Should we define Role-Playing Games [duplicate]

Question

A recent meta question asked if role-playing in video games is on topic here. The question was focused on one held question on main, and the answers seamed focused on the question. But it got me thinking about the scope of the site, and I didn't find an answer on a cursory search of meta.

What is a Role-Playing Game?

Is there a line we can draw between a straight up tabletop game with very little role-play elements and a 'traditional' RPG? Is there a line between friends playing pretend or telling stories around a table and a traditional RPG?

If we have those lines of demarcation of 'what is RPG enough to be on topic', what are they?

Do we need those lines if they do not already exist?

I do not ask this because I have a strong opinion one way or the other, but purely to know the scope of the site. I do not want to change the scope of the site (in this particular case), just to document where those limits are, if there are any.

Answer 1

No, we can't and shouldn't draft a hard definition of RPGs.

Right now we've got a "know it when we see it" sort of attitude, and it works very well at least 95% of the time. The RPG medium is vastly diverse, and historically attempts to define it have been... fraught. Any definition will likely accidentally exclude stuff we really think ought to be on topic, and spark arguments in response.

Answer 2

Role-playing games are games where we do role-playing.

And that's as @BESW rightly said about as much of a definition that we need. It is appropriate to ask a question about roleplaying in game context regardless of the medium used - be it in-person session, Roll20, MUD, LARP, freeform over e-mail or countless others.

In fact current practice shows that questions less focused on the "game" part are also OK (like ones that deal with educational effort or creating a safe psychodrama space), so I would posit that it's the playing of a role that's central to the experience. That said, defining "roleplaying" is even more challenging and we should definitely not attempt to do it.

In regard to the video-game question, it is not for us to decide arbitrarily whether the whole group is on or off topic here - we should consider these edge cases individually and carefully decide whether roleplaying is in the core of the question or not.