Quote from: SkargIt seems to me that the wargamers I know (self included) tend to be interested in the historical situation and that one of their main interests in playing historical wargames is to get an experience and perspective on the mindset of people in that historical situation. When we do approach the decisions in that wargame from an in-character perspective, we may be more or less roleplaying, but I'd still call the game a wargame.

Quote from: RPGPundit;991727You can argue, certainly, that in some wargames where, say, you are meant to try to put yourself in the head of Napoleon or Robert E. Lee or whatever, you are incorporating an element of role-play.  But I think that unless you are also making a character sheet for Napoleon, it's still a wargame with some role-play element, and not an RPG.

I quite agree with you on that. I wrote the above to quibble with the last part of what you wrote before :

Quote from: RPGPundit[No wargames] have the notion that you would immerse yourself in your character. If they do, to the point where you are expected to make choices not on what you as a player think is tactically best for winning the battle but on what the character would do, you are at that point playing an RPG.

So, nobody want to comment on my idea?

- Wargames have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" that are either laid out in the rules, or decided and agreed upon by all players before hand.

- Roleplaying games have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" defined by the player-characters from within the situation.

It might be generally true (although I can see a roleplaying game with a relatively objective win condition), but it doesn't seem like a defining difference.

Quote from: Telarus;991814So, nobody want to comment on my idea?

- Wargames have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" that are either laid out in the rules, or decided and agreed upon by all players before hand.

- Roleplaying games have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" defined by the player-characters from within the situation.

Seems like you have plenty of RPG sessions that can be one-shots, specificly module related or defined by what level you'll stop at. Even longer campaigns can be set around defeating a certain opponent or accomplishing some specific act.

Quote from: Telarus;991814So, nobody want to comment on my idea?

- Wargames have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" that are either laid out in the rules, or decided and agreed upon by all players before hand.

- Roleplaying games have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" defined by the player-characters from within the situation.

I've never played an RPG with a "win condition." Winning has always been beside the point. Maybe that's just me and the people I know, though.

Quote from: Telarus;991814So, nobody want to comment on my idea?

- Wargames have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" that are either laid out in the rules, or decided and agreed upon by all players before hand.

- Roleplaying games have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" defined by the player-characters from within the situation.

I can't really comment. I don't know enough about wargames to know whether there are exceptions to this rule.
I know for a fact that AD&D had tournament modules with win conditions, though.

Quote from: Telarus;991814So, nobody want to comment on my idea?

- Wargames have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" that are either laid out in the rules, or decided and agreed upon by all players before hand.

- Roleplaying games have "win conditions" or "objective conditions" defined by the player-characters from within the situation.

It's an clever try that usually matches, but it's only about one aspect, and I don't think it really makes a game an RPG or a wargame, nor matches all examples.

* Educational RPGs often have pre-defined VCs/objectives without being wargames, and still being mainly about experiencing a role, though they aren't open-ended RPGs like D&D etc.

* There are RPG adventures and campaigns that do have objectives or goals which can even be agreed upon by the players beforehand. In fact, one of the recurring divides in this forum is about GM's who design campaigns and adventures with goals and objectives for the PCs, and players who agree to accept what the GM has come up with for their group's objectives/goals, even if their PCs may not always know what those are at first, or if the PCs as written might likely prefer to do something else (in fact, some players think having your PC want to define and pursue their own objectives instead of conforming to the group can be condemed with the (mis-applied) label "My Guy Syndrome").

* While most wargames do have defined/agreed objectives, wargamers can be (and sometimes are) played without formal agreed VCs/objectives, and doing so doesn't make them not wargames.

I might tend to call a wargame also an RPG at the point where each player runs a specific character with some non-military aspects and goals, though I'm not sure the line is really clear there either. For example, there's an optional mode in the original wargame Squad Leader where players have one specific leader to be their main tracked character from battle to battle, which seems near where I'd draw the line (I'd still say that one's a wargame, but I have tweaked the play mode just a bit and run it as what I considered an RPG).

Cool, I get where you all are coming from. I'm basing this on my definition of "a game" (a period of play with defined rules in which the outcome is uncertain - but ultimately quantifiable).

With games like chess/poker/etc the uncertainty is resolved through play and the "outcome" after the play session is usually one of the predefined possible outcomes - a team or player "winning" (the specifics of this having been defined and agreed upon before play).

With games like D&D, & other RPGS, the outcome is uncertain (and ultimately quantifiable after the play session), but the questions of "have we the players accomplished our goals" is developed from within the play situation. The RPG players are defining their own goals (within the situation defined by the GM) - instead of relying on goals defined purely from an out-of-character/rules based perspective.

In an RPG session, the GM may think "they have to kill Villain X or they don't 'win'..." but the PCs may come up with a plan that neutralized Villain X without killing him. And the GM certainly didn't say to them "the goal of this play session is to kill Villain X" at the start of the session (unless this is a horrible railroad - and then aren't we basically playing a boardgame with an imaginary board??).

