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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7731801" data-attributes="member: 6677017">I'm glad other people beat me to the punch in this, but I cannot emphasis/agree more strongly that "fun" is a specific experience that is not identical to enjoyment.I actually get really irritated when people talk about the purpose of RPGs being fun. Why? Because it isn't, necessarily. Almost all role-playing games are about recreation, and most of them are also about enjoyment. But fun is a subcategory of enjoyment.As a different example of what I'm talking about, take movies. Watching most movies is both recreation and enjoyment. But it is pretty rare that it is accurately termed "fun." The concept of fun requires a sort of dynamic interaction with something or someone that isn't attained through passive absorption of content like you see in a movie.Watching some movies can be recreation but not enjoyment, or enjoyment but not recreation. Note: I'm talking about positive experiences watching movies here. Not watching a movie you hated. Sometimes the goal of watching an enjoyable movie isn't recreation, and sometimes you recreationally watch a move for a goal other than enjoyment. I'm sure people can come up with their own examples.The same applies to RPGs, except that fun is much more common amongst them than the extremely rare concept of having fun watching a movie (it would require something like watching it with friends and joking about--something interactive).But while fun is extremely common in RPGs, there can be positive and desirable role-playing games that are not intended to be fun (or even games).I'm going to write up a more detailed article on this at some point, so this was just a drive-by soapboxing on it.The reason all of this matters is that words and concepts inform our thoughts, which affect our communication, etc. We can't have a meaningful discussion about the nuts and bolts of role-playing if one person is caught in the mindset that role-playing is all about having fun, another person thinks role-playing is about enjoyment (fun optional), and a third person feels greatly edified by overcoming grueling, non-enjoyable role-playing experiences, but all of them use the word "fun", for what they like.</blockquote>

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