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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 4309122" data-attributes="member: 15538">Actually, I was saying I was. Using "obtuse" more than once in a post is not a very friendly.Are too!Novels are a series of logically connected events in time, and hence meet that definition easily.There are a lot of flying tomatoes in my house, then. However, I have so far been unsuccessful in getting them to un-pause. I would like you to explain to me why the lack of a function implies that the function exists but has been halted. Tomatoes also are not mammals, do not read serious literature, and rarely have anything worthwhile to say. Does that mean they must, then, have all those traits but have them somehow suppressed?A computer is a tomato. It does not and does not ever fly. if you drop a nonflying tomato, it falls. If you go off the map, a computer-based game stops.What on Earth are you talking about? It takes about five seconds, usually, to patch or alter a tabletop game enough to keep it moving.And it has nothing to do with narrative. Until the action resolves, the narrative is not doing anything. Narration is a series of events. Until the resolution occurs, there is no event.How is it like that?Show me. Give me an example of a role-playing game that lacks any one of those criteria. Obviously, I am going to reply that some things, like Capes and the Baron Munchausen game, do not comfortably fit my definition. But try to come up with an example of a game that embarrasses me and my definition by being a commonly accepted RPG that fails to meet a single one of those criteria.The difference is that a lack of a good mechanical option is not always a problem in TRPGs. There's one for significant differences.Suicide is an option in CRPGs that program for it and not in ones that don't. Simple.It is an option in every TRPG, although not necessarily a welcome one. It may be a "jerk move" but it's not an invalid one. Such decisions have a certain subjectivitiy to them anyway.I've studied literature. Genre is "where you shelve the books at Waldenbooks."  It doesn't mean anything except as a shorthand for a body of work. It has no theoretical meaning.Genre isn't even an immersive element. It's a metagame goal.Actually, I said media, but that obviously puts them in a different genre, too, depending on how you slice it. How do I qualify the media as significantly different? By identifying the numerous aspects in which they are dissimilar and concluding the dissimilarity results in a different experience. I do care about genre. Not a problem. But it doesn't mean anything definitive about a given work.Medium, however, is different. Correct.I have yet to encounter such a game. Show me.This is just extended rhetoric. II am not saying that, and hence I don't have to account for anything. yes.Games have rules. They might have rules for turning into a dragon, or they might not. It might make sense, or it might not. The limitations of a game engine and the limitations of a story are similar only in that they are both limitations. The rules in this case include an imaginary reality which must be adhered to.The freedom principle does not allow the player to cheat, to pull a gun on the GM and shoot him, to commit bank fraud on the internet, or to change the rules of the game. It only allows him to make a decision "as if" the character, however he chooses to resolve that decision.If the character cannot turn into a dragon, he cannot choose to do so. If the character can turn into a dragon, he can choose to turn into a dragon or not to turn into a dragon. Solid social metagame mechanics are important to a good game, but they are also outside the realm of game design. No game design can prevent the GM from giving his girlfriend two holy avengers or shooting someone in the chest with a paintball game to show a player "how it would feel" to be shot.A game fails to be a RPG by failing to meet any one necessary criterion. I have described four which I use, which I feel includes virtually everything that is an RPG and excludes virtually everything that isn't. Hong uses a different definition, and that's fine for him. I find my criteria more functional.</blockquote>

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