RPG metric, simplified version

[Quertus]

Previously, when I tried to explain why 4e was not an RPG, when I tried to explain my definitions of an RPG & role-playing, I was trying to be really detailed, trying to explain it at a really low level, hit all the nitty gritty details.

In retrospect, I've realized that that's like programming in Assembly Language. Nobody wants to deal with that!

So, instead, I'm going to present the really simple, really high level metric to measure the suitability of a game to being played as an RPG. Ready?

Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character.

This requires looking at things from the character's PoV, using the fiction, not the rules.

How well the rules match the fiction - or, more specifically, how well one can play the game¹ knowing and utilizing only the fiction, how the rules rate one's performance when role-playing - is a simple metric for the suitability of the game to being played as an RPG.

That's it.

And that's why 4e is not an RPG.

Well, mostly. I actually used a more complex metric when making that determination, one I feel has greater fidelity. But this much simpler, much more approachable metric should suffice.

Any questions?

¹ "playing the game" is "making (meaningful) choices", for those not familiar with this argument.

[Faily]

I'm no fan of 4e either (and probably never will be), but this is a stretch. There's nothing in 4e that prevents people from roleplaying; making IC-decisions or considering things from their character's PoV. 4e doesn't say "Roleplaying is strictly forbidden and you may only treat this as a boardgame!".

EDIT: Just because you don't like a game system and it's level of crunch/fluff/mechanics, doesn't disqualify it from being a Roleplaying Game.

[Quertus]

I'm no fan of 4e either (and probably never will be), but this is a stretch. There's nothing in 4e that prevents people from roleplaying; making IC-decisions or considering things from their character's PoV. 4e doesn't say "Roleplaying is strictly forbidden and you may only treat this as a boardgame!".

EDIT: Just because you don't like a game system and it's level of crunch/fluff/mechanics, doesn't disqualify it from being a Roleplaying Game.

By all means, hand me the IC thought process one uses when determining whether and how to contribute to a skill challenge, or the IC thought process around the use of a muggle daily, including the character's understanding of what the ability is. Then we can look at that, and evaluate how the character who sees the universe that way should *actually* act, or whether you've cracked the code on a working 4e fiction.

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh look, another episode of Quertus's Gaming Elitism.

Yeah, I'm not buying this, especially as Martial abilities are explicitly noted as not necessarily being mundane. Skill challenges also actually make complete sense from the perspective of streamlining world simulation, the issue being that they have the default limiter as the number of checks instead of the number of rounds.

Let's look at it from another perspective. HeroQuest can easily meet all of your requirements, is it an RPG? Honestly while many people will be able to give a yes/no answer I suspect most just don't actually care.

[Khedrac]

One problem with virtually all group definitions is that they never handle edge cases well - and edge cases exist for virtually everything.

And to demonstrate just how big a problem this can be, consider mathematics. Set theory has been an important part of modern mathematics since the late 19th Century, so maths being maths, the rules should be clearly defined, correct?
Well no, set theory has no formal definition of a "set" - as pretty much any definition instantly breaks (either itself or set theory more generally). Instead there are general agreements on can and cannot be counted as sets and the details are ignored (except where they matter).

Another example is the definition of "species" in biology - if you go by the common understanding (groups of organisms that can interbreed) then a of of generally accepted species cease to be so.

So, don't expect your definition of an rpg to do two things:
1. Be accepted as valid.
2. Have everyone agree on the classification of all games.
4th Ed D&D being a good example, either people will disagree on it's classification or they will disagree on your definition. You are not going to come up with a definition where everyone agrees with everything.

[Composer99]

Indulging in preposterous absurdities for the sake of flogging the mostly-decomposed remains of a dead edition-war horse isn't a good look.

Your assertion of the primacy of the fictional framing leads to a contradiction.

(1) Since it is strictly speaking impossible to actually inhabit another person's mind in order to make decisions "in character" - all we are doing, at bottom, is playing make-believe - then a logical conclusion of this line of thought is that no game is a roleplaying game.

(2) Since it is strictly speaking possible to construct an in-fiction framing for any game and then make decisions mostly or even exclusively within the bounds of that framing - nothing is stopping you from playing that sort of make-believe while playing Gloomhaven or Wrath of Ashardalon, or even Monopoly, Chess, or Tic-Tac-Toe, after all! - then a logical conclusion of this line of thought is that every game can be - or even is - a roleplaying game.

