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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9782018" data-attributes="member: 42582">Gygax's PHB (1978) has this on p 7:Swords & sorcery best describes what this game is all about, for those are the two key fantasy ingredients. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is a fantasy game of role playing which relies upon the imagination of participants, for it is certainly make-believe, yet it is so interesting, so challenging, so mind-unleashing that it comes near reality.Page 18 goes on:Character class refers to the profession of the player character. The approach you wish to take to the game, how you believe you can most successfully meet the challenges which it poses, and which role you desire to play are dictated by character class . . .I think this shows us what Gygax, at least, had in mind by "role play" or "role adoption": he was not particularly concerned with pretending to be a particular individual but rather with taking on a particular suite of abilities for engaging with the challenges of the game. These "roles" correspond, loosely at least, to the idea of distinct "unit types" in a more traditional wargame.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. ([USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] has made this point upthread too.)Gygax worked out one game in detail - the dungeon-crawl, exploration-oriented, skilled-play game (and its hexcrawl variant). But that hardly exhausts what can be done using the combination of players imagining their characters having to confront situations and what is imagined mattering to the way the game participants agree on what happens next.</blockquote>

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