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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5813453" data-attributes="member: 3192">Historically speaking role playing in TTRPGs clusters around two different ideas depending upon the school of thought believed in. Yeah, belief systems have something to do with faith, but I think we can discount any formal religious institutions claiming ground here.#1. Role playing is pretending to be someone other than your self. #2. Role playing is performing a social role as one's self whether falsely or honestly.#1 goes on from here to more sophisticated definitions like "expressing ideas you do no believe in" usually with the increasingly unnecessary historic appendage of "character" tacked on for whatever that means to the listener.Theater has become our dominant cultural paradigm, so definition #1 is largely accepted as "the way things really are" even though a diehard believer would not want it phrased in those terms. From this perspective Balesir's definition in the original post is a near recitation of the answer to "What is Role Playing?" as it stems from our present cultural authorities. The pretending half in #2 is actually #1 and never otherwise. To believe otherwise is to be deluded, at least when viewed from within this belief system.For TTRPGs our hobby began under #2 and moved to #1 in the early 1980s. However we spent the first 30+ years designing games as puzzles, often half completed, with the blueprints for those puzzles distributed openly to players and GMs alike - game masters being the relaters of the puzzle. Some elements like adventures were and still are sold with what some may call "delusional" forewards claiming "spoilers" for players if they read any further.What we have today is an uneasy mix of styles with different self-appointed authorities claiming more or less singular interpretations of what role playing is. And so, by controlling others thoughts and speech regarding role playing some may claim control over the play and design of RPGs as well. At least this is a popular belief among those who hold power-centered philosophies. (Only they know what freedom is and we will receive it.)My own idea is to very much accept all comers and ideas and disavow any absolute definitions for role playing games. That goes not just for its practice but for how we refer to it, think it, play it, design for it, or distribute it. For every game with "conflict resolution" there should be game with obviously no such thing in it. For every game seeking "character immersion" there should be a game where it is utterly irrelevant.I think we can get past trying to close people within mental boxes. Has anyone mentioned the "one true definition" of role playing in this thread yet? I doubt it.</blockquote>

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