to drive in nails, is it hammer? Same deal. As an action, I'm using it as a (not very good) hammer, so yes. As far as it's structure goes, it remains a screwdriver throughout, so no.

The equivocation happens because there are cases where you can't carry out the action without changing structure of the thing you're doing it with. Namely, as painstakingly explained above, there are games where you can't roleplay without changing the rules first to facilitate it.

For even wilder contrasting example, some martial arts traditions hold that "anything can be a weapon". By which they mean, with the right skills, anything can be used as a tool to apply force on another living thing. The reason why average people and the law don't adhere to such statements is because they don't have the right skills and don't consider all things from the perspective of how they could be used to apply force on living things. Also, people who do have the right skills nearly inevitably come to the conclusion that most things make for very bad weapons because they were never made to be used as such, and then go and get purpose-made weapons.

Morgaln
2022-01-14, 06:59 AM
I don't think there's one definition for RPG that encompasses all RPGs while excluding everything that isn't one. There will always be fringe cases that could go either way.

The definition in the original post is however incomplete in my eyes:

Points 1 and 2 are pretty much true of every co-operative game where the game itself takes the place of the neutral arbiter (like any version of Arkham Horror or Gloomhaven)
Points 5 and 6 are true of a lot of games; binary in the form of e. g. dice rolls, randomized in the form of drawing tiles or similar mechanics.
Which leaves points 3 and 4. While most games fail that one, any game with a campaign and advancement will fulfill this. Gloomhaven does; so does the Arkham Horror card game. Descent would also fill this (at least in the campaign version), but might fail the neutral arbiter rule.

So while most RPGs would fill all of these rules (I think there are a few that don't have advancement, but I can't think of one at the moment), the rules aren't sufficient to separate them from non-RPGs.


There is one major defining feature that, for me at least, has to be part of an RPG and makes it distinct from non-RP games:

An RPG allows you to do things that the rules don't mention.
In any other game, if you do something that the rules don't mention as something you can do, then you're cheating. In an RPG, it's part of playing the game. An RPG specifically enables you to do things the rules didn't anticipate. It doesn't restrict you to discrete actions that the rules define and instead provides the tools to perform other actions as an intrinsic part of the rules.
You could also phrase this as: in most games, anything that isn't specifically allowed is forbidden. In an RPG, anything that isn't specifically forbidden is allowed.
To elaborate, that means most games tell you what you can do. An RPG doesn't; it lets you decide what you want to do and then only tells you how to do it.

That's why roleplaying your chess pieces doesn't turn chess into an RPG. You can roleplay all you want, but the pieces still just move according to the rules. Your roleplaying will just justify why the rook moved straight after the fact that it had to move straight as per the rules. In an RPG, roleplaying will inform the action your game piece performs instead.

However, I'm not ruling out there are examples of possible RPGs that don't follow this and that I am not aware of. As I said, fringe cases exist.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-14, 08:48 AM
@Morgaln: you are right that there's a difference between positive and negative rule formulation, but almost no roleplaying game is actually purely negatively formulated. Likewise, while "anything not allowed is prohibited" is a possible overarching rule for a game, it isn't true of many non-roleplaying games either. A lot of children's games and physical sports, even some card games and strategy games, also have incomplete rules and thus require building a metagame or require a referee-figure to make on-the-spot rulings on open questions. The position of a game master in roleplaying games is an evolution of such a referee role, inherited from open-ended wargames.

For children's game examples, Simon Says, Follow the Leader and Mother May I. There isn't a complete list of allowed commands Simon can say, nor actions for leader to perform, nor for what suggestions you can give to a Mother and what counter-suggestions the Mother can give in turn. The limits for acceptable play are pretty much negotiated as part of play and informed by metagame thinking such as who likes who, who is fair or unfair, etc.. These games are especially noteworthy because the special leading roles that exist to facilitate these games are prototypical referee roles.

Taevyr
2022-01-14, 09:19 AM
Well, RPG falls apart into two defining aspects: Roleplay, and game.

The roleplay aspect means that, whether tabletop or digital, the player(s) is/are expected to be able to create characters with defining characteristics and skills, to have the world/story respond to those characteristics and skills (or the lack of them) when applicable, and to make choices that impact the world or story to a degree. In tabletop, this is almost always done by a DM/"referee" who runs the world. In digital rpg's, this is usually done with either procedural generation/emergent storytelling, or deliberately designed branching story options.

The game aspect means that there's a rulebase, and that these rules govern whether the players "win" or "lose", which usually comes down to "succeed" or "fail" in RPG's. Personally, I also prefer if there's a degree of randomness involved, which are usually the dice, but that's certainly not necessary to create an RPG. The rulebase can be ridiculously expansive (GURPS) or highly freeform (Fate). What matters is that there's some degree of fundamental rules that dictate how any encounter/obstacle/confrontation is resolved. As there will inevitably be someone who does something that isn't in these rules, they should ideally be clear and robust enough that you can come up with a way to improvise new uses of them.

