Worlds of Design: What Defines a RPG?

It’s a daunting task to try to define and characterize a segment as large and diverse as tabletop role-playing games in just a few words. But here goes.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.
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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller​

Some people won’t be happy with my definitions--which is my opinion, drawn from experience. But the purpose of such exercises is (aside from encouraging people to think) to narrow down something so that we can talk about it intelligibly.

Defining the Undefinable​

There are two ways to define something: 1) specific (as in a dictionary), but this usually leads to dispute even when what’s being defined is a single word; or 2) describe typical characteristics, even if it’s possible that some will not have all of those characteristics. I’m trying the latter, being general enough to think all the characteristics are necessary.

What makes an RPG a tabletop hobby RPG? An RPG, as we talk about them in the hobby, is a human-opposed co-operative game. There are four characteristics:

• Avatars,
• progressive improvement,
• co-operation, and
• GMed opposed adventure.

Simple enough, but in defining a concept it’s sometimes easier to explain what it isn’t.

What RPGs Are Not​

Role-playing games, as defined by the last word, are games and therefore require opposition. An RPG is not a puzzle (with a correct solution); an RPG is not a means for the GM to tell a story (reducing player agency immensely); an RPG is not a storytelling mechanism, whether for players to tell each other stories, or for the GM to tell a story. These things all exist, but to include them in the definition goes far beyond the realm of game. A game is a form of play, but most forms of play are not games.

Not Just Role-Playing​

Technically, a role-playing game may be any game where you play a role – which is a LOT of games, tabletop and (especially) video. It even includes some business simulations. I’m more interested in what makes a game a hobby RPG, a game played frequently by hobby game players. So I’ll discuss role-playing in terms of avatars.

What’s a “Pure” or “Real” Avatar?​

• A single thing/entity that represents the individual player, most commonly a humanoid
• All the player’s actions in the game emanate from the avatar
• The “pure” avatar is fully subject to risk: if it dies/is destroyed, the player loses (at least temporarily)

An avatar could be a spaceship, a tank (World of Tanks) or other vehicle, even a pizza-shape (Pac-Man). In video games, the avatar typically respawns. In hobby RPGs, the avatar is a creature, usually human or humanoid. (For more detail, read "The most important design aspect of hobby RPGs is the Pure Avatar".)

Avatars sometimes have a separate developer-provided “history” and personality (Mario, Sonic). Sometimes an avatar is a blank slate so that the player can more easily infuse his/her own personality or fictional character background into the avatar.

In many games, a "kind-of-avatar" is not the source of all action, nor does the game end if the avatar is killed. That’s not an RPG.

Progressive Improvement​

This can happen in many kinds of games. But in what we call RPGs, it’s some variety of:

• Gaining experience to rise in levels, and the levels give more capability (though the term “level” might not be used)
• Gaining skills/feats/features (which give more capability)
• Collecting magic or technological items (which provide extra options, defense, offense, etc.)
• Acquiring money/treasure (which can be used for lots of things)
• No doubt there are some RPGs with other ways to improve, for example via social standing if that is formally tracked

Does it need levels? No, but that's typically (conveniently) how increase in capability “without employing the loot I've got” is expressed.

So a game where the hero(es) don’t progress in capability – or only a little – might be an interesting game, but it’s not an RPG. Many of you can think of board, card, or video games of this kind. Well-known heroes in novel series rarely progress significantly in capability, for example James Bond.

You can have avatars without progression, you can have roles without “pure” avatars, you can have progression without avatars, but those are not what we categorize as RPGs.

Co-operation, Adventure, and a Gamemaster That Controls the Opposition/Enables Adventure​

• Yes, opposition. It’s not a game (I use the traditional sense) without opposition, though it might be a puzzle or a parallel competition
• I don’t see how there can be significant opposition without a GM/referee; unless you go to computer programming
• If there’s no co-operation, if it’s player vs player, it’s more or less a board/card game in concept

I include Adventure, because the stories coming out of the original RPGs would be called adventures. In the 21st century we do have novels that don’t seem to have any particular point other than describing everyday life, and I think that’s leaked over into so-called RPGs as well. Whether adventure is necessary is a debatable point (surprise), though I’m certainly not interested in RPGs without Adventure.

The GM also allows the players to try to do “anything” that could be done in the current situation. Some regard this freedom-of-action (extreme player agency) as the defining aspect of RPGs, and it’s certainly vital; but think of a story RPG where the linear plot (typical of stories) forces players to do just what the story calls for. That’s not freedom of action. Yet story form may be the most common form of tabletop RPG.

And consider games like Minecraft. You can try to do almost anything there, too, but it's not an RPG.

