Quote from: Marleycat;755883Uh, Wat?

I've been in an argument where someone tried to claim the HG Wells Little Wars was an RPG, therefore RPGs were over a hundred years old. This is part of why I'm interested in the Pundit's efforts to distinguish RPGs from Story games...  I'm tired of this fruitless, pointless ambiguity.

By their logic, checkers is chess because it's on a checker board and uses pieces. Oh, it's also role-playing because you're assuming the role of an invisible commander of the pieces, playing to a goal that is beyond the scope of any piece.

Related, but not in response to Marleycat... I played games with my GI Joes and Transformers as a kid. I made plots, stories, and played out scenarios. It wasn't a role-playing game, because when I graduated into role-playing games, I had to figure it out from scratch. They are related activities (creative, using characters, generating plots) but not the same animal.

So I think what separates RPGs from simple play is the structure involved.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;755987I've been in an argument where someone tried to claim the HG Wells Little Wars was an RPG, therefore RPGs were over a hundred years old. This is part of why I'm interested in the Pundit's efforts to distinguish RPGs from Story games...  I'm tired of this fruitless, pointless ambiguity.

By their logic, checkers is chess because it's on a checker board and uses pieces. Oh, it's also role-playing because you're assuming the role of an invisible commander of the pieces, playing to a goal that is beyond the scope of any piece.

Eeesh, no kidding.  Or back in college days, where the UMass-Boston SF Club was our crew's hangout, and we'd turn games like Nuclear War into melodrama.  "You have betrayed me for the last time, you jackal!  Feel the wrath of the Royal Lithuanian Strategic Nuclear Forces!  Triple yield!  Triple yield!"

We joked that we'd turned Nuke War, Car Wars and other such games into RPGs, but our blather didn't make it so.

Quote from: Ravenswing;756172Eeesh, no kidding.  Or back in college days, where the UMass-Boston SF Club was our crew's hangout, and we'd turn games like Nuclear War into melodrama.  "You have betrayed me for the last time, you jackal!  Feel the wrath of the Royal Lithuanian Strategic Nuclear Forces!  Triple yield!  Triple yield!"

We joked that we'd turned Nuke War, Car Wars and other such games into RPGs, but our blather didn't make it so.

I used to roleplay escape from Colditz. Each of my little men had a preferred method of escape a name and a couple of quirks. I alway remember when Polowski was caught by an apell roll call just as I was lining up a staff car escape and he flipped and went all Do or Die on me... or Schmitt who's own father had servers it the trenches and refused to shoot a man in the back even if he was fleeing.

Nearly all the home brew boardgames we turned out have strong role play aspects. Basically any game where given a standard circumstance you have a couple of different options to choose from can be role played.
In Arkham Horror do you charge in with reckless abandon and let the dice fall where they may or do you take time to build up an unassailable position,  In Tannhauser do you sacrifice yourself so the Allied forces can be eliminated? etc etc

Quote from: jibbajibba;756195I used to roleplay escape from Colditz. Each of my little men had a preferred method of escape a name and a couple of quirks.

I do the same sorts of things with various wargames I play. It's hard not to get into the 'character' of the army and certain heroes.
Warhammer Fantasy Battles always brought that out in spades and any smaller skirmish games like Song of Blades and Heroes plays a lot more fun if I drop the straight up competition angle and play more to the motivations of the particular warband.
Games like WFB aren't  RPGs... but they can be played to where they feel a lot like one... just like RPGs can be played where they feel more like skirmish wargames.

Here is another question, do they need to be unique?

Quote from: jibbajibba;756195I used to roleplay escape from Colditz. Each of my little men had a preferred method of escape a name and a couple of quirks. I alway remember when Polowski was caught by an apell roll call just as I was lining up a staff car escape and he flipped and went all Do or Die on me... or Schmitt who's own father had servers it the trenches and refused to shoot a man in the back even if he was fleeing.

