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Wittgenstein proved almost 75 years ago that you can't define what's an RPG

jdinatale

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In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one another only what one might call family resemblances. He argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things:

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. – And I shall say: "games" form a family.
RPG's are just a specific case of this. Elements of RPG's such as stats, choice & consequence, and rule systems don't adequately define what RPG's are. RPG's have common features but no one feature is found in all of them, there are only similarities.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Wittgenstein was right, but your thread title is incorrect. We can define the RPG genre in reference to the original RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, and determine whether something is or is not an RPG based on how closely its game mechanics reflect the fundamental game mechanics of D&D.
 

DraQ

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Wittgenstein was right, but your thread title is incorrect. We can define the RPG genre in reference to the original RPG, Dungeons & Dragons, and determine whether something is or is not an RPG based on how closely its game mechanics reflect the fundamental game mechanics of D&D.
It never ceases to amaze me how eager the members of this forum are to define the genre they supposedly like and seem to be proud of effectively as "shit".
 

Darth Canoli

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If you read philosophers too much, you won't know anymore which hand is your right hand and which one is left.

Even if we don't know what RPG are (discussions about video games RPG tend to prove that describing any not online one as a RPG is at most doubtful because human interactions are required ), we can determine what isn't a RPG.

That part at least is easy ...
 
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hexer

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we can determine what isn't a RPG.

That part at least is easy ...
You think so?
I've people seen define it as "it has fantasy".
Or the Telltale games as RPG.
Or "everything that allows me to roleplay" (explicitly including a game like Tomb Raider).
Or...

In his book Role-Playing Mastery (or maybe it was Master of the Game, cant recall 100%),
Gary Gygax said he didn't "invent" RPG games because he derived them from kids games such as "Cowboys & Indians".
Any form of acting is role-playing.

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are.

Maybe it could be defined as a casual joy-inducing activity where someone interacts with something following a set of rules?
 

thesheeep

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we can determine what isn't a RPG.

That part at least is easy ...
You think so?
I've people seen define it as "it has fantasy".
Or the Telltale games as RPG.
Or "everything that allows me to roleplay" (explicitly including a game like Tomb Raider).
Or...

In his book Role-Playing Mastery (or maybe it was Master of the Game, cant recall 100%),
Gary Gygax said he didn't "invent" RPG games because he derived them from kids games such as "Cowboys & Indians".
Any form of acting is role-playing.
Exactly, which is why such a definition of RPG is utterly useless, as it applies to pretty much everything.
 

Sigourn

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I came to the conclusion that if one could define RPGs, this would have been done many, many years ago.

What one considers an RPG may not be an RPG to another. So it makes sense to simply take the universally agreed upon RPGs to define what an RPG is. Games like
  1. Fallout
  2. Planescape: Torment
  3. Arcanum
  4. Baldur's Gate
  5. Icewind Dale
  6. Gold Box games
  7. Shadowrun
  8. Divinity: Original Sin
  9. Pillars of Eternity
  10. Wasteland 2
And many, many more... are universally considered to be RPGs. Whereas games like
  1. New Vegas
  2. Gothic
  3. Dark Souls
  4. Deus Ex
Aren't UNIVERSALLY considered to be RPGs. To me this is a matter of classification.
  1. Some people think New Vegas is an RPG with action combat: it prioritizing RPG elements over flashy action combat invalidates the action gameplay, making it into an RPG, or "action RPG" to clarify how you fight.
  2. Others think New Vegas is an action game with RPG elements: it having action combat invalidates the RPG elements, making it into an action game.
That's pretty much what separates both viewpoints. One way or another, the problem clearly lies in the "action" element. So an universally agreed upon RPG cannot have action combat. But I cannot honestly say New Vegas isn't an RPG when it is vastly, vastly superior as an "action RPG" to other "official RPGs". I refuse to put New Vegas in the same bag as Quake and below crap like Baldur's Gate, the allegedly "superior" RPG just because of its combat system.

To put it bluntly: would you guys say GTA V is a racing game? You can take part in races, but that isn't really the main purpose of the game. Same thing with New Vegas and many other action RPGs.
 
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In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one another only what one might call family resemblances. He argues that things which could be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all of the things:

And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; we can see how similarities crop up and disappear.

And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities.

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. – And I shall say: "games" form a family.
RPG's are just a specific case of this. Elements of RPG's such as stats, choice & consequence, and rule systems don't adequately define what RPG's are. RPG's have common features but no one feature is found in all of them, there are only similarities.
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The more I think about teh question "what is an RPG", the more I come to believe that the best way to understand the genre is to apply to it the concept of family resemblance. There is no one core feature which is common to all RPGs. But there are overlapping similarities.

E.g.
RPG #1 has core elements A, B, C
RPG #2 has core elements C, D, E
RPG #3 has core elements D, E, F

RPG #1 and RPG #3 do not share any core elements. But still it can be completely plausible, that both are RPGs.




Still, if there is one common core element, I am inclined to think that it is rather "stats & progression" than "choice & consequences" or "ability to play a role".
 

Darth Canoli

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Any form of acting is role-playing.

Exactly and i wasn't probably clear enough because i thought it was obvious when i said it has to involve other players because acting alone on your solo RPG doesn't make sense, unless you're living in a madhouse.

What the enlightened ones amongst us call PC RPG are just computer games with RPG elements and the rest of the mainstream action shit is as much a RPG as my last dump is caviar beluga.
 

HeatEXTEND

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The more I think about teh question "what is an RPG", the more I come to believe that the best way to understand the genre is to apply to it the concept of family resemblance. There is no one core feature which is common to all RPGs. But there are overlapping similarities.

E.g.
RPG #1 has core elements A, B, C
RPG #2 has core elements C, D, E
RPG #3 has core elements D, E, F

RPG #1 and RPG #3 do not share any core elements. But still it can be completely plausible, that both are RPGs.




Still, if there is one common core element, I am inclined to think that it is rather "stats & progression" than "choice & consequences" or "ability to play a role".

/thread
 

Tigranes

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Messages
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While 'family resemblances' has become a favourite of Wittgenstein-users everywhere in all sorts of situations, Wittgenstein himself - characteristically - only refers to it here and there, and does not present it as any general theory of categorisation. He's not trying to provide a nihilistic argument that we can never define anything, either.

W's wider point is that yes, we do define what things are - it's just that we usually don't define it by noting down a discrete set of clear and codified definitions, we learn by the kind of practical use they have. You don't learn football by memorising the rules, and even when you do, there's a host of unwritten rules, small local differences, etc. But you do learn what football is by playing it with others and adapting to what kinds of consequences your actions have. Everybody seems to know what's 'cool' and what's lame when they're 13, but it rarely comes down to discrete rules like 'you have to wear your pants this high/low'. Thus the famous U.S. court precedence on what counts as pornographic - basically, 'I know it when I see it'.

A more properly Wittgensteinian view of RPGs would be that we learn what an RPG is by watching how Codexers respond when we call something an RPG, and that what elements an RPG must contain is not really a worthwhile question, only what we mean and what we do when we use that word and fight over it.

Also, obviously the correct philosophical view of RPGs is some kind of pre-Enlightenment Hegelianism, where history conspires to begin from a mythical point of perfect RPGs and steadily but surely devolve into its complete annihilation with every Kickstarted spiritual successor
 

Ninjerk

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I bet Serbs don't have this problem.
 

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