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Well, yeah, GM can be ditched, and it isn't uncommon to not have one. Having one, though, can be beneficial, as playing a main character is kinda big deal that requires a lot of effort and attention -- they're on screen for long periods of time, after all, and need to be rock solid. So, person...

I mean, it's obvious, the point of roleplaying is to take hot skinny goth guys home after the session. They keep getting older, tho...

Because it's cool? And because actions of Rob's character will inevitably cause ripples and affect your character? Rob the Gunlugger asks the GM for a gig to earn some quick buck, she smiles and tells him that the local warlord wants to, khm, "persuade" one particular guy to join his gang. The...

Does it matter? 80s-early 90s hip-hop was also a chaotic mess, yet it's possible to productively discuss old-school hip-hop. I didn't come up with the labels. You're welcome to hunt down whoever come up with them first (you can start with Ivan Devyatko at the Eastern Lands blog, but he...

In my experience (yeah, limited, I'm but one woman, but still), the only people who struggle with partyless games and other non-D&D-esque things aren't actually new players, but those who have played D&D or other old- or midschool games and now expect everything to be exactly the same. Fresh...

... So, the same thing I described?

Or, hear me out, have a table full of players who are really interested in seeing characters they like struggle and change, and sometimes interject when they have a great idea. If I come to play (or run, it doesn't really matter that much) a character-driven game, it's because I like the...

To be honest, "spotlight hogging" doesn't seem like a problem to me. I mean, you want spotlight -- you take it. "Meanwhile, at Kardak's hideout...", gesture at the game master as if "go on" and puff! If somebody is being silent, I assume they don't have anything to say. Expecting other players...

I'll just quote Baker here:

Not like any rules for a tabletop game can sufficiently model the chaotic nature of actual combat anyway.

Main cast of Breaking Bad.

PCs just being major characters who we spend a lot screentime with, and preferably with conflicting interests, that's pretty much it. Like, say, Walter, Jesse, Skyler, Mike and Gus rather than Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. It works spectacularly well in Apocalypse World and Urban Shadows.

Parties. Everybody and their mother tries to shoehorn PCs working (and often even travelling) together for exactly zero reasons.

All the people in the world didn't magically learn about TTRPGs that were invented by wargamers in the '70s. Some invented them separately, untouched and undisturbed by Kriegsspiel, Chainmail, or D&D, so it's a good example of an alternative evolution path of TTRPGs. It could've happened 50...

Text-based roleplaying games, in essence, are very close to TTRPGs and when instant messaging became a thing, the line effectively disappeared altogether. Both use words and only words to, well, roleplay, and whether they're (normally -- there are people who play play-by-post D&D, and it's not...

...should I mention for the third time that TTRPGs were already invented separately with no connection to D&D nor wargames?

Well... No. If that was the case, all the roleplaying games (as in, not only tabletop ones) would evolve to have detailed rules on combat. Forum roleplaying games (that are often played by people who never even heard of D&D) don't. In many cases fighting another character boils down to "agree...

I mean, forum games and Tumblr roleplaying after that evolved pretty much separately from D&D. They tend to have rules concerning what kind of fiction you can create, but dice, detailed combat and all other D&D-esque things are quite uncommon.

More like post-Soviet. I'm totally not Slavic myself.

I think it's a useful framework to think, talk, and analyse games, so I don't see why not share it with westerners. You know the drill already, I hope: not prescriptive, rpgs are complex, all that jazz. And, yes, labels like "old" and "new" suck, as, say, Dogs in the Vineyard is almost twenty...