Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6416519" data-attributes="member: 22779">I suppose that gets into what Umbran is saying about shelving the movie at the video store.&nbsp; The general public doesn't really care about literary criticism.&nbsp; So, which one is right?&nbsp; The general public for viewing it as SF because it has robots and lasers, or someone who is trying to categorise it by theme?&nbsp; Well, I suppose, at the end of the day, they are both right.&nbsp; You are going to confuse people if you put it in fantasy because that's not what people envision when they talk about fantasy.&nbsp; For those of us who spend probably far too much time trying to work through what a genre actually is, it's probably better placed in fantasy.&nbsp; It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy - cast of thousands, fate of the world, classic quest themes, magic powers, wizards and knights.&nbsp; So, I guess, the question becomes, when defining RPG, who are we defining it for?&nbsp; Is it for someone just off the street who has only a basic knowledge of RPG's?&nbsp; Then, fine, giant umbrella term it is.&nbsp; Is it for someone like probably everyone posting in this thread, who has played a number of different games, knows that there are differences between them and that those differences might be enough to warrant a different classification.Then again, I'm all for simply using RPG as the umbrella term.&nbsp; It is what the general public would call everything we do.&nbsp; So, RPG gets shifted to the same level as Speculative Fiction as a genre classification, with story games, traditional games, and maybe a couple of other sub categories (horror?&nbsp; Comedy?) thrown in.&nbsp; I could certainly live with that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 6416519, member: 22779"] I suppose that gets into what Umbran is saying about shelving the movie at the video store. The general public doesn't really care about literary criticism. So, which one is right? The general public for viewing it as SF because it has robots and lasers, or someone who is trying to categorise it by theme? Well, I suppose, at the end of the day, they are both right. You are going to confuse people if you put it in fantasy because that's not what people envision when they talk about fantasy. For those of us who spend probably far too much time trying to work through what a genre actually is, it's probably better placed in fantasy. It's pretty much straight up heroic fantasy - cast of thousands, fate of the world, classic quest themes, magic powers, wizards and knights. So, I guess, the question becomes, when defining RPG, who are we defining it for? Is it for someone just off the street who has only a basic knowledge of RPG's? Then, fine, giant umbrella term it is. Is it for someone like probably everyone posting in this thread, who has played a number of different games, knows that there are differences between them and that those differences might be enough to warrant a different classification. Then again, I'm all for simply using RPG as the umbrella term. It is what the general public would call everything we do. So, RPG gets shifted to the same level as Speculative Fiction as a genre classification, with story games, traditional games, and maybe a couple of other sub categories (horror? Comedy?) thrown in. I could certainly live with that. [/QUOTE]

Verification