The Many Faces of Roleplaying: How ‘RPG’ Became Everything and Nothing

[billd91]

To be fair, I don't feel that this is a "problem" requiring a solution; and I don't believe I actually suggested one. But I think it deserves a little more awareness on occasion, and maybe a little deeper consideration. Or maybe not, considering how strongly (surprisingly) people seem to be feeling about it.

I'm not surprised people feel strongly about it. It's an issue that breeds divisiveness because you're (effectively) telling them whether what they're doing is in Bin A or Bin B based on some criteria that they might agree with. I had to put up with that crap from coaches of other sports in high school when I was on the curling team - because some of them had the notion that curling wasn't a "sport" in their minds. It was a stupid notion, and it parallels what's going on here. There are different ways to play RPGs, different ways to focus on them, depending on how the RPG is designed and what it includes. That doesn't mean one approach isn't really role playing if it isn't the same approach as another, more favored (by some) definition.

 

[GobHag]

I think you were on to something at first, but that comparison doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny. “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. It can apply to anything from Gloomhaven to Fiasco to Baldur’s Gate.

To be fair, I don't feel that this is a "problem" requiring a solution; and I don't believe I actually suggested one. But I think it deserves a little more awareness on occasion, and maybe a little deeper consideration. Or maybe not, considering how strongly (surprisingly) people seem to be feeling about it.

However this does make me wonder: should we consider that a Baseball player is also a Football player because, you know, they're both "sports"?

No, but they're both athletes

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think you were on to something at first, but that comparison doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny. “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. It can apply to anything from Gloomhaven to Fiasco to Baldur’s Gate.

To be fair, I don't feel that this is a "problem" requiring a solution; and I don't believe I actually suggested one. But I think it deserves a little more awareness on occasion, and maybe a little deeper consideration. Or maybe not, considering how strongly (surprisingly) people seem to be feeling about it.

However this does make me wonder: should we consider that a Baseball player is also a Football player because, you know, they're both "sports"?

I don't think that this is quite fair (the bolded part). The main problem is that we have this ... shift ... from wargaming to a new type of game that occurred, and this new type of game (focused on players taking on the role of individual characters in a fictional setting) became known as a "roleplaying game." Of course, there were other strands that were interwoven at that time (from the influential "Science Fiction community" which was the umbrella term for SciFi+Fantasy to others who were simultaneously making their own proto-RPGs such as Western Gunfight), but that's a good, if reductive, way to look at it.

But here's the thing- you have this umbrella term that covered a new modality of play, but then you get it ported to different media; most notably, computer games (later video games). And those games needed to be called something ... and since many of them were modelled after a specific RPG, D&D, they were also called RPGs! With Akalabeth and Temple of Apshai (1979) and Wizardry (1981), you already had "RPGs" popping up on computers- and people simply ported over the same term used to describe the tabletop games to describe these games.

I'd argue that there is a massive difference between (TT)RPGs and (C)RPGs (including variants such as MMORPGs and JRPGs). We just normally omit the (TT) part. Heck, a LARP isn't the same as a TTRPG.

And while it certainly makes sense for us to know the differences between TTRPGs - Monster Hearts is not Ten Candles is not Blades in the Dark is not 5e is not PF2 is not Honey Heist ... I don't see much value in getting rid of an umbrella term for the (TT)RPG hobby that we all enjoy.

Am I missing something?

 

[KYRON45]

While I appreciate the OP, and anyone who makes the attempt to present an argument in the form of an essay ...

I certainly hope that there are stylistic indicators for "Snarfness" that are more than just "amount of verbiage."

I mean ... How is Snarf like Tolstoy?

...no one bothers to read either.

Oh how well you know us.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

I enjoyed the essay but im not one that agrees with this recent notion that words are made meaningless. We still need to discuss things to understand each other. The context matters and you will never distill words into entire concepts on their own. "RPG" covers a lot of ground, but its still a common ground.

Ninja'd by Umbran's "sports" analogy.

I've encountered a few games that do a good job of narrowing their focus and funneling players into it. I've also seen the D&D effect derail that process. Sometimes a group comes apart without any fault of the game at all. There is much to the dynamic of an RPG play group to consider.

