Chewing on an argument I've heard about roleplaying (I won't cite sources bc I'm not trying to convince anyone, nor cause folks trouble by sending them naysayers), where the proponents assert that—in their words—conceiving of roleplaying as a focus on scene work, character interaction, dialogue and internal motivation is ahistorical, and therefore not representative of the actual hobby.
I've been turning over that argument—particularly the assertion that it's ahistorical—and I think that while there is truth to it, there is a rigidity inherent to the argument that doesn't meet the reality of the modern scene. Sure, trpg comes from d&d, a series of games that put no emphasis on character development, interpersonal relationships, or storytelling in their early iterations. However, I think that insisting that any definition of roleplaying must then be based on its earliest ancestors lets slide the fact that there is a significant and muddy gap where the wargames of yore slowly became the trpgs of today.
Wargaming and skirmish games that have characters with tightly defined combat roles with choose your flavor progression still exist today alongside modern trpgs. We wouldn't confuse one for another, because part of the promise of a roleplaying game has evolved over time to mean "a story about my oc".
That doesn't mean that OD&D isn't a roleplaying game. It also doesn't mean that it isn't a wargame. It's both, a messy, hybrid ancestor of something that has become more tightly defined in the decades since its conception.
Any definition for roleplaying and its games, therefore, must be something that can meet the modern expectations of trpgs culturally while still being identifiable in earlier iterations. In most cultural artifacts concerning themselves with these games and their play, we see an emphasis not on the way that rules text produces a mechanically unique character, but how the players craft the legend of their game thru their heroic avatars. A game of narrative tennis and choice is what is culturally promised to players, and if that can be achieved without using rules defining what a character can do mechanically, then insisting that all contact with rules *is* roleplay is as acontemporary as the insistence that roleplay must always center scene work is ahistorical.
Just because something is mechanically attached to your character doesn't mean that invoking it is roleplay. Just because there aren't story driving mechanics in OD&D doesn't mean it's not a roleplaying game. We can identify roleplay happening when a player shapes a narrative thru active participation with its characters, and you can't do that by invoking rules in a contextual vacuum.
