Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
This seems like a really strange base definition of RPG to me.
Hehe, yeah, it's basically impossible to talk about genre without stumbling into semantics, because genres are these ambiguous, subjective vibes without any official definition. And so we all come to define every genre in our own way that's distinct to us, a collection ideas that in some ways overlaps what some people think, and in some ways doesn't. That's why generally speaking, I find it best to not talk about genre at all, but rather to unpack these ideas and talk about the actual traits themselves. Maybe when I say RPG's what I'm really talking about is player choice and strategic options. Maybe I'm talking about role-playing. Maybe I'm talking about epic adventures. Maybe numbers that go up? Maybe some of that, or all of that, or none of that. So it helps to specify, because that way even if we have different definitions of "RPG", we can at least talk about the things that person wants to talk about.

That said, OP didn't specify, and I didn't want to interrogate them with 20 questions, so I just did my best and rolled with it. ^^


Quote Originally Posted by ty_taurus View Post
The changes we have are not made because they must be made. They're made because someone in some seat of power wants to see the game streamlined even more than it already is.
Just to be clear, I don't think there's any change that would ever need to be made to any game. Games are fake, imagined from whole cloth. They can be anything anyone wants them to be. So yeah, I agree, and I hope nothing I said suggested that I thought the game was in need of change one way or the other. All I wanted to point out was that over 10 years the game has changed and become a meaningfully different experience compared to what it once was.