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To give a short, simple attempt at answer to kick things off: I would say that a roleplaying game must be partly comprised of hidden information that has been invented by one or more of the players. That's the key difference I can see between The Arkham Horror/Mansions of Madness (boardgames) and The Call of Cthulhu (roleplaying game), where both are ...

In an archetypical board game, the action focuses almost exclusively on that which can be represented by state on the board, state on a sub-board, or marker substitutions. Further, board games generally operate on the principle of "What is not explicitly permitted is forbidden." The board itself versus the Narrative In a Roleplaying game, the board is not ...

How is a board game not a role-playing game? Let's say you have a board game game with these elements: an Overlord (GM) that commands the Monsters and sends Heroes on Quests.. multiple players that take on the roles of characters in the game (PC) Timmy always screaming, "Death to the Orcs" whenever he rolls for an attack. Board games can be role playing ...

Definitions are only useful as long as they are useful. It is much more important that a game category reasonably describes aspects of the game that the person you are communicating with can understand, than that it can be summarized using a few technical bullets. Thus, when normal usage of a term conflicts with some suggested definition, then the definition ...