"All Games becoming RPGs" Topic

[Ithunn]

It's interesting. I never knew role-playing game was in my silly Oxford/Apple Dictionary, but they assume RPG as:

a game in which players take on the roles of imaginary characters who engage in adventures, typically in a particular computerized fantasy setting overseen by a referee.

Perhaps "role" is essentially ambiguous leading into misnomers. This is just from the dictionary though.

[Morgenstern]

My thoughts on the subject have already been shared earlier in the thread, so I'll be pithy:

Games making fresh, intuitive usage of RPG elements = Great!

Games tacking on RPG elements as a gimmickly selling-point = Boo!

[Prime Mover]

Well, if you think about the origins of rollplaying, even farther back than P&P, it goes back to roll playing balls back in probably the 18th century... although I could imagine the Greeks doing something similar, so it may go back thousands of years. In these cases, basically it's improv theatre in a party setting. Each participant is encouraged to done a character (whether they create it or it is given to them) and act out that persona as best they can. P&P essentially does the same thing. Western RPGs usually don't allow you to play with the character very much, where-as jRPGs tend to force you to play them in very predetermined ways. Neither of them does a very good job of immitating actual "roll playing", IMO, but they each tackle the issue in different ways.