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<blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 8963131" data-attributes="member: 6690965">There is pretty muted debate in hobby board gaming about &quot;what is a game?&quot; these days, because everyone realized it was largely a waste of time when we could be determining what kind of games we actually liked and playing them. Pure luck is pretty generally frowned on, as is anything that doesn't take player decisions into account when producing different outcomes, but that's about all anyone is willing to call &quot;not a game&quot; when pressed.However, once you add a qualifier, like &quot;hobbiest game,&quot; &quot;euro game,&quot; &quot;strategy game,&quot; or even the vague &quot;gamer's game&quot; you'll get a very different set of criteria. Randomness is still divisive, but on aggregate players will expect to get better with repeated plays and will expect more than one strategy to offer a route to victory. Press a little harder, and victory will probably give way to &quot;producing interesting board states&quot; and something about allowing ludic expression through player decision making.Basically, everyone concedes there is no generally accepted absolute definition of &quot;a game&quot;, but there is a significant utility in suggesting some games are gamier than others. Tic-Tac-Toe qualifies for most any basic definition of game, but played &quot;well&quot; is a scripted set of call and responses that does not allow for player agency or expression.This gets muddled in TTRPGs, because players have narrative agency (and character expression), in addition to the ludic agency/expression board games offer, and there's a tendency to conflate the two, something that should very much be avoided. There is, meaningfully, more game in a round of Catan than Tic-Tac-Toe, and (for most definitions) even more game in a round of Hansa Teutonica than Catan. A roleplaying game that is resolved entirely by flipping coins is less of a game than one that offers a wide range of player actions with different chances of success.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Pedantic, post: 8963131, member: 6690965"] There is pretty muted debate in hobby board gaming about "what is a game?" these days, because everyone realized it was largely a waste of time when we could be determining what kind of games we actually liked and playing them. Pure luck is pretty generally frowned on, as is anything that doesn't take player decisions into account when producing different outcomes, but that's about all anyone is willing to call "not a game" when pressed. However, once you add a qualifier, like "hobbiest game," "euro game," "strategy game," or even the vague "gamer's game" you'll get a very different set of criteria. Randomness is still divisive, but on aggregate players will expect to get better with repeated plays and will expect more than one strategy to offer a route to victory. Press a little harder, and victory will probably give way to "producing interesting board states" and something about allowing ludic expression through player decision making. Basically, everyone concedes there is no generally accepted absolute definition of "a game", but there is a significant utility in suggesting some games are gamier than others. Tic-Tac-Toe qualifies for most any basic definition of game, but played "well" is a scripted set of call and responses that does not allow for player agency or expression. This gets muddled in TTRPGs, because players have narrative agency (and character expression), in addition to the ludic agency/expression board games offer, and there's a tendency to conflate the two, something that should very much be avoided. There is, meaningfully, more game in a round of Catan than Tic-Tac-Toe, and (for most definitions) even more game in a round of Hansa Teutonica than Catan. A roleplaying game that is resolved entirely by flipping coins is less of a game than one that offers a wide range of player actions with different chances of success. [/QUOTE]

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