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<blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8935515" data-attributes="member: 71699">I want to pull out part of my reply above, to highlight it.Addressing the OP, I believe it is this - ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in - that is at the heart of RPG. The distinct technical feature that enables it is fictional positioning. As games, another technical feature of RPG is to have regulatory and constitutive rules. Notice how the phrasing I have chosen steps back one level from the assumptions in -The heart of RPG (as I rephrased it) makes no assumptions about number of players or the way powers of authorship are divided. In this light, much heated argument over the years has been had over something that is no big deal.EDIT In order to be abundantly clear, I am saying that an RPG is that which has at least<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">regulatory and constitutive rules</li>
</ol>And I am suggesting that number of players and division of authorial power between them is not at the heart of RPG. It may be that once one gets to those particulars, one is discussing different games and it will in some ways confound theorising to lump them together. (I'm also saying, as an aside, that games other than RPGs may well have story - KOTOR had story - but I point that out only in order to make clearer the vital contention. It's also worth acknowledging that in any attempted ontology of games or a subset thereof, one finds the categories are blurred around the edges.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="clearstream, post: 8935515, member: 71699"] I want to pull out part of my reply above, to highlight it. Addressing the OP, I believe it is this - [B]ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in[/B] - that is at the heart of RPG. The distinct technical feature that enables it is [B]fictional positioning[/B]. As [I]games[/I], another technical feature of RPG is to have regulatory and constitutive rules. Notice how the phrasing I have chosen steps back one level from the assumptions in - The heart of RPG (as I rephrased it) makes no assumptions about number of players or the way powers of authorship are divided. In this light, much heated argument over the years has been had over something that is no big deal. EDIT In order to be abundantly clear, I am saying that an RPG is that which has at least [LIST=1] [*]ongoing authorship of common fiction, through a continuous process of drafting and revising, that all participate in [*]regulatory and constitutive rules [/LIST] And I am suggesting that number of players and division of authorial power between them is not at the heart of RPG. It may be that once one gets to those particulars, one is discussing [I]different games[/I] and it will in some ways confound theorising to lump them together. (I'm also saying, as an aside, that games other than RPGs may well have story - KOTOR had story - but I point that out only in order to make clearer the vital contention. It's also worth acknowledging that in any attempted ontology of games or a subset thereof, one finds the categories are blurred around the edges.) [/QUOTE]

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