What is more, it's simply wrong on its face apropos of the specific counter-points you tried to raise. Both skill challenges and tactical decision making in combat in 4e depend on the fiction:
- The player has to come up with an in-fiction reason for why the skill they want to use applies to the situation at hand. [*]
- What to do on your turn in combat depends on combatants' positioning and how dangerous and durable you perceive your enemies to be - these are all inherently a reference to the in-game fiction, even if it is mediated through the mechanics of monster damage output, special abilities, and hit points.
[*] Unless the DM is willing to simply indulge in "it has my highest bonus" as a reason, but that's not on 4e.

[InvisibleBison]

If you find that 4e's mechanics don't match its fiction, doesn't that mean you're using the wrong fiction? And if you change your understanding of the fiction so that it does match the mechanics, wouldn't that mean that by your metric 4e becomes an RPG again?

On a related note, it seems odd to me that whether or not a game can be classified as an RPG is dependent on how people use it. Wouldn't that mean that some people find a game to be an RPG and others don't?

[oxybe]

I posit Quertus has a faulty definition because

This requires looking at things from the character's PoV, using the fiction, not the rules.

is false.

Rules are part of the structure the fiction is built around.

Let's take a story. Harry Potter.

One of the core tenets is that when a British kid turns 10, if you're wizard-capable, you start developing your powers and get sent an invitation to join Hogwarts.

Anyone writing or telling a story in that universe needs a heckin' darn good reason as to why their 32 year old office clerk in Ohio just now gained magic powers and is being asked to join classes with small British children.

It might not be a "game rule" but "weird stuff likely happens in your youth, but you gain powers at 10" is most definitely a rule in the HP world.

Does that make sense? not really, but it's applied consistently enough that we can see that as a rule.

Same goes for an RPG.

The rules may not exist in the terms we use like At-Will, Encounter, Daily, or keywords... but their existence should inform your fiction.

Otherwise, all I can posit is that while Quertus may be a decent mage, but they're a terrible writer.

[Vahnavoi]

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

4th edition D&D very obviously includes all of those elements. It is hence is a roleplaying game. It also has bunch of decisions that don't make sense from the viewpoint of any character, because it is also an abstract strategy game. The fallacy Quertus is tripping himself over is the idea that the latter observation nullifies the former. It doesn't. A complex game can fall into many categories at once and even include simpler subgames within itself.

If this principle is confusing, consider character creation. Majority of roleplaying games have character creation rules; the choices rarely make sense from any character viewpoint, because they are about setting said viewpoint; hence, character creation subgames fail to count as roleplaying games; but who here will argue the presence of a character creation game disqualifies a game overall from being a roleplaying game?

There are many common arguments in circulation which trip on the same fallacy. "D&D is a wargame, not a roleplaying game" is one of those, "my pet (peeve) indie game is a storygame, not a roleplaying game" is another. These are all broad categories that sometimes overlap with one another, a game can have elements from multiple at once, thus being a hybrid. This is in fact normal with complex games.

The sane version of the argument Quertus is making would just identify specific mechanics of 4th edition that interfere with roleplaying parts of that system, and use those to argue 4th edition is poor as roleplaying game. It's sort of like arguments about art - you don't need to have a semantic argument about "what is art?" if you can make your point by just arguing something is BAD art.

[Quertus]

I posit Quertus has a faulty definition because



is false.

Rules are part of the structure the fiction is built around.

Let's take a story. Harry Potter.

One of the core tenets is that when a British kid turns 10, if you're wizard-capable, you start developing your powers and get sent an invitation to join Hogwarts.

Anyone writing or telling a story in that universe needs a heckin' darn good reason as to why their 32 year old office clerk in Ohio just now gained magic powers and is being asked to join classes with small British children.

It might not be a "game rule" but "weird stuff likely happens in your youth, but you gain powers at 10" is most definitely a rule in the HP world.

Does that make sense? not really, but it's applied consistently enough that we can see that as a rule.

Same goes for an RPG.

The rules may not exist in the terms we use like At-Will, Encounter, Daily, or keywords... but their existence should inform your fiction.

Otherwise, all I can posit is that while Quertus may be a decent mage, but they're a terrible writer.

lol. My signature academic mage is actually an accomplished (if dry) writer of text books. I, OTOH, am a terrible writer.

“The rules” are an abstraction for the physics of the game reality, so, yes, one would certainly *hope* that there would be some relationship between them.

