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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8178114" data-attributes="member: 75787">#1 AvatarsI agree that an RPG has as a core concept the idea of a role -- "avatar" is a more clear testament of this. Adding the word "pure" in front of that seems overly restrictive, given the link explaining what the OP means by "pure" and the statement "if it dies/is destroyed, the player loses". Clear examples of RPGs where an avatar being destroyed is an expected part of the game and would not be considered a loss are Paranoia and Pendragon. In the later, your avatar is a family -- I think the OP would regard this as an "impure avatar". I'm also not happy ruling out games like Toon that have no avatar death and no concept of "losing" that lasts more than 5 minutes of game time. For me, all the qualifications the OP adds eliminate valid examples, or render his critical concept off "loss" trivial to the point of meaningless.#2 Progressive ImprovementThis rule would eliminate pretty much every game I have played at a convention. It would make Gen Con "not an RPG" convention. It would mean that if I decided to run a campaign (like a James Bond spy drama) where the fun was in solving problems and finding the bad guys, and no-one ever "levels up", that the game would not be defined as an RPG. This is obviously silly. Just drop this criterion.#3 Co-operationNot much info given on the OP's point of view except maybe " if it’s player vs player, it’s more or less a board/card game in concept". Apart form defining any one-on-one game as "not roleplaying" (e.g GUMSHOE one-on-one), it also eliminates DramaSystem, which is brutally PvP and has given me some of the best RPG experiences I have enjoyed at a convention, so ... this criterion has to drop also.#4 GMed opposed adventureThe OP apparently has no experience of RPGs where the role of the GM rotates or is shared  (e.g Fiasco) or he believes those are not RPGs. Since he limits RPGs in #3 to purely co-operative among players, that fits with the notion that a non-player must be the opposition. However, the converse is true -- if the players are allowed be sometimes non-cooperative, then they can provide oppositions. He does make that point in his notes and so his position combines the two into a belief that an RPG requires a defined group of cooperative players against an adversarial GM, and that the roles are fixed. I do not see how giving the players a chance to create opposition prevents a game from being an RPG, so just as I reject #3, I reject this narrow definition of opposition as requiring a GM.On the other hand, I do agree that opposition is needed. Conflict is at the heart of drama, and roleplaying, I believe, needs to embody drama, so I'm in agreement that opposition is needed. "Adventure" is a very general term, so I have no problems with that!In summaryRemoving the parts of the definition that rule out many games that are sold as, and generally regarded as RPGs, we are left with:An RPG is an activity where players control avatars and through them are challenged by opposition.Not terrible, I think. But it misses out the identification with the avatar that makes a difference between and RPG and RPG-like boardgames like Gloomhaven. Would it be too much of a stretch to say that for an RPG the player is more concerned with the internal state of the avatar, whereas for other games they are more concerned with external state?</blockquote>

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