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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6934488" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's interesting to see how this definition has evolved over time.In OD&amp;D, &quot;character,&quot; &quot;role,&quot; &quot;class,&quot; &quot;player&quot; and more are used basically interchangeably to refer to what we'd now probably refer to as class. It's clear it's coming from a sort of &quot;talking to people who already know what we mean&quot; place, aimed squarely at minis gamers, though it goes on at length about how minis aren't required. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> No strong distinction is here between player and character and class. 1e is the where the language gets cleaned up and explicit, distinguishing &quot;players,&quot; &quot;characters,&quot; and &quot;class&quot; as all different things. We also have this:....which is explicitly asking you to play a role in the &quot;personality&quot; sense, and links that pretty clearly with defining a &quot;role-playing game.&quot; In Holmes Basic, this language is very similar to OD&amp;D, complete with a lack of description about what an RPG is, but is cleaned up a bit to refer to &quot;characters&quot; pretty consistently, indicating that by this point, it was distinct. Red-box basic follows on from 1e:2e has a rather lengthy &quot;turn Snakes &amp; Ladders into an RPG&quot; analogy that specifies:Not as gung-ho about turning everyone into master thespians as Gygax was, I guess, but very much explicitly in the realm of &quot;pretend you are a fictional personality.&quot; 3e mentions that the D&amp;D game is &quot;part acting,&quot; and says that your character is &quot;just like the heroes of a book or movie.&quot; 4e has a very similar blurb:5e's quite succinct about it:...so it seems to me that since the dawn of the term &quot;role-playing game,&quot; it has distinguished itself from other kinds of games primarily by talking about the personas of characters, not their functions. OD&amp;D didn't make a clear distinction between them, and sort of mushed them all together, which I think is honest enough when you don't yet have a framework for seeing how your game is distinct from the minis wargames it's based on.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6934488, member: 2067"] It's interesting to see how this definition has evolved over time. In OD&D, "character," "role," "class," "player" and more are used basically interchangeably to refer to what we'd now probably refer to as class. It's clear it's coming from a sort of "talking to people who already know what we mean" place, aimed squarely at minis gamers, though it goes on at length about how minis aren't required. :) No strong distinction is here between player and character and class. 1e is the where the language gets cleaned up and explicit, distinguishing "players," "characters," and "class" as all different things. We also have this: ....which is [B]explicitly[/B] asking you to play a role in the "personality" sense, and links that pretty clearly with defining a "role-playing game." In Holmes Basic, this language is very similar to OD&D, complete with a lack of description about what an RPG is, but is cleaned up a bit to refer to "characters" pretty consistently, indicating that by this point, it was distinct. Red-box basic follows on from 1e: 2e has a rather lengthy "turn Snakes & Ladders into an RPG" analogy that specifies: Not as gung-ho about turning everyone into master thespians as Gygax was, I guess, but very much explicitly in the realm of "pretend you are a fictional personality." 3e mentions that the D&D game is "part acting," and says that your character is "just like the heroes of a book or movie." 4e has a very similar blurb: 5e's quite succinct about it: ...so it seems to me that since the dawn of the term "role-playing game," it has distinguished itself from other kinds of games primarily by talking about the [I]personas[/I] of characters, not their [I]functions.[/I] OD&D didn't make a clear distinction between them, and sort of mushed them all together, which I think is honest enough when you don't yet have a framework for seeing how your game is distinct from the minis wargames it's based on. [/QUOTE]

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