What Is This?

“Hey, want to come over to my place? We’ll play cards!”

“Sure, I love playing cards!”

And you head on over, pull up a chair, and pick up your hand of Magic the Gathering cards.

“I bid ten,” the person on your left throws some poker chips into the middle of the table.

“Go fish!” the person on your right answers.

You can’t complain. No one at the table can. You are, in fact, all playing cards.

You probably have an image in your head about what Table Top Roleplaying Games “are.” Even if you’ve never played one, you have a shape in your head, defined enough that you can see a group sitting around a table with dice, paper, pencils, and a cardboard screen and say “ah yes, that is an RPG. I saw it on Stranger Things.”

Well, Euthyphro, I would like to disabuse you of some notions.

Because RPGs are legion. They vary in design, genre, style, goal, format…any metric you care to define. There are Fantasy, Science-fiction, political thriller, supernatural conspiracy, steampunk, and modern life RPGs. There are action, drama, romance, comedy, and horror RPGs. There are RPGs about fighting, exploring, growing up, falling in love, running an empire, hiding your otherness, learning about yourself, and enacting glorious revolution. There are RPGs about politics, religion, sex, survival, cooking, shopping, and dressing up.

Some are played with dice, others played with playing cards, tarot cards, poker-chips, candy, Rock-Paper-Scissors, spinners, stopwatches, pedometers, Jenga towers, and even a bookshelf. Some use mathematical tables, some have figures that move around on maps, some only take a couple hours, while others last for years. Some are played at a table while others are played “live action.” Some are played while on a hike. Some are played over the phone. Some are quiet personal affairs. Some are vibrant flashy adventures. Some are recorded and played online. Some are designed for kids. Some end before they’re finished. Some are used for therapy. Some are used for education. Some are fun. Some are terrible. Some are horrific. Some fit entirely on a business card.

But they’re all “roleplaying games.” Just like you’re all playing cards.

So what, exactly, is a roleplaying game?

Well, Wikipedia’s definition of Roleplaying Game is…frankly uninteresting to me. We can establish codified definitions all we want, but it won’t change that some day I might look around and say “none of this is what I would call an RPG…what happened?”

Incidentally, that day is today.

See, I was born in 1982. You may remember that as two years after Michelle Remembers was published, a snake-oil money-grab that set off the Satanic Panic, resulting in Dungeons & Dragons manuals being burned in churchyards across America. I still remember the first game of D&D I played with my brother and his older friends. (Well, I say “played;” it was really only for one combat. I was a troll with a bag of marbles I could trip people with and I had no clue what I was doing, but I remember getting really excited every time I rolled the die. They were just humoring me, I’m sure.) I remember my first real character: Sir James, the halfling, with gauntlets of Ogre Strength and a pet Griffon mount my brother had allowed me to tame.

I remember setting D&D aside for the more flexible worlds that GURPS provided.

I remember learning that Vampire: the Masquerade existed, and wondering how many other systems were out there.

And now? Now I look around and see games that are about angsty disaster lesbians, games about heavy-metal covers come to life, bleak emotional explorations of superheroes, heartfelt love-letters to hope and the future, creating cities, youthful rebellion turned actual rebellion, absurd mashups of disparate genres, intricate balances of systems and narrative, first seasons of a children’s cartoon series, retro-remakes, spoofs, deconstructions, alternatives, elevations, explorations, and one-shot story-telling affairs about a Spectral Moose.

What happened? When did it happen? How? Why?

Frankly…none of those questions really interest me either.

“How” is easy to answer, after all. Self-publishing is easier these days, and as our reach broadens, so too does our audience. “Why” is equally easy: someone had the idea. Combine the two, and the plethora of original games, hacks, and supplements is predictable, if not unavoidable.

“When” is usually a boring question in general, partially answered by the how and why. What matters most to me is that it did happen. This is the world of RPGs now, a speckled mess of games that overlap, homage, and intersect in marvelously intricate ways.

So that leaves us with “what.” What happened? Simply put, I believe Roleplaying Game has naturally evolved outside of its original place as a genre of board game or hobby. Instead, I think we have to consider them as their own medium, placing the term “Roleplaying Game” alongside “Sport,” “Movie,” or similar classification.

That’s…going to be a heavy lift to explain, isn’t it?

So, am I going to go on a long-term treatise on the intricate details of the thousands upon thousands of RPGs out there to slake some intellectual goblin in my brain? It’s not like there’s a dearth of conversation out there about RPGs, much less a lack of self-important pseudo-intellectual blogs about the right and wrong ways to play.

Why am I doing this to myself? To you? Why spend however many hours writing however many words dissecting RPGs as a concept, when most of what I have to say has likely already been said by people that the RPG community actually knows about?

Same reason we play RPGs. Because it’s fun!

Well, I’m having fun, anyway…

So come along with me if you wish, as my addled brain explores the myriad metrics and spectrums with which to define, discuss, classify, and comprehend the medium that is the Roleplaying Game.

(As a side-note, Roleplaying Game is a term that is used in video games as well. Please note that I’m not talking about your Final Fantasies, your Mass Effects, or your Elders Scroll. I’m talking entirely about the strange alchemical process of people getting together for an evening of make-believe, sitting around a tabletop, virtual or otherwise.)

---