The main thing to define is "how much roleplay do you need to be playing an RPG": technically, you could roleplay in virtually any game, from D&D to Settlers of Catan to Simon Says. I'd say this could be defined as the presence of a combination of the roleplay and game aspects: this can be stringent or extremely loose (and I personally prefer it the latter way), but the game needs to include some mechanics/rules/guidelines for roleplay in its foundation. That doesn't mean the game forces you to stick to a given personality or anything like that: merely that roleplay has been made into a fundamental part of the game, without which part is missing. Like how you could technically play D&D as an endless combat simulator with randomly generated character sheets and no flavoring of attacks/actions, and it'd be a valid game, but no longer a roleplaying game.

To make an example that fits these rules yet isn't something people would immediately think of, I would call Crusader Kings III an RPG: it has you play rulers with distinct personality traits, has a robust and clear "game" portion, and has the Stress mechanic so that, while you can go against your personality traits when necessary/expedient, it has clear consequences if not managed properly. It also has quite a bit of emergent storytelling and events, and lifestyle focuses to develop a given ruler the way you want them, which strengthens the roleplaying aspect. CKII also has most of these elements, but nothing that encourages roleplay or makes it an intrinsic part of the game aside from the presence of character traits that give mechanical effects on rulers: I'd hesitate to call it a roleplaying game, though it's certainly easy to roleplay it.

EDIT:

@Morgaln: you are right that there's a difference between positive and negative rule formulation, but almost no roleplaying game is actually purely negatively formulated. Likewise, while "anything not allowed is prohibited" is a possible overarching rule for a game, it isn't true of many non-roleplaying games either. A lot of children's games and physical sports, even some card games and strategy games, also have incomplete rules and thus require building a metagame or require a referee-figure to make on-the-spot rulings on open questions. The position of a game master in roleplaying games is an evolution of such a referee role, inherited from open-ended wargames.

This is definitely a key point: I personally always enjoy poking holes in games, and there's almost always a way to do so if you're willing to try some crazy things. I distinctly remember a game of Saboteur in which I collapsed the entrance card as a last-ditch effort at sabotage ("EVERYONE LOSES"), and was surprised to find out there wasn't a rule forbidding it. My friends looked at me incredulously, had a laugh, and we went ahead with the usual solution of "nice improv, now let's continue the game as it was intended".

As said in the quote, this is why most sports need a referee, and why most cardgames and strategy games gain a metagame, banlists and such when they become competitive/professional: because there's always someone that'll find a way to either exploit or poke a hole in the existing rules.

Scots Dragon
2022-01-14, 09:43 AM
It's like porn. You know it when you see it.

pwykersotz
2022-01-14, 10:19 AM
I was wondering if someone would bring up Doom or Quake. Or Oregon Trail. I wouldn't call those RPGs, but I was curious if someone would.

Does being able to role-play in a non-RPG make it an RPG? If you can role-play in a game, is it definitionally an RPG? If I drive a Camry across a field is it an off-roader?

I would posit that being able to roleplay during a game doesn't make the game more of an RPG. But I don't think it's a hard and fast no, it's just very weak on the spectrum. It goes back to my definition that the more the game encourages the RP, the more of an RPG it is. After all, there's not many games you actively can't roleplay during at all. And there's a sniff test involved. If you billed an Oregon Trail clone as an RPG and got testers to try, you'd probably get an outcry.

Of course, now that I think of it, that sniff test is probably exactly what you're looking for, and it's not something I personally can answer. Not only because it's so subjective, but I haven't bothered to define it for myself. Interesting.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-14, 10:36 AM
Looking for hard and fast rules isn't productive here, IMO. "RPG" sits at the center of a Venn diagram, and where the circles overlap is to some degree a matter of subjective opinion.

* Go too far in one direction, and you have an improv acting session.

* Go too far in another direction, and you have a pure rules-based game of some kind, a boardgame or similar.

* Go too far in yet another direction, and you cross from "this has elements that can be mistaken for storytelling (characters, setting, events occurring)" to "this is a deliberate act of storytelling that happens to superficially seem spontaneous".

To be an RPG, it can't go too far towards any edge, and how much is "too far" will vary based on personal experience and taste.

kyoryu
2022-01-14, 11:26 AM
I'd take a stab at the following:

1. You play a role - you step into the shoes of (at least one?) a person and make decisions as that person. This is a declared part of play, and the rules (if any) explicitly reinforce this.
- this isn't that helpful, because few games prohibit this. However, in an RPG, it is a defined part of play.
- yes, this means that games where you don't play a role aren't roleplaying games. I'm okay with this distinction. I'm 100% okay saying Microscope isn't a roleplaying game, but it is a story game
2. The game interactions are not defined entirely by rules. IOW, the fictional situation feeds back into the rules and mechanics, it's not a one way street.
- This excludes Gloomhaven and Descent.

So D&D is a roleplaying game. So is Fate. Chess isn't (rules 1 and 2 are violated) Gloomhaven isn't (rule 2 is violated). Microscope isn't (rule 1 is violated... arguably). Freeform roleplay is a roleplaying game (point 2 specifies that there must be information from the "fiction". It doesn't specify that there *must* be mechanics). Storium is a roleplaying game.

