My Attempt to Define RPG's - RPG's aren't actually Games

Ok, so, once more I'd like to flog this horse.

I was thinking about what differentiates RPG's from other games and I think I might have one true difference. RPG's aren't really games. Now wait, hear me out. I'm going somewhere with this.

In a typical game, you read the rules, follow the rules and play the game. Deal 5 cards, have rounds of betting until everyone calls and then show your cards - the rules of Poker pretty much directly line up with what you do when you play Poker. But, if you read the three core D&D 5e books, you can't actually play the game.

RPG's are game creation engines. They operating systems. You use the rules of an RPG to create the game that we play at the table. But, until such time as someone actually creates that game, you can't actually play an RPG. Your books don't tell you what to do. They tell you how to build your game.

While I think you're maybe on to something here, I also think you've hit the wrong difference.

It's not that RPG games aren't games. They are, in that participants sit down and engage in a communal recreational activity which in theory provides fun-enjoyment-entertainment for said participants.

But RPG rules aren't the same as game rules, particularly in terms of how they set or don't set boundaries to play.

In a more typical game like chess or poker, the rules set the hard boundaries of what can be done within the game meaning play can almost certainly only proceed in a similar manner both from one game to the next and when comparing different groups of people playing the same game.

But in most RPGs the rules provide only a skeleton, onto which the participants (and often mostly just one participant) have to add flesh and beyond which the participants can sometimes go should the mood strike them - the boundaries set by the rules are in some cases hard boundaries (e.g. in D&D 5e there are 6 ability scores, a d20 is rolled to attack, etc.), in many cases soft boundaries (the DM isn't always bound by the rules, a player/PC can find unexpected uses for a spell, kitbashing the system is sometimes encouraged, etc.), and in a few cases no boundary at all (e.g. an Illusionist can cast as an illusion anything she can dream up, no matter how ridiculous). End result: rarely if ever are two RPG games going to be as similar to each other as two games of chess or two games of poker would be.

There's also the whole bit about whether a game requires a win-loss condition and whether an RPG has such, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

Lanefan

Hussar said:

In a typical game, you read the rules, follow the rules and play the game. Deal 5 cards, have rounds of betting until everyone calls and then show your cards - the rules of Poker pretty much directly line up with what you do when you play Poker. But, if you read the three core D&D 5e books, you can't actually play the game.

RPG's are game creation engines. They operating systems. You use the rules of an RPG to create the game that we play at the table. But, until such time as someone actually creates that game, you can't actually play an RPG. Your books don't tell you what to do. They tell you how to build your game.

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I heard you out, but I don't think you got anywhere.

Can you play poker if nobody deals out the cards? No. Can you play Sentinels of the Multiverse if you don't pick heroes and a villain and an environment? No.

To play any game, you still must set up an instance of that game. You need to put the pieces on the chessboard, you need to give everyone their starting Monopoly money and sort out the deeds and put the top hat on Go. For most games, setting up the instance is incredibly simple compared to D&D. For most games, setting up the instance has far fewer choices for those involved than in D&D. But creation of the instance is still there.

Umbran said:

I heard you out, but I don't think you got anywhere.

Can you play poker if nobody deals out the cards? No. Can you play Sentinels of the Multiverse if you don't pick heroes and a villain and an environment? No.

To play any game, you still must set up an instance of that game. You need to put the pieces on the chessboard, you need to give everyone their starting Monopoly money and sort out the deeds and put the top hat on Go. For most games, setting up the instance is incredibly simple compared to D&D. For most games, setting up the instance has far fewer choices for those involved than in D&D. But creation of the instance is still there.

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But, the rules of poker specifically tell you to deal the cards. The rules of Monopoly specifically tell you how to set up the board and what each player can do each turn. You don't read the rules of Monopoly or Poker and then set up your own board (although you can) or pull out Uno cards. In order to play those games, the game itself defines the setup.

RPG's do not. The game gives a number of guidelines on how to create a game, but, you cannot actually play D&D without first creating a game.

Which is why discussing RPG's becomes so problematic because no two tables is EVER playing the same game. Except maybe something like Adventurers League, I suppose, but, that's somewhat its own animal.

I'd argue that for non-RPG's, the setup isn't just simple (and, having played games like Advanced Squad Leader, I'd argue that board games =/= simple set ups), but that your initial conditions are dictated by the game itself. There is no game creation in setting up Monopoly. Every single time you play Monopoly, the set up is identical and dictated by the game.

Every single time you play an RPG, the set up is different and the rules don't dictate any initial conditions.

Hussar said:

Ok, so, once more I'd like to flog this horse.

