I wouldn't denigrate the process of saying what an RPG is *not* as long as it's part of the *process* of defining what it is. Call it the "Holmesian Step" of eliminating the impossible and whatever's left is the possible. Also recognize that someone else will take what you discarded and make it a part of their own.
You're obviously correct in the abstract: a label only functions if it draws a boundary between what it does and does not contain. For "role-playing game" to mean anything, there must by definition be things that are not role-playing games. That isn't or shouldn't be controversial to anyone. That's just the way language works.
The issue isn't in identifying things that are obviously and easily not role-playing games: Chess, Jenga, Age of Sigmar, and so on. I don't think anyone's going to take issue with the bold claim that Monopoly is not an RPG.
This conversation is instead directed towards arguments about whose set of elf-game-pretend-time preferences counts as real role-playing games and who has to call their elf-game-pretend-time preferences something else. This is unfortunate, because it's not only wasted effort in the sense that it won't accomplish anything, but doubly wasted when you consider that the same effort could be used to identify what people actually want and build up useable terminology around them.
I wouldn't denigrate the process of saying what an RPG is *not* as long as it's part of the *process* of defining what it is. Call it the "Holmesian Step" of eliminating the impossible and whatever's left is the possible. Also recognize that someone else will take what you discarded and make it a part of their own.
You're obviously correct in the abstract: a label only functions if it draws a boundary between what it does and does not contain. For "role-playing game" to mean anything, there must by definition be things that are not role-playing games. That isn't or shouldn't be controversial to anyone. That's just the way language works.
The issue isn't in identifying things that are obviously and easily not role-playing games: Chess, Jenga, Age of Sigmar, and so on. I don't think anyone's going to take issue with the bold claim that Monopoly is not an RPG.
This conversation is instead directed towards arguments about whose set of elf-game-pretend-time preferences counts as real role-playing games and who has to call their elf-game-pretend-time preferences something else. This is unfortunate, because it's not only wasted effort in the sense that it won't accomplish anything, but doubly wasted when you consider that the same effort could be used to identify what people actually want and build up useable terminology around them.