Where does this leave computer RPGs? There’s not exactly a GM, though the computer tries to be. There’s certainly not as much freedom of action as with a human GM . . . But my goal was to define hobby tabletop RPGs.

Your Turn: What’s your definition of a role-playing game?

 

[Hussar]

You can't play with Lego out of the box either - someone has to build something, and (typically) imbue it with some sort of meaning.

But that doesn't make Lego an RPG.

[/QUOTE]

I'd argue that Lego isn't a game. It's a toy.

Your definition is also true of some wargaming - it's not enough to have painted your figures and read your copy of the rules, someone actually has to frame a battle, set up the terrain, etc. But wargames aren't RPGs. (Though RPGs have an important historical derivation from wargaming.)

But the wargaming rules you use will, by their very nature, define what kinds of wargaming you will do with those rules. You won't use Napoleonic rules for running a Vietnam Era combat, for example. IOW, every game you play with that specific set of wargaming rules will be fairly similar within that specific wargaming set.

Your definition would also mean that an intro/demo module with pre-gens doesn't count as a RPG, when I think it obviously is.

But, now you're trying to define by the edges. I'm not. I'm defining by the centers. I admit, quite readily, that there are fuzzy bits at the edges. What distinguishes a demo module with pre-gens from a board game? It's one of those cases where it's on the border between.

@lewpuls is right to fasten on the avatar as pretty key - that's the inheritance, much changed as it is in many ways, from single-soldier-per-figure wargaming.

It's the other aspects - which build in assumptions about participant roles (players as cooperating, GM as opposition) and play goal (ie advancement) - that are contentious because they are true of (most) D&D play and true of play in many D&D-influenced games (eg Rolemaster or RuneQuest as played in their default modes) but are not true of all the other RPGs that have been designed over the years since D&D was invented.

What keeps those other games within the general parameters of the type of gaming that D&D pioneered is (i) the role of the fiction in adjudication, which is different from nearly every other game type (except some wargaming), and (ii) the continued use of the single-person avatar as a primary locus of participation in the game by most if not all of the participants (ie the "players").

But, even fastening on the avatar doesn't work since so many RPG's allow the players to step outside their avatar and directly influence the game as a player, instead of through the avatar.

 

[pemerton]

even fastening on the avatar doesn't work since so many RPG's allow the players to step outside their avatar and directly influence the game as a player, instead of through the avatar.

This is why one has to talk about the primary locus.

Even where a RPG allows a non-GM participant to adopt director stance this is typically - at least in the games I know - connected to the avatar. Eg the player might be allowed to spend a token to stipulate that the room his/her PC is in also has a flower pot in it.

Once you have a participant stipulating fiction completely independently of the avatar - eg some ways of approaching set-up in systems like Fate and Burning Wheel- then I think it's better to talk about sharing the GM role around. (Which is why I think @lewpuls's definition is weak - because too narrow - in its treatment of the participant roles.)

If there's no avatar at all, then I'm not sure what's become of the role-playing.

 

[CandyLaser]

This is why one has to talk about the primary locus.

Even where a RPG allows a non-GM participant to adopt director stance this is typically - at least in the games I know - connected to the avatar. Eg the player might be allowed to spend a token to stipulate that the room his/her PC is in also has a flower pot in it.

Once you have a participant stipulating fiction completely independently of the avatar - eg some ways of approaching set-up in systems like Fate and Burning Wheel- then I think it's better to talk about sharing the GM role around. (Which is why I think @lewpuls's definition is weak - because too narrow - in its treatment of the participant roles.)

If there's no avatar at all, then I'm not sure what's become of the role-playing.

I'm inclined to think that the presence of an avatar is common, but not essential. There's a range of games here - games in which each player has multiple avatars (Band of Blades, troupe play in Ars Magica), games in which players jointly control shared avatars (Everyone is John, some iterations of Wraith), games in which each play controls a single avatar (D&D and most other RPGs), and games in which there is no avatar at all (Microscope, Kingdom, possibly Dialect). And there are also some unusual cases - Legacy and Rhapsody of Blood, for instance, in which your 'avatar' is ultimately disposable, because the story and the game are about communities, families, etc. Another odd one is Die, where you play as players playing an RPG, who have their own avatars in the game.

 

[pemerton]

games in which each player has multiple avatars (Band of Blades, troupe play in Ars Magica

On this, I think what I posted upthread is applicable:

I think the key thing is not how many "avatars" but rather that the avatar(s) figure(s) in play as individuals. So even if a player is playing a PC plus entourage of henchmen etc, those characters figure in play - both the fiction and the mechanical processes of resolving the player's "moves" - as individuals, not as a squad, unit, vessel, etc.