I was thinking about what differentiates RPG's from other games and I think I might have one true difference. RPG's aren't really games. Now wait, hear me out. I'm going somewhere with this.

In a typical game, you read the rules, follow the rules and play the game. Deal 5 cards, have rounds of betting until everyone calls and then show your cards - the rules of Poker pretty much directly line up with what you do when you play Poker. But, if you read the three core D&D 5e books, you can't actually play the game.

RPG's are game creation engines. They operating systems. You use the rules of an RPG to create the game that we play at the table. But, until such time as someone actually creates that game, you can't actually play an RPG. Your books don't tell you what to do. They tell you how to build your game.

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This is something I’ve been saying for a while. Although it’s important to recognize that there are a whole lot of people that do like to play it like a “standard” game, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

To me the difference is one of play style. I prefer the rules to be primarily in the background, and they are tools to help the DM adjudicate the events in the fiction. They should not interfere with the fiction, and I largely prefer if they don’t define the fiction either.

This approach is more old school, works well with a theater of the mind approach, and especially well in AD&D style with the DM responsible for the rules and the players responsible for their characters. They often tend to include a balance of exploration, role-playing and combat, where combat is often the least important pillar.

I do think the White Wolf storyteller games get a bit too free-form for my liking.

Those that like to optimize, who like to “master” the game from the standpoint of character build tend to prefer the measurable mechanics more, and the games often focus more on combat because that’s where mastering mechanics shines. Especially on a grid.

Of course there are a lot more that two options, and most games are a mix. The game system itself can be geared toward one style or another.

The idea that they are game building systems has also been discussed, but a good percentage of them are a complete ruleset that you could play them as is. a AD&D for example with not only random monster tables also had random dungeon generation tables. You could play it, even by yourself, without a DM at all, right out of the book. Probably wouldn’t be terribly interesting, but you could do it.

Hussar said:

In a typical game, you read the rules, follow the rules and play the game. Deal 5 cards, have rounds of betting until everyone calls and then show your cards - the rules of Poker pretty much directly line up with what you do when you play Poker. But, if you read the three core D&D 5e books, you can't actually play the game.

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Well, a recurring claim made on The Forge is that many RPGs are games with poorly written rulebooks!

If you sit down and read the rules of Dungeon World, or Burning Wheel, or The Dying Earth, you can start playing the game. (One player might have to start a bit earlier - that's the case for DW and TDE, not so much for BW - but that could be compared to the need for someone to shuffle and deal in a card game.)

The same thing is almost true for Over the Edge, Pendragon and Prince Valiant. And now that I thikn about it, a very early game for which it is completely true is Classic Traveller - which doesn't even require the GM to stat earlier, because the patron generation and world generation systems can be used to create fictional content for play as things go along.

Hussar said:

But, the rules of poker specifically tell you to deal the cards. The rules of Monopoly specifically tell you how to set up the board and what each player can do each turn. You don't read the rules of Monopoly or Poker and then set up your own board (although you can) or pull out Uno cards. In order to play those games, the game itself defines the setup.

RPG's do not. The game gives a number of guidelines on how to create a game, but, you cannot actually play D&D without first creating a game.

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Again, this may be true of D&D (all versions? most of them? Moldvay Basic has pretty clear instructions on how to set up the game), but it isn't true of all RPGs.

The Dying Earth rulebook tells the players what the steps are that one of them (the GM) has to take to kick things off, in its instructions for scenario design. The Dungeon World rulebook gives very clear instructions on how to prepare for and run a first session, and then what to do prior to subsequent sessions. Classic Traveller also has clear instructions for making things happen - remarkably clear given its vintage! (Where it's quite unclear is in instructing players what they actually do in the play of the game once fictional content is generated.)

Hussar said:

Every single time you play an RPG, the set up is different and the rules don't dictate any initial conditions.

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Every time I play fiver hundred the set up is different (ie the hands and kitty contain different mixes of cards compared to the preivous hands and kitty). The process is the same from hand to hand (shuffle the cards, and then deal them out in a certain pattern) but that's true for RPGs also (identify a starting situation for the PCs using whatever method the rulebook states, and then ask the players what their PCs do). Of course some RPGs don't suggest any very solid method for establishing a starting situation (eg OD&D is pretty weak on this, and the AD&D DMG isn't super-strong either), but that goes back to the "bad rulebook" point.

It's not true that the rules of a RPG don't dictate an initial situation. In most cases they dictate a rather precise initial situation, namely, one in which someone establishes a fiction in which those characters who are the PCs find themselves in (imagined) circumstances that propel them into some sort of action. That action is the play of the game.

