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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8177900" data-attributes="member: 42582">What differentiates a RPG from a boardgame? The fiction matters to resolution.What differentiates a RPG from a wargame? The non-referee participants plays a single figure rather than a unit, a tank, a vessel, etc.Put these together and I would say that a RPG is a game in which the non-referee participants play single persons (typically one each, but sometimes more than one each). Their 'moves&quot; in the game consist primarily in saying what those persons do. And the resolution of those moves - which are declared actions, quite a bit like a wargame - depends at least in part on the fiction that all the participants agree is part of the ingame situation.Compared to [USER=30518]@lewpuls[/USER] I think that cooperation is not so important (consider RPGing with one player and one GM/referee; or an Apocalypse World game where the PCs &quot;hang out&quot; in the same place but don't really work together), and nor is character improvement (Classic Traveller is a well-known example which has no &quot;internal&quot; improvement, only money and gear; and it's possible to play Traveller with the money and gear being in a net outflow rather than inflow!).The more that a non-GM/referee participant's move can be adjudicated without engaging with the fiction of what is the participant's character doing, the more we're getting away from RPGing I think. But this is tricky, because it clearly makes no sense to suggest that D&amp;D is not a RPG, yet it's possible to get quite a long way in resolving some D&amp;D combats without ever having to think much about the fiction at all!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8177900, member: 42582"] What differentiates a RPG from a boardgame? [I]The fiction matters to resolution[/I]. What differentiates a RPG from a wargame? [I]The non-referee participants plays a single figure rather than a unit, a tank, a vessel, etc[/I]. Put these together and I would say that a RPG is a game in which the non-referee participants play single persons (typically one each, but sometimes more than one each). Their 'moves" in the game consist primarily in saying what those persons do. And the resolution of those moves - which are declared actions, quite a bit like a wargame - depends at least in part on the fiction that all the participants agree is part of the ingame situation. Compared to [USER=30518]@lewpuls[/USER] I think that cooperation is not so important (consider RPGing with one player and one GM/referee; or an Apocalypse World game where the PCs "hang out" in the same place but don't really work together), and nor is character improvement (Classic Traveller is a well-known example which has no "internal" improvement, only money and gear; and it's possible to play Traveller with the money and gear being in a net outflow rather than inflow!). The more that a non-GM/referee participant's move can be adjudicated without engaging with the fiction of [I]what is the participant's character doing[/I], the more we're getting away from RPGing I think. But this is tricky, because it clearly makes no sense to suggest that D&D is not a RPG, yet it's possible to get quite a long way in resolving some D&D combats without ever having to think much about the fiction at all! [/QUOTE]

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