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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7762211" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I've said this before but what makes a game an RPG is pretty clearly a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance" target="_blank">family resemblance</a>." This kind of searching for a clear logical boundary in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions/defining features is, therefore, bound to fail. It serves very little useful purpose. There are simply going to be a lot of counter-examples or features that don't quite work out for nearly every game and rapidly lead to pervasive logical absurdities. Picking through some of the examples above and adding a few to illustrate why the search for a clear definition in terms of conditions is ultimately pointless:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The one-shot game of D&D usually leads to no advancement or meaningful loot all of a sudden becomes not an RPG. Really? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">What about a superhero game or Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures that involves very little advancement of PC ability or loot but is just focused on story, though it features stern opposition to the PCs? In STA it's not at all uncommon for the PCs to fail, just as happens in the source material the game is emulating. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Different sessions can have different focuses. For example, if a game session mostly focused on philosophical interactions among the PCs it doesn't have opposition or advancement---something very plausible in a number of games, for example Mage the Ascension. Is that session all of a sudden "not an RPG?" even though the previous session involved a nailbiter combat? </li> </ol>Ultimately I wonder what the motive for trying to provide such a definition even is, although I do find value in laying out the features that make up the family resemblance. It reminds me a lot of the kind of exercises in dorm room musicology that used to try to define rap as "not music" to be able to avoid making an aesthetic judgment. Clever move to be able to knock out a genre you don't like as not even being music at all! By the way, this is the well-known "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman" target="_blank">No true Scotsman</a>" informal fallacy. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /></blockquote>

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