What makes an RPG?

[Drew Stevens]

Short form-

What is the difference between pawn stance, GMless Gamism and a tactical/strategic board game?

Long form-

Last night, my friend Nigel and I were playtesting a prop-heavy combat system for Smash Brothers Melee, the RPG.  As what we were mostly doing was stretching/testing the basic resolution and combat specific mechanics, there wasn't much in the way of character interaction- it was basically just a beatdown in progress.

A couple of other friends watched Nigel and I in passing, and asked about our new 'boardgame'.  Explanations that it was the combat system of an RPG were met with doubtful stares- after all, the props (board and tokens) were pretty well required at this point.

And, in point of fact, I came up with no real solid answer.  While I realize that Exploration is one of the primary defining characteristics of roleplaying, I suppose I still don't quite grok the distinction between Exploration of Game/System as the primary mode of play from a non-RPG.  Are you roleplaying in Monopoly?  In Risk?  In Settlers of Cataan?  Moreover, could you take those games at their basic idealized level, and /make/ them a roleplaying game, without fundamentally changing what they are?

[quozl]

You're going to get all sorts of answers to this but here's my take.  Yes, you roleplay in Monopoly, Risk, and Settlers of Catan but the roleplaying is incidental to those games and not the focus.  The board and "props" have nothing to do with it being a "boardgame" or a "roleplaying game".  In fact, I would say that Diplomacy is a roleplaying boardgame.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Drew,

I don't have an answer for you. I'm pretty sure that the answer I don't have is nothing like Jonathan's.

Sorry man. I'll be watching this thread with interest to see if the discussion clarifies anything for me.

Best,
Ron

[ThreeGee]

Hey Drew,

The question of questions...

I would say an RPG is a game with the following elements: exploration, effective values, and story. Exploration in the sense that there is background/setting material to be discovered through play. Effective values in the sense that your piece(s) has one or more effectiveness numbers (even if those numbers are binary)--as do the other pieces in the game--and those numbers can change through play. Story in the sense that things happen, and these things may be described in a narrative.

Thus, things like board games are right out. Most wargames are out because there is nothing to explore. Most interactive fiction is out because there are no effective values. Most freeform play is out. Dramatic improvisation is out.

On the other hand, LARPS are in. CRPGs are in, including such games as Final Fantasy Tactics and Jagged Alliance. Most MUDs are in. Tabletop RPGs, of course, are included.

However, one has to ask the question: what advantage is there in defining what an RPG is? People will decide for themselves whether something is or is not an RPG, based on their preconceptions and prejudices, regardless of what any of us might say. I'll know it when I see it, as the saying goes.

Later,
Grant

[Mike Holmes]

Grant,

I think the freeformers would disagree. I mean they call it roleplaying. Aren't the character's efectivenesses enumerated in the player's descriptions?

What if I had a system where effectiveness was listed in terms of words. Bob has Amazing Strength, for example.

The narrative description falls apart, too. I can narratively describe a game of Advanced Squad Leader.

I do agree with you that it's a fine line. Nobody has really ever come up with a defintion that even the majority of parties will agree to. So I['m not sure that the definition is really important. In point of fact, I'm not really sure at all that Universalis is a role-playing game.

The only problem becomes practicalities. Like what's suitable for discussion here at The Forge. But that's been pretty well established by tradition. I'm unaware of anyone who has felt disenfranchised because they were discluded for having a "borderline" game.

Mike

[Drew Stevens]

Well, the advantage to me is that I like precise language.  :)

So, is Magic: The Gathering an RPG?  After all, it's had an increasing amount of setting to discover through play, effective values that will change during play, and can be related as a narrative.

At the same time, it really doesn't seem like one, to moi.

All board games are right out?  How does Monopoly not have a setting to explore (the world/mindset of a property baron), effective values (money, property), and narratability?

Wait- what precisely do you mean by exploration of setting?  I've got the feeling we mean different things there...

EDIT

See, I personally consider the question of 'What is an RPG?' to be in the same vein as asking a purely Socractic question, like 'What is virtue?' or 'What is courage?'  Which is to say, an important question to ask over and over, with subtle variation and more specific points, because the answers can open different paths than you haven't previously considered.  It's not practically useful in even the way that GNS can be- but it is a good thing to keep retreading.

[ethan_greer]

From Ron's GNS essay:

When a person engages in role-playing, or prepares to do so, he or she relies on imagining and utilizing the following: Character, System, Setting, Situation, and Color.

Character: a fictional person or entity.
System: a means by which in-game events are determined to occur.
Setting: where the character is, in the broadest sense (including history as well as location).
Situation: a problem or circumstance faced by the character.
Color: any details or illustrations or nuances that provide atmosphere.
[/list:u]
At the most basic level, these are what the role-playing experience is "about," but to be more precise, these are the things which must be imagined by the real people. In this sense, saying "system" means "imagining events to be occurring."

I think these five elements are a pretty good breakdown of the elements in RPGs.  However, it could easily be argued that all of these things are present in some form or another in most games.

So, how does the quote address the question?  That last paragraph is, for me, the key.  It has to be imagined.  In a boardgame, you're not imagining the events, you're simply moving the pieces or following the rules.  The movement/placement of pieces is the event.  Whereas in an RPG, the participants imagine what's happening - "I plug in the terminal and try to hack the database."  The system allows the participants to establish the outcome, but that outcome is further described and leads to further imagined events in a freeform manner.  In Monopoly, on the other hand, if you roll doubles three times in a row, you go to jail.  There are actions and consequences, but there is no imagination involved by definition.  It's certainly possible to inject imaginative descriptions of the real estate deals that go on, but this is not supported by the rules.  In an RPG, this imagination is a requirement that is either explicitly stated in the rules, or is assumed.

