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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 8204155" data-attributes="member: 60075">Thanks, that’s what I suspected. Too small a marketshare.Except that isn’t exactly what was said upthread, or all that the poster intended. Their claim rather was: "The main problem with PF2 is that it is not a role-playing game. It is a tactical wargame with role-playing elements.“So just pointing to roleplaying-elements doesn’t falsify but only corroborates the claim made. How would one falsify it? That’s more complicated, but I recall two useful points from the 4e discussion regarding the same issue.1. just saying that you can use game x to roleplay with doesn’t make x a roleplaying game. Descent 1 by Fantasy Flight is a dungeon crawl Boardgame and I used it to introduce my (elementary school age) nephews to RPGs. We just introduced skill checks using the Descent dice for perception, stealth, and persuasion, and then the players got bonuses on those die rolls if they roleplayed how they sneak past or parley with a monster. My nephews, on their own, came up with the idea to share their gold with one of the hobgoblins and recruited him as a henchman. The dialogue was comedy gold. 2. building on the same example: a game isn’t a RPG if, out of the box, it doesn’t encourage, incentivize, or demand roleplaying as a resolution mechanic; similarly, a game that allows you to roleplay decisions and outcome that are mechanically determined, isn’t thereby a rpg. For, if you want, you can roleplay the knight stabbing the king in chess, but that result wasn’t generated by roleplay, you’re just roleplaying a mechanical game result in the way an actor reads out (and gives life to) a pre-existing script. Similarly, you could totally roleplay your 4e powers hitting critters on the battle field, or re-skinning your powers to shoot green rays rather than blue. But that was surface dressing and didn’t drive the game‘s resolution mechanic one bit.By metric (2.) above, Descent isn’t a roleplaying game though it can be used as one—and though I have some fonder RPG memories from Descent 1 than six years of D&D 4th edition. By the same metric, 4e’s combat game—the core of the game—wasn’t a RPG. It was a DDM (d&d miniatures) clone, and a very enjoyable one at that. Both designed by Rob Heinsoo.By the same metric, elements of 4E such as its disarm traps system (allowing players to disarm traps if they properly describe how they do that) and skill challenges tapped into a greater degree of RPG-ness than 3.x or Pathfinder (either iteration) ever did.So I think the question whether something qualifies as a RPG or not depend on what someone thinks is at the heart of a game, and then how much they think that heart/core engine allows for roleplaying. It‘s not binary and frankly how a game is advertised or how it’s referred to for sales purposes is neither here nor there. Nor is it determined by "but I had my fondest RPG experience with game x“ though many people believe that’s the sole relevant criterion.All the above is coming from someone who believes D&D 4e and PF2 are both roleplaying games. I mean, if I can roleplay a Fantasy Flight beer and pretzels game, some dissociated mechanics ain’t gonna stand in my way of good ol‘ roleplaying fun.</blockquote>

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