A Case for Classification

This is for my TTRPG folks.

We need to start looking more seriously at functional classification of our different hobbies. Yes, "different hobbies." Look, TTRPGs are young. Once ground was broken, there's been an explosion of both innovation and iteration, creating all kinds of wonderful things. And because the field is so young, we're all running around calling everything by the root term "TTRPG," happily assuming we're just doing variations on a single thing.

But we're not. This boundless creativity made us spread out fast. It's my belief that we creativity'd so hard that we've actually got multiple fundamentally unalike hobbies, activities that are different enough that it's no longer reasonable to call them different "approaches" or "playstyles" of the same thing.

When two things are so different that the advice, tips, and best practices of one would actively undermine the other, they're different enough that they need their own spaces.

All of the things we're currently doing under the TTRPG umbrella are beautiful and important enough that they deserve room to grow and flourish. But an artform can't grow and flourish if half the people in the room are giving you advice for a completely different artform. None of us are at our best when we're constantly kneecapping each other. Descriptive clarity is a good thing.

Now, you might be skeptical that there's anything under the TTRPG umbrella that has reached such a threshold of differentiation, so I'll demonstrate by contrasting some key points between the two types of TTRPGs that I'm most familiar with. Fans of each just call them TTRPGs, but that would make this comparison incomprehensible, so I'll temporarily give them different names: Flat-Process Oracular Storytelling and Literalist Roleplay-Gaming.

Flat-Process Oracular Storytelling (FPOS)

First, let me explain the name. This activity is fundamentally a form of storytelling (and story-making). In traditional narrative media, there's a bit of a process in between the starting point of the author(s) creating the story and the audience consuming the story. FPOS "flattens" that process into a single step: people who are both author and audience are both creating and consuming the story all at once. The "oracular" part refers to how the mechanics of the TTRPG are treated not so much as game rules but more like an "oracle" that can be consulted when desired but also disregarded when unnecessary or unhelpful. (Note that this is independent of whether the TTRPG was designed to be used in this way.)

The fundamental activity is the creation and telling of a story. The activity is fundamentally generative, in that it carries an inherent intent to create. A statement like "Don't let the rules get in the way of the story" is highly relevant advice, as the story is your main goal and the "rules" (oracles) exist only to serve that end. Concepts from other narrative mediums, such as "Yes, and" from improvisational theater, are often adapted for use in FPOS as means of curating the story. Concepts from gaming mediums, such as pausing to validate rules or diligently maintaining an accurate game state, are ignored or even shunned as "bad behavior." Player agency beyond their own character, such as the ability to introduce something into a scene, is usually positively regarded.

Literalist Roleplay-Gaming (LRG)

Again, let's start with the name. I'm calling it "literalist" because it uses "TTRPG" not just as a name, but as a literal description. The TTRPG is literally a game, and the type of game is one whose most-central mechanic is roleplay. LRG takes the concept of a "game" (which, importantly, is more specific than "recreational activity") and the concept of "roleplay" (which is more specific than "imagination") and integrates them into a whole. As an analogy, a "drinking game" does not mean simply drinking recreationally, nor does it mean drinking while also separately playing a game, it means adding rules to drinking in order to "make a game of it." In the same way, LRG treats a roleplaying game as a full integration of roleplay and gaming.

The fundamental activity is the playing of a game, and that gameplay is built on inhabiting a persona within a shared imaginary world (roleplay). The activity is fundamentally experiential, in that the point is to do it, not to generate anything from it. A statement like "Don't let the rules get in the way of the story" is both nonsensical (what story?) and counterproductive (rules define a game). Concepts of gaming carry over, such as how rules can be altered by group consensus (houserules) but not by one person (cheating). Preservation of fidelity, not only of the "game state" but also the in-universe truths of the roleplay, is a high priority. Player agency is typically channeled almost exclusively through the character's in-universe capabilities; meta-influence like a player introducing an outside element to a scene (rather than simply interacting with what's already there) is often viewed as disruptive and undesirable. The LRG fan would rather spend a point of Stamina to have their character swing from a chandelier that already exists, than to spend a Plot Point to declare that a chandelier exists to swing from.

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I know that's a lot to properly digest, but once you do, it becomes clear that these two hobbies are largely incompatible. That's not to say one is better than the other, but their best practices are at odds with each other's goals. If someone who's into FPOS seeks advice, but half the incoming advice is from LRG enthusiasts (or vice-versa), then half the advice is actively disruptive to the requester's needs. It should be self-evident that both activities would be more enjoyable if their fans could count on the people around them actually liking the same things. Otherwise, we just keep giving each other bad advice and invalid feedback, over and over, every day, forever. Does that sound ideal to you?

I don't have a roadmap to the endpoint. Hell, I don't even know how many different artforms we're dealing with. But the more our different fields grow, the more disruptive the lack of classification will become, gradually smothering our potential more and more. If we want to flourish, we're going to have to stop being afraid of functional description, and start acknowledging that there's lots of different roommates in this house, rather than each of us pretending to live alone.

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(P.S. — Yes, I've seen the XKCD Standards thing. If you think that applies here, you may have misunderstood something.)