But the character should be conceptualized by the fiction, in accordance with the world physics.

If you find that 4e's mechanics don't match its fiction, doesn't that mean you're using the wrong fiction? And if you change your understanding of the fiction so that it does match the mechanics, wouldn't that mean that by your metric 4e becomes an RPG again?

On a related note, it seems odd to me that whether or not a game can be classified as an RPG is dependent on how people use it. Wouldn't that mean that some people find a game to be an RPG and others don't?

Wow, awesome, questions that’re based on actually understanding what I wrote! Those were becoming vanishingly rare - that’s why I moved to the simplified version.

Is it the wrong fiction? Well, that depends. It certainly could be the wrong fiction, or it could be a matter of abstraction. That is, even with the optimal fiction, one expects that the rules, as an abstraction, won’t perfectly match the fiction - that there will be places where, to facilitate gameplay, you’re dealing with spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane.

Ignoring that possibility for the moment, yes, it could be a suboptimal fiction. But “how people use it” would be subjective, so my question is, what fiction did 4e ship with? Use *that* fiction to play the game, measuring how the rules rate your choices. That’s how suited to being played as an RPG 4e is under the simple metric.

Sure, under the complex metric I actually use, you also measure how much you have to change the rules and/or the fiction to reach the best match you can achieve. But that’s outside the scope of this thread, which is just about my simple metric, and why I’ll unabashedly say that 4e is not an RPG.

[Glorthindel]

I think, if any justification on this is to hold, there needs to be an answer to "well, what is it then?"

I say that, because personally I would find it would be easier to justify the statement "4th ed is a board game" than it is the statement "4th ed isn't a roleplay game", despite the (hopefully not too controvertial statement) that the two things are seperate entities, and a game theoretically can't be both (though that is not a guaranteed statement).

Rather than working on a single exclusionary category, maybe firming up the categories (say between: wargame, boardgame, roleplay game, playing make-believe) and then that might more easily see where something has drifted into a different category than it perhaps had originally intended to be.

[Vahnavoi]

On a related note, it seems odd to me that whether or not a game can be classified as an RPG is dependent on how people use it. Wouldn't that mean that some people find a game to be an RPG and others don't?

The way you are formulating your question is what's odd and likely cause of your confusion.

Games aren't something you "use". They are something you play and of course how you play something changes classification of a game.

This also why arguments like "you can roleplay in Chess/Monopoly/whatever other simple or abstract game" are dumb. Their own rules don't really establish characters nor stage situations, only someone who has specific ideas about those and adds in a lot of material to facilitate them would play them as roleplaying games. As a result, most people who play such games don't roleplay in them, and the few who do understand they are doing something way beyond their normal rules, to the point they'd recognize and call them new games.

[JNAProductions]

What you say is not an objective truth. It’s your opinion on 4E.

[Max_Killjoy]

I dislike, to the point of almost loathing, 4e.

That doesn't make it not-an-RPG, it just makes it not be vibe.

[Quertus]

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

4th edition D&D very obviously includes all of those elements. It is hence is a roleplaying game. It also has bunch of decisions that don't make sense from the viewpoint of any character, because it is also an abstract strategy game. The fallacy Quertus is tripping himself over is the idea that the latter observation nullifies the former. It doesn't. A complex game can fall into many categories at once and even include simpler subgames within itself.

If this principle is confusing, consider character creation. Majority of roleplaying games have character creation rules; the choices rarely make sense from any character viewpoint, because they are about setting said viewpoint; hence, character creation subgames fail to count as roleplaying games; but who here will argue the presence of a character creation game disqualifies a game overall from being a roleplaying game?

There are many common arguments in circulation which trip on the same fallacy. "D&D is a wargame, not a roleplaying game" is one of those, "my pet (peeve) indie game is a storygame, not a roleplaying game" is another. These are all broad categories that sometimes overlap with one another, a game can have elements from multiple at once, thus being a hybrid. This is in fact normal with complex games.

The sane version of the argument Quertus is making would just identify specific mechanics of 4th edition that interfere with roleplaying parts of that system, and use those to argue 4th edition is poor as roleplaying game. It's sort of like arguments about art - you don't need to have a semantic argument about "what is art?" if you can make your point by just arguing something is BAD art.

Well, you’re close, which means it might be very hard for you to hear the difference.

