“Card game,” “board game,” and “video game” describe form — the physical or digital medium that defines how they’re presented and played. “Roleplaying game,” by contrast, describes function more than anything else.
The repeated comparisons to things like “video games” or “sports” miss the distinction I’m talking about. Those terms describe mediums—they’re defined by form and delivery. A video game is a digital medium; a sport is an athletic contest. You know what you’re getting just by the word alone. “Roleplaying game,” on the other hand, describes a mode of play—not a format or medium. That’s why it’s such a broad and interpretive category. It can be collaborative storytelling, tactical combat, or character-driven drama, and all of those are valid.
That’s what makes the discussion interesting to me: how we, as players, navigate that spectrum of experience and expectation.
That’s a fair comparison, and I agree that broad categories aren’t unusual — language thrives on generalization. The difference I was aiming at isn’t that “RPG” shouldn’t be broad, but that its breadth carries particular consequences because of how play expectations form around shared imagination and collaboration.
I think part of the disconnect here is that “roleplaying game” operates on two overlapping but very different levels of meaning.
On one hand, it’s a general descriptor — any game involving character progression, narrative choice, or role assumption, whether digital or analog. That’s how we end up with video game RPGs, tactical hybrids, or narrative board games all falling under the same umbrella.
On the other hand, it’s also a specific product category: tabletop games published primarily as books or PDFs, often using dice, imagination, and collaborative storytelling. Within this context, “RPG” doesn’t describe a mechanic or genre — it describes a format of play.
I'm not sure I really follow the ostensible contrast between a
function, a
mode of play, a
format or a
medium. Especially because at one point you say that "RPG" does not describe a format, but on the other hand you say that - as a specific product category - it
does describe a format.
Similarly to
@Campbell, I think that RPG - at least in the context of the "product category" to which D&D, Apocalypse World, CoC, V:tM, etc, etc belong -
does describe a format of play:
What distinguishes a RPG, of the sort that resembles D&D, from a wargame are two main things:
*The players (cf GM/referee) predominantly control, and engage the game, via one imagined person within a first-person perspective (ie they imaginatively insert themself into the player's character's imaginary circumstances) rather than from the typical wargame god's eye general's perspective;
Those imagined circumstances - the *fiction - matter to resolution. The game is not just a boardgame.
But this combination of arrangements can be used to play many different games, just as is the case for moving tokens on a board in accordance with rules and dice rolls; or as is the case for dealing and playing hands of playing cards.
If I pick up a book of rules for a RPG, or sit down to play one, I know that - unless it's departing a fair way from the norm - that this is what I'm getting.
As to what
the game will be that I'm playing within this format - using shared imagination as the principal medium of play - that will depend on the details of the particular game. And this is, in my view the source of your concern that there can be a lack of clarity over what constitutes
playing a RPG in some particular context: many RPG rulebooks don't actually spell out the details of the game, in particular (i) what the "point" of play is, and (ii) how the medium is to be deployed and manipulated: that is, how
imaginary circumstances are to be established and "evolved" at the table in the course of play.
Sometimes this is due to it being taken as given that everyone who sits down to play will know how this is to be done: I think Rolemaster is an example here, and it assumes prior knowledge from the play of D&D.
Sometimes I think this is for commercial reasons: eg 5e D&D is pretty non-committal in this respect, but that's because WotC wants to sell the game to many people who are playing pretty different games, just like a manufacturer of playing cards wants to sell to five hundred players, bridge players, poker players, solitaire players, etc.
