[Ah, the thread seems to have moved on and I don't want to derail, but I do want to address Wittgenstien and provide some of the references from which I built my definition...Also, noism has a great point... rpgs and story-games are definitely "related"... the author of the below article actually calls out the similarities between "games" and "stories" as one of his points.. but to also draw distinctions between them]

Valid points, rabalais (great nick, btw.. not too many are familiar with Gargantua and Pantagruel now-days). Although I believe he was using the German root "Spiel" which has various context and can be used as "Game", "Play", "Match", "Dalliance", "Acting" or even "Slackness" (Praise Bob!) depending on context. I find that this level of abstraction lines up with the modern meaning of "play" more than the specific type of play we call "games" in english.

Again though, as with scientific disciplines, it is useful to define the term while in the specific context of game design as much narrower than the general sense. I recommend you read this article, as the author goes quite in-depth on the subject (and specifically contrasts the modern term with Wittgenstein's usage). It's 6 pages, tho, so I've only quoted a section.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134922/what_is_a_game_an_excerpt_from_.php

QuoteTreating "what is a game?" as an ontological question will not settle it once and for all, although that is not to say that ontology doesn't have an important role in a philosophical investigation of games. There are in fact some rather crucial questions in the intersection between games and reality -- and particular that nebulous concept "virtual reality" -- that warrant addressing.

For the time being, though, we must set this domain of philosophy to one side in order to undertake a philosophical investigation as to what the unifying concept behind "game" might be given that we can so easily and confidently act as if we know what a game is, despite not actually agreeing on any particular answer to the question "what is a game?"

[snip]

In her 1974 philosophy paper "The Game Game", Midgley became only the second philosopher to tackle the question of "what is a game?" This paper, I'm sad to report, is largely unknown in both philosophical and game studies circles, despite its relevance to the foundational question in the latter domain's area of exploration.

The first philosopher to explore this space, Bernard Suits, initially approached the subject in a 1967 paper actually entitled "What is a Game?" which he later revised and expanded into his 1978 book The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia.

Sadly, Sarah Hoffman (2009) has suggested that among the philosophical community Suits' work remains largely unknown, and Midgley's paper is similarly quite obscure.

This is unfortunate, since Midgley and Suits between them have much to offer that is useful in decoding the game concept, and interestingly both of their approaches involve something of a swipe at another philosopher who is far more well-known -- Ludwig Wittgenstein. Indeed, Thomas Hurka in his 2005 introduction to Suits' The Grasshopper has suggested that Suit's book is "a precisely placed boot in Wittgenstein's balls."

Working towards a deeper understanding of language in his magnum opus, Philosophical Investigations (1953), Wittgenstein specifically singles out games as an example of what he calls family resemblance. He observes that the vast variety of games -- board games, card games, ball games and so forth -- have nothing specific common between them, but instead are tied together by a series of commonalities and relationships.

He relates this to the way in which members of a family display common traits -- a similar nose, or build, or hair color, for instance. It is precisely Wittgenstein's claim that "you will not see something that is common to all [games]" that Midgley and Suits take task with.

Suit's complaint is that Wittgenstein asks us to "look and see" if there is anything common in all things we call games, but then doesn't do so himself. Suits thus objects that Wittgenstein had "decided beforehand that games are indefinable", and indeed accuses Wittgenstein of believing in the "futility of attempting to define anything whatever".

Alas, Suits seems to have thoroughly misunderstood Wittgenstein's purposes, for despite the explicit reference to games it is a point about language that the Austrian philosopher was trying to make, namely that the way words come to be used does not originate in definitions; definitions are post-hoc justifications for the way words are used, and it is this usage that Wittgenstein insists is the genuine meaning of the word, not any definition we might propose.

Midgley accepts Wittgenstein's main point, but disagrees with his use of family resemblance to characterize the underlying concept. As she noted to me earlier this year (2010), words such as 'game':
"...have neither a single, fixed meaning (which was what Wittgenstein pointed out) nor merely a vague string of resembling meanings (as his idea of family resemblance suggested) but a definite shape, an underlying organic unity which is often mysterious but must be present in the background to account for e.g. their being usable as metaphors."