If we were to arrange a bunch of games, I think this set of criteria would do a pretty good job of alignment - the things on the roleplaying side would be mostly uncontentious, the things on the not roleplaying side would mostly be noncontentious. The things that tend to cause arguments might go either way, but that's expected - the best I think you can hope for is that it does a good job of sorting the things that consensus agrees are clearly one or the other.

dafrca
2022-01-14, 12:18 PM
And at long last I get to this: if you go to
What is a Roleplaying Game? (a game by Epidiah Ravachol)
you find this criteria.

It’s a game you play with friends in a social setting.
It’s a chance to be someone you’re not.
It’s a celebration of sticky situations.
It’s collaborative daydreaming.
It’s exercise for your personal sense of drama.
It’s a way to trick ourselves into creating interesting things.
It’s something you’ve been doing all along.


I like this little gem. Thanks for sharing it.



I'd take a stab at the following:

1. You play a role - you step into the shoes of (at least one?) a person and make decisions as that person. This is a declared part of play, and the rules (if any) explicitly reinforce this.
- this isn't that helpful, because few games prohibit this. However, in an RPG, it is a defined part of play.
- yes, this means that games where you don't play a role aren't roleplaying games. I'm okay with this distinction. I'm 100% okay saying Microscope isn't a roleplaying game, but it is a story game
2. The game interactions are not defined entirely by rules. IOW, the fictional situation feeds back into the rules and mechanics, it's not a one way street.
- This excludes Gloomhaven and Descent.

Keeping the list very short does help make it easier to use for sure. Nice "stab" in my opinion. :smallsmile:

kyoryu
2022-01-14, 02:19 PM
Keeping the list very short does help make it easier to use for sure. Nice "stab" in my opinion. :smallsmile:

Thanks. I tend to approach things like this very pragmatically, rather than as a philosophical statement. The first point is basically "roleplaying", which seems obvious. The second cuts out a number of games that theoretically look like RPGs but aren't really (Descent, etc.).

The result is something that isn't necessarily kyoryu's Statement Of Roleplaying Truth, but rather something that delivers the expected results.

In my real life, I'm a software engineer and an advocate of test-driven development, so "hey, we know generally what the result should look like, let's make criteria that give us that result" is pretty natural for me.

Elves
2022-01-14, 02:51 PM
Basically, you can roleplay with many games but a roleplaying game is one that's specifically designed for you to roleplay in. Arguably any "step into another person's shoes" game is playing a role by definition, but many games with that premise don't fit into the traditional RPG category.

Telok
2022-01-14, 07:50 PM
Hmm... Very much a "what is art" question.

A) It is a game.
B) In which you roleplay*.
C) Where the RP is intended to drive the game.
D) The game is driven by the RP**.
E) And the RP is not contradicted by the game***.

* Issue: missing definition, probably another sort of "what is art" one.
** Issue: highly likely to be a subjective value judgement.
*** Issue: requires RP at least generally matching the understood intended RP of the game.

I think I'd have to differentiate between & along the axis of "intended as an rpg" and "rewards/punishes RP based activity".

Pauly
2022-01-14, 08:39 PM
For me the difference between an RPG and say a board game with RP elements or a skirmish scale tactical wargame is the perspective of the player.

If you are playing AS the character, making decisions based on what the character knows and what the character would do in that situation then you are roleplaying.

If you make decisions FOR the character based on what you need to do to win the situation according to the rules then you are not roleplaying.

Witty Username
2022-01-14, 11:55 PM
I think the most basic requirement is roles. An RPG requires the ability for a player to choose a role, either from a set list or create one from a set of options. I would add that this process needs to have personally and how the character fits in the larger context (game world, narrative, something like that).

For example, picking between a fighter and a mage could fill this. The roles would need considerations of the above to be sufficient (for fighter alone to fill this, that would likely need a personality, and goal/obligation more like a pregenerated character in a module).

False God
2022-01-15, 11:30 AM
Well...going with the "50 different answers..." option.

"Role-playing" where you pretend that something false is true. IE: you pretend to be a paladin in a fantasy land. Though both a pretend-character and a pretend-realm need not be true. You can pretend to be yourself in a fantasy land, or pretend to be someone else IRL (like a doctor curing a disease, yes Pandemic is an RPG).
"Game" where the above play-pretend has rules that must be followed by all participants in order to play. (So Calvinball is a game, but not an RPG, until you make a rule saying you have to pretend to be a wizard).

RPGs exist in a range of hard, to soft. Hard RPGs have explicit rules that define what you can pretend to be and where you can pretend to be playing, they rely heavily on dice, numbers and rules to codify the play experience(So, Pandemic is again hard RPG). Soft RPGs have loose guidelines on what you could play and the kind of world you could be playing in; they rely heavily on players deciding how they want to play, what they want to do, and leave resolution up to discussion between the GM and the players rather than numbers or explicit rules.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-01-15, 11:46 AM
A RPG is an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a puzzle.

Or to give the lawyer answer: well, what do you want it to be?

dafrca
2022-01-15, 12:31 PM
For me the difference between an RPG and say a board game with RP elements or a skirmish scale tactical wargame is the perspective of the player.