Nearly all the home brew boardgames we turned out have strong role play aspects. Basically any game where given a standard circumstance you have a couple of different options to choose from can be role played.
In Arkham Horror do you charge in with reckless abandon and let the dice fall where they may or do you take time to build up an unassailable position,  In Tannhauser do you sacrifice yourself so the Allied forces can be eliminated? etc etc

But the key thing is, without the RP, you are still playing those games. It is not a key feature of any of them that role playing be involved. Whereas with RPGs roleplaying a character is a key feature of the game and arguably if you stop doing that (however one defines RP) you are no longer playing a roleplaying game. So for the key feature of RPGs is the ability to try anything as the character you are playing. I wouldn't want to reduce it to that (there is a lot more to RPGs than that alone). It is however the thing that struck me when I first played and why I kept coming back to it.

Quote from: dragoner;756271Here is another question, do they need to be unique?

They don't need to be. But they clearly do offer a different experience from a board game, movie, or video game. I am not sure you can sum up that difference in one item. I feel like there is a cluster of qualities that separate RPGs from other things.

The problem though is definitions of RPG are usually self serving.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;756275The problem though is definitions of RPG are usually self serving.

Another might be representing rpg's as special snowflake when they are just another game might be turning people away who otherwise might be interested in playing. Sort of like in Zero Charisma when the one guy says "it's just a game" and the other is like "no, it's ancient blah blah blah". Inclusion vs exclusion.

Quote from: dragoner;756279Another might be representing rpg's as special snowflake when they are just another game might be turning people away who otherwise might be interested in playing. Sort of like in Zero Charisma when the one guy says "it's just a game" and the other is like "no, it's ancient blah blah blah". Inclusion vs exclusion.

I think one can acknowledge what makes an activity with others without becoming a zealot though. Sure if your in everyone's face like the guy from zero charisma, that is an issue. But it is useful to know how to describe RPGs to people. That doesnt mean you need to crap on other activities in the process, it isnt a zero sum game between activities. Just because a car can drive 200 mile per hour and a DVD can't, it doesnt make watching movies a worse hobby than nascar.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;756282I think one can acknowledge what makes an activity with others without becoming a zealot though.

Yes, but it doesn't always play out that way, look at the clinging to "geek culture" on rpg.net, enworld, etc.; it does get represented as special snowflake. Even here, I can list a few posts over line in just the last few days.

Quote from: Simlasa;756201Games like WFB aren't  RPGs... but they can be played to where they feel a lot like one... just like RPGs can be played where they feel more like skirmish wargames.

This can't be said enough.

Quote from: dragoner;756284Yes, but it doesn't always play out that way, look at the clinging to "geek culture" on rpg.net, enworld, etc.; it does get represented as special snowflake. Even here, I can list a few posts over line in just the last few days.

Certainly, but everything on the internet is like that, it isn't just gaming or geek related forums. I am just talking about being able to identify some of the things that make RPGs different from other similar activities. To me that is totally reasonable provided it isn't being used to win other arguments (and i completely agree it often is, which is why I said unfortunately definitions of rpg are often very self serving). So while there is the extreme of people who narrowly define RPGs and try to make it this thing that can't be compared to anything else, there is the other extreme of people saying it is indistuinshable from other activities. I mean it is okay to identify the things that make gaming special to us without going over the deep end. If I am talking about other things I enjoym and someone asks me why, I will usually try to find the few things that set that activity apart for me.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;756289If I am talking about other things I enjoym and someone asks me why, I will usually try to find the few things that set that activity apart for me.

Yes, making up your own world for example, great fun. I was just mentioning the non-unique viewpoint isn't necessarily bad.

Quote from: Marleycat;755479They cause a bunch of 40-50 year old men to enter frothing at the mouth rages on the internet if they decide you're not playing pretend elves correctly?

That my thought.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;756273But the key thing is, without the RP, you are still playing those games. It is not a key feature of any of them that role playing be involved. Whereas with RPGs roleplaying a character is a key feature of the game and arguably if you stop doing that (however one defines RP) you are no longer playing a roleplaying game. So for the key feature of RPGs is the ability to try anything as the character you are playing.

Emphasis mine.

So stipulated, but that's not the OP's question.  The OP's question was what unique features RPGs had that set them apart from other games.  Since one can plainly RP in many board games -- and indeed some games encourage you to do so -- RP alone is nothing unique.