thread: 2012-02-11 : 3 Problems
On 2012-02-12, Ewen Cluney wrote:
I don't know if I'm unusual among gamers or what, but I enjoy a diversity of experiences in my RPGs. There are certain things that bug me (I have an irrational dislike of exploding dice) and certain kinds of content I like or dislike (like anime magical girls, no interest in zombies), but I can go anywhere from a long D&D campaign to a one-shot of one of Jake's nifty games and have fun. People can and should play what they enjoy of course, but from the first time I saw the Forge booth at Gen Con SoCal way back when, I've known that RPGs can be just about anything, and that that's all kinds of awesome.
If we do come up with a role-playing game that can fit the busy lives of a typical adult Downton Abbey fan or similar (ask me about my manga-inspired slice of life schoolgirl RPG app project some time) it will likely be on the fringes of what we currently think of as an RPG. There are already tons of people doing free-form fanfic-like role-playing on message boards and whatnot, probably a lot more than are doing tabletop. I don't have any idea where all that would take us, but I think I want to see it.
Also, I really, really don't buy the "not a real X" type arguments some people throw around. There are edge cases where you can make a rational argument (you could make a strong argument that Action Castle isn't an RPG for example), but by and large "this isn't a real RPG" really seems to just mean "this isn't the kind of RPG I prefer." In video games there's a lot of complaining about social games. Those kinds of games do get incredibly cynical in many cases (and I've heard some terrible stuff about Zynga in general), but saying that they're not games requires moving away from how actual people use the game in real life.