She observes, indeed, that Wittgenstein is quite dependent upon understanding the word "game" in a particularly subtle way, for without this he cannot make use of his idea of a "language game" which is a central concept in his later philosophy. This is only possible because we do have a general grasp of the concept of a "game" and can thus understand appeals to this concept in a wider context, such as in the case of Wittgenstein's language games.

In "The Game Game", Midgley (1974) draws from the work of Julius Kovesi to develop her argument. Kovesi had very similar issues with the apparent nebulosity of Wittgenstein's concept of "family resemblance", and his argument can be felt resonating in Midgley's paper. In his book Moral Notions (1967), he had been pursuing a rigorous argument counter to the attacks on moral philosophy by A.J. Ayer and G.E. Moore and others that had attained considerable notoriety in the first half of the twentieth century.

Kovesi demonstrated the relationship between needs and concepts by the example of particular kinds of furniture, claiming that provided you understand the need that (say) a chair embodies (i.e. to support a person while sitting), you know what characteristics are relevant in distinguishing a chair from other kinds of objects [Or, as the Buddhists put it, "It ain't a chair while it's on fire" -Tel]. This example generalizes to other cases. As Midgley observes (directly following Kovesi) "in general, provided you understand the need, you know what characteristics to look for. To know what a chair is just is to understand that need."

Thus -- despite disagreements over the details concerning games -- we are all perfectly able to deploy the concept of a game precisely because there is an underlying unity to it. It is because games meet human needs (and, for that matter, animal needs), and because human nature has its own structure, that we can identify what constitutes a game. Those needs that a game meets are precisely what is involved in understanding what the concept 'game' must mean.

One way of exploring our need to play is to dig deep into the biology of the gaming experience.

[snip a fascinating 2 pages worth of how biology interfaces with games]

The anthropologist Thomas Malaby has taken a particular interest in play and games, and has published a number of fascinating papers on the subject (2007, 2009), with particular reference to time he spent studying the role of play in contemporary Greek culture. One of Malaby's key observations concerning games are that they are processes, sustained by human practice. But what kind of process?

He notes that "Games are, at root, about disorder", recognizing a central role for contingency in games, and suggesting that the incredible unpredictability of our everyday experience bridges the gap between games and life in general: games contrive unpredictability, but life is by its very nature always already unpredictable. Contriving contingency is one of the things that games excel at, since games which are readily predictable rapidly become boring.

The element of uncertainty, while crucial, is not the whole of the matter. Malaby (2007) observes that a second crucial aspect of games is their capacity to generate meaning. The many kinds of situation that can occur within a game (including but in no way restricted to the goal states and final outcomes, such as winning) happen in never wholly predictable ways and are "subject to interpretations by which more or less stable culturally shared meanings are generated."

This generation of meaning is a critical aspect of the game experience, and it is thoroughly open-ended. Not only can the way games are played alter within any particular social group, but the meanings that a game can generate can also change.

This appreciation of the meaning of the internal states of games is crucial to understanding the play of a great many games, and particular of digital games. The more complex games are not always undertaken for the sake of winning, even if this forms part of the framework of motivation.

No, what is rewarding in a game is the interpretability of the states the rules of the game throw into the player's awareness. Nowhere is this more clear than with a game like The Sims (Maxis, 2000) or the game I designed with Gregg Barnett, Ghost Master (Sick Puppies, 2003), where a great deal of the player's enjoyment is in the stories they tell about the little people running around on screen.

There is an important connection at this point with stories. Stories too are processes, and like Malaby's games they aim to be compelling or engaging, and possess a characteristic capacity to generate meaning by their internal states. There is a temptation to say that, unlike games, the content of stories is fixed, static -- but this reaction is premature.

Perhaps the most important states generated by a story are the emotional states of the participant --the reader of a book, the viewer of a play -- and these do indeed change, and the meaning of the internal states of the story also change (for instance, upon seeing the end of a movie, we may have a different understanding of what happens in the middle).

Furthermore, uncertainty is central to stories. It is oft said that "stories are about conflict", but this is a gross simplification. True, conflict is a common storytelling device, but there are many stories without express conflicts, such as love stories which rest upon misunderstandings, rags-to-riches tales of outrageous fortune, and adventure stories, all of which sustain the reader's interest by maintaining curiosity.

