Unpopular opinions go here

[Thomas Shey]

0D&D was a wargame. After it was created, it was also called an RPG, a category invented for it, and since then many more RPGs have been created, and the category is huge, the definition expansive, and few games today called TTRPGs, share the with 0D&D, the qualities that made it a wargame. Likewise, very few of 0D&D's fellow wargames could be called RPGs, even in retrospect, in spite of sharing many qualities with it.

I think your assumption few could not still be called wargames is not well supported. There are enough games with combat engines that can't be called anything else if viewed just in and of themselves.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think your assumption few could not still be called wargames is not well supported. There are enough games with combat engines that can't be called anything else if viewed just in and of themselves.

He said few of those wargames would be called RPGs, not that few RPGs would be called wargames.

 

[Thomas Shey]

He said few of those wargames would be called RPGs, not that few RPGs would be called wargames.

With the qualification I might buy that, but I still need to point at things like Five Parsecs Out.

 

[Fenris-77]

With the qualification I might buy that, but I still need to point at things like Five Parsecs Out.

I think it would be silly to suggest that no wargames had RPG-ish aspects before OD&D.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Now that we got that all cleared up, ice cream cake > regular cake.

How dare you, sir!

I... I just... words fail me.

But also: tiramisu is a type of cake.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Cannonball by The Breeders is the most quintessentially 90s song.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, 'mislabeled' from the PoV of a few years later when people started saying Roleplaying Game.

That's not mislabeled, that's later re-interpreted.

Then every RPG since is also a miniatures wargame.

I'd rather think that it was mislabeled since that's all that they knew, and when the RPG was recognized, it along with the others fell into that category.

It wouldn't be the first time something was mislabeled, either. A honey badger isn't a badger. A mantis shrimp isn't a mantis or a shrimp. A red panda isn't a panda. And the D&D minatures wargame isn't a miniatures wargame. It's an RPG.

 

[Maxperson]

Nah, just, it wasn't called jazz, it was whatever it was marketed as or discussed as being at the time. It's not an extraordinary claim or anything.

If you asked Gygax, in '73, what he was working on, he'd have said a wargame. He wasn't wrong, he wasn't lying.

Yes he was wrong. No he wasn't lying. He was mistaken as you can see from reading the rules. It's an RPG through and through, not a miniatures wargame, despite having that kind of combat resolution. The core of the game is RPG.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Cannonball by The Breeders is the most quintessentially 90s song.

It was a good song, but I don’t know that I’d label it “the most quintessentially 90s song”.

Thing is…I’m not sure I could say ANY song is “the most quintessentially 90s song”.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I admit that I'm trolling a bit. Cannonball is a good song, I'm very fond of it. But I'm not sure what makes a song quintessentially 90s either. (Maybe all the band wearing doc martins?) I'm actually quoting some clickbait from my google feed.

But hey, it's an unpopular opinion, and at least it isn't about the definition of "RPG."