Different RPGs have different rules and instructions - express and implied - for who establishes that initial fiction, and for what counts as an imagined circumstance sufficient to propel a fictional character into action, and for what sort of action those characters should be propelled into (eg in classic D&D, the most salient action is an attempt to recover treasure from a dungeon).

Hussar said:

Which is why discussing RPG's becomes so problematic because no two tables is EVER playing the same game.

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I think there are two reasons that discusssing RPGs is sometimes hard.

One is related to your point: one group is playing poker, another is sitting around playing solitaire together, but they expect to be able to talk to one another not only about shuffling, or some general features of dealing like how to handle sticky cards, but the details of dealing in various patterns, and the details of card play as if each group is doing the same thing. And then when someone points out that they're playing different games, each starts insisting that poker, or solitaire, is not a real card game.

But the second reason is a bit different: the above situation never (literally) comes about, because no card player ever had trouble acknowledging that their are other card games, nor (shoudl they be so inclined) to describing the features (of deal patterns, of play, etc) that distinguish those games.

Whereas for reasons that I don't get, many RPGers are bizarrely reluctant to talk about their games as games that follow various procedures and deploy various techniques, to identify the ones they use which make their game different from someone else's games that uses different techniques, and hence to facilitate coherent discussion across peole playing related by different games.

So whereas the solitaire players will find it pretty easy to pick up tips for dealing with sticky cards from the poker players, without being berated for not betting and for not having one hand per player, in the RPG context it's quite hard to get coherent discussion of points of commonality where advice can be given without encountering totalising arguments that all RPGing must be this one thing that is how that particular person plays.

Well, Maxis used to call their Sim series of computer games 'software toys', because:

Since 1987, we have made games that allow players to create and tell their own stories.

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That pretty much exactly describes RPGs, don't you think?

RPGs are more than 'just' games because they're so open. They provide you with a sandbox to play in as you like.

What differentiates RPGs from other games?

Each player (except, perhaps, for one special player, if the RPG has a GM in the traditional sense) has, as his/her "piece", a character who is understood to be a component of a shared fiction - all the participants in the game, as part of playing the game, imagined a world in which these characters are inhabitants. A player's moves consist in declaring actions for this character, which aren't just moves in the traditional boardgame sense, but are also understood as intentions to change the fiction that this character is part of.

Another, distinct set of "moves" consists in establishing the rst of the shared fiction beyond these characers and their players' action declarations. In most RPGs on the traditional model, the GM does this.

The rules of the game (which may include various sorts of "mechanics", but may also confer direct authority on one participant to sauy what the shared fiction shall be) are used to help determine the outcomes of these moves. The rules take as input, and generate as output, not just mechanically-defined states of the game (as is the case for a boardgame, or most wargames) but also states fo the shared fiction.

There are probably games that count as RPGs that I haven't quite captured with the above. I think it's hard if not impossible to get more specific than the above without beginning to characterise some particular RPG(s) raher than RPGs in general (just as a definitin of card game that went much beyond shuffling and dealing in the specified pattern, and then making permitted moves in relation to changing the pattern of cards - eg to include that there is an auction or that each round of play involves a trick - woiuld be to specific to define card games in general, as opposed to say variants of whist).

I'm going to have to disagree with you - because I have 6 editions of this game, PF, & numerous other RPGs, ALL of wich do tell me how to play the game in question. OK, I'll admit that some do have a better explanation than others (have you ever tried to read OD&D?).

The main differences between RPGs & other games?
1) The complexities of setting up the game to be played. Once you get past this hurdle though....
2) The win condition(s)
3) The complete mutability of an RPG. Sure, you can add house rules to Monopoly or whatever. But THIS type of game is actually built with house rules, changes, etc in mind.

Jhaelen said:

games that allow players to create and tell their own stories.

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That pretty much exactly describes RPGs, don't you think?

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It also seems to describe all storyteling games, most dolls and similar sorts of toys, etc.

RPGs are quite a bit more specific than that.

Jhaelen said:

RPGs are more than 'just' games because they're so open. They provide you with a sandbox to play in as you like.

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Well, I can't build sandcastles with a RPG; whereas I can with a sandbox. (With at least some RPGs I can pretend to build a sandcastle, but that's not the same as actually building one.)

Even if we confine ourselves to storytelling; and even if we build in further assumptions that the story is going to be created not by the players just sitting around telling stories but via the mediation of some process wherein one player establishes an initial situation, and other players bring distinct characters into that situation; and then some process is used to work out how the situation changes from those characters engaging with it; it's still not true that any RPG let's you tell any story that you like.

For instance, no version of D&D that I'm aware of lets me tell the story of Jack the Giant-killer (I believe I'm recalling the Blue Fairy Book version): the events of that story aren't able to be generated by D&D combat rules, XP rules or treasure rules.