What is common to all well-regarded stories is uncertainty, the desire to discover what happens next, and conflict (i.e. competition) is just one of many ways that uncertainty can be generated. All this underlines the affinity between stories and games, and emphasizes the connectivity between play and art.

Malaby ultimately defines a game as "a semibounded and socially legitimate domain of contrived contingency that generates interpretable outcomes." This is something of a mouthful... Much of the wording goes to acknowledging that there is a special space that play occurs within -- what is often termed the magic circle -- but that it is porous ("semibounded").

The key point is that games are about contriving contingency to be interpreted. This is also true of stories. It is equally true of many other forms of art that are not expressly narrative in nature; I am unsure how Jackson Pollock's work is to be understood if it is not a form of contrived contingency intended to be open to interpretation.

The perspective on play presented in Malaby's work is refreshingly distinct from the usual tropes in game studies, for Malaby (2009) insists on seeing it not as a state (which would make it just a different aspect of a game) but as a disposition. He asserts, with reference to William James (1961) that "play becomes an attitude characterized by a readiness to improvise in the face of an ever-changing world that admits of no transcendently ordered account."

Malaby thus recognizes that when we play -- in games or in life -- we are adopting a particular attitude towards our activity, one that is fundamentally different from the attitude expected in the formal games of culture (such as the institution of money or bureaucracy) which "aim to bring about determinate outcomes".

Thus, following Malaby, games can be understood as processes that utilize uncertainty in particular ways to create compelling and engaging experiences, while play is best understood as a willingness to improvise in the face of uncertainty. Play is thus an attitude we adopt towards uncertainty, and games processes that may make use of this disposition, contriving, simulating or even suppressing contingency so that we might interpret what results. Paradoxically, games on this reading need not be undertaken in a playful spirit, even though the notion of a game may depend upon an understanding of play.

There are a lot of other great expositions on this (this one comes to mind: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatIsaGame.shtml ). Hope that was an interesting wall-o-text.

Quote from: rabalias;569990For someone who was earlier getting quite annoyed about me claiming that you were saying something you never said...

As I said (but apparently you didn't bother reading again): I'm applying the definition you proposed. If you don't like the implications of that definition you need to change it.

QuoteBy "play a role" I mean something along the lines of "put yourself in a character's shoes and say what they say and do what they do, within the restrictions imposed by the game".

Here, for example, you revise your definition so that an RPG requires spoken words. So Super Mario Bros. isn't an RPG because it doesn't have dialogue. Fair enough.

Risk and Arkham Horror, of course, still qualify as RPGs under your new definition.

QuoteAs a matter of fact though, I do know someone who has run Arkham Horror as a roleplaying game on more than one occasion. I guess they probably fiddled the rules a bit, but not much; the main distinction was that they were, uh, roleplaying.

As you admit here for Arkham Horror.

Which just brings us back to my original point: The current definition you've proposed includes Risk, Arkham Horror, and the anniversary edition of Halo (which includes spoken dialogue as part of the game) as roleplaying games.

You need to either further refine your definition or you need to accept that your definition does not match the way the term "roleplaying game" is used in actual practice.

If you're interested in finding a definition which fits actual practice, my suggestion would be to focus on (a) the difference between a game where players are assigned a particular role (as in Clue) and roleplaying games. And (b) the difference between a game in which players are capable of roleplaying extensively (like Arkham Horror or Knizia's Lord of the Rings) and a roleplaying game.

Quote from: rabalias;569993My experience of the latter has been that some of them really aren't all that different from trad RPGs. Apocalypse World, for instance, has a GM, who does prep in advance to work out the sort of crap he's going to be throwing at the players.

That's because Apocalypse World is an RPG, not an STG. Its mechanics are non-traditional, but almost universally roleplaying mechanics (i.e., in using the mechanics the players are making choices as if they were their characters; the mechanics are associated). And if it has any narrative control mechanics whatsoever, they're minor enough that I don't recall them from my experience playing the game 8 months ago.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;570001As I said (but apparently you didn't bother reading again): I'm applying the definition you proposed. If you don't like the implications of that definition you need to change it.



Here, for example, you revise your definition so that an RPG requires spoken words. So Super Mario Bros. isn't an RPG because it doesn't have dialogue. Fair enough.

