The Guardian on Reading RPGs: Why don’t RPG manuals count as books?

Roleplaying games are being mentioned in the mainstream press again, and you don't get much more mainstream than The Guardian. An article today, by Damien Walter, discusses the joy of reading (as opposed to playing) roleplaying games, and compares them to other forms of book reading as he asks the question "You don’t have to actually play a role-playing game for it to fire your imagination, so why don’t RPG manuals count as books?"

You'll find the full article here.

 

[Grainger]

The Guardian is regarded as a "quality paper" - as opposed to the tabloids. It's the biggest so-called "left wing" newspaper in the UK. It's got a middle-class slant to it, and I'd argue it's more socially liberal than it is actually "left wing" - it's probably largely centre right in terms of economic stance (for reference, most of the UK press is socially conservative, and centre right - or further right - economically).

 

[spinozajack]

Reality has a liberal bias, so the better the paper, the more it will be viewed as leftist.

The notion that the media is in general liberal, though, is laughable and demonstrably false. Many consider the NYT to be, for example, when it definitely is not. Most reporters are just stenographers to their corporate master's PR and sales agenda. The news is basically just filler in between commercials, and full of misleading slant and even outright propaganda. Designed to make you buy more stuff, stuff you don't need probably. Also, its most important function is to maintain the power of those in charge, and that means promoting endless wars. NYT was one of the main Iraq cheerleaders, hardly a liberal thing to manufacture consent for illegal wars, now is it.

The Guardian isn't really liberal per se, it just looks that way from North America. It's a good rag, but compared to, say, The Intercept, it's very middle of the road.

 

[Alzrius]

The Guardian isn't really liberal per se, it just looks that way from North America.

Given that they publish articles about making sure that our future martian colonies aren't sexist or racist - and under their "science" heading, rather than "op-ed," just to be extra crazy - they don't look liberal in North America; they look like they've gone quite a bit past that.

From the article:

When Europeans seized the New World, its cultures were virtually extinguished. Luckily the only population on Mars that we know of is a handful of rovers, but no doubt we’ll start a war anyway, before dragging them into some form of slavery or oppression. It’s just what we do.

 

[Morrus]

From the article:

It's a joke. It's funny.

But anyway, let's talk about RPGs and reading, not the nature of various media institutions. Much more interesting!

 

[Jhaelen]

Buying RPG books for the sole purpose of reading but not playing them sounds about as exciting as reading through a strategy guide for a video game, but never actually playing the video game.

I suppose you never read any non-fiction books?!
I've bought the majority of my RPG books just to read them. Most of them are sourcebooks detailing a region. I'm particularly fond of the Ars Magica source books, since they are always well-researched and include a lot of historical information in addition to the RPG-specific information.
I also collect core rules for unique RPG systems. I'm very much interested in the inner workings of RPGs and games in general, so there's always something new to learn from these books.

 

[Grainger]

I suppose you never read any non-fiction books?!
I've bought the majority of my RPG books just to read them. Most of them are sourcebooks detailing a region. I'm particularly fond of the Ars Magica source books, since they they'Re alwys well-researched and include a lot of historical information in addition to the RPG-specific information.
I also collect core rules for unique RPG systems. I'm very much interested in the inner workings of RPGs and games in general, so there's always something new to learn from these books.

Indeed. I just bought a few RPGs at the UK Games Expo. Some I might play, others I probably won't, but I can keep up with what various modern games are doing, and perhaps incorporate their ideas into my D&D game; even I don't like the ideas, at least I know what they are.

 

[Chimpy]

I enjoy reading RPG books for the sake of it, especially gazetteers or campaign settings.

 

[Desalus]

I suppose you never read any non-fiction books?!
I've bought the majority of my RPG books just to read them. Most of them are sourcebooks detailing a region. I'm particularly fond of the Ars Magica source books, since they they'Re alwys well-researched and include a lot of historical information in addition to the RPG-specific information.
I also collect core rules for unique RPG systems. I'm very much interested in the inner workings of RPGs and games in general, so there's always something new to learn from these books.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you are reading these books because you intend to use the setting material or game mechanics for the RPG games that you do play. If you never played a single RPG in your life and you never intended to in the future, would you still enjoy reading these books? What would be the point of reading about the inner workings of RPGs if you never had the intention of utilizing that information?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Was this not discussed a long time ago...in a galaxy far far away...

It is all in the definition, it is not that it is not a book but what Publishers define publications as, I would not be surprised to find out that the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has something to do with it.

 

[delericho]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you are reading these books because you intend to use the setting material or game mechanics for the RPG games that you do play. If you never played a single RPG in your life and you never intended to in the future, would you still enjoy reading these books? What would be the point of reading about the inner workings of RPGs if you never had the intention of utilizing that information?

Paizo have noted before that they have a lot of subscribers who buy and read their APs with no intention of ever running/playing them. And, actually, I'm one of them - I may have started my subscription with the intent on running them, but by this point I can no longer lie to myself on that point; with nearly 100 volumes out, I've run exactly zero sessions of PF.