(This is a based on an earlier draft entry. I thought it'd be better to repost with edits than to edit the original.)

This goal of this post isn't to define RPGs. Rather it's to provide a categorical survey of defining characteristics, as suggested by various observers.

First note that all games except a very few have elements of freeform, and even those that don't still have a fiction; otherwise, they are merely (virtual) kinetic art. (By the first I mean, very few games tell you precisely what to do at every step. Chutes and Ladders does. Chess and Monopoly do not. By the second I mean that the game proposes a set of meanings--often the concept of "winning and losing"--that have no real impact outside the game.)

So what is an RPG? What distinguishes it from other games? Markus Montola has proposed some criteria for roleplaying. An earlier discussion on rec.games.frp.advocacy also comes to mind.

Lea Crowe wrote:

Specifically, I think, a wargame does not concern itself with "literary" issues: character, plot, mood, etc. In a wargame, the action is all. [1]

This may be a side point, but in the majority of (modern) wargames, action is delimited by the rules, rather than merely being guided by them. For example, you can only use the tactics of spying, seduction and assassination if there are rules for them -- you can't just come up with a "spy" unit, any more than you can arrange a Mafia hit on someone in Monopoly. [2]

Lea's first paragraph refers what I'll dub the thematic or aesthetic criterion. It's been a problem for RPGs for a long time. Arguably this criterion underlies GNS (in the sense that aesthetic goals are what GNS is about instead of formalism and procedures). It's also related to some of Markus Montola's criteria.

The second paragraph is the freeform procedure criterion. I think this is a weak criterion for RPGs but it's advanced frequently. Essentially it's the criterion which says that the vision of the world overrides formal rules, or rather the vision of the world and how it can be acted on by the players cannot be encapsulated in formal rules.

In response to Lea, I added:

--Wargames generally have unambiguously defined "victory conditions" as part of the rules. RPG's generally don't. [3]

--Wargames have well-defined conditions for when the game ends. RPG's generally don't. [4]

The third criterion, which I proposed, is the motivational criterion. The claim here is that RPGs do not provide clearcut purpose, within the game, to guide player "moves". Consider: tennis, within the game, is motivated by scoring points and winning the game/set/match. (The goal of winning the match might conceivably override the goal of winning the game. As e.g. if you make shots which your opponent can score on provided he or she exhausts herself. But there is a unitary goal guiding your strategy, tactics, and technique/skill.) Outside the game, tennis may be guided by things like trying to impress someone on the sidelines or not making your boss look bad. But the goal is in the fiction of the game and the metagame goals are achieved via the game fiction.

By this criterion, an RPG explicitly does not have a formal goal in the fiction. I think this is an essential criterion, but it is sometimes excluded (generally only provided freeform criterion is satisfied; otherwise you have a closed system that becomes boardgame-like).

The fourth criterion, above, is the endgame criterion, but I think it's been basically disproved. At most it's a special case of the third criterion. Nevertheless it's still expected by many that RPGs will either go on indefinitely, or end only when some non-formal condition is reached, such as general agreement that all the "story arcs" have been played out.

[The rest of this post remains highly sketchy. Sorry.]

Now compare: pictionary, charades, the imagine-a-journey game, etc.

added: note that I don't use the word role above. So let's read what Jonas Dagar has to say about "not an RPG" and Wittgenstein. I find it very exceedingly useful to imagine that "these games" are not being called "RPGs" or even "storytelling games". These terms imply motivation and may (1) constrict play and (2) give a designer an excuse not to really explain their game. Charades doesn't have that problem. Nor does Werewolf. So what are "these games"?

Also look at this rpg.net thread about Capes.

This is prompted by a current thread at theRPGsite, where I took Levi to task for bringing up "Lumpley Principle"-esque definitions.

Anyway, I'm going to make my own set of definitions, not as a bid to impose them on the rest of the world, nor as an attempt to "interpret" the essential meanings of terms as used in Forge/Story-Games circles. These definitions may be influenced by earlier ones but they're completely de novo. Also, they're just a stepping stone to talking about the underlying concepts as they relate to design and play, in less jargonistic fashion.

Here goes.

System: the formal rules governing the distribution of authority in an RPG, and the transformation of participant declarations into game-world "facts". Systems are concerned with explicit rights and procedures.

Paradigm or ethos: a collection of common or mutually-complementary understandings regarding the responsibilities of the participants and the purpose of play.

