RPGs are ... Role Playing Games

[Hussar]

I gotta go with Doug and the Prof on this one. I'm a big tent kinda guy. To me, defining RPG's is kinda like defining genre - a definition based on the edges doesn't work. The best definitions of genre start at the center. Same with RPG's.

I'm explaining this badly. Think of a forest. We all know what a forest looks like. Now, define forest. Trees per square metre? Age of the trees? Amount of sunlight filtering down? I dunno. I do know that when I'm standing somewhere and all I see are trees around me, I'm in a forest.

RPG's work the same way. There are some things that you can point to and say, yup, that's an RPG at work. D&D in any form pretty much fits this bill, as does any fairly traditional game that follows similar paradigms - campaign play, non-competitive, etc. There's lots of stuff at the edges that might shade over into something else. MMO's for example.

Meh, I figure our hobby is small enough that when we start being exclusionary based on nothing more than personal tastes, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.

 

[Umbran]

RPGs are not "experiments".

They very well can be. I've run a mess of experiments in game form.

RPGs are not made of "chapters".
Or "scenes". Or "story arcs". Or "plots".

Up until you got here, I was mostly with you. Here, though, you go awry.

Up to here, you were talking about not likening an RPG to another thing. Now, you've drifted off into, "These types of structures cannot be used within a game," and you're... dead wrong there.

I think that RPGs are just that: Role Playing Games.

Yes, but that statement, without explication, contains no useful information. Comparison and contrast to other things is how humans make sense of the world. To insist that we never talk with comparisons is a good way to make it difficult to understand the thing.

Even discussion of a poor analogy helps us understand what we are actually dealing with.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

Tautologies are...tautologies.

 

[Jhaelen]

RPGs are not "XXX".

No, they ARE not, but they certainly (can) contain elements from "XXX". And thus it's useful to compare them to "XXX".

 

[Grymar]

RPGs are....whatever is fun to you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

[Fifth Element]

Anything beyond that just seems to bring more and more noise to the hobby, muddies the waters, and ultimately, changes role playing games into what they never were, should not be, and must not become.

I mostly agree with most of your list, but at this point I have to ask...why not? Why should RPGs not change, and why should they not become something different? If people would enjoy playing this something else, why avoid it? Or is it simply a matter or terminology..."you can play that, but it's not an RPG" type of thing? That sort of elitism helps no one.

 

[Crothian]

Is this like being able to only prove the null hypothesis? Are we only able to say what they are not and is that really helpful? I would think saying what a game is is better or we end up with

RPGs are not elements
RPGs are not radio waves
RPGs are not furry little creatures from small planetoids we have yet to discover in the crab nebula

 

[coyote6]

RPGs are not Kevin Bacon
RPGs are not back bacon
RPGs are not bacon bits
RPGs are not croutons
RPGs are not Jack's broken heart
RPGs are not Jack's complete lack of surprise

Say, this could be amusing.

 

[Rykion]

D'oh. All this time I thought RPG stood for rocket-propelled grenade. I have a completely different understanding of this forum now.

 

[Fifth Element]

RPGs are not back bacon

Oh, would that they were. Preferably with some bacon bits on top.