If you are playing AS the character, making decisions based on what the character knows and what the character would do in that situation then you are roleplaying.

If you make decisions FOR the character based on what you need to do to win the situation according to the rules then you are not roleplaying.

This is a great statement about Roleplaying but is not what defines an RPG. I have seen people play D&D. Pathfinder, Traveller, Shadowrun, while doing "make decisions FOR the character based on what you need to do to win the situation according to the rules ". But that does not make those games not RPGs, just that the group was not really roleplaying.

But a nice statement regarding the act of roleplaying. :smallsmile:

Witty Username
2022-01-15, 12:38 PM
The really funny thing is most of the definitions offered are quite different, but most of us agree, in the end, on what we mean when we say "RPG".


That, I suspect, is because we have a few things we all agree is an RPG, D&D for example.

We didn't think of a definition for RPGs and then they existed, games were made and we describe them as RPGs. So we structure our definitions to include the games that we have been describing as RPGs.

In short, D&D is an RPG, if the definition doesn't include D&D. Then the definition is poor.

Pauly
2022-01-15, 03:31 PM
This is a great statement about Roleplaying but is not what defines an RPG. I have seen people play D&D. Pathfinder, Traveller, Shadowrun, while doing "make decisions FOR the character based on what you need to do to win the situation according to the rules ". But that does not make those games not RPGs, just that the group was not really roleplaying.

But a nice statement regarding the act of roleplaying. :smallsmile:

Just because you are playing what’s marketed as a RPG doesn’t mean a player is role playing. This is particularly true for D&D and why I find D&D personally unsatisfying as an RPG. D&D is a great resource management game. It is a serviceable tactical wargame. It can be a fantastic problem solving game with the right GM. However the RP element is optional and not that well supported. Many tables include at least 1 player who isn’t role playing, and the game functions perfectly well without the RP element.

For my money D&D isn’t a RPG. It’s a complex game with the option of including role play.

Vahnavoi
2022-01-15, 03:50 PM
Sure, a game with a huge amount of rules revolving around establishing who characters are, what they can do and what situations they are facing, isn't a roleplaying game... like many other arguments about how D&D isn't a roleplaying game or doesn't have roleplaying mechanics, the argument requires ignoring huge parts of the game. Or some contrived idea of what it means to make decidions from a character's viewpoint, carefully excluding tactical choices and the like from that.

It's the inverse of all these "but you can roleplay in Monopoly" remarks. Sure, you can not roleplay in D&D, if you purposefully neglect observance and enforcement of all those parts that encourage or require... but then you've reduced your D&D game to something different from the original product.

Taevyr
2022-01-15, 04:23 PM
Sure, a game with a huge amount of rules revolving around establishing who characters are, what they can do and what situations they are facing, isn't a roleplaying game... like many other arguments about how D&D isn't a roleplaying game or doesn't have roleplaying mechanics, the argument requires ignoring huge parts of the game. Or some contrived idea of what it means to make decidions from a character's viewpoint, carefully excluding tactical choices and the like from that.

It's the inverse of all these "but you can roleplay in Monopoly" remarks. Sure, you can not roleplay in D&D, if you purposefully neglect observance and enforcement of all those parts that encourage or require... but then you've reduced your D&D game to something different from the original product.

Exactly. D&D might not be the best at mechanizing/encouraging RP compared to some other tabletop rulesets, but it certainly includes mechanics to aid and encourage roleplay, though how well they're used certainly depends on the group and DM.

It's the same as playing Settlers of Catan with a group that disallows trade between players, then claiming it isn't a game of diplomacy. Sure, that way it's still perfectly playable as a simple resource management game (though probably a rather boring, unengaging one), but that doesn't mean it's not a game of negotiation, simply that you chose to ignore that part.

Or, perhaps a better example, playing an MMORPG without ever doing group content or working with other players, then claiming it's not an MMO but "merely a complex game with the option for inter-player cooperation". Just because a given player can choose not to engage with part of the game as it was intended to be played, doesn't mean it's not a key part of the game.

Easy e
2022-01-26, 02:27 PM
Controversial answer: It doesn't matter what is and is not an RPG. What matters is if you enjoy the use of your time to engage with the game or not.

Needless classification, niche- making and gate-keeping is not necessary. It does not add any clarity and is may actually be counter-productive to the end goal of enjoying your time.

kyoryu
2022-01-26, 02:36 PM
Controversial answer: It doesn't matter what is and is not an RPG. What matters is if you enjoy the use of your time to engage with the game or not.

Needless classification, niche- making and gate-keeping is not necessary. It does not add any clarity and is may actually be counter-productive to the end goal of enjoying your time.

Blue is for sarcasm. I see nothing sarcastic in that.

Psyren
2022-01-26, 03:26 PM
A miserable pile of rulings.


That, I suspect, is because we have a few things we all agree is an RPG, D&D for example.

We didn't think of a definition for RPGs and then they existed, games were made and we describe them as RPGs. So we structure our definitions to include the games that we have been describing as RPGs.

In short, D&D is an RPG, if the definition doesn't include D&D. Then the definition is poor.