You’re right, I don’t, and one shouldn’t, demand that *all* minigames be played in roleplaying stance. As I’ve covered in other threads, but not in this one yet, character creation and after session write up don’t demand roleplaying, whereas talky bits and combat do.

Note also that my definition started with defining roleplaying.

Now, if every game that had an “abstract strategy game” wasn’t an RPG, we might have trouble- or it might be trivially easy to identify games that aren’t RPGs. But that’s not what I’m claiming.

Listen carefully: I’m claiming that, to measure a game’s suitability to be played as an RPG, one must play all the “character choices” minigames - including the “abstract strategy game” - in roleplaying stance, and measure how the rules rate your performance compared to someone just playing the rules.

That said, your “ It also has bunch of decisions that don't make sense from the viewpoint of any character, ” sounds like my “if it forces you out of roleplaying stance to play the game, it’s not (suited to being played as) an RPG”. So it sounds to me like you already acknowledge that 4e is not an RPG, by my definition. Am I wrong?

If I’m right, then your logical next steps would be to either agree that 4e is not an RPG, or to demonstrate why my definition is clearly faulty. Simply proposing another definition, btw, doesn’t demonstrate any fault in my definition. You need a proof, like you would give to a math or logic professor, or a really obvious (because I can be / seem kinda slow sometimes - reading comprehension is decidedly not my strong suit) example of, “you can’t X, because Y”.

Oh look, another episode of Quertus's Gaming Elitism.

Not that I’ll deny being an elitist, I’m just trying to get people to understand my terms and my PoV.

Yeah, I'm not buying this, especially as Martial abilities are explicitly noted as not necessarily being mundane. Skill challenges also actually make complete sense from the perspective of streamlining world simulation, the issue being that they have the default limiter as the number of checks instead of the number of rounds.

By all means, hand me the fiction you use to make decisions in character, and we can evaluate it. Strongly agree on the astoundingly boneheaded nature of the “limiter” - that by itself is really hard to create fiction for.

Let's look at it from another perspective. HeroQuest can easily meet all of your requirements, is it an RPG? Honestly while many people will be able to give a yes/no answer I suspect most just don't actually care.

I don’t know that game, sorry.

The only reason I cared in the first place was because people kept saying, “4e is not D&D”; now, I care because people don’t understand what I’m saying… and it’s a running gag for me to deride 4e, now with the (true) phrase, “4e is not an RPG”.

Ok, fine, the mostly true phrase. It’s an abstraction for the actual truth, that 4e is significantly less suited to being played as an RPG than other games marketed as RPGs I remember (darn senility), and 4e fails to pass my arguably arbitrary line for is / is not an RPG”. Of course, people will need to understand my stance before we can even begin discussing whether or the extent to which where I draw the line is arbitrary.

[LecternOfJasper]

Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character.

This requires looking at things from the character's PoV, using the fiction, not the rules.

How well the rules match the fiction - or, more specifically, how well one can play the game¹ knowing and utilizing only the fiction, how the rules rate one's performance when role-playing - is a simple metric for the suitability of the game to being played as an RPG.

That's it.

And that's why 4e is not an RPG.

¹ "playing the game" is "making (meaningful) choices", for those not familiar with this argument.

Fun!

Alright, so far:

"Role-playing is making decisions for the character, in character." - I have no reason to disagree with this statement, though as another has posted there are certain aspects of roleplaying games that do not involve or lessen the importance of role-playing (character creation being the clear one, solving OOC issues and maintaining fun for everyone involved being another).

"This requires looking at things from the character's PoV, using the fiction, not the rules." - Sure, but it has been pointed out that the rules and the fiction ought to be consistent already. If they do not line up, that's either a problem with how the fiction and rules have been built, or how the fiction and rules are being interpreted by other people. I see this has been addressed:

Is it the wrong fiction? Well, that depends. It certainly could be the wrong fiction, or it could be a matter of abstraction. That is, even with the optimal fiction, one expects that the rules, as an abstraction, won’t perfectly match the fiction - that there will be places where, to facilitate gameplay, you’re dealing with spherical sacred cows on a frictionless outer plane.

Ignoring that possibility for the moment, yes, it could be a suboptimal fiction. But “how people use it” would be subjective, so my question is, what fiction did 4e ship with? Use *that* fiction to play the game, measuring how the rules rate your choices. That’s how suited to being played as an RPG 4e is under the simple metric.

The 4e players handbook, as I found out in the last 10 minutes, specifies that the Martial power source often contains feats beyond the capabilities of ordinary mortals, and describes them as "not magic in the traditional sense."

