Jacob Lewis
Ye Olde GM
1. Introduction — The Problem of the Label
The term roleplaying game has come to mean many things and, in doing so, has come to mean almost nothing at all. It evokes ideas of adventure, character, and choice — but those ideas manifest in wildly different ways depending on who’s using the word and what kind of experience they expect. “RPG” can describe a tactical skirmish played with miniatures on a grid, a collaborative storytelling exercise with no dice or rules at all, or a video game driven almost entirely by statistics and inventory management. Each of these claims the same label, and each attracts people who believe that label promises something specific.
But “RPG” no longer functions as a clear descriptor of a game’s design or purpose. It functions as a signal — a promise of depth, freedom, and imagination that may or may not exist in the product itself. This elasticity is part of why the term has endured, but it is also the source of confusion and tension within the communities that form around these games. When a system like Dungeons & Dragons presents itself as the definitive expression of the “roleplaying game,” it inevitably gathers players seeking entirely different things under one banner: some chasing story and character, others tactics and mastery, others world simulation or social improvisation. The result isn’t unity, but friction — born from incompatible interpretations of what that label was supposed to mean in the first place.
This essay explores how “RPG” evolved into a catchall identity, what its underlying ideas once represented, and why the term’s broad application often obscures more than it clarifies. Rather than arguing for a strict definition, the goal is to examine how roleplaying — as concept, practice, and product — has been stretched across so many contexts that it no longer describes a coherent genre, but a spectrum of overlapping intentions.
2. Origins and Intent — What Roleplaying Originally Meant
Before “RPG” became a genre label, roleplaying was an activity — an act of assuming a perspective, inhabiting a character, and making choices within an imagined context. The essence of the idea wasn’t bound to dice, rules, or even games. It emerged from drama, psychology, and improvisation: the practice of exploring identity through behavior. When that idea intersected with gaming in the early 1970s, it produced a new form of play that wasn’t about winning, but about being.
Early tabletop roleplaying games, most notably Dungeons & Dragons, didn’t set out to create a distinct “RPG” genre. They evolved from miniature wargames, where the tactical control of armies shifted to the control of individuals. Players no longer commanded units on a battlefield; they became singular adventurers navigating perilous worlds. The novelty wasn’t in the combat resolution system — it was in the act of perspective shift. The player’s imagination, not the rulebook, became the primary interface.
That shift marked the birth of roleplaying as a form of collaborative authorship. The rules served as a shared language for what could or couldn’t happen, but the creative agency rested in the players’ willingness to inhabit a persona and respond to the unfolding fiction. Story, character, and world were no longer pre-written narratives or rigid simulations. They were co-created experiences, made meaningful by choice and consequence within a shared framework.
Yet, even in those early days, there were already competing ideas about what the experience was for. Some saw it as a storytelling tool. Others as a tactical challenge, or a sandbox for simulation. The word “roleplaying” encompassed all of them, and so the tension between narrative intent and mechanical expression was present from the beginning. That foundational ambiguity — between role and game, story and system — is what allowed “RPG” to grow, but it is also what ensured it would never mean just one thing.
3. The Fracturing of the Term — Mechanical vs. Experiential Identity
As roleplaying gained structure, it also gained metrics. What began as an imaginative exercise needed rules to sustain consistency — systems for conflict, risk, and reward. In codifying those elements, designers translated abstract roleplay into quantifiable components: ability scores, experience points, levels, and loot. These tools made the experience repeatable and expandable, but they also changed its center of gravity. The “role” became something measured rather than embodied.
Over time, the mechanics designed to support roleplaying began to define it. The shorthand of “RPG elements” — progression, customization, character stats — became familiar enough to exist without the actual practice of playing a role. In video games especially, “RPG” came to signify not who you played, but how your numbers grew. The shift wasn’t malicious; it was structural. Systems are easier to sell than experiences, and progress is easier to visualize than immersion.
This mechanical identity offered clarity for designers and consumers alike. It made “RPG” a recognizable brand across mediums — one that could scale, hybridize, and market easily. But the tradeoff was conceptual. When roleplaying became something a system did rather than something a player did, the definition of the genre began to fracture. A player could now “play an RPG” without ever engaging in roleplay, just as another could “roleplay” freely in a game that wasn’t labeled an RPG at all.
