So what exactly IS an RPG?

[TexAvery]

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.

1. a neutral arbitrator (storyteller/ DM/ GM/ computer) controlling one side
2. at least one other player with imperfect information about the game state
3. advancement of the non-GMs' avatar(s) through the act of playing the game
4. non-GM avatar persistence from session to session
5. rules exist to determine success and failure of avatar actions
6. 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]

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]

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!

[pwykersotz]

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]

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]

This may help at least spark some thought.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...a-brief-primer
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress...ytelling-games

[kyoryu]

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]

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]

A game in which you play the role of, and role-play as, one or more characters.

[Batcathat]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

1. a neutral arbitrator (storyteller/ DM/ GM/ computer) controlling one side
2. at least one other player with imperfect information about the game state
3. advancement of the non-GMs' avatar(s) through the act of playing the game
4. non-GM avatar persistence from session to session
5. rules exist to determine success and failure of avatar actions
6. 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]

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]

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]

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.