Risk and Arkham Horror, of course, still qualify as RPGs under your new definition.



As you admit here for Arkham Horror.

Which just brings us back to my original point: The current definition you've proposed includes Risk, Arkham Horror, and the anniversary edition of Halo (which includes spoken dialogue as part of the game) as roleplaying games.

You need to either further refine your definition or you need to accept that your definition does not match the way the term "roleplaying game" is used in actual practice.

If you're interested in finding a definition which fits actual practice, my suggestion would be to focus on (a) the difference between a game where players are assigned a particular role (as in Clue) and roleplaying games. And (b) the difference between a game in which players are capable of roleplaying extensively (like Arkham Horror or Knizia's Lord of the Rings) and a roleplaying game.



That's because Apocalypse World is an RPG, not an STG. Its mechanics are non-traditional, but almost universally roleplaying mechanics (i.e., in using the mechanics the players are making choices as if they were their characters; the mechanics are associated). And if it has any narrative control mechanics whatsoever, they're minor enough that I don't recall them from my experience playing the game 8 months ago.

Justin, you're admirably defending to the death your entirely arbitrary classification system, but it isn't terribly convincing. Risk doesn't involve playing any sort of role - it's almost entirely abstract: you represent, at best, a faceless and characterless generalissimo, but in most people's game you are simply representing, and represented by, a colour. It is the same for any board game your could mention. Sure, I suppose there are some people who do a little voice for the little hat, or walk the little dog, on the Monopoly board, but in practice most people don't do that and it is totally tangential to the game - and you know it. At best when people play board games they talk about "I" and "me" as if the piece is an avatar of themselves. There is no role being played.

Your introduction of computer games is done in pretty bad faith: "role playing game" has its own meaning in that context and we, in any event, clearly talking about social tabletop games which do not take place through the medium of a computer.

Finally, your analysis of Apocalypse World just shows how empty the distinction is, because you have to resort to special pleading to escape the fact that it could easily fit into either of your categories, as could, really, any traditional role playing game or "story game": more so because it's not even the case that every group plays such games in the same way.

Quote from: Telarus;570000[Ah, the thread seems to have moved on and I don't want to derail, but I do want to address Wittgenstien and provide some of the references from which I built my definition...Also, noism has a great point... rpgs and story-games are definitely "related"... the author of the below article actually calls out the similarities between "games" and "stories" as one of his points.. but to also draw distinctions between them]

Interesting! I doubt that our little discussion here can do justice to the depth of analysis that the article you quoted has gone into. If I get time later on I'll click through the links you provided. I think for now I'll just say thanks for providing some fascinating reading material.

QuoteAgain though, as with scientific disciplines, it is useful to define the term while in the specific context of game design as much narrower than the general sense.

Re "in the specific context of game design", I suppose it depends on what kind of game you're trying to design. Certainly, I know the author of WtDiG put quite a bit of time into thinking about the design of that (I'll keep calling it this for ease of reference, but please don't take it as an invitation to further definitional argument!) game to heighten certain aspects of play and and eliminate others. One way or t'other it doesn't seem to make much difference whether it's a "game" or whether what she was engaged in was "game design" or something else; but certainly those who have played it believed they were taking part in a game.

Quote(great nick, btw.. not too many are familiar with Gargantua and Pantagruel now-days)

Thanks! However, I must reluctantly admit that the source of the name isn't anywhere near as erudite as this... it's take from the WH40K universe, specifically a character I played in it. Maybe the WH40K authors took it from Gargantua and Pantagruel.

Quote from: noisms;570011Justin, you're admirably defending to the death your entirely arbitrary classification system, but it isn't terribly convincing. Risk doesn't involve playing any sort of role - it's almost entirely abstract: you represent, at best, a faceless and characterless generalissimo, but in most people's game you are simply representing, and represented by, a colour. It is the same for any board game your could mention. Sure, I suppose there are some people who do a little voice for the little hat, or walk the little dog, on the Monopoly board, but in practice most people don't do that and it is totally tangential to the game - and you know it. At best when people play board games they talk about "I" and "me" as if the piece is an avatar of themselves. There is no role being played.

Your introduction of computer games is done in pretty bad faith: "role playing game" has its own meaning in that context and we, in any event, clearly talking about social tabletop games which do not take place through the medium of a computer.