The GM sets out the conflicts, the PCs (as a "team") set their own goals and choose how to engage with the conflicts. We as players share our character's sense of accomplishment when an in-game objective is achieved because of the close association of our character with ourselves (immersion, etc). There are modern board-games that get close to this (RoboRally was a favorite of mine due to the 1 player = 1 robot setup, and all the quirky stuff that happens to the poor bots), but none of them assume a flexible 1-or-many session "campaign" with continuity.

Tournament-play RPGs almost edge back to the Wargaming side of things.... exactly because they had to add more objective "how to keep score" rules. And that's because you may be playing an RPG at the table you are sitting at, but you are COMPETING with all the other tables playing through the same module, and there were rules in place that you agreed to before beginning that defines which table will "Win".

The elements you are talking about are certainly there, interesting, and related to the question. However they don't map exactly to how I think of the definitions of game/wargame/RPG. e.g.:

* I don't define "game" as having a period or necessarily including an outcome, nor a quantifiable one. I do agree on it being "play" and having rules.
* Related to that, my experience of both RPGs and wargames (and board games) is that while there often are both agreed goals and often other goals invented by players for themselves, that those aren't fundamental to them being games, don't necessarily define or limit the type of game they are, and can be set aside when players (or any type of game) find aspects of play that are more interesting to them.

* Yes in an RPG often players invent their own goals or ignore spoon-fed ones, but there are also RPGs where formal goals are defined or even enforced to some degree, but to me that doesn't make it not an RPG (it just makes it a more constrained one). I might agree that the part of the game about fulfilling a forced objective is a boardgame-like element and not so much a roleplaying-like element, but depending on what it is, it could fit in an RPG (e.g. where the premise is a PC is a Knight sent by King Arthur to devote himself to seek the Holy Grail - taking that goal to heart could be a required condition and that could be a roleplaying element because the game is about roleplaying that - you're just not being given a choice about that part of your character - that might make it an RPG some people don't want to play, but it's still an RPG.) No?

Quote from: Telarus;992037The GM sets out the conflicts, the PCs (as a "team") set their own goals and choose how to engage with the conflicts. We as players share our character's sense of accomplishment when an in-game objective is achieved because of the close association of our character with ourselves (immersion, etc). There are modern board-games that get close to this (RoboRally was a favorite of mine due to the 1 player = 1 robot setup, and all the quirky stuff that happens to the poor bots), but none of them assume a flexible 1-or-many session "campaign" with continuity.

These seem to me mainly like common situations that nonetheless have ready exceptions and that don't define the type of game, e.g.:
* Players in sandboxes can ignore many GM conflicts/goals and also start their own conflicts.
* Some players also tend not to set their own goals and prefer to be told how to engage things by a GM, NPC boss, or PC leader, to some degree.
* There are board game players and wargamers who also identify/associate with whatever they represent in those games, and share a sense of accomplishment with that imaginary entity.
* There are examples of board games and wargames with flexible 1-or-many session campaigns with continuity. (e.g. Avalon HIll's Squad Leader, Gladiator, IIRC Wooden Ships & Iron Men, too.)

Quote from: Telarus;992037Tournament-play RPGs almost edge back to the Wargaming side of things.... exactly because they had to add more objective "how to keep score" rules. And that's because you may be playing an RPG at the table you are sitting at, but you are COMPETING with all the other tables playing through the same module, and there were rules in place that you agreed to before beginning that defines which table will "Win".

* I agree that Tournaments add a non-roleplaying element... but I'd tend to call that element just a "competitive" and/or "tournament" OOC/meta element. It wouldn't occur to me to call it a "wargaming" element or a "boardgame" element. And there is a "scorekeeping" aspect, and many/most wargames do also have that, but I don't think that's what has them be wargames.

By the way, there are PLENTY of skirmish level wargames where you play one and only one character, and they are unambiguously wargames.  For instance, among my collection I have at least two gladitorial combat games where you play a single character, and the game has no provisions for absolutely anything outside of combat -- not even naming gladiators.  They are purely about two poor chumps hacking each other to death.

So wargames can be RPGs but storygames never...okay.

Quote from: Voros;994170So wargames can be RPGs but storygames never...okay.

Wargames can't be storygames? That... seems fairly reasonable. Storygames would seem to me to be what happens when you shift the focus of an RPG away from the wargame aspects that an RPG retains.

Quote from: Voros;994170So wargames can be RPGs but storygames never...okay.

It about focus not mechanics whether it is a wargame, tabletop roleplaying game, or storygame.

Mister Tragically Hip is trying to derail yet another thread.  Don't let him.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;994003By the way, there are PLENTY of skirmish level wargames where you play one and only one character, and they are unambiguously wargames.  For instance, among my collection I have at least two gladitorial combat games where you play a single character, and the game has no provisions for absolutely anything outside of combat -- not even naming gladiators.  They are purely about two poor chumps hacking each other to death.

There are several solitaire wargames that I tend to relate to also as tactical roleplaying experiences. The situation is about managing your squad or submarine or whatever, and no other players and generally no extra-curricular activities and you generally stay on mission and fight things and manage damage and resources, but to me they conjure the experience of being in command and that's much of what I like about RPGs. I wouldn't categorize them as RPGs though. But if you wanted to, you could extend/expand them to be roleplaying games.