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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6414142" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not entirely sure where to draw the line myself.  I know where the box gets fuzzy, and I know what lies outside the box, but in that fuzzy area around the box it not only would be easy to make a mistake and speak too quickly, but based on my own theory of RPGs its highly likely that some groups are playing those edge cases as actual RPGs and some are playing them as story games.  System itself wouldn't tell us enough to make a judgment.  How you think about a game and how you prepare to play are at least as important as the rules themselves.   You play a Prime Time Adventure about the cast trying to escape a building overrun with zombies, and the producer secretly makes a map and the cast members play as if the map is an unalterable part of the fiction and bring with them other similar preconceptions, you are going to produce a game that resembles D&D or other traditional RPGs even though it doesn't have rules that suggest this result.   I discovered this problem trying to run a game of Paranoia.  My disposition as a story teller and my particular mental and social skills (or their lack) prevented the game from being the game intended by the designer.  The longer I ran the game, the more it started to resemble a serious investigation of a science fiction dystopia until at some point the game wasn't funny - but frightening and angsty.   I learned that I could not think about the story Paranoia wanted to tell.  It was just not something I could do.  I could play the game; but it was something I couldn't run - at least not as intended.   Conversely, I run CoC really well.For my purposes, I feel safe to say that the following isn't an RPG:"Whose Line is it Anyway" (the TV show): WLiiA involves roleplaying and is a game by the definition of being structured play, but I feel pretty confident in saying that isn't a RPG.   WLiiA is just the most visible example of a long history of Theater Games.  Modern RPGs have over the years borrowed or at least convergently evolved many of the same forms as Theater Games, but they are distinctive.  howandwhy99 would object, and I would agree, that one of the problems with a Theater Game being an RPG is that there is no game board - nothing exists concretely in the shared imaginary space.  Actors take turns adding to the story, passing the hat as it were, and there may even be a director that sets the stage, but neither actor can propose a concrete move that may or may not successfully alter the game board.  There is no formal conflict resolution.  If someone points a finger gun at you and goes, "Bang."  You decide how to follow from that lead based on what you think will be funny or dramatic according to the story goals.   Or in other words, the Fundamental Law of Role Playing is not in effect in this game.  Hense, it's not an RPG.Games I'm Fuzzy On:Amber Diceless Roleplaying: I've got limited experience with this system, just sitting in for a few hours, but based on my experience with it it's more of a theater game than it is an RPG.  With no fortune mechanic, and rather minimal concrete guidance on how propositions and conflicts are to be resolved, much of the game involved 'back channel' negotiation and cooperation regarding what the best outcome for the scene would be - where best generally meant 'a compromise that satisfied all parties'.   That to me felt more like my experience with theater games than it did RPGs.  Hense, I'd be fairly confident in asserting Amber is in the world of 'story games'.  That said, it's hard for me to be fully confident in that until I spent a lot of time with the system (which frankly, I wouldn't want to do).  Fiasco RPG - I'm even less confident in declaring Fiasco is a story game than I am Amber, perhaps because I have even less direct experience (ei, none).  Also, it declares itself to be an RPG and has won awards as an RPG.  Also, in a strange way, it seems to implement the Fundamental Law.  However, if it is an RPG then its possible that all story games and all theater games are actually subsets of an RPG and Gygax and Arneson didn't invent anything we actually have a unique term for.  The issue that I have is that the mechanics of Fiasco seem to mostly resolve around who gets to play the role of the director during a theater game, but the game itself seems intended to play from that point more like a theater game.  There is no conflict resolution.  There is no propositions and no real fortune mechanic.   All you have is some basic rules for allocating stage direction to everyone playing the game in a cooperative fashion.  However, for all that the Fundamental Law does seem to be present in some form.  It's not possible for a player to demand a good result, because while you are in the player role someone can take the director hat and require you to play out a scene in a failing fashion.   What I'm fuzzy on is whether that really counts.   It feels like you have two games going on here.  A metagame which is not an RPG, because no roleplaying occurs in it, which allocates resources fairly.   And a theater game, which does involve roleplaying, but which has no game component.   The part that is a game doesn't share in the roleplaying, and the part that is roleplaying doesn't share in the game.   Does this count?  I'm not sure, though at a certain level it doesn't really matter.   It looks like with the right people it could be fun, and whether we label it a story game or an RPG probably doesn't matter a lot.</blockquote>

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