Even these definitions aren't so important in their particulars as they allow us to talk about these things separately in design and play. In design, they're fully distinguishable. A rule that says, "The GM may not declare a conflict without the agreement of the players" is formally the same as "the players may veto any conflict proposed by the GM". Both are part of the system. A "rule" that says "The GM should avoid killing player-characters unless they do something stupid" isn't a part of the system, because it doesn't formally address rights or procedures: it doesn't alter the fact that, presumably, the GM has ultimate say over life & death, or at least the right to over-rule the results of other procedures in the system. But it is an attempt to impart or explain a paradigm or ethos.

As a bit of an aside, an explicit paradigm or ethos may or may not be necessary. As I've argued in the past, many games do have a paradigm that guides play even though we tend not to be aware of it. Namely: winning and losing, concepts that are seemingly meaningless outside the "game-space", but which we allow ourselves to care about. The only exceptions to this are activities such as gambling and professional sports, which do have extrinsic outputs that clearly intrude on "real life". But most of the games we play are not of this nature.

Still other games operate on sub-cultural paradigms that barely need explaining to the initiated--and, in any case, can't be fully explained any more than other cultural activities, whose "purposes" and "language" are diverse, and constantly being transformed through use. For example, "going to a club to see a show" has so many possible functions, each understood in varying degrees by different subsets of the club attendees, that one ought to resort to a meta-paradigm of sociality, the idea of a "scene", if one wants to capture the "aboutness" of the activity. (I've never played a LARP, but I'm pretty sure this idea will ring a bell to those who have.) I think it's undeniable that tabletop can have the same quality. In fact most interactions between humans have this quality, but RPGs are one of those activities that can thrive on it. Furthermore there's a wide range between "using an RPG as a general excuse to hang out with friends" and "using an RPG as the focus for a particular mode of socializing". Even if one did seek a method to group the varies "modes" into categories, that would not in itself allow us to directly impart a specific mode.

Finally, some people wish to assert that certain paradigms are "natural" and don't need to be taught. Personally I think this is more likely to be true of "playing pretend" than various varieties of "telling a story", but that's neither here or there: I'm just including this possibility for the sake of completeness. If you can believe that dogs instinctively communicate with barks, growls, and whines--even if they've been separated from "dog culture" since weaning--then maybe it's possible that significant portions of human culture, or its "substrate", are innate and do not need to be taught.

Let's return from the digression. As I said, the distinction between system and paradigm as I define them is absolutely clear when it comes to the designer's job and the rules text itself. A system may be incomplete--for example, it may describe how to resolve combat, without instructing you how to tell if combat occurs: can anyone declare that it's started, or only the GM, or is there some set of objective conditions which automatically triggers combat? But that doesn't stop it from being a system. Implicitly the holes will have to be filled by a paradigm, such as "the group decides collectively based on common sense".

However, once we move to actual play, the system may or may not survive, but the paradigm goes through a complete transformation. It is no longer text, but action, and the difficulties I alluded to with regard to transmission of paradigms now applies much more widely (to virtually all RPGs, if not to all games), regardless of whether the designer made an effort in the "rules text" to impart a paradigm.

The importance of this observation can be seen by briefly returning to the concept of "System" that I've previously dubbed "LP maximalism". Under this concept, it's commonly been noted (usually as an epiphany) that "systemless" or "freeform" RPGs have infinitely complex "Systems" (LP sense) rather than simple ones. But the nature of paradigms in actual play reveals that this is a completely banal assertion: all RPGs work by means of, through, and indeed upon the paradigm, the web of social interactions and understandings, that guide play. A "systemless" game is only "complex" if it requires a drastic shift on the part of the observer: otherwise it's easy as pie.

Conversely, no matter how much or how little system (my sense) a game has, there are very few ways to avoid the complexity of social interaction. One is to sew up as much as possible under formal procedure, or to fall back on very well-worn paradigms like "win/lose". Either way, you impinge on the quality that distinguishes an RPG from a board game. (The effect varies from group to group: if you strongly buy into the notion that "you aren't really playing the game if you never roll the dice", to the point that you're always trying to hammer on the mechanics, then you're more likely to fall into this trap than if you take a light system as an invitation to apply it only when necessary, on top of your largely-freeform style of play. Viz.) Finally, you can pretend the complexity isn't there, either by appealing to naturalism (see "Brain Damage") or by culture-formation and identification.

See also Jim Henley's recent post about the different perspectives on rules, with a dash of polemic from Malcolm Sheppard (eyebeams) in the comments.

Ah, almost forgot: the next step should be to take all this and translate it back into English.

