I'm going to hit just a couple of specific responses here, and then state my positions on the new things we've recently opened up for debate.
You see this is what strikes me as odd; something that continually vexes me about you game theorists; given that it seems that the few of you that get beyond pointless semantics and pseudo-intellectual bullshit posturing will instead talk about what I would DEFINE as "roleplaying", as in what I've been doing since day one and age 11, as though it was some holy grail that you had to discover. It makes me wonder if you guys weren't seriously fucked around by someone; I blame it on White Wolf, as I note most of you are part of what I termed that "lost generation". You never had a chance to see how normal people roleplay, and now you had to go through this whole unbelievably ridiculous process to get to the point where you do what the rest of us just learnt to pick up and do naturally.
I find this pretty funny, myself. Specifically, I find it funny because when people come to play with me, and I tell them about what I do in games I run, they say "Oh, yeah, I do that."
And then we play, and they say "yeah, I do that - but not the same way, or to the same degree".
So, I'd say that by means of an admittedly circuitous process, a lot of theory people have managed to dig out what are, ultimately, completely simple and dirt-common ideas that people did without even realizing it, and put them right at the forefront of their games. It doesn't necessarily make the games better or worse; it just makes them different - more to one set of tastes and less to another.
And, of course, there's also some theory stuff that is pure drivel, or helpful only to the barest few. That's hardly news, though.
I understand that you value that Gamers are tolerant. And its good that we are; but I think that your concerns that we could somehow turn from where we are into some group that unfairly excludes is unfounded. You are worried that we might run out of water when we are drowning.
Let me tell you a bit about my extended gaming circle and FLGS....
I LARP and tabletop both; in the last month, more LARP than tabletop because some of my regular players have University finals. Our
extended group of some fifty people over a good three LARPs and ten or so tabletops contains, so far as social outcasts are concerned, about three people that the majority of the people in the extended group roll their eyes at regularly, but that are regular attendees at events.
In the last three years, we've had contact with exactly one person that needed to be simply exiled. In this case, well-bathed, well-groomed, but apparently a compulsive bullshitter that got caught out repeatedly inside the first night he appeared, and departed within a week because a few of our members called him on his crap every single time they caught him.
We have an FLGS we visit. It has two or three regulars that aren't exactly socially adept, and the managers of the store have enough balls and enough sense that if there's a problem, they simply walk up and say "Hey. See you next week, earliest, or never again."
I've heard plenty of stories about places where it was worse, and I have seen gamers in stores and at events that made me shudder - but I always need to wonder if those gamers haven't
already been exiled to the degree you're talking about, and judging from the way they often can't seem to find a group and need to bitch about it, I suspect that many of them have.
The grotesquely overweight unemployed unbathed 28 year old trying to convince a 14 year old girl to come back to his mom's basement with him by saying he's a "14th level Ranger" is the only place you need to look for an answer as to why gamers "lack self confidence about admitting their hobby to the public". Because we are already at the point that if a perfectly normal guy tells Joe Public that he's an RPG gamer, that image of "14th level ranger" guy is what will come into Joe Public's head.
The prosecution pretty much rests its case with that, as to whether we need to be less tolerant or more tolerant of those with social dysfunctions in this hobby.
You know, I won't even deny the possible existence of such a repulsive figure.
I'll, instead, say this...
The public knows what they see. If Joe Public only sees that one guy being gross, and never learns that five or six other perfectly cool people he knows are gamers, then Mr. "14th level ranger" has already won -
even if he's been exiled from the hobby at large.No confidence means no recovery of reputation.
If, just for the sake of example, the hobby is 1% made up of people that cast an image just as poor as Mr. "14th level ranger", and 98% composed of people that keep their gaming habits quiet, awaiting the day when the stigma of gamers vanishes, then half of all visisble gamers are repellent, and the stigma
won't vanish.
I'm not saying those numbers are correct by any means, mind you; I'm saying that if the majority (whatever their numbers) stand up, then Mr. Ranger suddenly dwindles in the public eye.
...
On to the new stuff.
RPG BoundariesBy my standards, a Roleplaying Game is what it is because it combines elements of both named things - roleplaying and games - into, as you've said, a singular experience available in neither. Putting those on an axis, we get a range.
1. Just outside of RPGs, in "pure game" territory, we have, for example, Warhammer Quest.
2. Towards the game end of the axis, but firmly in the territory, we find Iron Heroes, D&D, WFRP and the majority of both the older and the more popular games.
3. Towards the roleplaying end of the axis, but still firmly inside the line, we get games that have fuzzier mechanics, or ones that govern only certain kinds of situations - Castle Falkenstein, for example, which can abruptly cease to be a game if you drop about two pages of rules, or can move suddenly to near the center if you add in the optional rules from it's supplements.
4. Just outside the area, we get Theatrix.
The Story BoundaryAgain, by my own standards, spotting the boundary of what is and isn't an RPG in terms of "story inclusion" is a matter of cases. Dogs in the Vineyard, with clear characterisation, speaking in-character, and a diced resolution system that includes tactics (though different ones than usual) remains an RPG. Polaris, which is based off an extended negotiation as a dramatic device for playing and story-building around the character, goes outside; it's a Story Game (this isn't meant as any kind of statement on the quality of it, mind you, just where I think it goes).
On emulating a feelOkay, on reflection, I meant two seperate things by this, and I'm going to seperate them for clarity.
First, rules that emulate the feel of a genre; if a villlian get "evil points" they can spend to do villainous things, that's a mechanic that emulates something, and one I expect you'd enjoy if it was done well. Many small games have those, but they also have...
Rules that are meant to emulate narrative pacing. For example, one rule or piece of advice - it amounts in this case to the same basic thing - from Dogs In The Vineyard (and the
only rule from that game that I somewhat mislike), is that the GM should constantly push for escalation in the game. After the situation is constructed, they are to keep going harder. Naturally, this emulates the feel of "rising action" - the middle of most stories - in a game.
Player empowerment without power struggleThis one is possibly the strangest case of deliberately missing rules I've run into. In a few of the small-press and independent games, limits to player authority are handled by
not handling them in a very specific way. That is, when the text of a game makes it abundantly obvious that power struggles will ruin the game if you have them, and therefore you had damn well better sort out your shit together,
people do. Yes, I'm aware that it doesn't sound like hardly any answer at all, but I've seen it work - sitting down with my players and saying "you're free to narrate this and that and the other, and if you screw up the game, then
you screwed it up."; and they blink, and then we play, and they pause every so often and we sort out a detail for a second, and we keep going.
...
Okay, I'm not sure I covered everything you wanted, but I'm out of cigarettes, so I'm going to stop there and go get some.