Am I Just a Purist?

After reading about D&D 4^th-Ed. and the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, I had to think about where the tabletop roleplaying games industry is headed. That got me to thinking about what qualifies a game as a tabletop RPG, and gaming in general. In particular, it got me to thinking about how the tabletop RPG industry is shrinking and how many attribute it to a lack of new blood.

My interest in comic books and tabletop RPG is not nostalgic in nature; I view them as alternative forms of entertainment, outside the realm of the same old same of TV and movies, even prose books. I like boardgames and card games for the same reason, as well as puzzle books and coloring the occasional picture. What? I get bored. I think the industry is overlooking the obvious in players like myself.

The most I have played recently is online. I've played offline with friends only a handful of times in the last several years. The technology is only now starting to catch-up to the idea, and Google Hangouts is where we have found the best setup and connection. I look forward to these nights, even though they are a lot of work for me as the gamemaster.

Still, this wouldn't work at all if you absolutely needed a board to play. It helps that all of the players have the books - either in print or PDF - but that could be gotten around in the same way demo games are handled at conventions, where usually only the GM has the books. Either way, if you absolutely need a board, miniatures, a map, or some other property to play, then it probably isn't fully a tabletop RPG. But being able to play it online through chat isn't necessarily the litmus test.

There are as many strata of games as there are games, and I'm not suggesting that every game that uses cards is automatically a cardgame anymore than every game with a board is a automatically a boardgame, but there are some characteristics that go with certain types of games. When you start mixing and matching those elements, the game has to be able to stand on its own because it becomes its own thing.

All that said, I just don't see the new crop of tabletop RPG as being... tabletop RPG. They are hybrids of whatever sort or variety - boardgames meet tabletop RPG, kind of like Talisman (but without the charm). Not that they can't be enjoyed on their own merits, just that they are not actual tabletop roleplaying games.

If you introduce new players to these games, they are not getting the full tabletop roleplaying experience. They are merely getting to play the particular game in question, as it so intentionally defies classification. For that matter, one could argue that introducing someone to Scrabble is not the same as introducing them to boardgaming, but tabletop RPG is a pretty specific category. The fact that we can even separate the field into a "traditional" sub-category proves its legitimacy.

Obviously one clue is in the name itself: If you do not portray a character in the game, it is not a roleplaying game; players have to play roles, or characters, for the game to be considered a roleplaying game. But I'll go one further: If the majority of game play does not take place in the mind, it is not a tabletop roleplaying game - at least, a traditional tabletop RPG.

Am I just a purist?

© C Harris Lynn, 2011