Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 6405236"><p>I think said the argument was good because I have seen people meet with a lot of difficulty refuting his points. That doesn't mean his conclusion is supported by his argument. I definitely think there are serious issues with his conclusion and I feel like there is a bit of sophistry at work in how he gets there. I suspect if we drill down we will find serious flaws in his reasoning (for example much of it rests on his definition of RPG and I don't think that definition is an accurate one that reflects how people in the hobby use the word). I also think he starts with something everyone just kind of intuitively recognizes: chess isn't an RPG. His argument seems to be, anything you add to chess doesn't suddenly make it an RPG. He then draws a comparison saying D&D actually meets the requirements of a board game just like chess and anything we add to it, doesn't make it an RPG. I think his argument fails to acknowledge from the very beginning that D&D has a much different set of assumptions than chess. Importantly, in D&D you are given permission to try anything you want and the GM is supposed to rule on whether it works or not. Plus you have all kinds of mechanics for social things (even in the white box with attributes like Wisdom and Charisma and talks about the parameters of play...which chess doesn't do). The history isn't even really important here though, what matters is no matter how far back one wants to go and peal away at D&D to 'prove' it isn't an RPG, clearly it is one now. That is how it is used and that is what it is designed to do.  Either way though, I think everyone intuitively understands D&D is an RPG in the same way they understand Chess is not. But in my mind saying D&D isn't a roleplaying game is like saying the Model T isn't a car. I am sure you can build an argument for that case, but I don't think many people would take it seriously.</p></blockquote><p></p>

Verification