back in the dark ages, before the invention of fun, a man named Gary Gygax had never heard of roleplaying before so he decided to invent it. but he was a giant nerd so his version of roleplaying was mostly paperwork and math, and he called it D&D

years later, computer nerds who had also never heard of roleplaying said to themselves “man I love D&D, but the paperwork and math sucks. maybe if we put the D&D in the computer, it can do all the paperwork and math for us!” so they did. and it turns out that when the computer does all the paperwork and math in D&D, what’s left is a lot of boring numbers. and the nerds decided to call their new boring number game “a roleplaying game” - because they still didn’t know what roleplaying was

later on, innovators in the RPG genre decided to put the paperwork and math back into their games, and now every time you level up you have to fill out a talent tree and apply for a +10% damage bonus on all deductible business expenses. this increases the fun

and that’s why RPGs are called RPGs to this day, even though it’s much easier to roleplay in a genre that isn’t about paperwork and numbers

@kasdeya roleplaying is when number go up; the more number go up, the better the roleplaying is

@cybersqyd @kasdeya me when my gun levels up and changes colour after shooting a bunch of masked baddies: o wow rpg elements killing makes me stronger and has zero consequences this is so deep