I ought to be doing something else right now, so I only have time for an introduction and one or two examples.

Anyway, it's a trick question.

Over on RPG.net, I wrote

What is plot? Popular definitions cover a continuum, with the extremes at:
a) A situation involving the characters, a "problem" or "setup", that the player-characters then engage and resolve.
b) A sequence of events constituting the action of a story.

Many if not most modules (and GM prep based thereon) contain a "plot" in sense (b). Scenes are arranged sequentially--or they only branch in the sense that they can be "experienced" in a varying order, but each one is still expected to play out in a certain way. "After the PCs overcome the guards, they will find themselves in the data center." What if they don't overcome the guards? What if they don't go to the data center? If the GM controls the plot(b), then those are non-issues; the GM will make sure they get to the data center if that's what it takes to advance "the plot".

On the other hand, if "the GM controls the plot" means only that there are some things that the players don't control or initiate, you've got plot type (a). If the GM concocts a town riven by factionalism, he "controls the plot" but the player-characters get to resolve it--they can decide which faction to side with, or whether to take advantage of the situation for their own ends.

I think a lot of people say "the GM controls the plot" and then slip back and forth between (a) and (b). This is foolish at best, dishonest at worst. If we nail it down, then it's easy to spot some trends. The issue of control over (b) really doesn't interest me here. I've heard that somehow Feng Shui (and apparently Rune, both by Robin Laws) makes a fun game out of herding the PCs from preplanned scene to preplanned scene. And I know that games of follow-the-trail-of-clues are often used. I've played in a few. They're okay, I guess, if done well.

But what I want to look at is (a). Even if the players are completely free to resolve a scenario any way they want, who decides what the scenario is in the first place? How?

I'd like to do something a little bit like what John Kim did in his overview of RPG design innovations in the area of adventure prep. But here, the question isn't what the adventure looks like structurally. It's how the adventure is (or isn't) designed to engage the players' interests, or conversely how the players are persuaded to "buy in" to the scenario. Or indeed, instead of speaking of adventures or scenarios, we can talk about entire campaigns.

Two examples. Back in the day, I played D&D because I liked the basic scenario: exploring the unknown, facing dangers, and finding treasure. You didn't have to ask how to create a scenario. If you wanted to play D&D, you dove into a dungeon, and if you wanted to dive into a dungeon, you played D&D. The scenario was resolved through the collision of player choices (starting with character creation) and the prepared dungeon. End of story.

These days, if you're playing, say The Riddle of Steel, things are different. At least according to the guidelines, when you, the GM, write a scenario, you look at the characters' abilities, flaws, and Spiritual Attributes, and you make an adventure to match (some of) them. This is the idea of Flags (I think the term was coined by Chris Chinn): whatever is on the character's sheet--mostly mechanical elements, but not necessarily--is taken as a sign that it's something of interest to the player, and the GM constructs the scenario accordingly.

Did I say two examples? Okay, two more. In Dogs in the Vineyard, you have something a bit in between. Town construction is premised on the notion that the players are interested in playing moral shepherds--the core story is: visit a town beset by troubles due to some moral failing, and engage those troubles and failings. However, the GMing guidelines also state in several places that the GM should watch the players carefully, see what sorts of answers they give to the moral problems, and then challenge them in future scenarios. I don't recall if the guidelines also say to use the characters' traits as Flags for the types of moral problems to raise, though it seems like an obvious thing to do in the general spirit of the game. On the other hand, actual play of the game often seems to involve "canned towns" shared over the Internet, drawn from the examples in the book, or saved up and reused by GMs. Clearly these aren't handcrafted to match the PCs, and furthermore, a player who's not really engaged by the basic idea of telling people how to live their lives might have a little trouble with Dogs.

And finally, you have the "mission" approach found in many "troubleshooter" type scenarios--starting at least with Top Secret. The basic premise of any given character is that he or she is in the employ of some kind of authority or organization which supplies mission goals and guidelines; however, once the mission is assigned (by the GM), the player-characters now have considerable leeway to negotiate its challenges and overcome the enemy. In a sense this takes us back to the dungeon: creating a character implies interest in the sorts of mission-based scenarios that go with the game.

Well, that's enough for now. Comments on these examples, as well as further examples, are welcome.

Things seem to happen in waves in the RPG blabosphere.

Anyway, Chris Chinn has been putting up some practical advice on how to develop scenarios which I find interesting and potentially useful. Find it here.

