The Defense of Roleplaying

This entry's title should be "The Defense of Roleplaying In A Roleplaying Game: The History Itself." Now I like OSR/OSG/0E/Retro-Clone/'Nards as much as the next person that buys RPG material. Like Finland sitting next to Russia, as a guy that likes "indy" adventure gaming as much as that country likes access to the Baltic Sea most of my hobby world is dominated by their presence. I like reading their blogs, watching their videos, and buying their books. What I am starting view in the same vein as East German intellectuals from the mid-80s trying to show the real freedom of totalitarian society away from individualistic ideas, are a lot of them lecturing me about how "role-playing" was not a part of D&D.

Role-playing as a parlor game is the point of any RPG publication. While the mind game of figuring out which rules from a few books, a couple editions, and possibly a homegrown additive here and there a Dungeon Master is applying to a particular "puzzle" can be a bit of fun, a full game it does not make. Don't miss the point that I am saying that there is are places for that in any RPG campaign, but that doesn't have to be the point of an RPG campaign. Things like "character development" and "motives" are not dirty words in a game where the players play "Characters" and the GM presents an adventure.

Don't give me that "Trad Vs Narrative" line of reasoning. The tradition of the "Trad" style of gaming is more designed to get rid of unwanted players and then focusing on the quest of the approved players. Maybe GMs use it for one offs at conventions and folks show to scare away the wife for a couple hours. Guess what. White Wolf RPGers don't often do dungeon crawls and are about daydream fulfillment, but they love getting into arguments about rules as often as any Old School Gamester. Can we as a hobby move on?

I get it. Parchment bound rule-zines like Chain Mail were not an RPG. But when Dungeons and Dragons became a thing that there were a lot more people roleplaying being elves and half-orcs and dwarves than people worrying about where every secret door and false floor was in forty rooms.