Talk:RPG

Page expansion & topic separation?

I also saw a wish for this topic to expand and be separated on the wish list recently!

There needs to be a page not for LARPing or RPGs, but for the practice online role-playing, where you take up the roles of various characters and do dynamic storytelling with other people, usually on some sort of forum. I haven't done this in many years, though, and I know it's still a thing, but not what's happening with it/where it is.

Or, maybe a disambiguation page where Larping, RPGs and roleplaying in forums are all separate pages?

— User:Liaroflesbos on Fanlore:Wish_List#RP

I think a big thing keeping this topic from expanding is that tabletop RPGs, video game RPGs, and narrative/play-by-post/forum/blog/character role playing is all shoved under the same page (here and esp Role-Playing Game) and I agree that we need separate pages for everything. I only really know about the forum-based/blog-based/play-by-post/character RPs, and what I know about them is that I've almost never seen them called RPGs in the places I've played them over the past, like, ten years, so it would be weird if most of the information on them was on the RPG page, I think? And it's definitely weird to see them under the heading "Interactive Unstructured Text RPGs" on Role-Playing Game with MUDs and MODs.

Anyway, all that to say that I don't really know what I'd name the page for the kind of roleplaying I usually do, but I'd sure like to sort out this category a little more and expand the page, if we can brainstorm some stuff. - Hoopla (talk) 21:40, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm glad someone saw what I said and was thinking about it! Especially somebody who has RPed in the last like six years since I haven't.

I definitely think that RPGs, LARPing, and RPing (web-facilitated? text-based? interactive?) should all have their separate pages. I don't think I've ever heard of it called anything but role-playing, but that's why a disambiguation page would be good here i think. But my other question is whether table-top RPGs and RPG video games should have separate pages, especially since there's a fairly direct lineage between table-top rpgs and video game rpgs (i think. i've seen ppl talking about like the history of skill creation in video game rpgs coming from like D&D). And should there be separate pages for JRPGs, American RPGs, and MMORPGs then? (probably not, right?)

MUDs would probably still go under the RPG category too, though, I think. They're developed and produced game experiences, right? like there's an element of other development, while the practice of rping in a sense of fan activity is about a group of fans coming together and just bouncing text off of each other --Liaroflesbos (talk) 22:15, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

I was in the depths of NaNoWriMo so I had to let the ideas settle a little before I could do anything about it lmao but I finally hit 50k and MPH's edits reminded me of this, so here I am!

If I could name the page we want to make anything I wanted, roleplaying (currently a redirect to Role-Playing Game I think) or RPing would be my preference because that's the only thing I've ever heard it called too and I feel like "roleplaying" and "RPG"/"Roleplaying Game" are actually distinct terms and it's weird that they're so firmly connected? Like, some RPing involves dice-roles to randomize events, but most of my experience has had it be a 100% collaborative writing experience with no "game" stuff involved.

I think tabletop RPGs and video game RPGs probably would benefit from different pages, but both could be briefly discussed on the Role Playing Game / RPG page and any relevant fannish history that involves both can go there. We don't have to actually chronicle the history of things, though — I would say our guide for "Should there be separate pages?" should be "Do these things have separate fanbases/distinct forms of activity?" So, with that in mind, I think eventually JRPGs should have their own page (although I don't know enough about them to write it) and MMORPGs probably should too, although for now I think we could content ourselves with, like, a paragraph about each on the catch-all RPG pages?

Also, yeah, MUDs/MODs definitely are RPGs. I actually know nothing about them except a quick glance at the wiki page, but I think it's weird that they're lumped in with text-based/narrative/character-focused/play-by-post RPing because the two formats are kind of presented on that page like they're closely related when imo they're not, really. - Hoopla (talk) 22:50, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Okay, so I just stumbled onto this page while looking at our roleplaying-related pages, and I have a couple of questions:

• What is the intention for this page as distinct from Role-Playing Game? At the moment it reads as sort of half a disambiguation page, but it doesn't cover anything that isn't mentioned on Role-Playing Game, which already talks about the different types of RPG (LARPing, tabletop RPGs, video game RPGs, etc.) Are we sure that it wouldn't be better off as a straight redirect to Role-Playing Game (which is after all what it stands for)?
• We now have a page for Roleplaying, which satisfies what Liaroflesbos was asking for above. I agree that online RPing deserves its own page (I did masses of it on forums in the mid-2000s, so I'm excited to add to that page), but now that we have that... again, is there any point in this being a separate page? We *can* make it a disambig, I'm just not sure if it needs to be when Role-Playing Game already covers the various types of RPG in its first paragraph. Thoughts? -- enchantedsleeper (talk) 20:21, 05 January 2020 (UTC)

Edit: Oh, hell. I just found the Fandom RPG page which covers exactly what I would have expected the online RPing page to cover... but literally no-one calls them "Fandom RPGs" and even the page uses the term "RP" more than it does "RPG".

There's already an old-ish Talk Page discussion about changing the page name, but I thought I'd mention it here as folks in this thread might not be aware of the Fandom RPG page (and it's relevant to my other comment above). Personally, I don't think the page name needs to specify "Fannish"/"Fandom" since... this is Fanlore... so I would just merge it with the Roleplaying/RPing page.

Our RPG-related pages are such a mess *cries in unclear fannish terminology* -- enchantedsleeper (talk) 20:31, 05 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree that Fandom RPG is just info that should be on the Roleplay page, and I don't think calling it Fandom RPG is actually common. If no one disagrees, I'll copy Fandom RPG's content to Roleplay and redirect it. —caes (talk) 00:28, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Since Fandom RPG actually has a Talk page discussion that we should preserve (and I don't think it would be visible if the page were a redirect), why not delete the current Roleplay page (which is blank with no Talk page) and rename Fandom RPG to Roleplay? We can link to this discussion on the Talk page as context for the change.

I also think we'll need to create a separate "presence" on Fanlore for Fandom RPG (probably a subsection of the Role-Playing Game page, with relevant links pointing to it) that's not a redirect to Roleplay, but right now I think most of the content on Fanlore that points back to Fandom RPG is actually relevant to Roleplay. We might need to do a bit of untangling to figure out if any of those links are referencing actual fandom RPGs and not RPs. -- enchantedsleeper (talk) 16:31, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Is This Page a Disambiguation?

This page looks like a disambiguation to me, but it lacks the template. Should I just put it up? --SecurityBreach (talk) 10:01, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I turned the page into a disambiguation and hope it's a step in the right direction :D --SecurityBreach (talk) 00:40, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Swap Name Title with "Roleplaying"

I was wondering if it might make sense to have the page "Roleplay" be the disambig while RPG redirects to it, rather than RPG being the disambig with Roleplay the redirect (additionally Roleplay Game and Role-Playing Game would redirect to the disambigs too). It seems to me the spelled out word would make more sense to be the main page. Any objection to me just swapping the page's functions? Or other thoughts? Patchlamb (talk) 19:39, 26 August 2023 (UTC)