Meanwhile both RPG.net and Harnforum (free registration required) have been getting into the same practical issues of how to create scenarios that involve the characters. (Another RPG.net thread, started by Levi Kornelsen is here.) The most interesting element of these discussions, for me, is the paradigm clash between the idea of "adventure hooks" and the idea of "flags" or "player-driven" scenarios. The most depressing element is the way that "player-driven" scenario-building is repeatedly caught up in the ideology of "story", such that if you don't have a "player-driven story", then either the GM must be leading the players around by the nose, or nothing particularly interesting happens.

I find this ironic and to illustrate why, I'll offer a completely unfair analysis of Dogs in the Vineyard as a game where the players are forced into taking cowboy defenders of the faith as their PCs, because, you know, if your friend purchases the book and gets you to play the game, that's your only choice. Player empowerment is not absolute; once you buy into playing the game with other people, you're always giving up some of your power to control the scope and expression of game elements, including your own character. At the same time, everyone else including the GM is giving up some of their power to you. It's your job to make the most of this arrangement, and exactly how you do it has a highly complex, non-isomorphic relationship to whether you're "authoring a story" or doing something entirely different.

I think for a certain class of roleplayers ("immersionists", "simulationists", or anyone whose primary goal is to "experience the fictional world" without regard to "theme" or "Premise" but certainly with regard to "interest"), it's probably useful to take up an alternative to Forge-inspired "protagonism", in a combination of "PC proactivity" and "PC magnetism". By the latter I mean construction of PCs such that, even if they don't go looking for interesting things to do, the nature of their role in life means that interesting things will happen to them. And by interesting, I mean no more or less than things which the player of the PC will enjoy dealing with, and which the other people around the table will enjoy interacting with either actively or as audience. A prime example of a proactive character is the entrepreneurial rogue or the seeker of arcane mysteries. "Magnetic" characters are often what I think of as "static responsibles"--a sheriff, for example, or a land owner. However, troubleshooters like superhero teams and superspies are also largely "magnetic" in that their presumed responsibilities tend to result in missions and crises being thrust on them.

For my purposes it's important to note where player-character interests converge and where they diverge. The player always wants interesting things, while the character perhaps not so much, unless he's proactively creating them. By definition, a problem is something that the character would just as soon avoid, or certainly something that he didn't deliberately bring on himself. It's still something the player craves, but for the sake of player-character identification, it's not something the player wants to generate himself.

(I really need a better term than "PC magnetism" since it's a bit on the whimsical and idiosyncratic side, and I prefer to use jargon that's easily grasped on the first pass. I am tempted to say "PC fitness"--but that's too close to Vincent's terminology.)

Some might see this paradigm as no more than an expression of Narrativist campaign/scenario construction. That may be, but where I think it differs from the outlook that inspires common Narrativist techniques, and indeed rejects the common GNS concept of Incoherence, is that it takes player interest, flexibly defined, as the central value instead of the literary/dramaturgical concept of Premise. For game systems, this paradigm also offers as a benchmark the ability to engage the interest of the players by providing mechanics that are actually enjoyable ways of negotiating/resolving the events of the imagined world. That is, if the combat mechanics of a given game are enjoyable in themselves, then the players' interests might well focus on situations that allow them to exercise those mechanics. Yet those players may have no special interest in combat per se--give them an enjoyable system of social conflict resolution, and they may gravitate toward political or social scenarios.

Hm, while searching for another thread I came across this one on the Forge, where it looks like some of the same issues are hashed out. Just including it here for future reference; I haven't read it closely yet.

Lee Short also covers some related ground in his work-in-progress Star Moon Cross, particularly in the campaign prep discussion of "what kinds of activities do you envision your character engaging in"?

Marco has some comments in one of my earlier postings about "El Dorado". To review, El Dorado is a bit of Forge jargon referring to the fact that it's impossible to "consistently address[] Premise through explicitly Simulationist play". I agree with Marco's point--the fact that "El Dorado" is impossible arises directly from the definitions and therefore it's somewhat questionable as an insight. I.e., any thought-experiment which proposes a method for consistently addressing Premise is automatically talking about Narrativist play in Forge terms.

However, for whatever reason, "Narrativism" conjures up certain techniques in the minds of many persons--both those who identify their play preferences as Narrativist and those who consider themselves "Simulationists". So what El Dorado says to you really depends on how you construe the definitions. Frankly I consider this as evidence that the theory is constructed in a manner which severely limits its utility for addressing certain aesthetic priorities.
( This is a long one...ultimately I get into some ideas regarding a technique for reaching El Dorado, sort of. )