My Life As A Gamer: Now To Sift Wheat From Chaff, & Toss The Chaff

Now that we have the definition of what a proper RPG is, we can start sorting games that call themselves "RPGs" using this as a rubric.

We can, in other words, start excluding those that do not belong.

A list of RPGs will include the following:

• All TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons, with the pinnacle being Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition.
• All Palladium Books games, with varying degrees of difficulty in execution. Yes, even their Robotech editions.
• Call of Cthulhu (especially in its classic editions)
• Traveller (especially Classic)
• Mechwarrior (a.k.a. A Time of War, the RPG for BattleTech)
• Shadowrun in all its editions.
• Cyberpunk in all its editions.
• Mekton in all its editions (despite appearances to the contrary).
• Champions, and by extension all HERO System editions.
• The World of Synnibarr, in all its editions, proving that even terrible RPGs can be real ones.
• Amber and all its derivatives, proving that I was not the only one to catch on to the Diplomacy angle (and Wujick did it decades ago) as well as how even the most fantastic of settings can nontheless conform to the standards of a wargame. (Throne War is just Diplomacy with extra steps.)

Storygaming, on the other hand, is right out- exactly as the RPG Pundit said years ago. And it is out for the reason Pundit gave: they are not real RPGs. They do not conform to the standard, so they are not to be counted as such even--especially--if it is insisted upon because saying so does not make it so. That is nothing more than Point Deer Make Horse in action.

Insist on this defintion. Insist on sorting games in and out by this rubric. Insist on calling things what they are. Insist on labeling things as they are. Carry on accordingly. Show naught but cold indifference to reactions, turning deaf ears to gainsayers, and as the bad actors take off their masks sort them out with the trash they push and silently carry on without them. Stop giving them money, time, and attention; all of that is better spent enjoying your hobby of playing RPGs with other people that also like to play RPGs.

They can live with outrage and complaints. They cannot survive without attention, formalized as money, which is why cold indifference and silence works better than anything else. They are not us; be inhospitable to them, keep your gate shut, and they will inevitably leave- one way or another.