Worlds of Design: What Defines a RPG?

It’s a daunting task to try to define and characterize a segment as large and diverse as tabletop role-playing games in just a few words. But here goes.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.
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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller​

Some people won’t be happy with my definitions--which is my opinion, drawn from experience. But the purpose of such exercises is (aside from encouraging people to think) to narrow down something so that we can talk about it intelligibly.

Defining the Undefinable​

There are two ways to define something: 1) specific (as in a dictionary), but this usually leads to dispute even when what’s being defined is a single word; or 2) describe typical characteristics, even if it’s possible that some will not have all of those characteristics. I’m trying the latter, being general enough to think all the characteristics are necessary.

What makes an RPG a tabletop hobby RPG? An RPG, as we talk about them in the hobby, is a human-opposed co-operative game. There are four characteristics:

• Avatars,
• progressive improvement,
• co-operation, and
• GMed opposed adventure.

Simple enough, but in defining a concept it’s sometimes easier to explain what it isn’t.

What RPGs Are Not​

Role-playing games, as defined by the last word, are games and therefore require opposition. An RPG is not a puzzle (with a correct solution); an RPG is not a means for the GM to tell a story (reducing player agency immensely); an RPG is not a storytelling mechanism, whether for players to tell each other stories, or for the GM to tell a story. These things all exist, but to include them in the definition goes far beyond the realm of game. A game is a form of play, but most forms of play are not games.

Not Just Role-Playing​

Technically, a role-playing game may be any game where you play a role – which is a LOT of games, tabletop and (especially) video. It even includes some business simulations. I’m more interested in what makes a game a hobby RPG, a game played frequently by hobby game players. So I’ll discuss role-playing in terms of avatars.

What’s a “Pure” or “Real” Avatar?​

• A single thing/entity that represents the individual player, most commonly a humanoid
• All the player’s actions in the game emanate from the avatar
• The “pure” avatar is fully subject to risk: if it dies/is destroyed, the player loses (at least temporarily)

An avatar could be a spaceship, a tank (World of Tanks) or other vehicle, even a pizza-shape (Pac-Man). In video games, the avatar typically respawns. In hobby RPGs, the avatar is a creature, usually human or humanoid. (For more detail, read "The most important design aspect of hobby RPGs is the Pure Avatar".)

Avatars sometimes have a separate developer-provided “history” and personality (Mario, Sonic). Sometimes an avatar is a blank slate so that the player can more easily infuse his/her own personality or fictional character background into the avatar.

In many games, a "kind-of-avatar" is not the source of all action, nor does the game end if the avatar is killed. That’s not an RPG.

Progressive Improvement​

This can happen in many kinds of games. But in what we call RPGs, it’s some variety of:

• Gaining experience to rise in levels, and the levels give more capability (though the term “level” might not be used)
• Gaining skills/feats/features (which give more capability)
• Collecting magic or technological items (which provide extra options, defense, offense, etc.)
• Acquiring money/treasure (which can be used for lots of things)
• No doubt there are some RPGs with other ways to improve, for example via social standing if that is formally tracked

Does it need levels? No, but that's typically (conveniently) how increase in capability “without employing the loot I've got” is expressed.

So a game where the hero(es) don’t progress in capability – or only a little – might be an interesting game, but it’s not an RPG. Many of you can think of board, card, or video games of this kind. Well-known heroes in novel series rarely progress significantly in capability, for example James Bond.

You can have avatars without progression, you can have roles without “pure” avatars, you can have progression without avatars, but those are not what we categorize as RPGs.

Co-operation, Adventure, and a Gamemaster That Controls the Opposition/Enables Adventure​

• Yes, opposition. It’s not a game (I use the traditional sense) without opposition, though it might be a puzzle or a parallel competition
• I don’t see how there can be significant opposition without a GM/referee; unless you go to computer programming
• If there’s no co-operation, if it’s player vs player, it’s more or less a board/card game in concept

I include Adventure, because the stories coming out of the original RPGs would be called adventures. In the 21st century we do have novels that don’t seem to have any particular point other than describing everyday life, and I think that’s leaked over into so-called RPGs as well. Whether adventure is necessary is a debatable point (surprise), though I’m certainly not interested in RPGs without Adventure.

The GM also allows the players to try to do “anything” that could be done in the current situation. Some regard this freedom-of-action (extreme player agency) as the defining aspect of RPGs, and it’s certainly vital; but think of a story RPG where the linear plot (typical of stories) forces players to do just what the story calls for. That’s not freedom of action. Yet story form may be the most common form of tabletop RPG.

And consider games like Minecraft. You can try to do almost anything there, too, but it's not an RPG.

Where does this leave computer RPGs? There’s not exactly a GM, though the computer tries to be. There’s certainly not as much freedom of action as with a human GM . . . But my goal was to define hobby tabletop RPGs.

Your Turn: What’s your definition of a role-playing game?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

The fundamental argument to me seems to be “squares are the only shape, circles and triangles are something other than shapes.”

Which is gatekeeping by definition.

 

[Hussar]

Let me take another stab at this, although, I get the feeling I'm not going to get much traction.

The reason that @lewpuls' list doesn't really work is that he's trying to define RPG by what you do while playing. The problem with that is, it's like trying to define genre by trope - sure it can work sometimes, but, for most genres, you define by theme - what is the story about, not by whether or not it ticks the genre checkboxes.

To me, what differentiates an RPG from all other games is that you cannot play an RPG out of the box. You simply can't. Someone has to define the campaign - whether that campaign is a single night (a la Dread) or fifteen years (a la some D&D campaigns). Someone has to create characters based on that campaign. Someone has to define some sort of plot or action. THEN you get to play an RPG.