I take this to mean that anything that is clearly beyond the capabilities of a warrior in the established setting to be tapping into nontraditional magic. Because it says so.

It also, when describing daily powers, as that is probably the main issue here (?), the good book claims that martial characters are reaching into their deepest reserves to pull off an exploit. While I agree that on its face, it seems a little silly to have a meat man only able to meat a particular way once a day. If it is, as they say on the same page, nontraditional magic though, then there's no reason to believe that it will work any differently than other types of magic in the same world. (Which appears to be the old "hold the ability in your head tenuously, and need good amount of rest to grab a hold of it again" maneuver.)

"How well the rules match the fiction - or, more specifically, how well one can play the game knowing and utilizing only the fiction, how the rules rate one's performance when role-playing - is a simple metric for the suitability of the game to being played as an RPG." -

Based on the fiction as laid out in the book - that martial characters are dubiously magical and commit superhuman exploits through the use of, er, magic - I think that the rules match the fiction pretty well. If characters are going through the world thinking "I've attained access to these abilities through honing my craft to the point of mastery, but attempting them hurts my head to the point where I can only try again tomorrow," then that qualifies as a win. If their thought process is anything else (head hurting not withstanding), the character doesn't understand their own abilities very well, or the player doesn't understand the fiction as is.

I know I have made a lot of assumptions here based on what the actual problem is, but it is necessary to find the specifics of the fiction and rules when trying to argue that the fiction conflicts with the rules.

About playing the game knowing and utilizing only the fiction - can you point to a specific example of where the fiction does not line up with the rules? I would love to discuss the details and make a case for this, as I have seen this topic come up way too often in the last month.

The few things I've looked at so far seem to indicate that the fiction is just as specific as the rules, as they had probably written the fiction in a particular way in order to justify the rules. Go figure.

[Quertus]

I dislike, to the point of almost loathing, 4e.

That doesn't make it not-an-RPG, it just makes it not be vibe.

Agreed, disliking or hating a system does not make it not an RPG. However, my definition makes 4e not an RPG.

What you say is not an objective truth. It’s your opinion on 4E.

Completely wrong. Anyone understanding my definition and following it to its logical conclusion would agree that, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG. Like math, the answer doesn’t change with the person doing the work - assuming that they do the work correctly. So it is not subjective.

You are welcome to prove how I’m wrong, but… maybe start with learning to differentiate between subjective and objective, between opinion and fact. Because the simple fact is, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG.

[JNAProductions]

Agreed, disliking or hating a system does not make it not an RPG. However, my definition makes 4e not an RPG.

Completely wrong. Anyone understanding my definition and following it to its logical conclusion would agree that, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG. Like math, the answer doesn’t change with the person doing the work - assuming that they do the work correctly. So it is not subjective.

You are welcome to prove how I’m wrong, but… maybe start with learning to differentiate between subjective and objective, between opinion and fact. Because the simple fact is, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG.

Okay… let me put it another way.

Your opinion that 4E is not an RPG is fact. But even by the very metrics you presented here, it can and does qualify as an RPG. And it certainly qualifies as an RPG by common usage.

If you are unable to imagine how anyone can find 4E to be an RPG, that’s a lack of imagination on your part, not an inherent flaw to 4E.

[KillianHawkeye]

Listen carefully: I’m claiming that, to measure a game’s suitability to be played as an RPG, one must play all the “character choices” minigames - including the “abstract strategy game” - in roleplaying stance, and measure how the rules rate your performance compared to someone just playing the rules.

Why?

No really, why is that a requirement?

Literally no RPG I've ever played has strictly met this requirement.

And what do you actually mean by "suitability"? Just say that you don't like it. That's fine. But you have no authority whatsoever to claim what is suitable for other people to do.

I'm not sure why you spend so much time and energy hating on D&D 4e, or why 4e is so important to you, but gatekeeping fantasy gaming hobbies is nothing but a waste of everyone's time.

Agreed, disliking or hating a system does not make it not an RPG. However, my definition makes 4e not an RPG.

Since your definition seems to be designed specifically to exclude 4e rather than for any kind of general use, it's nonsensical at best and academically dishonest at worst.

[AvatarVecna]

"4e isnt an RPG because it doesnt fit my personal definition"

This is coming from a person trying to lecture others on the definition of "objective".

[ShadowSandbag]

What you say is not an objective truth. It’s your opinion on 4E.

