Note to WotC: They're not TRPGs. They're just RPGs.

[Zander]

I don't visit the WotC site that often so only just noticed they've started calling D&D a "TRPG". The 'T' for "tabletop" is superfluous. D&D is an RPG. No specification is required.

Any related class of game such as so-called computer RPGs or live action RPGs, CRPGs and LARPs respectively, require elaboration but the version played with paper, pencil and dice doesn't.

The danger of specifying the 'T' is that it provides a licence to related classes of games to co-opt the term "RPG" without specification. For example, I saw a poster for a CRPG on public transport around the time the LotR films were in the cinema claiming to be "the first RPG set in Tolkien's Middle Earth". What they really meant was the first CRPG. I believe the first published RPG officially set in Middle Earth was MERP.

Wizards shouldn't encourage that way of thinking.

Apologies if this has been discussed before in the forum. I couldn't find an existing thread.

 

[Umbran]

I think they use that construction because the co-opting has largely already happened, whatever WotC may want - more folks now play computer RPGs than tabletop, I expect.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Millions of people play computer RPGs daily. That probably explains why those get the primary appellation.

 

[Morrus]

It's not WotC's decision. Language has done it all by itself over the last decade. "RPG" means computer RPGs these days, whether we like it or not. Adding the T makes it clear.

 

[nerfherder]

I don't visit the WotC site that often so only just noticed they've started calling D&D a "TRPG". The 'T' for "tabletop" is superfluous. D&D is an RPG. No specification is required.

Any related class of game such as so-called computer RPGs or live action RPGs, CRPGs and LARPs respectively, require elaboration but the version played with paper, pencil and dice doesn't.

The danger of specifying the 'T' is that it provides a licence to related classes of games to co-opt the term "RPG" without specification. For example, I saw a poster for a CRPG on public transport around the time the LotR films were in the cinema claiming to be "the first RPG set in Tolkien's Middle Earth". What they really meant was the first CRPG. I believe the first published RPG officially set in Middle Earth was MERP.

Wizards shouldn't encourage that way of thinking.

Apologies if this has been discussed before in the forum. I couldn't find an existing thread.

Yeah, I feel the same when people refer to "British English". It's simply "English"!

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, I feel the same when people refer to "British English". It's simply "English"!

Well, in the South it is. Ooop North where you are, it's Geordie!

 

[delericho]

Personally, I'd prefer TTRPGs, for the same reason as I prefer PHB to PH - it just fits better.

As TRPGs vs RPGs, I'm afraid I disagree on that one. The more specific a subset, the more specific the name should be. So RPGs should be the over-arching set that includes TRPGs, CRPGs, LARP, and whatever else, with each of the subsets getting a name that further details the type of RPG that is under discussion.

 

[Morrus]

Personally, I'd prefer TTRPGs, for the same reason as I prefer PHB to PH - it just fits better.

As TRPGs vs RPGs, I'm afraid I disagree on that one. The more specific a subset, the more specific the name should be. So RPGs should be the over-arching set that includes TRPGs, CRPGs, LARP, and whatever else, with each of the subsets getting a name that further details the type of RPG that is under discussion.

That's not really how language works. You can't give it rules like that. Language does what language does. It's not logical, captain!

 

[delericho]

That's not really how language works. You can't give it rules like that. Language does what language does. It's not logical, captain!

Well, yes. Which is why I said "I disagree" rather than "you're wrong".

Though it is worth noting that language does have some rules.

 

[Umbran]

Though it is worth noting that language does have some rules.

Yes, it has rules. But you (or I, or any individual) are pretty much incapable of injecting new ones. The rules are by consensus, not authority.