This. We make things and then make genres and subgenres to classify those things, not the other way around. "Soulslike" and "Metroidvania" became genres this way.

Easy e
2022-01-26, 03:56 PM
Blue is for sarcasm. I see nothing sarcastic in that.

Still basically trying to figure out how much I actually believe what I wrote, so I decided to play it safe and use the blue text. :)

kyoryu
2022-01-26, 04:03 PM
A miserable pile of rulings.

This. We make things and then make genres and subgenres to classify those things, not the other way around. "Soulslike" and "Metroidvania" became genres this way.

And those can be useful. I think they're most useful when they're fairly broad and not strict, and when there's enough core similarity that advice for one is applicable to the others more often than not.

Like, "is X a Soulslike?" is a useful question to answer things like:

1. Is advice for other Soulslike games generally applicable or not?
2. Will someone that likes other Soulslike things also like this?

#1 won't always apply, of course. But if the answers to them both are "yes" most of the time, then it's probably useful to keep them under the same umbrella. If the answers are almost always "no" then they shouldn't be.

Unfortunately a lot of times people hyper-focus on some pet feature they like in the umbrella, and get unnecessarily strict (or overly broad) so that the usefulness of the term is lost.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-26, 04:25 PM
One place definitions could be useful, is not in prescriptive mode (which is where a lot of these things tend to go), but in descriptive mode, so that people are more able to buy, run, and play games they're more likely to enjoy.

To some degree the argument over "is this an RPG?" can be avoided by treating different broad types of systems (and campaigns) as subsets of RPG.

For example, instead of arguing over whether a "storygame" is an RPG, the term "storygame" could be used to describe some systems so that someone like me is less likely to mistake that for an RPG they'd be interested in. I bought the books for Tales From The Loop and Things From The Flood because they're gorgeous and I love the setting, but I'd never make the mistake of running or playing a game using the system for those books, which is DEEPLY narrative-control based, and if it were me classifying them, I'd call them "storygames".

This wouldn't be to prescriptively control what games are made or are called RPGs, but to describe the game for everyone's benefit. No one wants players who are slowly and miserably finding out that yet another system or campaign wasn't what they were looking for.

kyoryu
2022-01-26, 04:29 PM
One place definitions could be useful, is not in prescriptive mode (which is where a lot of these things tend to go), but in descriptive mode, so that people are more able to buy, run, and play games they're more likely to enjoy.

To some degree the argument over "is this an RPG?" can be avoided by treating different broad types of systems (and campaigns) as subsets of RPG.

For example, instead of arguing over whether a "storygame" is an RPG, the term "storygame" could be used to describe some systems so that someone like me is less likely to mistake that for an RPG they'd be interested in. I bought the books for Tales From The Loop and Things From The Flood because they're gorgeous and I love the setting, but I'd never make the mistake of running or playing a game using the system for those books, which is DEEPLY narrative-control based, and if it were me classifying them, I'd call them "storygames".

This wouldn't be to prescriptively control what games are made or are called RPGs, but to describe the game for everyone's benefit. No one wants players who are slowly and miserably finding out that yet another system or campaign wasn't what they were looking for.

I think in this case that's probably better served by something closer to "subgenres", as I suspect most players of a large number of these games would argue they are playing RPGs. Call them "narrative RPGs" or the like.

I tend to use 'storygame' for things closer to Microscope or Fiasco rather than Fate and Apocalypse World.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-26, 05:14 PM
Fun historical fact: when the first ever RPG was released it was not called an RPG. It got called that (eventually) by the small community that played it, and by 1975 you began to see references to roleplaying and roleplaying game as a term in, for example, the Greyhawk supplement or the Blackmoor supplement (in the back where the 'order more stuff' appendix was). My example here comes from Blackmoor, 9th printing, which was after Basic D&D (Holmes) had come out to compete with the original game, and after the Monster Manual (AD&D's first book) had been published)
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Collector's Edition — The original game of swords and sorcery role-playing with paper and pencil, in its original format. This is the game that started it all! Three booklets, boxed). No price was listed.

I am not sure which newsletter or publication first saw that term - roleplaying - crop up, but the original use of the world 'role' was in a different sense than we use it now as regards this hobby.

There were three roles to be fulfilled in a group of adventurers, and those roles were Fighter, Magic User, and Cleric. (That's in Men and Magic, p. 6)

Before they begin, players must decide what role they will play in the campaign, human or otherwise, fighter, cleric, or magic-user. Thereafter they will work upwards — if they survive — as they gain "experience". First, however, it is necessary to describe fully the roles possible.
CHARACTERS:
There are three (3) main classes of characters:
Fighting-Men
Magic-Users
Clerics They are roles, and they are also classes. You can also argue that elf and dwarf were roles too, if you'd like.

And no, nit picking about the word choices or ambiguity made in a rush-to-publish-volume-or-three are not worth further time for the simple reason that over time those terms took on new connotations in this game form.

I suspect that Jon Peterson (Playing at the World) may have figured out which place first saw this term published, but I suspect that it had been used at cons and in conversation long before that. (He has done some incredible deep dives into original notes and fragments ...)

