"You don't play a storytelling game the same way you play a board game, RPG, or video game (because those are all different things)," just shouldn't be a statement that makes people froth at the mouth.

And yet...

Frankly, it's a sign of how dysfunctional the Forge was that the hobby is still poisoned by this discourse.

Imagine if in the late '70s the hobby had vociferously objected to people referring to D&D or Traveller or Runequest as anything other than wargames. (And even argued that all wargames should be played like D&D.)

Imagine how unnecessarily angry that would make the wargamers.

Imagine how incredibly stunted the development of RPGs would have been.

Tweets from that alternate reality:

Gloomhaven exists, so obviously Small World and Tales from the Loop are the exact same type of game.

Tweets from that alternate reality:

Your claim that Advanced Third Reich and Unknown Armies use fundamentally different types of mechanics is just gatekeeping!

Tweets from that alternate reality:

Look, D&D called itself a wargame in 1974. Therefore, Blades in the Dark is a wargame. Case closed, really.

Tweets from that alternate reality:

Your claim that D&D is a roleplaying game instead of a wargame is just trying to redefine us as outside the hobby! Preferences for trad game techniques is fine, but "you don't belong here" is not!