D&D General What is an RPG and is D&D an RPG?

[Jack Daniel]

Not all of them. Tactical infinity comes from Free Kriegsspiel.

Right, but it's tactical infinity + personal avatar that makes an RPG, which is why a generic free Kriegsspiel with no role to play (or Diplomacy for that matter) would be problematic to categorize as an RPG, whereas a Braunstein free Kreigsspiel most definitely is a simple kind of RPG.

 

[Tonguez]

So if I am a Fighter in DnD and declare I want to fly to the top of the castle wall, and the DM says no you can’t fly- does that mean tactical infinity has failed? Is DnD no longer a valid RPG?

 

[Oligopsony]

So if I am a Fighter in DnD and declare I want to fly to the top of the castle wall, and the DM says no you can’t fly- does that mean tactical infinity has failed? Is DnD no longer a valid RPG?

Violates tactical infinity:
“I fly to the top of the castle.”
(Non-rhetorically) “Where on your character sheet or in the rules does it say you can fly?”
“Oops, hmm, nowhere I guess!”

Preserves tactical infinity:
“I fly to the top of the castle.”
(Non-rhetorically) “How?”
“By, uh, flapping my arms?”
“Unless I’m missing something I don’t think that would have any affect, no.”

The criterion isn’t that one can succeed at any task one imagines but that success can be considered for any task one imagines - or at any rate, that the ideas one might have in play always exceed what the system can think of or enumerate in advance.

 

[Oligopsony]

Re: @Pedantic ’s concerns, I think that avatars + tactical infinity straightforwardly implies goal malleability: if you’re taking on the agency of an imagined person and can do whatever they could do, one of the things people do is reflect on and change their goals, so you can do that.

(There are edge case counterexamples maybe of like robots or angels that simply can’t change their goals; my intuition is that one could still play roleplaying games of such creatures. Likewise a very trad game where the GM is like “okay we’re going to play Rise of the Runelords, please bring a PC who is along for the ride,” not favored style but still an RPG.)

 

[Pedantic]

Re: @Pedantic ’s concerns, I think that avatars + tactical infinity straightforwardly implies goal malleability: if you’re taking on the agency of an imagined person and can do whatever they could do, one of the things people do is reflect on and change their goals, so you can do that.

I offered that criteria as a replacement for "tactical infinity" not an addition. I think RPGs can do just fine with a proscribed set of actions.

 

[Reynard]

I offered that criteria as a replacement for "tactical infinity" not an addition. I think RPGs can do just fine with a proscribed set of actions.

When thinking about PbtA and moves, it isn't so much a prescribed set of actions as a defined set of mechanical procedures intended to cover an infinite possibility of action.

 

[Umbran]

I think tactical infinity is common, but not required. A player's gameplay options can be constrained without removing the roleplay aspect.

 

[Pedantic]

When thinking about PbtA and moves, it isn't so much a prescribed set of actions as a defined set of mechanical procedures intended to cover an infinite possibility of action.

True, but for absolute clarity I am explicitly saying that a finite set of action and resolution procedures can constitute an RPG and that infinite possibility of action is not definitional of the form.

 

[pemerton]

Pretty straightforward two part question.

One: what is the definition of an RPG?

The clearest examples of a RPG involve three things:

(1) The play of the game involves engaging with, and generating, a fiction, an imaginary set of things and events, that is shared among the participants;

(2) The participant roles are not identical: most participants are in the player role, and they engage the shared fiction via their control of, and declarations of actions for, a particular imaginary character; while (typically) one participant is in the "GM"/moderator/referee role, who engages the fiction from a more "God's eye view" perspective;

(3) The fiction matters to the resolution of players' declared actions.​

I'm sure there are marginal cases that stretch or break what I've suggested, but I think what I've said covers a fair chunk of ground.

Two: does D&D fit that definition?

Yes. Even the most extreme railroading found in some versions of D&D play still permits those in the player role to make modes changes to the shared fiction.

EDIT: And even the most wargame-y D&D tends to have some element of the fiction mattering to resolution. Maybe the most narrow arena-combat D&D play doesn't satisfy (3) above and therefore is boardgaming/skirmish gaming rather than RPGing. (I note that @pointofyou finds this an unhelpful line of thought. I can see why. I don't feel there's a great deal at stake when we're getting to rather marginal use cases.)

 

[pemerton]

I would say a roleplaying game is one where the player interacts with a fictional space

Real people can't interact with imaginary things. Interaction is a broadly causal notion, and fictional things don't exert causal influence on real things.

This is why I think we have to talk about the declaration and resolution of actions by participants.