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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 7728914" data-attributes="member: 46713">While I agree that this is one key element, it's far from the only one.It's been a trend in board games for many years to offer a variety of starting factions resulting in different gameplay. It's even made its way into the abstract game genre: this year <a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194655/santorini" target="_blank">Santorini</a> was released in a new edition that features dozens of characters from Greek myth. When the game starts, each player is randomly assigned one of them. Each character allows the player to make use of special rules or victory conditions, resulting in completely different matches.Another key ingrendient of an RPG is character development. But that's also no longer exclusive to RPGs.Imho, the most important aspect of an RPG is that your PC/avatar comes with a set of motivations and character traits. These may or may not be expressed in game mechanical terms, but their effect should be that your decisions are no longer just guided by considerations what would would be the 'optimal' course of action to achieve the set goals. I.e. they should create a conflict between the avatar's personal goals and the game's/story's goals.I know of very few board games that attempt to model this kind of conflict. One of them is <a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39339/android" target="_blank">Android</a>. While it's superficially about solving a murder case, it's really about exploring your character's personality and trying to balance your positive and your negative traits.A slightly less ambitious approach was taken in the Innsmouth expansion for the <a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/40776/arkham-horror-innsmouth-horror-expansion" target="_blank">Arkham Horror</a> board game: Each character gets a set of cards describing a personal goal derived from their background story. Now, players have to make a choice of trying to resolve their personal stories (which usually results in a significant mechanical benefit) or ignore them and concentrate on winning the game instead (although that can be dangerous, as failing your personal story comes with strong detrimental game effects).<a href="https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205637/arkham-horror-card-game" target="_blank">Arkham Horror: The Card Game</a> also features this kind of thing by requiring each character to include a personal weakness card and a random weakness card in their decks.Imho, all three games clearly transcend the traditional definition of board games and allow for an 'RPG Lite' game experience.</blockquote>

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