Unpopular opinions go here

[Gradine]

Yes...if one agrees with your assertions about what TTRPGs are. You're making an assertion, "a necessary and definitional part of TTRPG play is engaging without mechanical intervention" and assuming it's true.

I mean, it's only one of the founders of the medium who said that the secret he hoped we'd never learn that we never actually needed the rules.

Of course, he also said a bunch of other stuff over the years, some of it incredibly beyond the pale, so I guess we can take anything he says with a grain of salt.

I don't generally agree, and hold the arguable far more topical (in that it's definitely unpopular) view that TTRPGs aren't a special class of games that require players to exceed the mechanically mediated actions to be in the category.

I don't know if you've paid much attention to the rest of thread, but if we're going to argue about whose position on this is more unpopular in this unpopular opinions thread, I'm giving you some incredibly stiff competition.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Even just pointing out that the "RP" isn't separate from the "G" in RPG is probably a pretty unpopular opinion. That's denying the whole Roll v Role debate, right there.
How often have you heard "Just RP it!" around the table?

I find it bizarre. Supposedly, were playing a Roleplaying Game, yet we have to stop using the actual game, in order to RP? How is that an RPG? Maybe it's RP & G?

 

[Gradine]

Even just pointing out that the "RP" isn't separate from the "G" in RPG is probably a pretty unpopular opinion. That's denying the whole Roll v Role debate, right there.
How often have you heard "Just RP it!" around the table?

I find it bizarre. Supposedly, were playing a Roleplaying Game, yet we have to stop using the actual game, in order to RP? How is that an RPG? Maybe it's RP & G?

Why isn't "role-playing" being considered a part of the game? It is a Roleplaying Game, sure, but it's also a Roleplaying Game. The game doesn't stop just because we're not currently engaging in the mechanics. It's all Game.

 

[Umbran]

TTRPG, or even RPG, aren't always well-defined in discussions either.

As always, I blame D&D's place in the hobby's history. ;P

Because D&D is held to be the hallowed First RPG, any definition of RPG, let alone TTRPG, must stretch and distort itself to include D&D, somehow. Even though D&D was a wargame (chainmail) adapted to be used something like an RPG.

(hey, Unpopular Opinions...)

It isn't like RPGs were going to leap into existence without some underlying referent, and also including everything we would later think of as being valid in RPGs. The first game was bound to have a skewed design, and incomplete from the view of the genre 50 years later. Guess what? In another 50 years, they may view our current games woefully immature in design as well.

Whatever the referent it would have lasting influence - whether it was "Shoots and Ladders", cribbage, chess, mancala or basketball - that some folks would later feel wasn't great for RPGs. It seems to me that trying to define the first forays into the genre to actually be out of genre would be poor scholarship.

 

[Umbran]

I encountered it in some video-game designer blog or something quite a few years ago, I believe the article was actually primarily about "ludonarrative dissonance,"

Okay, I know that term, so I get what you mean there. But in most ways, that isn't really different from the standard view of balance. In D&D, for example, if the choice of one class or other was a "trap option", it turns up as "imbalance" both in your and Pemerton's definition.

I also note that the videogame definition (coming from ludonarrative dissonance) is as much or more about adventure design than what we'd call "game design" or "system design". Most videogames release such that the system is indivisibly linked with the adventure, packaged and sold together, while in most TTRPGs, the system and adventure are typically separated, so that you can discuss them separately more easily.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, Lodonarrative dissonance doesn't apply so much to RPGs, because they rarely use cut scenes &c. But, it was a nice definition of balance, and, yes, mostly compatible with the one pemerton used.

It is interesting that in a videogame, giving the player options is very often in the singular sense, you only have one player, the issue often made of balance in RPGs - 'overshadowing' other players, spotlight time, etc - doesn't exist, but balance is still important.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Huh.

I misread the title. I thought it was, "Unpopular opinions." Not, "Let's argue about the same stuff, new thread."

I really need to get some glasses!

 

[Gradine]

Caster Supremacy is a myth with no basis in actual play.

The Wheel of Time show is better than the books.

"Roll"-playing vs. "Role"-playing is a false dichotomy, and if you've picked a side, you've picked wrong.

Taco Bell's food is great.

The Persona series of video games are bland, homophobic garbage.

All Star Wars is good.

Nobody asked for Snarf's sass

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Caster Supremacy is a myth with no basis in actual play.

The Wheel of Time show is better than the books.

"Roll"-playing vs. "Role"-playing is a false dichotomy, and if you've picked a side, you've picked wrong.

Taco Bell's food is great.

The Persona series of video games are bland, homophobic garbage.

All Star Wars is good.

Nobody asked for Snarf's sass

 

[Gradine]