I don't think RPGIng is wargaming (quite the contrary, as anyone who knows my posting history would realise!) but the historical influence of, and derivation from, single figure wargaming is pretty fundamental I think.

You don't have to get to anything very avant garde to have multiple avatars in this way - classic D&D has it (with henchmen, multiple PCs for different expeditions, etc) and (at least in my group) so does Classic Traveller.

Another odd one is Die, where you play as players playing an RPG, who have their own avatars in the game.

Over the Edge also has a possibility along these sorts of lines.

games in which there is no avatar at all (Microscope, Kingdom, possibly Dialect). And there are also some unusual cases - Legacy and Rhapsody of Blood, for instance, in which your 'avatar' is ultimately disposable, because the story and the game are about communities, families, etc.

I think it's fairly typical for more avant garde instances of a genre or artform to push against the received parameters of their tradition. Depending on how things go - in terms of penetration and uptake of the avant garde, response from more conservative/traditional elements, etc - the tradition might change, or might grow to encompass, or there might be a parting of ways.

In the case of RPGing it's probably too early to tell!, but if the avatar ceases to be primary then the phrase "role playing" will perhaps be more of an inherited label than a literal descriptor, and what at the moment continue (in my view) to be discernible boundaries between RPGing and other forms of structured, collective storytelling or fiction creation may cease to be such.

For instance, based on my own understandings and experiences I would say that A Penny for My Thoughts is structured collective storytelling but not RPGing (eg there is no action declaration); whereas having playtested Orbital recently, I would say it is RPGing with a strong emphasis on sharing the "GM"/set-up aspects of the game. But the gap isn't a massive one - in debriefing after our playtest experience, one of our group members went straight to A Penny for My Thoughts in comparison, whereas its never been used as a comparison for more conventional RPGing that our group has done.

EDIT: From this and my other posts in this thread you can probably also see that I think of genre/traditions etc being characterised not primarily by shared criteria (a "definition" in the most literal sense) but by the heritage they participate in, which is manifested by emulation and adaptation but can also be manifested by variations and self-conscious or even fortuitous departures. Sometimes those departures create new traditions (like D&D's fortuitous departures from wargaming giving rise to RPGing as new form of game) and sometimes they change and grow existing ones.

In my view trying to impose a priori limits or but it has to be this way assumptions on these processes is pointless. I think some of the clearest examples are impressionism, which turns out (in its best versions) to be masterful painting enjoying mainstream reverence no matter how shocked some 19th century critics were, and jazz and related American music and the derivatives and offshoots of these intertwined traditions, which really are music and even great music despite the objections of critics like Adorno.

 

[corwyn77]

You can't play with Lego out of the box either - someone has to build something, and (typically) imbue it with some sort of meaning.

Building something with Lego IS playing with it. That's the whole point.

 

[aramis erak]

Leveling up is just one way of improving. In original Traveler (if indeed there was no experience or leveling up, I don't recall) you still get money, try to get a better ship and crew, gain new technology, and so on. The improvement just isn't reflected as leveling.

There is provision for improvement of attributes and skills, but it's incredibly slow. Can't even replicate the rate of char gen skill acquisition.

 

[aramis erak]

Let me take another stab at this, although, I get the feeling I'm not going to get much traction.
[snip]

To me, what differentiates an RPG from all other games is that you cannot play an RPG out of the box. You simply can't. Someone has to define the campaign - whether that campaign is a single night (a la Dread) or fifteen years (a la some D&D campaigns). Someone has to create characters based on that campaign. Someone has to define some sort of plot or action. THEN you get to play an RPG.

Starter boxes negate that... Characters are pregens, and the adventure and rules instruction are conjoined. The ones for Star Wars and Star Trek are literally, open the box, hand out characters, and read the prompts and do the instructions. And they're decent adventures, too.

 

[pemerton]

Building something with Lego IS playing with it. That's the whole point.

Some people probably say the same thing about RPGs and world design.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Another odd one is Die, where you play as players playing an RPG, who have their own avatars in the game.

I’ve only read some of the playtest material for Die. I’m a huge fan of the comic, and the concept for the game intrigues me....but it’s kind of tricky to imagine how it works.

Have you actually played it at all? I created a thread here on the site a while back and I don’t think anyone replied. It’s a comic I would think most folks here would appreciate.

 

[CandyLaser]

I’ve only read some of the playtest material for Die. I’m a huge fan of the comic, and the concept for the game intrigues me....but it’s kind of tricky to imagine how it works.

Have you actually played it at all? I created a thread here on the site a while back and I don’t think anyone replied. It’s a comic I would think most folks here would appreciate.

I have not. The comic is great, and I've read the playtest material as well, but it wouldn't be a good fit for any of my groups.