Should you be acting out a part , telling a story , or playing a game ? My answer is Yes . Players of RPGs do all of these things and more all at once, of course, in varying degrees. They always have. It's simply a matter of which aspects individuals enjoy more or emphasize that differentiates cliques and factions in the never-ending battle in quest of the Holy Grail: the Best Game Ever. It's really all about personal preferences , not something that can be right or wrong. Yet it's not rare to find discussions about which play-styles are correct or incorrect, or discussions of the hobby's journey from pristine purity to subsequent corruption. Sometimes these discussions are about the history of game mechanics or game companies or cultures of play. Sometimes they are finger-wagging lessons in the morality of play and aesthetics. All of these discussions have something to contribute. Sometimes, though buried in these discussions, and in the responses to them, are implicit
Musings on table-top role-playing games today after spending a quarter century away from them.