What is a roleplaying game?

[newsalor]

I know that this is an old question, but it should be the first question to be asked. What is a roleplaying game? What is roleplaying? I know several definitions, but is there a forge definition out there somewhere?

Without answer to that basic question we can't really answer quoestions like the ones posed here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12223.

Is the forge definition of roleplaying "exploration of a shared imagined space"?

[Sean]

I think 'exploration of a shared imagined space' is a bad definition of role-playing, let alone of rpgs in general. It may be a good general definition of the category under which our kind of game goes, though.

Let me explain. I think that the basic activity of this kind of game is exchanging descriptions which introduce or modify the imaginary content of the game. (That's basically exploration of an SiS, yes.) So kids playing with mud-pies are already in some sense doing what we're doing. They even have rules - mud glob size correlates to pie size, different bits of twig and rock correlate to different ingredients, the globs that have gone on that rock have gotten baked, etc. - for negotiating the content. (You use red rocks for a blueberry pie. "I think that's cherry!")

Likewise, the dreaded 'cops and robbers' is a game of this type, using mostly Karma-based resolution based on real-world physical capacities (the fastest pointers and talkers win), unless the Social Contract breaks down, as, alas, it often does.

I would call the general type 'fantasy games' rather than 'role playing games', except 'fantasy games' has a double meaning because it's also a favored genre within the broader category. Let us call them 'imaginative games', then, where the media of play are principally imaginative constructs.

Role-playing games are a sub-species of imaginative games where all or most of the people at the table are primarily responsible for the behavior, actions, etc. of a particular character within the shared imagined space. Borderline cases are where characters get swapped or switched regularly. On the other hand, my friends and I in grade school used to sit around imagining our 'kingdoms' with only passing reference to the knights and kings etc. - we would just describe the stuff in them, mostly. That's another game of the same type without characters, IMO.

[lumpley]

Nah.  Defining "roleplaying game" is the last thing we oughta do.  As far as I'm concerned, anything calls itself a roleplaying game, it is one.  "But...that's not roleplaying!" is the last cry of the baffled.

"Shared Exploration" etc. is a Forge description of live tabletop roleplaying.  It's not a definition a'tall.

-Vincent

[Sean]

Vincent -

A true description which uniquely specifies the object, event, or activity being described is a definition.

It may be that attempting to define roleplaying now in terms of the Forge lexicon or otherwise is either (a) conceptually premature, (b) pedagogically inadvisable, or (c) politically inexpedient, but if there's a true specifying description which picks out the activity, then you've got a definition, whether you want to call it that or not.

[Tim C Koppang]

Sean,

I think the idea here is that "exploration of a shared imaginary space" is a true description of roleplaying, but hardly unique.  The unique requirement is the hard part and trying to nail it down at this point, I think, would only serve to unnecessarily exclude games from the hobby that might otherwise be labeled as innovative.

[Sean]

Well, I suggested that the crucial general category was 'imaginative' or 'fantasy game', where the game media are elements in a shared imagined space, and 'moves' involve introducing or modifying elements into that space. This fits with certain elements of the forge lexicon, at least - not to mention with lots of things that Vincent has written here in other contexts. I would suggest that 'role-playing games' are the subset of such games that involve role-playing, which I gloss as having most or all of the players at the table principally responsible for an imaginary conscious agent over whose actions and feelings they are granted primary control in the SiS.

Now some people will complain about this, but it's a principled definition, and one which I'd be willing to defend - and willing to give up if presented with suitable counterexamples. I think the resistance to stake ground over a definition of 'role-playing' comes from a realization that people are emotionally sensitive about the definition of what they do, and a similar realization that providing such a definition may be more likely to lead to fights than to push productive dialogue forward. This is merely a political concern, however, and therefore uninteresting to me at least.

[Jack Aidley]

Although I think political issues are part of the motivation, I don't think they are the whole story. Like many (perhaps most) interesting categories in the real world they defy any precise definition. I defy anyone to give me a single, universally applicable definition of life, species, a car, religion or a game (just as examples) that includes everything we would expect to fall into those categories and excludes everything we wouldn't.

