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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 6413319" data-attributes="member: 85555">I am not particularly worried about the conception of the hobby as much as what it developed into. By the 80s you clearly have something called RPGs that include GURPS, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Call of Cthulu, Pendragon and many other types of games. Any definition of RPG that excludes D&D is absurd. Any definition that excludes GURPS or Call of Cthulu is also absorb on the face of it. We can construct all kinds of arguments going to the root of the hobby, going to the root meaning of the individual terms in RPG, etc. But that isn't how language works. You are not chained to the meaning from a word's inception. What matters is how the community of gamers uses the term RPG and how people outside the community use it. Giving it a definition in order to exclude elements we don't like from the hobby is a bad idea. Whether that is story gamers trying to make all RPGs narrative or immersionists trying to remove story gamers from the hobby. I think both are trying to set limits on how others can enjoy themselves at the gaming table. I am personally in the camp of immersion, but that doesn't mean I feel people who like bennies or are into shared narrative mechanics are doing it wrong. They are just doing it differently. I didn't always take this view. My vision of RPGs was much more narrow in the past. Now I give people the courtesy of not imposing my preferences upon the entire hobby and I expect the same courtesy from them in return. Fundamentally that is the problem with Wick's article. He tries to set his preference as the default definition of RPG. That is the problem with some of the issues you site where people have used the word "story" to enforce a design philosophy on the whole hobby. But the worst thing to do is to simply inverse that. We can have a clear sense of what makes our style of play (immersion) work without tearing down other styles. I can play the way I want, without narrative mechanics, and not deny people who do play with them he right to call themselves role-players. This kind of back and forth doesn't get us anywhere. It is just tribalism.</blockquote>

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