That divide still defines the discourse today. On one side lies the experiential identity — roleplaying as the art of assuming perspective and shaping narrative through character. On the other lies the mechanical identity — RPG as a suite of features centered on numerical growth and optimization. Both descend from the same lineage, but their values diverge sharply. One is interpretive; the other procedural. One is about inhabiting a fiction; the other about mastering a framework. And yet, both insist on the same name.
4. The Modern Paradox — Inclusive Branding, Divided Communities
If the early years of roleplaying fractured the definition of “RPG,” the modern era has institutionalized that fracture. What began as diverging philosophies has become a commercial strategy — an invitation to everyone, regardless of what “roleplaying” means to them. Today, the term “RPG” promises universality: a game that can be tactical or narrative, structured or freeform, simulationist or cinematic. It offers the idea that all playstyles can thrive together within a single framework.
But that inclusivity is rarely structural. It exists as aspiration and marketing, not as coherent design. Dungeons & Dragons illustrates this paradox most clearly. The brand positions itself as the definitive expression of roleplaying, yet its mechanics and presentation must appeal to incompatible expectations — storytellers, tacticians, world-builders, and casual adventurers alike. The result isn’t a system that unifies those experiences, but one that shifts the burden of integration onto the table itself. Players and game masters become the translators between philosophies, negotiating tone, emphasis, and pacing to make the game “work” for everyone.
That negotiation can succeed — and often does — but it comes at a cost. The shared language of “RPG” conceals the real differences in what people want from the experience. When those expectations clash, groups don’t just argue over rules or storylines; they clash over purpose. Meanwhile, publishers continue to market breadth as virtue, framing adaptability as universal strength rather than a structural tradeoff. The system’s versatility is genuine, but it is also a quiet abdication: the responsibility for harmony belongs to the players, not the design.
5. A Different Approach — When Picking a Lane Reduces Tension
Not all RPGs suffer the tensions described above. Systems such as White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade or Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu take a different approach: they explicitly signal the type of experience they aim to provide. Vampire emphasizes personal horror and moral ambiguity; Call of Cthulhu emphasizes investigation, suspense, and the fragility of the human mind. Both systems structure mechanics, narrative cues, and social expectations around these focused experiences, aligning player goals from the outset.
By narrowing the intended playstyle, these games reduce the need for negotiation at the table. Players select these systems knowing the type of roleplaying they will engage in, and the mechanics reinforce that style rather than offering multiple, competing paradigms. The result is cohesion: communities form around shared expectations, and the label “RPG” carries a more meaningful signal.
This contrast illustrates that the paradox is not inherent to the concept of roleplaying games itself. It arises when a system attempts to promise universality without providing the structural or narrative scaffolding to reconcile divergent expectations. By deliberately “picking a lane,” White Wolf and Chaosium demonstrate that clarity of design focus can mitigate, though not eliminate, the tensions that broader systems propagate.
6. Conclusion — The Cost of a Collapsed Definition
The broad appeal of “RPG” has ensured its longevity, but also its instability. The label now describes a mode of play so flexible that it no longer communicates what kind of experience a player should expect. It suggests both authorship and advancement, freedom and framework, narrative and system — a collection of ideas bound more by association than by design. That elasticity has value, but it also erodes the clarity of discourse. When everything can be called an RPG, the term ceases to guide understanding.
This ambiguity shapes not only how games are marketed, but how they are discussed and played. It allows companies to sell inclusivity — the idea that one system can be everything to everyone — while leaving players to reconcile those promises in practice. It encourages communities to measure authenticity through personal preference, as though every interpretation must justify its legitimacy. And it obscures the fact that the word “roleplaying” once referred to an act of imagination, not a product category.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that the label has changed, but that we still treat it as though it means one thing. “RPG” has become a framework of expectations — a projection of what players hope to experience when they take on a role and inhabit a world. The challenge is that those hopes no longer converge. What was once a shared foundation has become a constellation of overlapping, sometimes contradictory, desires.
If there is any constant left, it is this: roleplaying remains a negotiation between identity, agency, and structure. Whether it takes the form of a tactical skirmish, a branching narrative, or a night of collaborative storytelling, the heart of the experience lies not in the mechanics, but in the player’s willingness to engage as someone else within a shared imagined space. The term may have collapsed, but the act endures.
I’d be interested to hear how others approach these tensions at their tables. Do you find that systems designed with a clear focus reduce conflict, or does negotiation remain inevitable regardless of mechanics? How do you reconcile divergent expectations when your group spans multiple play philosophies?
