Ourph said:
It seems to me that the cut-off point between RPG and non-RPG should in some way address the presence or lack of RP in the game.
Ourph said:
the distinction between them cannot be made by calling one a "roleplaying game" and the other a "non-roleplaying game". The distinction requires some other nomenclature that, instead, specifically addresses the presence or absence of an impartial referee with control over aspects of roleplay.
The fact of the matter is that very few terms mean only the sum (...or union? ...or intersection?) of their parts. (e.g. soap opera, auto) We give short pithy labels to things to keep communications from being impractically unwieldy.
(And "impractically unwieldy" itself shows that I need every advantage in that regard. (^_^))
And sometimes we give things labels that seemed accurate at the time, but then their meaning becomes set before we realize that it wasn't the best label. (e.g. atom)
Whoever it was who coined the term "role-playing game", I am pretty confident that they meant something more along the lines of "D&Desque" rather than simply "a game in which roles are played". (Whether or not they would consider CRPGs to be RPGs.) If you examine the usage of the term throughout both the TRPG & CRPG realms, I'm sure you'd find that the usage of the term is most often to mean more than merely "a game in which roles are played".
In fact, we've had examples of that in these two threads in the citing of criteria that have been used to classify computer games as CRPGs or not. Heck, to me, most IFs I've played have seemed more like an RPG than most CRPGs I've played, yet IF is often excluded from the CRPG category.
One of the problems I have in trying to define TRPGs is that, given just about any definition, I can usually come up with a game that I would still consider an TRPG that breaks that definition. I'm not sure that I'll ever reach a point at which that's no longer true.
There's a similar thing with CRPGs. For almost any definition I can come up with that separates TRPGs from CRPGs, I can think of a potential CRPG that might break it.
The difference between a CRPG's development team & a TRPG's live GM isn't really about limitations on what the player can do or changing the rules or such. It's that the best live GM in the world is no substitute for a computer when it comes to the things a computer does better than a person. Likewise, a computer programmed by the sharpest development team on the planet is no substitute for a live GM when it comes to the things a person does better than a computer.
(And, sure, there is the potential for a live GM to not even perform the things people do better than computers better than a computer, but that's a edge case that just confuses the matter. And, by the way, here I'm counting any game involving a live GM, whether a computer is involved or not, as a TRPG.)
In the end, most of us have acknowledged that there is a real difference between TRPGs & CRPGs. The disagreement is whether the "RPG" in "CRPG" means the same thing as the "RPG" in "TRPG". As long as we keep focusing on that, we'll continue to create much more heat than light. I know I've seen some light out of this discussion, but I think we could find a lot more if we could turn down the heat a lot. If we change the subject to "what are the differences between TRPGs & CRPGs" rather than "are CRPGs true RPGs".
Or, to avoid the emotional connotations of "heat", perhaps I should have said signal:noise instead.
Ourph said:
It seems odd then that Gary, other AD&D authors, every AD&D fan I've ever encountered and even the books themselves use the descriptor "
RULEbook" to refer to the books which, according to you, contain (explicitly) only guidelines.
Shouldn't everyone be calling them "Guidebooks"?
Yeah. They should. Because those authors often did actually put in the text of those books that they are only guidelines, not rules. Here's a direct quote from an TRPG I have handy: The c. 1981 D&D Basic Set rules booklet.
Moldvay said:
The purpose of these "rules" is to provide guidelines that enable you to play and have fun, so don't feel absolutely bound to them.
Now to return to different parts of the message I quoted from back at the start...
Ourph said:
The presence of a referee to adjudicate the rules doesn't have anything to do with how the rules integrate roleplay. Boxing, football, basketball, etc. all have referees to adjudicate the rules (the idea of an impartial referee who controls some aspects of the game certainly isn't a NEW idea), yet I doubt anyone would label them as roleplay.
Yes, but the TRPG expands the role of referee beyond those other games. Further than nigh any game that came before. The GM doesn't just intepret the cracks between the rules. They don't merely provide a disinterested point-of-view. (Indeed, a TRPG GM can get by with being much less impartial than a conventional referee.) They break the cracks between the rules wide open. They reduce the rules to mere guidelines. They make judgements
directly rather that accepting, modifying, or creating rules & then applying them.
For me, that is implied by the term "TRPG", no matter what the individual initials stand for. I think a "refereed games" category would still need to distinguish this case from that of most other refereed games. "GM'd games" perhaps?
(And, yes, I have no problem saying that people have played games under the name of a TRPG that I wouldn't consider an RPG.)
So, that my opinion, for what it's worth. I know others have different opinions.
