thread: 2013-05-25 : Complete Games
On 2013-05-27, Vincent wrote:
Okay, friends, let me draw a connection for you.
When I say "It may be that you could design any roleplaying game in 1500 words or so," what do I mean by "any roleplaying game"? What's one particular roleplaying game, versus another particular roleplaying game, in this context?
Answer: in this context, meaning this post and thread, a particular roleplaying game is a single particular combination of fictional setup and player goals. So here's one roleplaying game: Caravan guards guarding a caravan. One player's job is to create and play a threat to the caravan, trying to destroy it. The rest of the players play the caravan guards and try to protect it.
How many rulesets exist that would let you play this game? A huge number. What's the smallest possible ruleset that would let you play this game? It's pretty small! Smaller even than The Sundered Land: Caravan Guards in the Ruins of the Future. However, The Sundered Land: Caravan Guards in the Ruins of the Future is as small as I could make it and still say what I want to say on the topic.
I would definitely not argue for this definition of "a roleplaying game" outside of the context of this thread, but here in the thread, that's what I meant when I said it.
