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"?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Hey Sean.

You wrote: 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.

lumpley wrote: Hey Sean.

You wrote: 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

Axiomatic for tabletop rpgs. There are people talking about computer rpgs somewhere right now who hold a whole different set of axioms. Why do we get to define "roleplaying games" and they don't? What harm does it do us to acknowledge that we're talking about only one kind of rpg?

-Vincent

Blankshield wrote: 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.

lumpley wrote: 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.

lumpley wrote: Axiomatic for tabletop rpgs. There are people talking about computer rpgs somewhere right now who hold a whole different set of axioms. Why do we get to define "roleplaying games" and they don't? What harm does it do us to acknowledge that we're talking about only one kind of rpg?

-Vincent

OK -

Solo RPG gamebooks and computer RPGs do often involve both imaginative transactions and roleplaying. So I'd say that many specimens of each count.

You push on the 'shared' as your criticism. I agree, but don't regard the 'shared' as essential, so don't find this particularly problematic. I also think it's a stretch to suggest (as MJ did in another thread) that the writer or game designer is the 'other participant' in the space.

Rather, there's only one participant, who has agreed to use the object before him or her as a tool for admitting and excluding various things into his or her imagined space. That's what playing the game amounts to. Rather like going out and playing 'mud pies' by yourself using the same rules that you used playing it with your parents the day before.

There is a fuzzy line here, but it's the same line that comes up on the RPG/boardgame edge: when are you just pushing pieces around and rolling dice? When does the imaginative space cease to be the central locus of game transactions and some real space take its place, as in chess?It's not obvious to me that first person shooter CRPGs are RPGs, because the core activity of the game is a reflex test combined with some puzzle solving. There is 'room' in these games for some role-playing activity (I'm thinking of Doom in particular), but it's not really what the game itself is about.

Sean wrote: You push on the 'shared' as your criticism. I agree, but don't regard the 'shared' as essential, so don't find this particularly problematic. I also think it's a stretch to suggest (as MJ did in another thread) that the writer or game designer is the 'other participant' in the space.

Here's the question I think we have to answer on the 'shared' issue:

If I tell you "OK, here's some rules. Imagine things like this and this and this..." and then send you off to record your various imaginative acts, are you sharing in my space, or just doing something on your own?

I'm not sure I have a decided view on this one way or another. The thing is, there's no feedback to the author of a CRPG or solo gamebook, so it's not shared in that arguably important sense. That person is setting up a playground and rules for your imagination, which you use to introduce and modify imaginative elements, roleplay a little, etc. But is that a 'shared space'? I guess I don't really think so, but I'd be willing to be persuaded to the contrary.

On the other hand groups of people sitting together all playing Everquest together on their laptops do have a shared imagined space in whatever sense tabletop roleplayers do. Even if they aren't in the same room, actually.

Hello,

I think I've expressed this idea somewhere in that wad o'threads I cited, but instead of expecting others to ferret it out, I'll say it here again.

When seeking a definition, you cannot hold the two following things fixed:

1. A basic principle or descriptive feature

2. A set of individual instances that are supposed to be included

One or the other has to go. So either we search through everything that has been tagged "role-playing game" historically and denote them as such as the definition, excluding whatever isn't them ... or we come up with some principle or feature and therefore are likely forced to dis-include some of the historical "role-playing things" and perhaps to include some things which have never been called "role-playing."

My own preference is to stick with #1 and throw out #2. This is the kind of thinking that led people to recognize that the term "reptile" is not actually meaningful in terms of creatures' features and apparent evolutionary history. It tends to make other people very angry because they really liked the term "reptile" or are annoyed that birds are now considered extant dinosaurs.

However, my own preference is not authoritative for purposes of defining role-playing. What I can do is suggest that people understand which of #1 or #2 is their own, personal priority, and to be very clear about it.

If one person proposes a definition based on #1 (a principle or feature), then that proposal cannot be falsified by citing some historical thing that was called "role-playing." The only criterion is whether the principle or feature is reasonable on whatever basis.

Similarly, if one person proposes a definition based on some set of historical activities that are called "role-playing," then it cannot be falsified by citing some activity that shares the same features. The only criterion is whether the initial grouping is reasonable on whatever basis.

Best,
Ron

(I say things about the SIS question here.)

-Vincent

Ron Edwards wrote: Similarly, if one person proposes a definition based on some set of historical activities that are called "role-playing," then it cannot be falsified by citing some activity that shares the same features. The only criterion is whether the initial grouping is reasonable on whatever basis.

Hi Chris,

It depends on the group who has authority over the definition.

Let's say that they decide ... oh ... that a direct lineage of designers is necessary.

Or let's say that it's a procedural thing and they require a traceable evolution from wargaming dice mechanics.

I bet no one on this website would be happy with either of those. But that's not the point - the point is that using the #2 meaning of "definition" is always going to be argument-by-authority. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't going to hold up well when a designated and recognized authoritative person or group isn't available.

And frankly, the people who are telling Sean "that won't work because it doesn't apply to solo play!" or similar are falling into that trap. They have already decided that "role-playing" must cover certain activities that they have in mind. Hence any argument based on principle is going to fail, if people are participating with pre-designated must-include activities in mind.

Best,
Ron

I'm one of those people.

Like I say, I'm comfortable with us by-principle defining "tabletop roleplaying game." And defining "roleplaying" in the Forge-default context of tabletop RPGs, as James says. No prob. I want a better definition than "has a GM, has no end conditions," but that's easy.

But "is a CRPG an RPG?" I think all we can legitimately say is "it's not a tabletop RPG, on account of [principled definition]."

So I guess my argument-by-authority is that we don't have authority. Other people out there in the world have as much claim to the unmodified term as we do.

Kind of like ketchup.

