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<blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 6403055" data-attributes="member: 40166">Certainly the line between roleplaying games and board games seems quite useful to some people; when people come to a board game meetup, they expect different things then if they came to a roleplaying meetup. In those terms, one of the major differences between RPGs and board games is that RPGs take at least 4 hours a night and extend over multiple nights and even the longest board games top out at 4-6 hours.* One of my friends specifically likes the concrete nature of board games over the more flexible nature of roleplaying games. And there's not that much bleed between the two in practice; the board games I see played would never be mistaken for RPGs anymore then chess would. Maybe Resistance, but that lacks defined characters--you can't even describe what you look like! (It's less weird in context, since your picture also reveals whether you're a spy or not, but it's quite a hindrance to roleplaying.)If I were asked whether Dominion is a card game, my response would depend on the context; board gamers might get a flat yes, whereas for Magic or Bridge players I might say that it's more like a board game, because the essential difference between a card game and board game in a lot of cases is deeper then cards versus board.* Stuff like D&amp;D Encounters take some of the parts of &quot;extend over multiple nights&quot; away, for better or worse; one shots take away all of the &quot;extend over multiple nights&quot;, but seem limited to conventions--they're not marketed to consumers much. There's exceptions on the board game front--old-school war games could take weeks to play, with the Campaign for North Africa notoriously claiming 1200 hours for a complete play, and the 12-hour 18OE was successfully Kickstarted last year, but they're currently even more esoteric then single-night RPGs.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="prosfilaes, post: 6403055, member: 40166"] Certainly the line between roleplaying games and board games seems quite useful to some people; when people come to a board game meetup, they expect different things then if they came to a roleplaying meetup. In those terms, one of the major differences between RPGs and board games is that RPGs take at least 4 hours a night and extend over multiple nights and even the longest board games top out at 4-6 hours.* One of my friends specifically likes the concrete nature of board games over the more flexible nature of roleplaying games. And there's not that much bleed between the two in practice; the board games I see played would never be mistaken for RPGs anymore then chess would. Maybe Resistance, but that lacks defined characters--you can't even describe what you look like! (It's less weird in context, since your picture also reveals whether you're a spy or not, but it's quite a hindrance to roleplaying.) If I were asked whether Dominion is a card game, my response would depend on the context; board gamers might get a flat yes, whereas for Magic or Bridge players I might say that it's more like a board game, because the essential difference between a card game and board game in a lot of cases is deeper then cards versus board. * Stuff like D&D Encounters take some of the parts of "extend over multiple nights" away, for better or worse; one shots take away all of the "extend over multiple nights", but seem limited to conventions--they're not marketed to consumers much. There's exceptions on the board game front--old-school war games could take weeks to play, with the Campaign for North Africa notoriously claiming 1200 hours for a complete play, and the 12-hour 18OE was successfully Kickstarted last year, but they're currently even more esoteric then single-night RPGs. [/QUOTE]

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