I am strongly of the opinion that trying to define these things is a fools game, and that they are always better left as 'fuzzy' categories. We don't need a precise definition of a roleplaying game to discuss them, or to discuss whether something is one or not.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Not surprisingly, this issue has seen a lot of discussion here already. I'm presenting the following in hopes that people will enjoy them, as well as to prevent, perhaps, going over old ground. It's a lot of stuff, but hey - that's what the Forge does ...

Do you believe everything they tell you? - very useful for the present discussion!!
Defining role-playing: an alternate approach
What is a role-playing game?
Psychotic (or is it schizoid) game design - more relevant than it might seem at first
Monopoly: the most popular role-playing game?
To Mr. Langford: special theory of role-playing
What makes an RPG?
"Playing a role for fun"
What does role-playing gaming accomplish?
The four main forms of role-playing games
Needed: "What is role-playing?" quotes
A perspective on role-playing
Defining published-style RPGs
Why we fight! (long)
RPGs and related media
Game or role-playing: which is more important?
Mainstream appeal: what exactly does it mean to role-play?
RPGs as art form?
Regarding the nature of role-playing
A definitive definition of role-play?
Something I cooked up, a model if you like
No limit?!
"Games" issue (split from older thread
"What is a role-playing game" essay

Also see the articles by Chris Lehrich and Kester Pelagius here at the Forge, as well as multiple sources and features at John Kim's website.

Best,
Ron

[Jonathan Walton]

What Tim said.  "Exploration of Shared Imaginary Space" is definitely a major component of roleplaying, and one that almost every Forge denizen would agree with.  Beyond that the details get fuzzier and, as Jack says, rightly so.  Closed definitions are often limiting and breakable.

That's the short answer.  For the long answer, there's all the stuff Ron quoted (Forge threads, Lehrich, Kim, Ron's own writings) and also my previous RPGnet column, "The Fine Art of Roleplaying," linked from my sig.

[M. J. Young]

It's a daunting question. I'd say to a degree, part of why we do theory here is to try to get to the answer. Yet the answer is elusive.

As an example, it sounds to me as if Sean intends to exclude Cops and Robbers from the category "Role Playing Games". I, on the other hand, think that it is very much and fundamentally an example of a role playing game--along with Cowboys and Indians (probably people don't play that anymore), less common make believe such as television emulation (Lynette Cowper (GURPS Rogues), reports playing Star Trek as a child), and even House. I don't see why anyone would exclude any of these from the category, unless they had some notion that "make believe" was for kids and therefore different from what we do. (That to me sounds like saying that Candyland and Stratego aren't both board games, because children play one and adults play the other. It makes no sense.)

Yet whether or not you think those games are role playing games is very important to how you define it--or the other way around, perhaps.

As I think Vincent implies, we keep trying to identify those features which all role playing games hold in common. The joint creation of a shared imaginary space is one such feature; it may be the only one thus far agreed by all parties and present in all such games yet identified. That doesn't make it a definition--it makes it a recognized feature in the taxonomy.

It's been suggested that a taxonomical definition could be developed which gave a list of features and specified that anything having a minimum number thereof would be a role playing game; that would mean they didn't have to share any one feature in common across all games. I'm not happy with that, but I recognize it as one of the proposed definitional approaches. Such a definition would not be able to be couched so easily as a "definition" as we usually present them, although it would still be a definition.

Let me throw the question back to you, Newsalor: what is a roleplaying game? Oh, and what is your name, really?

--M. J. Young

[Callan S.]

If one were going to try to define roleplaying, I think it would be important to avoid looking at the paraphenalia usually involved to define it. Eg, I can roleplay while playing solitaire. So the actual paraphenalia (books, dice, whatever) can encourage roleplay, but really isn't part of it.

[simon_hibbs]

It should be so easy, after all the name says it all - you 'play the role' of a character. That isn't enough though, because w argamer playing Great Britain in Axis and Allies is notionaly 'playing' Winston Churchil, so isn't tha a roleplaying game?