Psyren
2022-01-26, 05:37 PM
And those can be useful. I think they're most useful when they're fairly broad and not strict, and when there's enough core similarity that advice for one is applicable to the others more often than not.

Like, "is X a Soulslike?" is a useful question to answer things like:

1. Is advice for other Soulslike games generally applicable or not?
2. Will someone that likes other Soulslike things also like this?

#1 won't always apply, of course. But if the answers to them both are "yes" most of the time, then it's probably useful to keep them under the same umbrella. If the answers are almost always "no" then they shouldn't be.

Unfortunately a lot of times people hyper-focus on some pet feature they like in the umbrella, and get unnecessarily strict (or overly broad) so that the usefulness of the term is lost.

#2 is the more valuable question, but for me, what's important is why. Why would someone who likes Dark Souls enjoy Bloodborne, or Hollow Knight, or Remnant From The Ashes? I'd argue in most cases (not all, but most) they do, so it's important to understand what aspects those games have in common that warrant them getting a label like that.

For me the best treatise on the subject of game genre continues to be Extra Credits Aesthetics of Play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uepAJ-rqJKA

It's aimed at video games primarily, but a lot of it applies to board and tabletop just as well imo. To wit: "If you start to think carefully about game genres, and really dissect them, you'll find that there are a few core aesthetics that almost every game within any given currently accepted genre will have in common. That is how we know genres, and that's how we know instinctively that certain games don't fit in with the rest." For most TTRPGs, I'd say the core aesthetics are (in no particular order) Fantasy, Expression, Community and Narrative. And then you can layer on mechanics (like rolling a die and comparing it to a target number, or having a speed stat that controls how far you can move in a turn) and dynamics (collections of mechanics) that work together to deliver those aesthetics through play.

Azuresun
2022-01-27, 05:43 AM
Controversial answer: It doesn't matter what is and is not an RPG. What matters is if you enjoy the use of your time to engage with the game or not.

Needless classification, niche- making and gate-keeping is not necessary. It does not add any clarity and is may actually be counter-productive to the end goal of enjoying your time.

Objection--that's not controversial in the least.

KorvinStarmast
2022-01-27, 08:35 AM
For me the best treatise on the subject of game genre continues to be Extra Credits Aesthetics of Play. Bravo, nice link. The fellowship/teamwork aspect is one of the aesthetics that draws me to games on line (even LoL, with its hard core competition, is loaded with teamwork elements). I also play Hearthstone these days with a heavy dose of Abnegation as the appeal. (Yes, it's competitive, but I am not someone ever at risk of going to a championship match). I think that the teamwork aspect of a lot of TTRPGs is a core of their appeal - be it Traveller, shadowrun, D&D, Dungeon World - and that is why MGS is so jarring when it is encountered.

@Easy e: another vote for "blue text not necessary." :smallsmile:

Willie the Duck
2022-01-27, 09:01 AM
I think in this case that's probably better served by something closer to "subgenres", as I suspect most players of a large number of these games would argue they are playing RPGs. Call them "narrative RPGs" or the like.

I tend to use 'storygame' for things closer to Microscope or Fiasco rather than Fate and Apocalypse World.

For this reason, I'd almost say this would work better using a flags/tags model than a category one. The Max's of world are going to dislike something like Fate regardless of whether it fits into a shared consensus category of either 'storygame' or 'narrative RPG,' or worse yet the game end up in another bin like 'one shot' or 'GM-less game' because those were overriding categories. Instead, I'd think they could benefit from game X being labelled 'Roleplaying game [multi-player, multi-session, DMed, warning: contains codified narrative-control mechanics].'

Burley
2022-01-27, 09:05 AM
I think on this concept a lot, when I'm playing video games. Why is Final Fantasy an RPG and Legend of Zelda is also an RPG?

When am I not playing a role in a game, right? I guess, like, Tetris? So, is it an RPG because there's maths and level ups, or because I decide what my character will do, in and out of combat, by way of listed selectable options? Does the input matter? Does the system matter? Is it about the narrative or the gameplay?

I can say that I love RPGs and it holds true for Tactical RPGs, JRPGs, Action RPGs, Tabletop RPGs, etc. But those are all pretty different, in concept and in practice. I know an RPG when I see it, but I can't tell you what it is. But, it's not a catch-all term. You can tack level-ups and equipment and damage numbers onto an Assassin's Creed game, but its not gonna fool me into calling it an RPG.
Why do I think of Kingdom Hearts to be an Action RPG, but not Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, when they're all mechanically about pressing X until it's time to press Triangle? They all have equipment and skills to unlock and you gain [currency] from defeating enemies that is spent toward making your character stronger. Is it because KH calls it experience points and DMC calls it red souls (or whatever, haven't played in a while).

Many RPGs, especially JRPGs, use the silent protagonist trope to identify that you, the player, will be Playing the Role. You'll have allies and enemies, but you are this person and you can name them. They don't speak, because that's you and hearing yourself speak would create a cognitive dissonance. But, isn't Doom Guy is a silent protagonist, with a skill tree and upgrades? Is it not an RPG because I don't select the letters to name him, even though he's Grim Harold in my head?