Completely wrong. Anyone understanding my definition and following it to its logical conclusion would agree that, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG. Like math, the answer doesn’t change with the person doing the work - assuming that they do the work correctly. So it is not subjective.

You are welcome to prove how I’m wrong, but… maybe start with learning to differentiate between subjective and objective, between opinion and fact. Because the simple fact is, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG.

If we are going down that route I have a question.
Would you accept the following?

"Quertus' definition, conclusion and general view on what is or is not an RPG is objectively, factually wrong."

This is based on my definition of such, and anyone using my definition would reach the same conclusion with no room for error.

[Lacco]

lol. My signature academic mage is actually an accomplished (if dry) writer of text books. I, OTOH, am a terrible writer.

By your own definition, which game allowed you best to roleplay this side of your character...?

Wow, awesome, questions that’re based on actually understanding what I wrote! Those were becoming vanishingly rare - that’s why I moved to the simplified version.

If that happens often, then you should consider a different choice of words, argumentation, etc. Or even the stance you take: see JNAProduction's reply and your response to them. You may think you are stating everything in clear and concise way, but the reader may get a completely different information than your original intent was.

Also, not touching the "4e is not a roleplaying game". Didn't play it, don't care for it. However, the sentence is only your subjective statement, based on your subjective definition. Whether you view it as objective based on your (subjective) perceptions and knowledge, does not make it objective.

However, if one accepts your definition, then neither 4e, nor 3.5 are roleplaying games. And neither are most of versions of D&D that I have seen/read/participated in.

[Telok]

This also why arguments like "you can roleplay in Chess/Monopoly/whatever other simple or abstract game" are dumb. Their own rules don't really establish characters nor stage situations, only someone who has specific ideas about those and adds in a lot of material to facilitate them would play them as roleplaying games.

Well there was the old Talisman game, you had a fantasy character in a fantasy world facing situations. Could even have a character with spells or a magic sword. Still a board game.

More generally, I realized something. Most rpgs are developed from a fiction. Thus their rules follow or emulate the fiction. D&D wizards originate from and cast like Vance's Dying Earth stories, while rangers originally came from LotR's Aragorn character (these days they originate more from FR Drizzy). The rules in Call of Cthulhu follow the fiction of ordinary people dealing with horrible supernatural stuff. The rules for supers games come from various comic book tropes.

D&D 4e's rules weren't developed from a fiction. The developers made the mechanical game as a response to issues real & perceived in previous D&D games, they didn't try to follow or implement a piece of fiction. Now, people can (and do) try to retroactively justify & add a fiction to the mechanics. But the mechanics don't come with a fictional source, they're just stand-alone mechanics & rules.

Have tovstop for peb

[AvatarVecna]

4e's not a great RPG because most of the effort put into the books is going towards mechanics - there's fluff text for most things, but it's not as much as we got in 3.5 (as an example). Despite all that, "being more mech than fluff" does not disqualify it from being an RPG - you are still entirely capable of making and playing characters based on characterization rather than build. 4e has a hundred choices to make with a thousand options each, and only some of them are really optimal...but the rest are just mediocre, so if you can accept not being optimal, you can make those hundreds of choices based on characterization - all before you get to actual play.

By all means, hand me the IC thought process one uses when determining whether and how to contribute to a skill challenge

This is exceptionally silly to me because skill challenges are basically freeform roleplaying. "Alright guys, you're characters in the world and you're good at only certain things. Here's the task set out for you: how will you use your abilities to contribute?" And then you get to just make **** up. The DM can assign example ways to use skills, but I've never seen a DM just categorically turn down skill use suggestions like "nope, I didnt think of it before session so that's illegal". Pretending that robot DMs incapable of swerving from the path is some phenomenon unique to 4e is myopic.

or the IC thought process around the use of a muggle daily, including the character's understanding of what the ability is.

The ability for an ninja to have a super-secret technique that's really hard and exhausting to pull off is as much a staple of fiction as a mage who has one dangerous mega-spell kept in reserve for special occasions because it drains most of their mana.

You may not like it. You might think it's dumb that somebody who isn't magic has special techniques that they can't repeat over and over all day every day. You're entitled to your opinion. But that doesn't make your opinion an objective fact of game design.

[NichG]

There's something to the OP, but the edition war stuff and binary absolutes are obscuring it.

