The "game" in "role-playing game"
If I had a nickel for every time I read "I actually prefer the 'game' part of roleplaying games" somewhere online, I'd have quite a few nickels, which are completely useless where I live. Haven't used a coin in ages, to be honest.
But anyway, I get what these folks are saying, but it's such a silly way to phrase it1. Like, do you pretend you're someone else and make decisions in a fictional world in real life? Is that not part of the "game" part? Are you not doing that for fun?
From my experience, they generally mean number crunching, or sometimes interacting with the fiction by utilizing specific mechanics instead of describing what you do in the fiction, or even optimizing a character build2. Which is all fine, but I do think it's a bit of an arbitrary way of splitting the r, p, and g. I'd much rather interpret the three letters together and simply say that everything you do while in the role-playing game is, well, the "role-playing game" part.
So rolling a die to determine success? That's the game. Arguing with another person while both are in-character? Also the game. Pretending you are a wizard in a dungeon? Looks like a game to me. Choosing the feat that gives you +2 AC while holding a snail and preparing the Summon Snail spell everyday? Things you do in a game. Zooming out of the fiction and talking out-of-character to make a rule clarification? All part of the game. Metagaming? Still. Gaming.
Some weird and wonky sentences become part of the jargon of a community, but that doesn't mean they can't be useful. If saying to someone that "you like rpgs when they have more g in them" makes you understand eachother better, more power to you. However, for me there are probably clearer, less loaded words to describe what that sentence should mean.
anb
I also feel like sometimes it has a bit of elitism on it? But it's really hard to tell when reading online. The little "this has no combat rules so it's barely a game" vibe, which is just... Not a good vibe for me.↩
Is it too shallow to just approximate it to being a rules-heavy game? I feel like there are a lot of really dense PbtA and FitD games out there that probably still don't feel like they have a lot of "game" in them for some peeps because of the lack of number crunching.↩