Thus, even if you use the identical rules for two different campaigns, they may look absolutely nothing like each other. Unlike other games where the initial point is defined by the game itself, RPG's don't (as a general rule) have a single initial point from which play progresses. Can you role play in a board game? Of course you can. But, what separates that board game from an RPG is the fact that every time you pull out that board game, your initial premises will be the same (within a given tolerance of same) whereas your initial points in an RPG might be completely different. And most likely will.

RPG's can't be defined by what you do in game because what you do in game resembles too many other games. It's the fact that you use the rules of an RPG to construct a game that will be idiosyncratic to your table at that point in time and likely can never be reproduced. Sure, modules allow for shared experiences across tables, but, even then, unless we're talking about the most railroaded, linear scenario, there will be massive variance between one table's experience of a module and another's. Because each group is building a new game every time they sit down to start a campaign.

 

[Umbran]

Resort to the idea of "gatekeeping" (again, "the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something") tends to be a reflection of someone who disagrees, or who feels left out.

Have you considered the possibility that they feel left out because there are gatekeepers trying to leave them out?

It rarely actually exists.

Upon what do you base this assertion? Because I can point to any woman called a "fake geek girl" as an example of gatekeeping being a real thing that happens.

 

[pemerton]

what differentiates an RPG from all other games is that you cannot play an RPG out of the box. You simply can't. Someone has to define the campaign - whether that campaign is a single night (a la Dread) or fifteen years (a la some D&D campaigns). Someone has to create characters based on that campaign. Someone has to define some sort of plot or action. THEN you get to play an RPG.

You can't play with Lego out of the box either - someone has to build something, and (typically) imbue it with some sort of meaning.

But that doesn't make Lego an RPG.

Your definition is also true of some wargaming - it's not enough to have painted your figures and read your copy of the rules, someone actually has to frame a battle, set up the terrain, etc. But wargames aren't RPGs. (Though RPGs have an important historical derivation from wargaming.)

Your definition would also mean that an intro/demo module with pre-gens doesn't count as a RPG, when I think it obviously is.

@lewpuls is right to fasten on the avatar as pretty key - that's the inheritance, much changed as it is in many ways, from single-soldier-per-figure wargaming.

It's the other aspects - which build in assumptions about participant roles (players as cooperating, GM as opposition) and play goal (ie advancement) - that are contentious because they are true of (most) D&D play and true of play in many D&D-influenced games (eg Rolemaster or RuneQuest as played in their default modes) but are not true of all the other RPGs that have been designed over the years since D&D was invented.

What keeps those other games within the general parameters of the type of gaming that D&D pioneered is (i) the role of the fiction in adjudication, which is different from nearly every other game type (except some wargaming), and (ii) the continued use of the single-person avatar as a primary locus of participation in the game by most if not all of the participants (ie the "players").

 

[loverdrive]

Hm, now I'm thinking.

What if we try to classify RPGs not from mechanical standpoint or by ability to roleplay (as you can roleplay in any game, if you want to), but from uhm... Intent?

A role-playing game is a game, where roleplaying is expected from all the participants.

So, if you're playing D&D "as normal", or, I don't know, hosting a British Parlaiment Style debate tournament, where everyone takes on roles of the Lords of Terra, you're engaging in role-playing, but if you're playing a PvP battle royale using 5E rules, or just one weird dude roleplays in debates while no one else does, you're not.

I think it works.

 

[Aldarc]

Maybe we should switch the title heading to "Who Defines an RPG?"

 

[loverdrive]

Maybe we should switch the title heading to "Who Defines an RPG?"

Well, that would be meaningless, because the answer is obvious: me.

 

[pemerton]

if you're playing a PvP battle royale using 5E rules

Can the fiction affect the resolution? Eg can one of the PCs push the other into a patch of mud so that other slips over?

Then I'm prepared to allow it's a RPG, albeit not a character-driven one.

On the other hand, if the terrain, or other fiction, figures only if it has - in advance - been rendered into mechanical terms (eg anyone who enters this square has to make a Reflex/DEX save or fall prone, where prone is a mechanical status) then I would say that it's not a RPG but a type of boardgame or mechanically-defined wargame.

A role-playing game is a game, where roleplaying is expected from all the participants.

In the battle royale, the "role" is occupied, and "played", simply in virtue of the "avatar" being the locus of the player's making moves in the game.

My characterisation in this and previous posts will count, as a RPG, a single-person-per-figure wargame in which the referee can adjudicate the fiction outside of pre-determined mechanical parameters, and the non-referee participant approaches the game from the avatar perspective rather than a birds-eye-view "general's" perspective. Given the derivation of RPGing from that sort of game, this is a cost I'm prepared to wear.

 

[pemerton]

A definition of tabletop RPGing that can't capture (1) White Plume Mountain played using classic D&D rules and expectations, and (2) Classic Traveller, and (3) In a Wicked Age, and (4) My Life With Master - just to pick four of the many boundary points that might be chosen - has clearly failed.

If a definition picks up some wargaming, some boardgaming and some LARPing as borderline cases I think that's OK.

 

[loverdrive]

On the other hand, if the terrain, or other fiction, figures only if it has - in advance - been rendered into mechanical terms (eg anyone who enters this square has to make a Reflex/DEX save or fall prone, where prone is a mechanical status) then I would say that it's not a RPG but a type of boardgame or mechanically-defined wargame.

Yeah, that's what I meant