Rather than 'X is/is not an RPG', imagine taking a system and creating a setting for it in which all of the rules known and visible to the players are known and visible in character. Compare that setting with the setting presented by descriptive text accompanying the rules.

Desiring to minimize that gap is a reasonable design goal. Prioritizing games in which that gap is smaller is a reasonable preference to have. And that gap is something about which at least some agreement should be possible, though I won't call it objective.

The 'gap>0.3, not an RPG' bit is the arbitrary, subjective assertion added that is setting off a lot of posters.

[Max_Killjoy]

There's something to the OP, but the edition war stuff and binary absolutes are obscuring it.

Rather than 'X is/is not an RPG', imagine taking a system and creating a setting for it in which all of the rules known and visible to the players are known and visible in character. Compare that setting with the setting presented by descriptive text accompanying the rules.

Desiring to minimize that gap is a reasonable design goal. Prioritizing games in which that gap is smaller is a reasonable preference to have. And that gap is something about which at least some agreement should be possible, though I won't call it objective.

The 'gap>0.3, not an RPG' bit is the arbitrary, subjective assertion added that is setting off a lot of posters.

Very well said.

Those are all things I want from an RPG system, and IMO a good way to judge a system.

[Khedrac]

Completely wrong. Anyone understanding my definition and following it to its logical conclusion would agree that, by my definition, 4e is not an RPG. Like math, the answer doesn’t change with the person doing the work - assuming that they do the work correctly. So it is not subjective.

Please pay more attention to my previous post.
Georg Cantor proved that on could never have the biggest set possible - he showed a method of constructing a bigger set from any postulated set.
The another mathematician whose name I forget asked "what about the set of all sets"?

So in maths, yes the answer can change with the person doing the work because the definition doesn't work.

You are postulating a defintion and then assuming that everyone will interpret things exactly the same way you do - and your defninion is far too loose for that to be a valid assumtion, and that's even assuming the definition isn't flawed and stands up under rigorous use - and from the look of other people's posts it doesn't.

[MoiMagnus]

By all means, hand me the IC thought process one uses when determining whether and how to contribute to a skill challenge

Skill challenge is not that hard as IME the work is done by the GM. Here is how I've played them (not sure if they match precisely the guidelines, hum I mean the rules):

The GM describe a situation that has a reasonably clear objective and ask "what do you do?". Peoples say what they want to do, which get converted into a skill check.

Either the action is secondary, and the success/failure of the check only grant bonus/penalty to following checks (and consume some time if that's relevant to the check), and possibly long term consequences.

Or the action is directly linked to the objective, and each success/failure gets some narration from the GM on how the situation changed. After multiple failures on important checks (usually 3), the narration from the GM naturally results in the situation degenerating at our disadvantage forcing us to give up the objective. After enough successes (depending on the complexity of the task), the narration from the GM naturally lead to the objective being reached.

So from an IC perspective, it's just "what can I do to be useful in the current situation?" and "if I have a good idea but I know I'm not good at executing it, I share it with someone more competent that me".

IMO, skill challenges are a very advanced version of railroading, where contrary to regular railroading, the players are given a significant amount of decision-making (and at least two different outcomes), but the GM is still supposed to control the flow of the game quite strictly.

[HumanFighter]

Yeah, I'm with Quertus on this one. 4e D&D is not really much of an RPG. It is more of an awkward table skirmish boardgame.
The premise of the game is this: 1. Make characters. 2. Go to dungeon. 3. Have a Look Around. 4. Fight monsters. 5. Collect Loot. 6. Repeat. Yeah, sounds like a boardgame to me.
Also, damn skill challenges

[JNAProductions]

Yeah, I'm with Quertus on this one. 4e D&D is not really much of an RPG. It is more of an awkward table skirmish boardgame.
The premise of the game is this: 1. Make characters. 2. Go to dungeon. 3. Have a Look Around. 4. Fight monsters. 5. Collect Loot. 6. Repeat. Yeah, sounds like a boardgame to me.
Also, damn skill challenges

Have you actually read the books or played 4E?

Because, yes, you can do that. You can do that in 3rd as well. Or 5th. Or AD&D, or OD&D. In fact, I'd say that's much more OD&D and AD&D (from my limited knowledge of them) than any WotC-era D&D product.

If you don't like 4E, I have a different opinion of it, but you're certainly not wrong to dislike it. But to say it's not an RPG because it does tactical combats better than other editions of D&D seems pretty wrongheaded to me.