Divergent playstyles require compromise and adjusted expectations. A good example for me was when I played organized play with PFS. I enjoyed meeting people and seeing how they enjoy the game. Sometimes I really hit it off, and sometimes I hit a roadblock. That was often abotu emchanical applicaiton, but some of it was persoanlity. What I needed was good expectation that the game wasnt going to be consistent and that I needed to understand that to make it enjoyable.

When it comes to my own private games at home or online, im a bit more picky (particualrly now with online). I get to curate my group into a closer fit of mechanical expectation and persoanlity. I dont expect to have to compromise here and focus more on exactly what I want.

How did I get there? Well, organized play and conventions taught me the power of the one shot. A try before you buy routine. I have one rule abour RPG group forming and its never join a long term campaign with folks I have never played with before. I always work up to it through one shots and maybe the promise of more gaming to come. What I have come to relaize is that you can try and lock down a commonality with language such as "role play focus" but you wont really align until you see the execution in play.

RPG is a nebulous term for a hobby that can include multitudes of play styles and interests. Like a discussion, you need a greater context for it to be cosnturctive than to expect total understanding from a single term. YMMV.

Well, I’m glad you enjoyed reading it—and honestly, that’s all I ever hope for, whether someone agrees or not. I think you’ve read enough of my other posts to know I’m not working toward any grand agenda or trying to draw lines for a meaningless “movement.” I’m not here to tell anyone what to think, or to claim my perspective carries more weight than anyone else’s. I just like looking at things from different angles and encouraging others to do the same—even if that means I end up challenging my own ideas in the process.

Anyone can score points with a punchline or post a borrowed meme. There’s plenty of that kind of surface-level noise already—it just doesn’t move the conversation forward. We’ve all been in this echo chamber long enough to recognize how quickly it rewards repetition and discourages reflection. I’m not immune to it myself, but I try to resist it through conversations like these—mental exercises that keep me questioning, writing, and thinking critically.

So I genuinely appreciate you showing up for thoughtful discussion and pushing back where you see it differently. That’s what makes it worthwhile. Even when we don’t see eye-to-eye—maybe especially then—it helps refine what we’re actually trying to understand.

I think you’re exactly right that context and experience are what give those words meaning. The point I was aiming at isn’t that “roleplaying game” is being used wrong (that may have gotten lost somewhere in the density of my own words), but that it’s become so broad we’ve stopped noticing its flexibility—and its fragility. It started as a catch-all term emerging from wargames, when the boundaries were still forming. A computer RPG and a tabletop RPG could share the same label even when they had almost nothing in common beyond “playing a role.”

Over time, we didn’t resolve that ambiguity; we normalized it. So when someone picks up a “roleplaying game,” they might be getting a story-driven collaboration, a tactical skirmish, or something in between. Most of us navigate that instinctively, as you describe through one-shots and group curation—but that doesn’t mean the label itself communicates better; it just means we’ve learned to fill in the gaps ourselves. That’s why we still sit down for a Session Zero: to define the kind of experience we actually want.

That’s where tension creeps in—not for everyone, but often more than we admit. D&D set one standard for what an “RPG” means; it literally calls itself "the world’s greatest roleplaying game" and remains the cultural reference point. So other RPGs that do things differently, like Daggerheart or Genesys, inevitably get compared to it, even when they pursue entirely different philosophies. It’s not narrow-mindedness; it’s linguistic gravity. The dominant example shapes how the term is understood, even before anyone sits down to play.

The “solution” isn’t a fix so much as a heightened awareness—one that comes from more than cursory thought numbed by generations of normalization. Declaring one kind of RPG as preferred, or interpreting it as the correct and proper way to play with your table, doesn’t automatically mean exclusion or derision toward everyone else's ideas or opinions. But it often becomes that. And that, more than anything else, is the root of many of our divisions.

 

[Campbell]

I think you were on to something at first, but that comparison doesn’t hold up under closer scrutiny. “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. It can apply to anything from Gloomhaven to Fiasco to Baldur’s Gate.