So, maybe an RPG is something where you play as a role (presumably the hero), making choices on their behalf that will affect the experiences the character has. But, also, I have to be able to see the characters' stats and how they effect and are effected by the rest of the world.

kyoryu
2022-01-27, 10:11 AM
For this reason, I'd almost say this would work better using a flags/tags model than a category one. The Max's of world are going to dislike something like Fate regardless of whether it fits into a shared consensus category of either 'storygame' or 'narrative RPG,' or worse yet the game end up in another bin like 'one shot' or 'GM-less game' because those were overriding categories. Instead, I'd think they could benefit from game X being labelled 'Roleplaying game [multi-player, multi-session, DMed, warning: contains codified narrative-control mechanics].'

100%! I am completely in favor of tag-based models overall.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-27, 10:39 AM
Many of the computer games called "RPGs" aren't really RPGs, I think, because they lack for choice space.

They're much more like acting out a role within a story with some degree of freedom as to how, but always going to the same ending or a very fixed or only superficially different set of endings. Solutions to problems that aren't coded into the game, are impossible to choose. If The Story relies on an NPC betraying you, then that's always going to happen, no matter what. If The Story relies on the character holding the idiot ball, they're going to hold it no matter what the player does or chooses.

Berenger
2022-01-27, 10:42 AM
Is freeform roleplaying actually roleplaying?

I‘d say it‘s roleplaying, but not a roleplaying game.

kyoryu
2022-01-27, 11:39 AM
Many of the computer games called "RPGs" aren't really RPGs, I think, because they lack for choice space.

They're much more like acting out a role within a story with some degree of freedom as to how, but always going to the same ending or a very fixed or only superficially different set of endings. Solutions to problems that aren't coded into the game, are impossible to choose. If The Story relies on an NPC betraying you, then that's always going to happen, no matter what. If The Story relies on the character holding the idiot ball, they're going to hold it no matter what the player does or chooses.

So are heavily railroaded RPGs RPGs? Many of them offer less choice space than your typical BioWare game.

Psyren
2022-01-27, 12:43 PM
Bravo, nice link. The fellowship/teamwork aspect is one of the aesthetics that draws me to games on line (even LoL, with its hard core competition, is loaded with teamwork elements). I also play Hearthstone these days with a heavy dose of Abnegation as the appeal. (Yes, it's competitive, but I am not someone ever at risk of going to a championship match). I think that the teamwork aspect of a lot of TTRPGs is a core of their appeal - be it Traveller, shadowrun, D&D, Dungeon World - and that is why MGS is so jarring when it is encountered.

Indeed - and I think a lot of AAA games have gotten more expansive over the years and so deliver on multiple aesthetics. Hearthstone has many different sub-games inside it, varying from the standard constructed PvP Ladder Play mode, Duels, Arena, Battlegrounds, the various singleplayer roguelike modes that debuted in Kobolds & Catacombs, the singleplayer constructed boss rush modes like Karazhan, the pure puzzle modes in Boomsday and so on. We even started getting narrative-heavy modes in Into The Barrens+ that delve into Azeroth's history and lore.

But I digress.


Many of the computer games called "RPGs" aren't really RPGs, I think, because they lack for choice space.

They're much more like acting out a role within a story with some degree of freedom as to how, but always going to the same ending or a very fixed or only superficially different set of endings. Solutions to problems that aren't coded into the game, are impossible to choose. If The Story relies on an NPC betraying you, then that's always going to happen, no matter what. If The Story relies on the character holding the idiot ball, they're going to hold it no matter what the player does or chooses.

I understand why you feel this way and what your standards are for roleplaying - but personally, I don't think a definition of RPG that excludes things like Dragon Age, Skyrim, Deus Ex and even The Witcher is especially useful. We'd likely have to agree to disagree on that.

(Not to mention that these objections apply even to D&D CRPGs like Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights, as well as spiritual successors like Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin.)

kyoryu
2022-01-27, 02:20 PM
I honestly feel that CRPGs are different enough from TTRPGs (maybe not inherently, but due to current technological limitations) that trying to apply definitions across them doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, and will just muddy the waters.

Max_Killjoy
2022-01-27, 02:29 PM
So are heavily railroaded RPGs RPGs? Many of them offer less choice space than your typical BioWare game.


There is a line beyond which a railroaded RPG isn't an RPG, it's just the GM storytelling and expecting the players to play along.




I honestly feel that CRPGs are different enough from TTRPGs (maybe not inherently, but due to current technological limitations) that trying to apply definitions across them doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, and will just muddy the waters.


Which is part of why I don't like CPRGs being called RPGs -- calling them RPGs leads to that exact confusion that they are the same thing or similar enough to be treated as the same thing.

NichG
2022-01-27, 02:36 PM
The most open CRPGS are more open to choices and to character immersion than many tabletop RPGs... Things go back and forth, and both mediums have a range of levels of execution. CRPGs have a peculiar strength for immersion that tabletop can struggle with - you can spend a lot of time doing things which are only meaningful to you and don't have to respect spotlight sharing or pacing of others at the table. In something like Skyrim or Fallout 4, you can spend hours on highly personal base customization, decoration, domestic ritual, etc. Hard to do that in a tabletop game without boring everyone else...

