RPGs are ... Role Playing Games

[Odhanan]

RPGs are not "tales".
RPGs are not "novels".
RPGs are not "stories".

RPGs are not "wargames".
RPGs are not "board games".
RPGs are not "video games".
RPGs are not "card games".

RPGs are not "movies".
RPGs are not "thesis".
RPGs are not "studies".
RPGs are not "experiments".

RPGs are not "campaigns".
RPGs are not "chronicles".
RPGs are not "modules".
RPGs are not "books".

RPGs are not made of "chapters".
Or "scenes". Or "story arcs". Or "plots".

I think that RPGs are just that: Role Playing Games.

Comparing RPGs to something else some people might better understand to get them to play a game? Seems only natural.

Anything beyond that just seems to bring more and more noise to the hobby, muddies the waters, and ultimately, changes role playing games into what they never were, should not be, and must not become.

I think we have a problem as gamers, and as designers too, in that we just can't help but compare RPGs to other things which are not RPGs, and can't help but modify RPGs to better fit the expecations of this or that other medium. And in the end? RPGs just remain bastard products, not a medium of their own.

If we want to change this, we need to treat role playing games as such. We need to stop endlessly comparing them to other things and try to shape them into something, anything, that they ultimately are not. This has been done time and time again, sometimes with pleasant results, and sometimes with not so pleasant ones. Regardless of these results, I think we need to get beyond this stage, somehow, and let RPGs be RPGs, and evolve as such.

This is not a question vocabulary, structures and design only. It's a problem of mindset and culture.

I don't know if we ever will. I sure wish we would, though.

Discuss.

 

[Hussar]

RPGs are not "tales".
RPGs are not "novels".
RPGs are not "stories".

RPGs are not "wargames".
RPGs are not "board games".
RPGs are not "video games".
RPGs are not "card games".

RPGs are not "movies".
RPGs are not "thesis".
RPGs are not "studies".
RPGs are not "experiments".

RPGs are not "campaigns".
RPGs are not "chronicles".
RPGs are not "modules".
RPGs are not "books".

100% agree

RPGs are not made of "chapters".
Or "scenes". Or "story arcs". Or "plots".

Now we hit where I disagree. I believe that in playing an RPG, we most definitely can use all of those things. Unless your game is nothing but randomly generated gibberish, you have a plot, a story arc and what is a keyed encounter if not a "scene"?

RPG's are a creative endevour, and share many of the same things that any group story telling activity has.

 

[Rechan]

They are not to you.

 

[ppaladin123]

Platonism is scary.

 

[Nightson]

RPGs are not "tales".
RPGs are not "novels".
RPGs are not "stories".

Correct, while the recounting of the events that occur during a RPG would qualify, the RPG does not.

RPGs are not "wargames".
RPGs are not "board games".
RPGs are not "video games".
RPGs are not "card games".

Well, these definitions are not mutually exclusive, but while they could theoretically overlap they are clearly not equivalent.

RPGs are not "movies".
RPGs are not "thesis".
RPGs are not "studies".
RPGs are not "experiments".

Concur on all points.

RPGs are not "campaigns".
RPGs are not "chronicles".
RPGs are not "modules".
RPGs are not "books".

Well, RPGs are indeed not these things, but the are what makes up an RPG (modules being optional).

RPGs are not made of "chapters".
Or "scenes". Or "story arcs". Or "plots".

There is no set word for delineating natural stopping points within the experience of playing a RPG, hence these words are used because they have an analogous meaning in other forms of creative expression.

 

[Rechan]

Some RPGs, based purely by their rules, operate exactly like what you say they are not.

Take Penny For My Thoughts. Penny's rules are as follows:

Write three statements down on slips of paper, and put them in a hat. Now, on a separate paper, write "I remember (Blank)" three times. Now, say the statement ("I remember..."), draw a slip of paper from the hat, and fill in the blank. People at the table ask you questions about the sentence to garner more details. Then at the end, when you put all of the questions together to form a paragraph about your memory, someone offers you a penny and asks you "Or was it *This* way?" and you have the option of adopting their suggestion.

The Role Playing comes in the form of everyone being amnesiacs in an Institute trying to recover their memories. But the game part is as much of a "game" as mad libs. What it is is improvisational story telling or narrative brainstorming, facilitated by the loosest idea of guidelines for question asking.

Then there's PrimeTime Adventures, which is built to emulate a TV series, from scenes, to episodes, to seasons. The second edition doesn't even use dice, but conflict resolution is settled by cards, and the person with the highest Influence based on cards gets control of the narration of the episode and win conflict resolution (basically saying what happens).

Honestly, the only reason for the game part of RPGs is one simple thing: Conflict resolution. If I say "This happens" and you say "No it doesn't", we must have a method of deciding who is correct. Thus, a rule is merely there to facilitate the question "Did what I say just happen?"

If the only conflict resolution is a coin flip, and everything else is people sitting around a table taking turns telling a story, is it still a Game?

 

[Rechan]

changes role playing games into what they never were, should not be, and must not become.

RPGs came out of wargames. Chainmail was a wargame from whence came D&D. Instead of playing a unit, you played a single character from that unit. To people who played wargames at the time, they could have said "This should not be and it can't become that".them from growing.

Who decides what should not be? And who decides what they can't become?

By saying "You can't do that with an RPG", you're basically saying "You can't play that way". You're stopping someone from doing something different or new, and maybe they want to play that way.

 

[Dice4Hire]

They are not to you.

This.

To me, RPGs are a lot of those things. I do not divide my interests with walls so high.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

RPGs are not "tales".

Baron Munchausen

RPGs are not "novels".

WoD

RPGs are not "stories".

Dogs in the Vineyard

RPGs are not "wargames".

Chainmail

RPGs are not "board games".

Arkham Horror

RPGs are not "video games".

World of Warcraft

RPGs are not "card games".

Legend of Five Rings


The truth of the matter is, RPGs can and will be anything you mentioned above. Instead of trying to pin down RPGs as some mythological purity, I say open your eyes and arms to the fact that roleplaying games are by their very nature able to bring the "play" to any other genre or style.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I see roleplaying games as a broad church, not narrow. They contain elements of many other entertainment forms and can place their focus in many different areas, or none.

Early D&D closely resembles the wargame Chainmail, for example, particularly in the way Dave Arneson ran it, with massed battles becoming a significant element late on in his Blackmoor campaign. The game of a very railroading DM who had devoured the 80s Dragonlance novels and tried to run the Dragonlance modules as close to the books as possible would resemble an oral novel. The Birthright setting for D&D is a hybrid of rpg and boardgame-like kingdom management.

The D&D game is a fantasy game of your imagination. It's part acting, part storytelling, part social interaction, part war game, and part dice rolling.

- 3.5 PHB

And that's just D&D. Never mind getting into other styles of game such as Call of Cthulhu, Star Wars or Prince Valiant. I even regard computer rpgs such as World of Warcraft and Morrowind as roleplaying games, though I know many people don't.