Question of Definition: What is a Role-Playing Game?

[MPOSullivan]

Okay, so i've been working on this RPG for IGC for the past couple of days. It's called The Mask of Juris and you can find a little bit of a thread about it right .

The really basic idea of the game is that the players are all Actors who are in a play about a folk hero called Juris. The play is put in in Greek theatre style, with masks. Each Character in the play is represented by a Mask. Characters aren't played by any one Actor but by anyone who is on stage wearing the mask.

The objective is for the Actors to please the Audience. The audience is meant to be a game mechanic and not represented by any one player. There isn't supposed to be a GM to this. When the players win over the crowd, then yay. If not, then boo.

The system as it stands right now is based arround a deck of cards that suggests scenes, conflicts and other storytellign devices. This deck is the desires of the Audience. As players introduce these things into the story on-stage, they get to collect the cards. Collect enough cards and you win over the crowd.

The problem that i'm having is completely conceptual. Does this core idea constitute a role-playing game? Players take on roles (who in turn take on roles of their own), but the deck seems to me like a way of making a Whose Line Is It Anyway: the Home Game. Or, even worse, of imposing story structure restrictions on something that is supposed to be completely freeform, or as close as you can get to it considering the game's conceit.

My frustration is that I intended this game to be a sort of role-playing improv. I'm sort of there, but i keep hitting this conceptual wall.

The deck, as it is currently, takes into account what the audience wants, but doesn't do much of anything if the players come up with some really cool ideas of their own. It rewards strictly for narrating what comes out of the deck and not for tangenting onto your own story, which could be completely cool. For me, the best part of RPing is the ability of the players to take their own actions, to drive a story themselves by making their own decisions.

So, does this form of controlled storytelling and improv constitute role-playing? and if it doens't, how can i shift the game over to an RPG? Andy, i'm going to need some of your help here too, as you're going to be the final arbiter of whether the game can even be enterred into the contest.

the more i think about it, this game might better be suited to being a storytelling device or a framework, like that game where the characters of an old-school fantasy game are actually delusionals in a mental ward, living out their fantasies inside of their heads. Or maybe something more in line with Polaris, where players use the masks and the like to tell tales of Legendary Heroes and the like.

Hm, there's a whole lot of style here, but i'm having the hardest time finding the substance.

thanks everyone,

-Michael

[kenjib]

Are you familiar with Marcel Duchamp's ?

My opinion is that you should make a game that interests you and that you think is the best game that you can. Whether or not it is called a "roleplaying game" is a marketing concern, not a development one. I'd rather see an awesome game that gets marked down by a judge and doesn't win the contest than one with watered-down potential that does. Wouldn't you?

[Joshua BishopRoby]

Is it a game where you play roles? If yes, it's a roleplaying game. Rock on.

[Eric J. Boyd]

Josh, has a good point. The players are playing roles (and roles within roles), so it's clearly a roleplaying game.

However, I see what you mean about the deck controlling narration perhaps too strongly, leaving little in the way of player decisionmaking. The October Ronnies had several entries that Ron Edwards called to task for this very issue (including mine). Check out his discussion of parlor narration in this

It sounds like you want the players to have the freedom to pursue whatever story threads are cool and engaging. My advice is to step back from your mechanics and ask yourself how you can encourage such play. Adding another form of currency that is awarded by the other players for good narration may be a start.

[uncle_wilf]