Rather than 'everything should be in a neat box to avoid muddiness', I'd say its interesting to look at places where you get unexpected advantages or difficulties towards executing a particular vision, and learning from that to the betterment of both.

Batcathat
2022-01-27, 02:37 PM
While CRPGs are their own thing, with their own strengths and weaknesses, I think the term is pretty reasonable. That said, it's not always used very well. I think something like Skyrim or Fallout is enough like their tabletop relatives for the term to make sense, but then you have games like Diablo where the "RPG" basically stands for "you have stats and they can change over time" where I think the term is less apt. Obviously there are a lot of grey areas and subjective opinions.

Witty Username
2022-02-07, 12:18 AM
I do wish Diablo was refereed to more often as a hack and slash. That genre better describes its mode of play in my mind. That being said, I do remember the first Diablo having some intriguing in an RP way features, what quests to peruse and approaches to take, maybe it was the dungeon running that left me that impression though, it was long ago for me.

That does get into some interesting things like something having RPG features without being an RPG, DungeonHack comes to mind, with it being made with the AD&D ruleset, but you are delving a dungeon hack & slash style rather than worldbuilding, interacting socially or whatever else.

How much do people feel character creation is important to RPGs?

Batcathat
2022-02-07, 04:32 AM
How much do people feel character creation is important to RPGs?

That's an interesting question. It's certainly one of my favorite parts of RPGs, but I wouldn't say it's necessary. If someone published a game that didn't include it, I would probably be hesitant to try it but I wouldn't say it wasn't an RPG.

Vahnavoi
2022-02-07, 06:19 AM
How much do people feel character creation is important to RPGs?

A roleplaying game needs characters, so someone will need to create them.

That someone doesn't need to be a player, though. Preset characters made by a game designer or a game master work just fine.

Psyren
2022-02-07, 03:09 PM
I honestly feel that CRPGs are different enough from TTRPGs (maybe not inherently, but due to current technological limitations) that trying to apply definitions across them doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, and will just muddy the waters.



Which is part of why I don't like CPRGs being called RPGs -- calling them RPGs leads to that exact confusion that they are the same thing or similar enough to be treated as the same thing.

It's true CRPGs and TTRPGs are not the same thing - but as I posited above, what defines a genre is not how you treat it but rather the reasons you play it, i.e. the core aesthetics you're looking to experience. The biggest core difference between CRPGs and TTRPGs is Community (since the former are most often played solo, and even the multiplayer ones tend to be very different than the latter) but the other three big ones like Narrative, Fantasy and Expression are all there.


That's an interesting question. It's certainly one of my favorite parts of RPGs, but I wouldn't say it's necessary. If someone published a game that didn't include it, I would probably be hesitant to try it but I wouldn't say it wasn't an RPG.


A roleplaying game needs characters, so someone will need to create them.

That someone doesn't need to be a player, though. Preset characters made by a game designer or a game master work just fine.

Agreed, and I'll go a step further. If you join a D&D table at a convention or a FLGS for example, and they hand you a pregen character sheet - are you no longer playing D&D at that point? Are you no longer playing an RPG?

The core aesthetic of Expression is tied to character creation, sure, but you can also express yourself through a character after they've been built - the actions you choose to make, your behaviors in the "three pillars" most TTRPGs use, and last but not least, the build choices you make with that character after it's been created. Even a barebones CRPG like Diablo lets you configure your build as you level, never mind something like Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights.

Max_Killjoy
2022-02-07, 03:18 PM
It's true CRPGs and TTRPGs are not the same thing - but as I posited above, what defines a genre is not how you treat it but rather the reasons you play it, i.e. the core aesthetics you're looking to experience. The biggest core difference between CRPGs and TTRPGs is Community (since the former are most often played solo, and even the multiplayer ones tend to be very different than the latter) but the other three big ones like Narrative, Fantasy and Expression are all there.


Even if I agree with "why you play it?" as a defining feature (which I have some issue with, especially given the reasons specifically listed), the "why you play it?" of the two is different enough to not call them the same thing.

CRPGs lack a level of openness that's key to why I'd choose to play a TTRPG instead -- character options are much more constrained, and you WILL be following along with a pretold story, any choices or branching outcomes won't change the actual outcome or overall plot, just some details. You'll never be able to pretend to join the BBEG, or actually join the BBEG, if those aren't prewritten options.

A strongly railroaded tabletop campaign also largely, IMO, fails to be an RPG for the same reasons... it's just DM's Story Time.

Psyren
2022-02-07, 04:07 PM
I agree that CRPGs have a more constrained possibility space, but I disagree that that disqualifies them from being RPGs in practice. Take your example of joining the BBEG - yes in theory that's possible in a TTRPG like D&D, but in the vast vast majority of them that just doesn't happen, or at best it's a fail state like it would be in a CRPG that offers the same option (insert spoilery example here like J*** E**** or K****.) D&D doesn't suddenly stop being an RPG because the Big Bad is Shar and joining her means no more campaign world to play in for example.