Unpopular opinions go here

[Bacon Bits]

I'm pretty confident about pure freestyle RP not being a game, tho. I mean, no rules, no a game? Is that too uncontroversial to even mention here.

What about charades or other parlor games?

To me, TTRPGs are hybrid games. They combine Pretend/House and other childhood games of imagination, the Storytelling Game or games of narrative, usually a dice-based Wargame of some kind, and numerous other subgames to create a combined experience. The game may or may not involve improvisational acting or voice acting. Often, players will take on the role of a single character at a time, but not always. Often, players will take actions in-game while imagining themselves as people other than themselves, but not always.

Since they're all hybrid games, you can play them with whichever elements you want. Some people might not want the Wargame. Others might not care about the Storytelling. Still others might only be interested in the Wargame, and play the game more like a season of Blood Bowl than what others would call a TTRPG.

However, the Object of the Game in a TTRPG is to keep the game going. When the game ends, all players lose. Typically, the referee player determines when the game ends, but not all TTRPGs have a referee player. Often, the game ends when all the characters currently played by the players die. But not necessarily. Some games continue with other characters, or the referee retcons death into survival. The key remains: you only lose when the game ends. So thus we have the core of the game: it's anything as long as it keeps going.

Given that, I say the core of TTRPGs is most often Pretend. Although I think some tables definitely would just point to the Wargame.

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's a paradox, as you're literally saying that D&D predated itself.

Look at the cover. It calls itself a miniatures wargame.

 

[Retros_x]

Whether we call it borrowing, cultural appropriation, or exchange, there are three things you need to know about it: It's inevitable, it's not always inappropriate, and in the aggregate it benefits all.

I don't see how we all benefit from white girls on instagram using traditional religious ceremonial clothings of a different culture do look cool in their stories.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't see how we all benefit from white girls on instagram using traditional religious ceremonial clothings of a different culture do look cool in their stories.

I honestly do not see why or how that makes a difference.

 

[Tony Vargas]

To me, TTRPGs are hybrid games. They combine Pretend/House and other childhood games of imagination, the Storytelling Game or games of narrative, usually a dice-based Wargame of some kind, and numerous other subgames to create a combined experience. The game may or may not involve improvisational acting or voice acting. Often, players will take on the role of a single character at a time, but not always. Often, players will take actions in-game while imagining themselves as people other than themselves, but not always.

Since they're all hybrid games, you can play them with whichever elements you want.

That (all of it, not just what I quoted) is a reasonable discussion of the way we usually hear TTRPGs defined. I expect it will not be unpopular.

I'd prefer to see a way of looking at TTRPGs that isn't so much other things mashed together, but a cohesive idea. (I doubt I could articulate it, but I'd like to /see/ one. Kinda how I felt about balance, really, until, ironically, I looked outside TTRPG discussions...)

 

[Cadence]

Look at the cover. It calls itself a miniatures wargame.

Kind of like...

"The game the Pritchards and McCallums invented wasn't actually pickleball. They invented a nameless game. They later named that game pickleball."

"Jazz didn't start in New Orleans in the 1890s, because the word Jazz wasn't used for music until 1912."

 

[MGibster]

I don't see how we all benefit from white girls on instagram using traditional religious ceremonial clothings of a different culture do look cool in their stories.

See point #2: It isn't always appropriate. In the aggregate it's a net positive even if you can point to specifics where it's wrong.

 

[pemerton]

GNS does that, in it's own, very unproductive way, it can exile early D&D into the Simulationist box.

You know that there's no need to speculate about Edwards' thoughts on this: The Forge :: A Hard Look at Dungeons and Dragons

To this we can add that classic D&D, of the sort advocated by Gygax in his PHB, Moldvay in Basic, and by Pulsipher in the pages of early White Dwarf, is presented as a game for GNS gamists: the goal is to win, by beating the dungeon.

As is well known, the actual uptake of the game produced significant departures from that presentation. Even Gygax was departing from it by the time his DMG was published a year after his PHB.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You know that there's no need to speculate about Edwards' thoughts on this:

I wasn't. I was thinking of the way GNS jargon is used - I suppose, often with incorrect/exoteric assumed meanings - in discussions.

To this we can add that classic D&D, of the sort advocated by Gygax in his PHB, Moldvay in Basic, and by Pulsipher in the pages of early White Dwarf, is presented as a game for GNS gamists: the goal is to win, by beating the dungeon. As is well known, the actual uptake of the game produced significant departures from that presentation. Even Gygax was departing from it by the time his DMG was published a year after his PHB.

It certainly sound like "the fantasy game underwent changes from Chainmail, more changes to D&D, and 0e had, like, two combat systems, and changed substantially with Supplement 1, went from wargame to treasure-hunting game and ultimately from that to setting simulator, to, increasingly, eventually RPG. The early game was so murky, tho, and the legal battle between Gygax and Arneson only further obfuscated it.
Heck, even then, Gygax seemed intent on broadening appeal and not admitting any gamer was being left behind. His circumlocution about realism in the DMG, for instance. Like a nervous politician.

 

[Hussar]

This. Can someone explain the value in saying D&D isnt actually a TTRPG?

Ten years of 4e edition warring? Forcing out a section of the fandom and then slamming the door behind you so that you can get the type of DnD you want and then man the battlements to make sure those other non-true fans stay out of the hobby all the while doing periodic donuts in the grave of the hated edition?

It’s incredibly effective.