That's my take...

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Wait- what precisely do you mean by exploration of setting?  I've got the feeling we mean different things there...

One of you is talking about character exploration, and the other is talking about player exploration.

(In the same vein, I believe you're talking about exploration (with Magic) as in "I am being fed a setting with I keep learning more about" and with an RPG setting, it's often more "Here is a setting which I explore by creating its nuances myself.")

[ThreeGee]

Hey Mike, Drew,

Mike, I am going to take the Ron Edwards approach to arguing and ask that you re-read what I said. The freeform play you describe has effectiveness values. Simple ones, but enough to work from. On the other hand, a lot of freeform starts as barely more than improv + genre conventions. I would say it evolves into an RPG but starts as shared storytelling.

Your ASL example is a non-sequiter. Any wargame worth playing has story. That is most of the point of play. What most wargames lack is exploration. Campaign-style wargaming could potentially fall into my definition, and I think that kind of game would be a lot of fun.

Drew, I suppose you could play Magic as an RPG, if you prioritized a) exploring the actual text on the cards and b) relating the gameplay as an evolving story. I do not think most people play Magic as an RPG, though.

Monopoly is way, way out there. It would be one of the most threadbare RPGs ever. Hardly anything to explore, and the story would be enough to make a stock-trader yawn. Nevermind that the effectiveness values are terribly dull. Again, if you honestly wanted to, you could drift Monopoly into an RPG, but I would have no interest in doing so.

Later,
Grant

[szilard]

At the risk of stating the obvious, I'll point out that (by definition) a role-playing game is a game in which one plays a role.

I think that a contributing (not necessarily determining) factor to whether a game should be called an RPG is how central that playing-of-a-role is to the game. In Monopoly, players in some sense take on roles of real estate barons. The sense in which they do so is not (typically) a very deep one, though. It is a pretense that allows you to get to the rest of the game. Some board games have each player take on the role of a character. These might be better-defined roles, but the focus of the game is still hardly the playing of the role.

Stuart

[lumpley]

I agree fully with Ethan.  When the players are Exploring Setting (say), they're envisioning the setting in their imaginations.  Chess and Monopoly and Squad Leader, you don't imagine the setting, it's right there in front of you, concrete and fully realized.  You can't Explore it.  Like you can't Explore the little doggie in Monopoly; its actions and behavior are fully layed out by the game mechanics, with no room for imagination.

No imagination, no Exploration, no roleplaying.

The line between rpgs and other kinds of games seems clear to me.  A game might cross over it during play, but at any given moment, you'll be roleplaying or you won't be.

(Not to say that you can't roleplay while you're playing Monopoly, or Magic the Gathering, or any game.  But it's not a roleplaying game if you can play it without using your imagination.)

-Vincent

[Mike Holmes]

Mike, I am going to take the Ron Edwards approach to arguing and ask that you re-read what I said. The freeform play you describe has effectiveness values. Simple ones, but enough to work from. On the other hand, a lot of freeform starts as barely more than improv + genre conventions. I would say it evolves into an RPG but starts as shared storytelling.

So you're saying it's something else until the "system" no matter how informal enumerates something? Well, then Univeralis, can't be an RPG until somebody buy's a Component, I'd say, maybe a Fact. Hmmm. Seems very arbitrary to me. Don't all games enumerate in some way at some point? So they all become RPGs at some point after play? Or are there some freeform games that never get to any enumeration? If not, then isn't it kinda wierd to say that they're not RPGs just because they don't start out as RPGs in some techincal sense?

And even if there are freeforms that don't enumerate by your standards, then why aren't these RPGs? What is it about enumertion that's so essential to RPGs? What happens with enumeration that doesn't happen with simple description?

Your ASL example is a non-sequiter. Any wargame worth playing has story. That is most of the point of play. What most wargames lack is exploration. Campaign-style wargaming could potentially fall into my definition, and I think that kind of game would be a lot of fun.

So, then, Close combat is an RPG? It's a computer game, that allows at least as much exploration (even scenario to scenario) as many Fantasy CRPGs.

Drew, I suppose you could play Magic as an RPG, if you prioritized a) exploring the actual text on the cards and b) relating the gameplay as an evolving story. I do not think most people play Magic as an RPG, though.

I think that's certainly a point there. At the point that no real exploration of anything but system is going on then you definitely do not have an RPG. Thus I agree that Monopoly isn't ever played as an RPG. Further, the text certainly never suggests it.

But that's an odd definition. Basically an RPG by that definiton would be anything that in the rules suggested exploration. I mean by that ideal, all ASL would have to do is suggest that you, for example, role-play the leaders of each squad you move, thus exploring their character.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Separating this post from the above for clarity.

(Not to say that you can't roleplay while you're playing Monopoly, or Magic the Gathering, or any game.  But it's not a roleplaying game if you can play it without using your imagination.

That's a definition that I can almost hang my hat upon.

Ron argued to me recently that the Metagaming titles Melee and Wizard were actually RPGs. But I garuntee you that there's nothing in there that requires you to imagine anything at all. No moreso than chess. So are these RPGs or not (I don't believe that they claim to be).

Mike

[Jason Lee]

What is the difference between pawn stance, GMless Gamism and a tactical/strategic board game?

My simplistic answer:
I don't think there is one.  If you ever transition out of Pawn stance (say, making the leap to Author stance) then it becomes a roleplaying game.

[quozl]

If you ever transition out of Pawn stance (say, making the leap to Author stance) then it becomes a roleplaying game.

I think this is the best definition yet.