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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 9105366" data-attributes="member: 177">I'm going to guess that it will be less straightforward than you think.People will be tempted to provide an exclusive definition.&nbsp; I think that'll be a mistake.&nbsp; RPGs are a genre of activity - and they are best defined with an inclusive definition. We can take an analogy from fiction - what is the definition of a &quot;Mystery novel&quot; or a &quot;horror movie&quot;?&nbsp; We could list a bunch of themes, tropes, techniques, and goals and the like that are common in mysteries or horror stories.&nbsp; If we want to ask if something is a Western, we look at the work, and if it has &quot;enough&quot; of the items on the list, it is a Western.&nbsp; When deciding if a work fits within a genre, having elements that fit in other genres is irrelevant - genre definition is not a question of &quot;purity&quot;.&nbsp; We can then note that this means that a particular example can fit more than one genre!&nbsp; A work could be a Space Opera and a Western at the same time, and that's perfectly okay!That means you could have a game that is a Role-playing game and a story game.&nbsp; Or an RPG and a tactical wargame, and so on. I would expect that D&amp;D is the place we would start to assemble our list of elements that define the genre, so that D&amp;D would fit in the genre automatically.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 9105366, member: 177"] I'm going to guess that it will be less straightforward than you think. People will be tempted to provide an exclusive definition. I think that'll be a mistake. RPGs are a [I]genre[/I] of activity - and they are best defined with an inclusive definition. We can take an analogy from fiction - what is the definition of a "Mystery novel" or a "horror movie"? We could list a bunch of themes, tropes, techniques, and goals and the like that are common in mysteries or horror stories. If we want to ask if something is a Western, we look at the work, and if it has "enough" of the items on the list, it is a Western. When deciding if a work fits within a genre, having elements that fit in [I]other[/I] genres is irrelevant - genre definition is not a question of "purity". We can then note that this means that a particular example can fit more than one genre! A work could be a Space Opera and a Western at the same time, and that's perfectly okay! That means you could have a game that is a Role-playing game [I]and[/I] a story game. Or an RPG [I]and[/I] a tactical wargame, and so on. I would expect that D&D is the place we would start to assemble our list of elements that define the genre, so that D&D would fit in the genre automatically. [/QUOTE]

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