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As a distinct set of literature, maybe, but not as distinct from science fiction. In the English language, space opera is a subset of science fiction, at least outside specialized context. Claiming it isn't is like me pointing out that English wasn't around in AM 1929, during the reign of...

Or they burnt large piles of money getting it to that point, and once you've established people will pay something, cutting your prices to the bone is simply not a win. If you were willing to pay what it would cost for a monthly magazine without ads, you wouldn't be complaining about the price...

That's only true for SRD material. Once you start using non-SRD material, whether it be Conan the Barbarian or 5E, you're back dealing with copyright.

And since when has space opera not been considered science fiction? It is science fiction in every generally accepted sense; the tags on Librarything for Galactic Patrol include 238 times tagged "science fiction", 82 times "sf", 53 times "space opera", 26 times "sff", 2 times "H. Beam Piper"*, 2...

Because WotC is spending the time and money making a book where many of its customers are asking "why?"? It's not an absolute "not", but it is a reason to stop and think about it.

Game mechanics aren't copyrightable. TSR settled against Mayfair (in their first case) on generous terms probably because they didn't have much of a case to stand on, even without the OGL. (Just like WINE, a Windows emulator for Linux has been around for over a decade without a lawsuit.) Hasbro...

I hope they don't spend too much time on it. The Epic Level Handbook failed on many levels, and didn't really see support from WotC or 3rd parties. It's hard to do right. Then again, maybe 4E's Epic Destinies did it better; certainly one of ELH's faults was just doing the same thing with bigger...

Whereas I see a lot of people willing to talk about why players suck. I think your biases are showing through there.

It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy; a magical society spends a millennium working towards the birth of the Chosen One, whose his family gets killed and who is exiled to the savages, where he rides the wild animals to impress them and learns the gift of prophecy, then leads them swords...

In some sense, language can be used a proxy for culture. There are around 5,000 of those in the real world, and likely many more before colonialism, nationalism, and then mass communications and high-speed/long-distance travel. There's basically one Amazonian tribes for every 2,500 native...

Yes, what the creator thought of his creation does have to factor in. But I don't get what that has to do with the second part; it's possible the self-definition is unachievable in the game system or that the fullest design potential is more then what the designers dreamed of. I'd pull out...

I think it unhelpful to look at the SUV and act like it's a sports or utility vehicle. Any realistic understanding of the SUV requires understand that no matter what the ads say, no matter what the dealers are selling, many, possibly most, of them are used as minivans. And the better selling...

Not really. You don't play any role beyond a nation, and about half of board games give you that much role, at least; Lords of Waterdeep's Lords, for example. There's negotiation, but it's all at the player level; there's nothing in the game that encourages someone to play as their nation might...

Who has a reason to misidentify? And what does "misidentify" mean there? When an offshoot of RPGs colonized the idea space now known as story games, there's no nonarbitrary way to say whether they were RPGs or not. So when the authors of these story games, knowing their origins in RPGs, declared...

I would consider traditional theater games not RPGs because they don't consider themselves RPGs, and they don't descend from D&D. Games like Mars Colony: 39 Dark, My Life with Master, The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Sorcerer and Best Friends label themselves RPGs right up...

Okay? In one edition of Champions, a baby could throw a football 100 feet. Is it realistic? No. Does anyone care? No. Presumably anyone playing a game where that's possible doesn't really care about those details. Cthulhu Dark has combat rules: the PCs die. At least with the skills rules in He...

I think thinking of "the definition" can be misleading. Each person has their own idiolect, their own conception of any word, and for most people, for "roleplaying game", the concept is prototype-based, not definition-based, thus "I know that this set of things are roleplaying games, and...

For me, Amber is one of the prototypes of the concept "roleplaying game" in my head. That's part of the frustration of this argument, is that I, as I suspect the vast majority of people do, have a prototype-based idea of what a roleplaying game is; for me, an RPG is something that is like D&D or...

I have no idea what you mean. Where are the stats progressions listed for "roll nd100 and something happens if anyone of them is below 05"? And how can a DM be a neutral arbitrator following the rules when two DMs would decide on entirely different ways of randomly determining random encounters...

If you're playing GURPS, that might be more of the social expectation, and I can't imagine a GURPS GM call for a check that wasn't 3d6. In D&D, on the other hand, DMs will call for rolls on whatever weirdass dice they have around. Could be a d20, but also could be d2 or d100 or even d1000, and...