The term roleplaying game has come to mean many things and, in doing so, has come to mean almost nothing at all. It evokes ideas of adventure, character, and choice — but those ideas manifest in wildly different ways depending on who’s using the word and what kind of experience they expect. “RPG” can describe a tactical skirmish played with miniatures on a grid, a collaborative storytelling exercise with no dice or rules at all, or a video game driven almost entirely by statistics and inventory management. Each of these claims the same label, and each attracts people who believe that label promises something specific.
But “RPG” no longer functions as a clear descriptor of a game’s design or purpose. It functions as a signal — a promise of depth, freedom, and imagination that may or may not exist in the product itself. This elasticity is part of why the term has endured, but it is also the source of confusion and tension within the communities that form around these games. When a system like Dungeons & Dragons presents itself as the definitive expression of the “roleplaying game,” it inevitably gathers players seeking entirely different things under one banner: some chasing story and character, others tactics and mastery, others world simulation or social improvisation. The result isn’t unity, but friction — born from incompatible interpretations of what that label was supposed to mean in the first place.
This essay explores how “RPG” evolved into a catchall identity, what its underlying ideas once represented, and why the term’s broad application often obscures more than it clarifies. Rather than arguing for a strict definition, the goal is to examine how roleplaying — as concept, practice, and product — has been stretched across so many contexts that it no longer describes a coherent genre, but a spectrum of overlapping intentions.
2. Origins and Intent — What Roleplaying Originally Meant
Before “RPG” became a genre label, roleplaying was an activity — an act of assuming a perspective, inhabiting a character, and making choices within an imagined context. The essence of the idea wasn’t bound to dice, rules, or even games. It emerged from drama, psychology, and improvisation: the practice of exploring identity through behavior. When that idea intersected with gaming in the early 1970s, it produced a new form of play that wasn’t about winning, but about being.
Early tabletop roleplaying games, most notably Dungeons & Dragons, didn’t set out to create a distinct “RPG” genre. They evolved from miniature wargames, where the tactical control of armies shifted to the control of individuals. Players no longer commanded units on a battlefield; they became singular adventurers navigating perilous worlds. The novelty wasn’t in the combat resolution system — it was in the act of perspective shift. The player’s imagination, not the rulebook, became the primary interface.
That shift marked the birth of roleplaying as a form of collaborative authorship. The rules served as a shared language for what could or couldn’t happen, but the creative agency rested in the players’ willingness to inhabit a persona and respond to the unfolding fiction. Story, character, and world were no longer pre-written narratives or rigid simulations. They were co-created experiences, made meaningful by choice and consequence within a shared framework.
Yet, even in those early days, there were already competing ideas about what the experience was for. Some saw it as a storytelling tool. Others as a tactical challenge, or a sandbox for simulation. The word “roleplaying” encompassed all of them, and so the tension between narrative intent and mechanical expression was present from the beginning. That foundational ambiguity — between role and game, story and system — is what allowed “RPG” to grow, but it is also what ensured it would never mean just one thing.
3. The Fracturing of the Term — Mechanical vs. Experiential Identity
As roleplaying gained structure, it also gained metrics. What began as an imaginative exercise needed rules to sustain consistency — systems for conflict, risk, and reward. In codifying those elements, designers translated abstract roleplay into quantifiable components: ability scores, experience points, levels, and loot. These tools made the experience repeatable and expandable, but they also changed its center of gravity. The “role” became something measured rather than embodied.
Over time, the mechanics designed to support roleplaying began to define it. The shorthand of “RPG elements” — progression, customization, character stats — became familiar enough to exist without the actual practice of playing a role. In video games especially, “RPG” came to signify not who you played, but how your numbers grew. The shift wasn’t malicious; it was structural. Systems are easier to sell than experiences, and progress is easier to visualize than immersion.
This mechanical identity offered clarity for designers and consumers alike. It made “RPG” a recognizable brand across mediums — one that could scale, hybridize, and market easily. But the tradeoff was conceptual. When roleplaying became something a system did rather than something a player did, the definition of the genre began to fracture. A player could now “play an RPG” without ever engaging in roleplay, just as another could “roleplay” freely in a game that wasn’t labeled an RPG at all.