-Vincent

Ron Edwards wrote: And frankly, the people who are telling Sean "that won't work because it doesn't apply to solo play!" or similar are falling into that trap. They have already decided that "role-playing" must cover certain activities that they have in mind. Hence any argument based on principle is going to fail, if people are participating with pre-designated must-include activities in mind.

Hiya,

If it was specifically you, Simon, I would have said so. I do not ever use euphemisms ("people") to indicate a person; I name the person or I'm referring to a general trend. The solo-play issue is merely one example of a general point.

In your case, yes, you're discussing solo-play by principle, which forces us all to dissect "shared" in a constructive way. To paraphrase the state-of-discussion at the moment, as long as we're accepting Sean's "shared," then either solo-play isn't really solo, or it's not role-playing.

But your case is not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about argument-by-known-members (my #2), period. Quite a lot of that shows up in the earlier threads about defining RPGs ("That won't work! It doesn't include LARPs!" etc) and we all need to watch out for it here, if we're accepting the by-principle approach.

Best,
Ron

I was using 'shared' out of habit. The discussions about how important 'shared' is and what exactly it means are still going on in this and other threads. I'm agnostic about its importance right now: the crucial thing to me is that there are certain imaginative constructions going on as part of a game. This may ultimately require a social dimension to differentiate it fromgarden-variety imagination, but I don't have an opinion on that one way or another at this point.

Maybe we should be talking about Communaly Created, Jointly Created, or Co-Authored Imaginary Space.

Different forms of roleplayign game might then have different forms of shared imaginary space.


Simon Hibbs

Hi Simon,

That construction certainly tends toward my point of view, for whatever that's worth.

As long as we think of imagine-ing, rather than receiving, as long as we thinking of sharing in the two-way sense; and as long we remember all five components (hence including System), then I think SIS does fine as a term, though.

I can't conceive of any term that would not be subject to "I don't get it, that can't be right" interpretation from a person who was unwilling to investigate to that extent.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: As long as we think of imagine-ing, rather than receiving, as long as we thinking of sharing in the two-way sense; and as long we remember all five components (hence including System), then I think SIS does fine as a term, though.

I'm sorry that I can't respond to all of your wonderful replies. I find myself in a situation, where I don't have access to a computer all the time.

I think that the Meilahti Model is very good. It is also nice to notice that the Meilahti Model could be injected strait to the Big Model without trouble. Despite what the authors of Meilahti Model say, the two are very compatible. Too bad that the many people who responded to that thread did understand it and/or bashed it.

Anyway, Big Model tries to describe roleplaying, but it does not include a definition of a roleplaying game. To me this is strange. It would seem to be the most important bit. If we don't know what is it that we are trying to describe with a model, then we don't know very much. It seems to be though that a definition is implied. A fellow who thinks that computer games are roleplaying games, is bound to have problems with the model.

Hi, newsalor -

My two cents on that is that you're putting the cart before the horse. The only way to construct a useful definition IMO is by knowing what you want to describe. The definition doesn't tell you that, it rather (if successful) expresses it in a true and specifying (and perhaps also 'epistemologically useful' - that's a third debated criterion of definiton) manner.

So you get a split between people who say 'well, as long as you understand what's being talked about, who cares about the exact definition?', and people like me who think that the process of trying to arrive at a definition is both cognitively useful and an important part of a serious attempt to understand things. But I don't accuse people who can't define things of not knowing what they're talking about. Really obvious cases are art and mathematics: artists and mathematicians surely know what art and mathematics are much better than those who don't participate in those activities, on the average, yet 95% or more of both groups will contradict themselves and generally utter gibberish when trying to define their own activities.

I'd even grant that a clear understanding of what you're doing is far more important in some vague general sense of 'important' than the ability to conceptualize that activity clearly that comes out in a definition. It doesn't follow from that that the latter is useless or unimportant, however.

Vincent thinks we don't have authority to define a word in common usage. I on the other hand believe that we and they and all speakers of the language do have such authority, so long as we defend our definition in a principled way. If both sides in the argument can muster good reasons on behalf of their choice, then you sometimes reach an impasse which can only be decided by future data or advances in theory which make it clear which definition fits better into the edifice as a whole; but it's not a damning impasse in any sense, since both sides are users of the language and can understand where the other is coming from, provided that they explain themselves and are willing to listen to the explanations of others.

Hello Newsalor!

newsalor wrote: Anyway, Big Model tries to describe roleplaying, but it does not include a definition of a roleplaying game. To me this is strange. It would seem to be the most important bit. If we don't know what is it that we are trying to describe with a model, then we don't know very much. It seems to be though that a definition is implied. A fellow who thinks that computer games are roleplaying games, is bound to have problems with the model.

clehrich wrote: Bell makes this very slick move of making “ritual” in effect a verb: she calls this “ritualization.” Ritualization is the process by which a group, culture, or even individual projects some form of practice as somehow different from others. In particular, it is a means by which people reify (make objects out of) practices not inherently distinct from other practices. In short, ritual is not a thing; it doesn’t have a different ontological status [status with respect to being or not being a thing] than any other practice. But people treat ritual as though it had a radically different ontological status than other practices. That is, it’s the natives who make ritual into a thing; by treating ritual as a thing in scholarship, we simply sign on to local ideology and power structures, and don’t actually analyze the world as it is. Furthermore, by then debating the “right” meaning of the term, we perform our own ritualizations! We’re not just parroting native ritualization, but doing it ourselves in our own special way.

Silmenume wrote: Essentially he is saying that roleplay is a ritual and rituals can't be defined as things but as processes.

Permit me a quick point of clarification, please.

Sean wrote: I also think it's a stretch to suggest (as MJ did in another thread) that the writer or game designer is the 'other participant' in the space.