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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4306685" data-attributes="member: 15538">Sticks and stones, Dr. Not true. Chapter Three of a book always has the same outcome, no matter how many times I visit Chapter Two. The media are completely different in regards totheir continuity. An ongoing RPG is, by its nature, unfinished, whereas a novel is, by its nature, complete.Why? The fact that tomatoes have no wings and cannot fly does not mean they had a flying state in the first place.No, it's not the same. In a TRPG, you keep playing. Some ruling is made and the story continues. In a CRPG, the game crashes, end of the road. We could go on all day about limitations they have in common, but that's not the point. We want to discuss differences.  There are some limitations CRPGs have that TRPGs simply don't.That sounds like a resolution to me. Perhaps you can explain yourself again, since I have no idea what you are talking about. I see the words, but I do not see in them an argument against anything I am saying. I agree that the player can make a new character or the GM assigns some kind of damage. How does this contradict what I said?I never said anything about genre. Genre is the kitchen maid in RPGs. Immersion is the queen. Genre concerns the game designer, and concerns an immersive roleplayer to the extent they view their character as belonging in genre, but it does not restrict the possible range of actions. How a game system reacts to out-of-genre decisions tells you a lot about its design.Your sentence reads "If you are playing a TRPG.... are you ... not playing in an RPG?" I am forced to conclude the answer is "no" or "This question has no logical answer." It seems to me you have phrased the question strangely.If the game makes no allowances for the action... you are still playing a RPG, if the action is nonetheless still permissible. This is not a legal move in Monopoly, but is in an RPG.If you limit the character to certain actions... who is limiting the character? If the game forbids it, then the action is resolved (it doesn't work) and the principle still holds. Though the GM can forbid an action, he cannot prevent a player from choosing the forbidden action, so unless the rules change, they are still playing an RPG. They may reach an impasse, but that's a social metagame problem, not a failure of the game to provide a resolution. If the GM has the right to narrate the action, within the rules, and in fact, no player can dictate the actions of any character within the choices provided by the rules, then it is in fact not a role-playing game, by my definition. I call that kind of game a storytelling game or interactive fiction game. RPGs don't allow this kind of action, but then, neither do CRPGs; the computer can't make you press any particular macro key or whatever."Putting someone on rails" is too nebulous a concept to argue for or against. Short answer: my definition covers all these situations and more without strain.</blockquote>

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