Finally, your analysis of Apocalypse World just shows how empty the distinction is, because you have to resort to special pleading to escape the fact that it could easily fit into either of your categories, as could, really, any traditional role playing game or "story game": more so because it's not even the case that every group plays such games in the same way.

I don't think I can add much to this, or indeed to Noism's previous post. If there was a +1 button I would be pushing it now.

As it happens, yesterday I purchased the "Varsity Edition" of High School Drama, which bills itself as "a comedic power structure building game with strong role-playing elements." From later in the rules booklet: "While your main student's attributes are important, you really should pick the student you think you'll have the most fun playing, since getting into character and role-playing your actions and reactions is what makes HSD the most fun." For the record, strictly from the mechanical point of view the available characters with the highest attribute totals in the game are Cheerleader and Goth Chick.

(While looking it up on BoardGameGeek, I also found an image of this combo...)

OK, how about this:

A game in which each player necessarily plays one or more roles, and the decisions made in-character affect the game's outcome.

Shoot it full of holes.

Quote from: noisms;570011Sure, I suppose there are some people who do a little voice for the little hat, or walk the little dog, on the Monopoly board...

Okay. So here we have noisms saying that you must either talk in a character voice or physically act out your character or you're not playing a roleplaying game.

I'll be honest, I think you've overshot here: Rabalias was proposing definitions which were far too wide. You're proposing a definition which suggests, IME, that the vast majority of people playing AD&D, for example, aren't playing a roleplaying game.

Quote... but in practice most people don't do that and it is totally tangential to the game - and you know it.

Oh, I absolutely agree. Which is, of course, why I don't think rabalias' definition is correct.

But I think you've got an interesting line of thought here: Exactly why is the roleplaying tangential to, say, Arkham Horror but non-tangential in, say, Call of Cthulhu?

(Assuming, of course, that we're not sticking with your abortive "it's not roleplaying unless you're talking in a little voice" definition.)

QuoteYour introduction of computer games is done in pretty bad faith: "role playing game" has its own meaning in that context and we, in any event, clearly talking about social tabletop games which do not take place through the medium of a computer.

You want to limit the definition to just tabletop games? Sure.

So, at the moment, the definition being supported by rabalias and noisms (since rabalias has +1'd your post) is:

"A roleplaying game is a tabletop game in which roleplaying -- putting yourself in a character's shoes, saying what they say, and doing what they do within the restrictions imposed by the game -- happens. This roleplaying must involve the player either speaking in a character voice and/or physically acting out their character."

QuoteJustin, you're admirably defending to the death your entirely arbitrary classification system,

I haven't actually brought up my definition in awhile now. Right now we're discussing your definition. More specifically, we're discussing the inadequacies of it. Would you care to revise it in order to make it more accurate? Or are you comfortable with your current "people playing D&D aren't playing an RPG unless they're using character voices and/or physically acting out the actions of their characters" position?

Quote from: The Butcher;570122A game in which each player necessarily plays one or more roles, and the decisions made in-character affect the game's outcome.

Shoot it full of holes.

Would you agree that Diplomacy, Arkham Horror, and Clue are roleplaying games? They fit the literal interpretation of this definition. Can the concept of "in-character decision" needs to be clarified in a way which distinguished the decisions of Arkham Horror from the decisions of Call of Cthulhu?

*scans thread briefly*

So how does all this shit help me design better games?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;570238Okay. So here we have noisms saying that you must either talk in a character voice or physically act out your character or you're not playing a roleplaying game...

...Right now we're discussing your definition. More specifically, we're discussing the inadequacies of it. Would you care to revise it in order to make it more accurate? Or are you comfortable with your current "people playing D&D aren't playing an RPG unless they're using character voices and/or physically acting out the actions of their characters" position?

I don't think there is much point in continuing the discussion if you're going to purposefully misinterpret and misrepresent what I've said. You're an intelligent person, so you clearly know that isn't my position at all.

To re-state my point, which I will stress was addressed to the specific issue of where the distinction between Risk and a "role playing game" lies, in the context of rabalias' definition: in Risk or Monopoly it is true that people occasionally do little voices for the characters or pretend to be a generalissimo, but that does not in themselves make those games role playing games. This is because those games are not predicated on the players having those roles, or indeed any roles. And moreover, when the vast majority of people play those games, they at most view their piece or pieces as avatars of themselves, but in most circumstances just manipulate them like pawns in chess. They are not really roles.

