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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 4754733" data-attributes="member: 22779">Umm, what?Are you honestly going to tell me that the primary method of play of nearly every RPG out there is NOT to create a fictional character with which to interact with a setting?  Even AD&D punished you for not playing in character with the training rules.  The assumption of a fictional role is at the very heart of every role playing game.Look at the introduction paragraph to pretty much every RPG out there.  That's PRECISELY what it states.  In 1981, Tom Moldvay wrote in the introduction to Basic D&D:And on your point that players play to "win"Sounds a lot like what you are terming "theater gaming" to me.  And this is long before Forgisms came on the scene./edit for further thought.The problem I'm having here is that Simulationist Role Play serves a very different function, typically, than what gamers consider to be role playing.  SRP is a pedagogical tool.  The entire point of using it is to teach people how to act in a given situation.  When you are in elementary school and you do a game of "going to the supermarket" and you have play money and plastic food to buy while another student acts out the role of the cashier, that's SRP.  But, and this is the big but for me, there is no such purpose to most RPG's.  There's not teaching element required or even wanted in RPG's.  Unless you're trying to Blackleaf D&D, most people are not playing D&D to learn how to cast spells.  It would be pretty useless to come to D&D to learn how to sword fight or climb a mountain.  There's no direct pedagogical function to RPG's.  Yes, you do learn skills while playing RPG's - communication skills, math skills etc - by that's a byproduct of the activity, not a reason for playing.In tabletop wargaming, OTOH, there is no role assumption.  You are not, usually, pretending that you are George Washington trying to defeat the British.  You are simply using your own knowledge of tactics and strategy to beat the other guy and change the course of history.  Without role assumption though, most people would not call Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures a role playing game.  Chainmail is a fantastic system for handling mass fantasy battles, but, it's pretty hard to call it any sort of a role playing game, because there is no assumption of any sort of role.For the same reason, I wouldn't call Microsoft Flight Simulator an RPG.  But, under your definition, it certainly is.  I'm acting out the role of a pilot in a very realistic situation that is about as close to real as you can get while sitting on the ground.  I can actually LEARN to fly an airplane playing this game.  As far as Simulationist Roleplay goes, that's SRP on the head.</blockquote>

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