One of the most debated, never-ending arguments in the tabletop role-playing community is the classification of rulesets and playstyles (the other being whether systems matter). Having recently joined such arguments on Discord, I've become convinced that any attempts to establish theories of TTRPG taxonomy are inherently futile and their usage impedes substantive discussion.
An important distinction to make is that between system and playstyle. Although one might argue that the latter is determined, or at least influenced, by the former, conflating the two is still unhelpful in our case.
Therefore, most taxonomies restrict their domains of discourse to either one, usually praxes rather than rules. This is no doubt partly because of the ongoing debate on whether systems determine actual gaming experiences at the table.
By far the most well-known theory is that of the "Six Cultures of Play" proposed by The Retired Adventurer. This classification tries to roughly reconstruct a common genealogy of all role-playing traditions using 6 loosely defined periods:
These have been criticized to no end, both historically and definitionally. In particular, "Nordic LARP", "Story Game", and "Classic" are questionable historically. And the definition given for the "Classic", "Story Game", and "Neo-trad" cultures are quite problematic as discussed in detail here.
An older, but probably more influential proposal is "GNS Theory" (and the wider "Big Model" as a whole). The name is an acronym of the terms:
which it claims are the 3 fundamental aims that games can have.
Controversially, GNS conflates system with playstyle by asserting that "coherent" rulesets serve just one of these principles while only "incoherent" ones try catering to more. Apart from the claim that focusing on a single goal is preferable to more, those 3 outlined have also been disputed. Specifically, how they aren't mutually exclusive or comprehensive.
A further very popular system is the "RISS" taxonomy developed by Idiomdrottning. This introduces four labels describing differing playstyles:
While these are defined categories, RISS does detail lot of overlap and interplay between them. In that, they are more malleable descriptors than discrete groupings. Yet, what these abstract concepts actually correspond to is somewhat unclear. And whether they are intended to provide an all-encompassing framework is also passed over.
Sam Sorensen's "Three-Question Taxonomy" is based on three simple dichotomies:
This is a much more descriptive classification, perhaps my favourite of the four. These divisions are also debatable though. Problem solving isn't necessarily opposed to Storytelling per se. Likewise, authorship can come from different sources for different aspects of the game.
Most of these taxonomies are grounded in simple, empirical observations: descriptive attributes or characteristics of various games and playstyles. The problems we see are those of systematization. Taking these concepts can't be made into discrete categories and comprehensive classifications. For that, we must introduce false dichotomies and groupings which rarely correspond to reality. Instead of seeing these ideas as absolute and defining, we should think of them as complementary perspectives that may or may not be helpful in describing any one gaming experience.
Moreover, the usage of these artificial labels seemingly only gets us further from the truth. They become monikers for perceived gaming praxes, and are distorted, becoming simulacra with no real-world correspondence. At some point, these terms start to function less as descriptors and more as marketing labels, buzzwords, and vague groupings devoid of actual meaning.
And for what? Why do we think we need some elaborate system of classification?
The TTRPG community's strange obsession with taxonomy is fundamentally misguided and futile since it's based on the idea that one can create a generalized framework that can represent any and all tabletop role-playing experiences. In my opinion, this view is very naïve and reductive. The sheer diversity and complexity of attitudes in any given playstyle, rule system, session, group, or table can't be reduced to some simplistic, unified theory of TTRPGs.
So instead, I suggest that we favour descriptive, concrete characterization of our gaming experiences. There are tons of angles and theories with which we can analyze games. In fact, even the 3 or 6 axes of Sam Sorensen's framework work well as such when taken individually as does his notion of legwork.
Let's put aside theoretical systems and focus on real and tangible aspects of TTRPGs.
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