For what it's worth, though, I haven't even brought up a definition, and to be perfectly frank I view the idea that it matters as utterly laughable. The act of defining what a role playing game is, versus what a story game is, is far more damaging to the hobby then the lack of a clear definition in my opinion.

Ultimately, indeed, I don't particularly have a problem with the notion that Risk, Monopoly, Halo or even noughts-and-crosses could be played as role playing games if people see fit. I'm relatively secure in the blind faith that this won't bring down D&D as we know it.

Quote from: The Butcher;570122OK, how about this:

A game in which each player necessarily plays one or more roles, and the decisions made in-character affect the game's outcome.

Shoot it full of holes.

I would draw the line, if one must be drawn, at games without a GM. Or where hotswapping the GM role is part of the game.

But i have yet to see a decent consistent defintion of what a traditional rpg is either. So definitions aren't meaningful.

Quote from: chaosvoyager;570256So how does all this shit help me design better games?

Call a spade a spade, and don't screw with your potential customers' expectations. If you are designing a story game, call it what it is. If you are designing a role playing game, or acquiring a traditional RPG IP, don't start injecting narrative metagame bullshit while clamoring to whoever wants to hear it that "ze game remains ze same".

Quote from: Benoist;570386Call a spade a spade, and don't screw with your potential customers' expectations. If you are designing a story game, call it what it is. If you are designing a role playing game, or acquiring a traditional RPG IP, don't start injecting narrative metagame bullshit while clamoring to whoever wants to hear it that "ze game remains ze same".

Can you name a single game where this is the case? Where a story game seems to masquerade as a traditional role playing game and hence confound people's expectations? Because I think this is a mythical scenario. Most "story games" make it fairly clear what they're about. And let's not forget they are usually played by only a tiny portion of die-hards anyway.

The only example where I think this bait-and-switch was actually a problem was the oWoD games (don't know much about the new ones), which had traditional RPG mechanics but were obsessed with getting everybody to "tell a story". But I think that was more a case of Ron Edwards-style incoherence than anything else.

EDIT: Or are you aiming a dig at D&D 4e here?

Quote from: noisms;570261For what it's worth, though, I haven't even brought up a definition, and to be perfectly frank I view the idea that it matters as utterly laughable.

I can't quite figure out if you actually revel in ignorance and stupidity... or if you're just a coward who realized he couldn't meaningfully define RPGs in a way that wouldn't distinguish them from STGs.

But I am comfortable in saying that your attempted semantic quibbling between "classification" and "definition" is pathetically transparent. So we do know for a certainty that you're a liar.

Disappointing. I thought it possible you might actually be capable of participating in an intellectual conversation.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;570432I can't quite figure out if you actually revel in ignorance and stupidity... or if you're just a coward who realized he couldn't meaningfully define RPGs in a way that wouldn't distinguish them from STGs.

But I am comfortable in saying that your attempted semantic quibbling between "classification" and "definition" is pathetically transparent. So we do know for a certainty that you're a liar.

Disappointing. I thought it possible you might actually be capable of participating in an intellectual conversation.

Blimey. Might I be so brave (pun intended) as to suggest you are slightly over-invested in this?

There is no semantic quibble involved between "classification" and "definition" - this isn't a court of law. I'm using the words interchangeably, in layman's terms. There is no point in having either a classification or a definition of RPG, story game, "traditional RPG", or anything else in my view. The people who know what they are, know what they are, inasmuch as it suits them to know, and any definition would be arbitrary and restrictive and probably fail to capture a whole host of nuances.

For instance, for Benoist there is a distinction between role playing games and story games, and for him that distinction is important and he will make decisions about games accordingly. For me the distinction does not really exist and is not very important, and likewise, I will make decisions about games accordingly.

There is absolutely nothing "cowardly" about recognising this. "I know it when I see it" is good enough for plenty of definitions in a variety of legal settings, after all - and if we allow judges discretion in how they interpret terms, I hardly think we are bring about the apocalypse of the hobby if we do the same for its participants.