To be fair, I don't feel that this is a "problem" requiring a solution; and I don't believe I actually suggested one. But I think it deserves a little more awareness on occasion, and maybe a little deeper consideration. Or maybe not, considering how strongly (surprisingly) people seem to be feeling about it.

However this does make me wonder: should we consider that a Baseball player is also a Football player because, you know, they're both "sports"?

It's a medium, at least as I mean it. When I talk about tabletop roleplaying games, I am speaking to games played within a negotiated imagination where what we imagine impacts how things are resolved. It's also why I prefer "table talk roleplaying game" to "tabletop roleplaying game" as the medium is the conversation.

The medium of a conversation about a shared imagined space is the constant. The actual function of Fiasco, Monsterhearts, Shadowdark and Traveller are as different as Risk, Monopoly and Secret Hitler.

Games like Gloomhaven or Baldur's Gate do not share the same essential medium of being played in a shared fiction where that shared fiction matters to resolution.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Tough crowd!

Tell me about it. I didn't expect to hit a nerve with any of this, but I suspect there's another reason for it: I'm only getting likes from @Micah Sweet. Statistically speaking, and according to reputable internet data and analysis that I just made up, it's 90% likely you'll be on the right side of any argument just by disagreeing with him. That's certainly a lot quicker and easier than reading through a long, boring essay (or writing one).

Thanks, Micah!

I enjoyed the distinction you drew with cRPGs that adopt the mechanics but not the core conceits. I think there is a lot to say there and would enjoy an exploration of just that topic.

I wouldn't mind that, but I can only guess at the hellfire "crap storm" we might conjure up with that conversation. Besides, it's going to take me a while to work through this one. See you in a month!

If you don't mind me asking, did you use gen AI to help with this post?

Don't make this weird. I only use that for sex stuff.

 

[payn]

Tell me about it. I didn't expect to hit a nerve with any of this, but I suspect there's another reason for it: I'm only getting likes from @Micah Sweet. Statistically speaking, and according to reputable internet data and analysis that I just made up, it's 90% likely you'll be on the right side of any argument just by disagreeing with him. That's certainly a lot quicker and easier than reading through a long, boring essay (or writing one).

Thanks, Micah!

lol, this made me spit my hot tea while reading

 

[Jacob Lewis]

lol, this made me spit my hot tea while reading

Well, I intended it as good-natured ribbing, thinking @Micah Sweet might wear this like a badge of honor. He did not see it that way, so I must apologize for that. We may not always see eye to eye on things, but I've always respected his tenacity for sharing his honest views and unapologetic opinions. No insult or disrespect was intended.

And since it seems I can't win for losing today, I think I'll take step back for a while.

 

[overgeeked]

@Umbran
I appreciate the engagement, but I want to clarify the focus of the essay. This isn’t about gatekeeping or arguing that people can’t handle broad categories. It’s about how the label “RPG” functions in marketing, communication, and player expectation. The term sometimes implies universality and a common type of experience, even though the games themselves deliver very different design and emotional goals.

Examples like Mind’s Eye Theater don’t contradict this; they illustrate the predictable divergence of player behavior within a clearly signaled experience. Most participants understood the intended style of play. One group exploited the system deliberately; that’s a matter of human choice, not ambiguity in what the game is.

Similarly, Session Zero isn’t a failing or an ignorance gap; it exists because the “RPG” label is often imprecise. It’s a social tool for aligning expectations that would be far less necessary if games were upfront about the type of experience they offer — whether combat-heavy, collaborative, or narrative-focused. I use D&D as an example because it often touts itself as the “world’s most popular roleplaying game,” positioning itself as inclusive of all styles of play and claiming no boundaries, which is precisely why the tensions around expectation versus experience are more visible there.

The core point remains: the label “RPG” is marketed as broadly inclusive, but it cannot reliably communicate what any given product actually delivers. That tension between expectation and design is the real phenomenon under discussion, and neither MET nor social negotiation techniques undermine it.

Feel free to disagree or dislike. I’m just sharing thoughts and sparking conversation that interests me.

Exactly. Just because we’ve invented various patches or crutches to mitigate the problem doesn’t mean the problem never existed or has been fixed.