That divide still defines the discourse today. On one side lies the experiential identity — roleplaying as the art of assuming perspective and shaping narrative through character. On the other lies the mechanical identity — RPG as a suite of features centered on numerical growth and optimization. Both descend from the same lineage, but their values diverge sharply. One is interpretive; the other procedural. One is about inhabiting a fiction; the other about mastering a framework. And yet, both insist on the same name.
4. The Modern Paradox — Inclusive Branding, Divided Communities
If the early years of roleplaying fractured the definition of “RPG,” the modern era has institutionalized that fracture. What began as diverging philosophies has become a commercial strategy — an invitation to everyone, regardless of what “roleplaying” means to them. Today, the term “RPG” promises universality: a game that can be tactical or narrative, structured or freeform, simulationist or cinematic. It offers the idea that all playstyles can thrive together within a single framework.
But that inclusivity is rarely structural. It exists as aspiration and marketing, not as coherent design. Dungeons & Dragons illustrates this paradox most clearly. The brand positions itself as the definitive expression of roleplaying, yet its mechanics and presentation must appeal to incompatible expectations — storytellers, tacticians, world-builders, and casual adventurers alike. The result isn’t a system that unifies those experiences, but one that shifts the burden of integration onto the table itself. Players and game masters become the translators between philosophies, negotiating tone, emphasis, and pacing to make the game “work” for everyone.
That negotiation can succeed — and often does — but it comes at a cost. The shared language of “RPG” conceals the real differences in what people want from the experience. When those expectations clash, groups don’t just argue over rules or storylines; they clash over purpose. Meanwhile, publishers continue to market breadth as virtue, framing adaptability as universal strength rather than a structural tradeoff. The system’s versatility is genuine, but it is also a quiet abdication: the responsibility for harmony belongs to the players, not the design.
5. A Different Approach — When Picking a Lane Reduces Tension
Not all RPGs suffer the tensions described above. Systems such as White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade or Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu take a different approach: they explicitly signal the type of experience they aim to provide. Vampire emphasizes personal horror and moral ambiguity; Call of Cthulhu emphasizes investigation, suspense, and the fragility of the human mind. Both systems structure mechanics, narrative cues, and social expectations around these focused experiences, aligning player goals from the outset.
By narrowing the intended playstyle, these games reduce the need for negotiation at the table. Players select these systems knowing the type of roleplaying they will engage in, and the mechanics reinforce that style rather than offering multiple, competing paradigms. The result is cohesion: communities form around shared expectations, and the label “RPG” carries a more meaningful signal.
This contrast illustrates that the paradox is not inherent to the concept of roleplaying games itself. It arises when a system attempts to promise universality without providing the structural or narrative scaffolding to reconcile divergent expectations. By deliberately “picking a lane,” White Wolf and Chaosium demonstrate that clarity of design focus can mitigate, though not eliminate, the tensions that broader systems propagate.
6. Conclusion — The Cost of a Collapsed Definition
The broad appeal of “RPG” has ensured its longevity, but also its instability. The label now describes a mode of play so flexible that it no longer communicates what kind of experience a player should expect. It suggests both authorship and advancement, freedom and framework, narrative and system — a collection of ideas bound more by association than by design. That elasticity has value, but it also erodes the clarity of discourse. When everything can be called an RPG, the term ceases to guide understanding.
This ambiguity shapes not only how games are marketed, but how they are discussed and played. It allows companies to sell inclusivity — the idea that one system can be everything to everyone — while leaving players to reconcile those promises in practice. It encourages communities to measure authenticity through personal preference, as though every interpretation must justify its legitimacy. And it obscures the fact that the word “roleplaying” once referred to an act of imagination, not a product category.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that the label has changed, but that we still treat it as though it means one thing. “RPG” has become a framework of expectations — a projection of what players hope to experience when they take on a role and inhabit a world. The challenge is that those hopes no longer converge. What was once a shared foundation has become a constellation of overlapping, sometimes contradictory, desires.
If there is any constant left, it is this: roleplaying remains a negotiation between identity, agency, and structure. Whether it takes the form of a tactical skirmish, a branching narrative, or a night of collaborative storytelling, the heart of the experience lies not in the mechanics, but in the player’s willingness to engage as someone else within a shared imagined space. The term may have collapsed, but the act endures.
I’d be interested to hear how others approach these tensions at their tables. Do you find that systems designed with a clear focus reduce conflict, or does negotiation remain inevitable regardless of mechanics? How do you reconcile divergent expectations when your group spans multiple play philosophies?