No, and the reason is very simple. In Axis and Alies there is no requirement for you to manage interactions between the notional character you are playing and other characters in the game. You interact with the game world by moving counters on the board. Winston Chrichill didn't move counters on a board, he gives orders to his generals. In the game if you said 'I turn to Auchinlech and tell him to redeploy the South Essex to Egypt', and that's how redeploying units was done in the game, then it's a roleplaying game (to some extent). If you just reach over the board and move the counter, it's not. You don't interact with the SIS by controlling the behaviour of your character, you bypass the character to do it. If you can't bypass the character, and primarily interact with the SIS though controlling the behaviour of your character, then it's a roleplaying game.


Simon Hibbs

[Sean]

Cops and Robbers and Cowboys and Indians and House are role-playing games by the definition I offer. Mud Pies is not, though one can imagine role-playing creeping in, but that's an added-on activity.

I have a broader axe to grind here against the idea that 'definitions are limiting' which I will not keep grinding after this post. If the definition is false or non-identifying, you can recognize that and go on. This idea that our creativity will somehow be limited by agreeing on definitions is mistaken: one keeps going with the analysis, and if you were wrong, you go back and change things. It's treating definitions as unassailable axioms which stipulate rather than describe a realm of discourse that's the problem.

Of course sometimes we just don't know enough to define things well while still having a subject to talk about. That's fine. I also agree that we don't need definitions to go on with serious discussion.  On the other hand, the process of trying to define things leads to net cognitive gain, in my opinion.

Here's an interesting question that I'd like answered about my definition. We have the broad category of 'fantasizing' and within that category the particular activity of 'role-playing'. On the other side we have the category of 'games'. Does regimenting fantasizing and/or role-playing automatically make it a game? I would think not. For example, if you hire a dominatrix to tie you up and call you 'naughty boy', you are both fantasizing and role-playing, and there may be fairly definite rules involved, but I still am not sure I would call what you are doing playing a game. A spy in deep cover is weaving an imaginative web and playing a role but is by no means playing a game.

My definition treats 'game' as a fixed category and then isolates within that category games whose principal 'pieces' and 'moves' are transformations of a shared imagined space, and therefrom moves on to 'role-playing games' as the sub-category of 'imaginative games' in which taking on a role by some players is central. But it seems that one might want to go the other way as well, by treating imaginative activity and role-playing as antecedently understood and picking out which such activities are games as well.

(And with that said, I start to wonder if House and Mud Pies, which undoubtedly involve fantasizing as essential features of the activity, are really best understood as games.)

Ron, thanks for those links, which are quite interesting.

[lumpley]

Hey Sean.

Now some people will complain about this, but it's a principled definition, and one which I'd be willing to defend - and willing to give up if presented with suitable counterexamples.

Exactly!  I've got a counterexample: every CRPG ever.  They've got no exploration of shared imagination, they're not "imaginative games," yet they're clearly RPGs.  They say so right on the label!

Any definition excluding CRPGs has some serious explaining to do.  "Oh, I'm not defining roleplaying games, just tabletop face-to-face roleplaying games like D&D" counts as serious explaining.

-Vincent

[Blankshield]

Hey Sean.

Now some people will complain about this, but it's a principled definition, and one which I'd be willing to defend - and willing to give up if presented with suitable counterexamples.

Exactly!  I've got a counterexample: every CRPG ever.  They've got no exploration of shared imagination, they're not "imaginative games," yet they're clearly RPGs.  They say so right on the label!

Any definition excluding CRPGs has some serious explaining to do.  "Oh, I'm not defining roleplaying games, just tabletop face-to-face roleplaying games like D&D" counts as serious explaining.

-Vincent

Hmm.  Just because someone has successfully marketed whales as fish doesn't mean we need to redefine fish to include water-dwelling mammals.  It just means the people calling whales fish are wrong.

IMO, the shared imagined space is axiomatic for role-playing games - not necessarily sufficient, but required.  Also IMO, CRPG's do not have a shared imagined space.

James