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?

 

[pemerton]

even the "Here's how to build a scenario" rules for wargames are still constrained by the limitations of those wargames. The scenarios are extremely proscribed by the mechanics of that system.

This is equally true of RPGs. I can't use Moldvay Basic to run a game of Napoleonic-era diplomacy. Nor to run a game of street vendors struggling with standover thugs, high taxes and family problems. Nor to run a game of hi-tech spies. If I follow the scenario-building rules in Moldvay Basic I will end up with a "dungeon" that is, from any historical perspective, utterly preposterous; that is replete with traps, treasures and monsters; and that is waiting for a very stereotypical band of "adventurers (fighters, clerics, mages, etc) to enter and loot it.

Yet Moldvay Basic manifestly is a RPG.

The same point applies to other games. No doubt the world of the Far Future (TM) contains vacc-suit factories: but I can't use Classic Traveller to run a game about vacc-suit manufacturing entrepreneurs. I can's use Marvel Heroic RPG to run a game about competition among vendors of organic fruit juices. Etc.

I could use the Traveller rules to do Battlestar Galactica (Original or Reboot), Buck Rogers, Pitch Black or Farscape. No single non RPG will allow me to do that.

I don't know Battlestar Galactica well enough to comment. Pitch Black, yes. Buck Rogers, no. The Traveller rules for PC build and starship battles won't support it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

My point is, non-RPG games are playable right out of the box. You set up, according to the rules of the game, and begin play in a proscribed manner. You cannot deviate from that proscribed manner either. But an RPG does not allow you to begin in a proscribed manner since RPG's don't have a proscribed staring point.

Requiring and encouraging improv is an important element in TTRPGS. Remember how people didn't like 4E and though it was just a skirmish game because they felt the game just ran itself, without requiring constant DM adjustments to work??

 

[Manbearcat]

Well, I don't consider beating dungeons with gamepieces instead of characters role-playing, and, frankly, I don't think that anyone out there seriously does.

And even in plain dungeoncrawling, characters are important, even if the changes are as simple as "orcs killed my buddies and now I hate their green guts!".

I’ll throw my hat in the ring as a piece of offending evidence in the opposite direction of your hypothesis.

You and I appear to agree a lot on games and play a lot of the same games. But here we significantly diverge.

Probably 1/4 of my TTRPGing since ‘84 has been Pawn Stance, Skilled Play delving/crawling. Coming into contact with the “you’re not RPGers(!)” epithet from 2E and White Wolf gamers was my first instance of “culture war” and gatekeeping in this hobby. Needless to say, I and my fellow players disagreed with them!

And let me just say it’s deliciously ironic to see the gatekeeping hypothesis embraced as much as it is now. I remember espousing the gatekeeping hypothesis back from 2012 to 2014 and it not being particularly welcome then (when the evidence for it was profoundly robust).

 

[pemerton]

Requiring and encouraging improv is an important element in TTRPGS.

This doesn't seem right. Unless by "improv" you mean making decisions on the basis of the fiction.

Remember how people didn't like 4E and though it was just a skirmish game because they felt the game just ran itself, without requiring constant DM adjustments to work??

Which people?

Anyway, 4e D&D needs a lot of GM judgement to adjudicate - p 42 and its extensions (eg whenever an attack power is used against a non-creature target), skill challenges, the effects of rituals, etc.

 

[Imaculata]

I disagree with the progression part. Let's see...

Classic Traveller has none even over long term play, if I remember correctly. Classic Traveller lacks any rules for progression, or so I was told by an old Traveller grognard.

Mutants & Masterminds characters generally don't progress. The PCs are created at a certain power level and stay there forever. The GM does have the option of increasing the power level if they wish, but steady increases in character ability is not part of a normal campaign.

To me it seems the OP is focused on RPGs being D&D, and those that aren't D&D, somehow, aren't RPGs.

Well put. I'll add to that:

Call of Cthulhu doesn't have character progression most of the time. There are options for it, but most editions of CoC specifically state that most pc's aren't expected to survive the adventure, and many CoC adventures are one-offs, where everyone dies or goes mad at the end. So character progression is entirely optional, and even discouraged per the basic rules of the game.

Does the OP want to make the claim that Call of Cthulhu is NOT a roleplaying game either?

 

[Imaculata]

To make defining the word RPG even more difficult: RPG as a genre in a computer game is different from what we consider a tabletop RPG. Since most computer games involve playing an avatar, and most computer games don't really require playing a role, even if they are RPGs, the definition gets more muddy.

Then there are boardgames such as Descent and Gloomhaven, which play very much like certain computer game RPGs. Gloomhaven is a full on dungeoncrawl with character progression. If it is not an RPG, then surely it can be considered an RPG-lite?

 

[Hussar]

The reason I tend to shy away from the standard arguments here is that these arguments - avatar play, etc - have been brought up perennially for decades. And nothing new ever comes from the discussions.

At least I'm trying to attempt to frame the discussion differently to see if we can make any forward progress.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Which people?

Good lord, a huge number of them. It was the basis of a massive amount of edition warring all over the place at the time. I wasn't even a fan of 4e and I thought it was over the top how frequently that chesnut came out.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well put. I'll add to that:

Call of Cthulhu doesn't have character progression most of the time. There are options for it, but most editions of CoC specifically state that most pc's aren't expected to survive the adventure, and many CoC adventures are one-offs, where everyone dies or goes mad at the end. So character progression is entirely optional, and even discouraged per the basic rules of the game.

Does the OP want to make the claim that Call of Cthulhu is NOT a roleplaying game either?

I'd say its not so much that CoC discourages character progression (most editions have used the same basic progression as other BRP derivatives) as that a lot of CoC games are short enough in campaign duration that its usually irrelevant.

 

[Fenris-77]

I have two things to say about 4E. I hated the emphasis on maps and figs, but I loved the more modern appraoch to adjudication in a binary test environment.