This is close enough to be on topic

What makes a role playing game¹?

• you can imagine yourself to be one of the acting characters (check)
• there are rules, it is not just free-form improv (check)
• players have agency to make meaningful decisions (fail)

Potato is a game of solitaire dice rolling painted with a veneer of Tolkien. The near entire lack of meaningful decision making is why it fails as a role-playing game for me. Like in the childrens game "Tempo, little snail", the player has next to no influence on the eventual outcome, the game plays itself.

  With goodwill, you could consider the "Hurling in the back garden" mechanic to save the game from failing entirely.

However, I do think this is not a reason to close the question as off-topic. There are many questions on the site that are only tangentially related to the hobby of role-playing games, for example there are many questions about the statistical probabilities of dice rolls, that one could argue could belong on a statistics wiki. And while the community has drawn some explicit division lines around shopping questions or computer role-playing games, minigames is not one of them. I feel we can be more welcoming and inclusive in our scoping than to ban a question on a game like this, that overlaps in many ways with kind of games we enjoy discussing.

¹ Play-acting is not essential to role playing games, role playing in an interacting world is. A lot of other things like rolling dice, the fantasy, horror or sci-fi genres are often also associated with role playing games, and are likewise not essential to the nature of the activity.

There are games without game masters, like the choose-your-own adventure books that can in the wider sense considered role playing games. You still imagine to be the main character, use rules (following the prearranged decision graph and sometimes simple mechanics to resolve fights), and make meaningful decisions at each node where you can choose one of serveral courses of action.

This is close enough to be on topic

What makes a role playing game¹?

• you can imagine yourself to be one of the acting characters (check)
• there are rules, it is not just free-form improv (check)
• players have agency to make meaningful decisions (fail)

Potato is a game of solitaire dice rolling painted with a veneer of Tolkien. The near entire lack of meaningful decision making is why it fails as a role-playing game for me. Like in the childrens game "Tempo, little snail", the player has next to no influence on the eventual outcome, the game plays itself. With goodwill, you can consider the "Hurling in the back garden" mechanic to save the game from failing entirely on this count (even if there is an optimal strategy, which is very likely, the player may not know it or need to follow it).

However, I do think this is not a reason to close the question as off-topic. There are many questions on the site that are only tangentially related to the hobby of role-playing games, for example there are many questions about the statistical probabilities of dice rolls, that one could argue could belong on a statistics wiki. And while the community has drawn some explicit division lines around shopping questions or computer role-playing games, minigames is not one of them. I feel we can be more welcoming and inclusive in our scoping than to ban a question on a game like this, that overlaps in many ways with kind of games we enjoy discussing.

¹ Play-acting is not essential to role playing games, role playing in an interacting world is. A lot of other things like rolling dice, the fantasy, horror or sci-fi genres are often also associated with role playing games, and are likewise not essential to the nature of the activity.

There are games without game masters, like the choose-your-own adventure books that can in the wider sense considered role playing games. You still imagine to be the main character, use rules (following the prearranged decision graph and sometimes simple mechanics to resolve fights), and make meaningful decisions at each node where you can choose one of serveral courses of action.

This is close enough to be on topic

What makes a role playing game¹?

• you can imagine yourself to be one of the acting characters (check)
• there are rules, it is not just free-form improv (check)
• players have agency to make meaningful decisions (fail)

Potato is a game of solitaire dice rolling painted with a veneer of Tolkien. The near entire lack of meaningful decision making is why it fails as a role-playing game for me. Like in the childrens game "Tempo, little snail", the player has next to no influence on the eventual outcome, the game plays itself.

With goodwill, you could consider the "Hurling in the back garden" mechanic to save the game from failing entirely: once you reach 9 orcs you have to ask yourself if you want to risk being eaten with an unlucky roll, or sacrifice one of your potatoes. But according to the statistics of AncientSwordRage, that situation only happens about every second game.

However, I do think this is not a reason to close the question as off-topic. There are many questions on the site that are only tangentially related to the hobby of role-playing games, for example there are many questions about the statistical probabilities of dice rolls, that one could argue could belong on a statistics wiki. And while the community has drawn some explicit division lines around shopping questions or computer role-playing games, minigames is not one of them. I feel we can be more welcoming and inclusive in our scoping than to ban a question on a game like this, that overlaps in many ways with kind of games we enjoy discussing.

¹ Play-acting is not essential to role playing games, role playing in an interacting world is. A lot of other things like rolling dice, the fantasy, horror or sci-fi genres are often also associated with role playing games, and are likewise not essential to the nature of the activity.

There are games without game masters, like the choose-your-own adventure books that can in the wider sense considered role playing games. You still imagine to be the main character, use rules (following the prearranged decision graph and sometimes simple mechanics to resolve fights), and make meaningful decisions at each node where you can choose one of serveral courses of action.

This is close enough to be on topic

What makes a role playing game¹?

• you can imagine yourself to be one of the acting characters (check)
• there are rules, it is not just free-form improv (check)
• players have agency to make meaningful decisions (fail)

Potato is a game of solitaire dice rolling painted with a veneer of Tolkien. The near entire lack of meaningful decision making is why it fails as a role-playing game for me. Like in the childrens game "Tempo, little snail", the player has next to no influence on the eventual outcome, the game plays itself.

With goodwill, you could consider the "Hurling in the back garden" mechanic to save the game from failing entirely.

However, I do think this is not a reason to close the question as off-topic. There are many questions on the site that are only tangentially related to the hobby of role-playing games, for example there are many questions about the statistical probabilities of dice rolls, that one could argue could belong on a statistics wiki. And while the community has drawn some explicit division lines around shopping questions or computer role-playing games, minigames is not one of them. I feel we can be more welcoming and inclusive in our scoping than to ban a question on a game like this, that overlaps in many ways with kind of games we enjoy discussing.

¹ Play-acting is not essential to role playing games, role playing in an interacting world is. A lot of other things like rolling dice, the fantasy, horror or sci-fi genres are often also associated with role playing games, and are likewise not essential to the nature of the activity.

There are games without game masters, like the choose-your-own adventure books that can in the wider sense considered role playing games. You still imagine to be the main character, use rules (following the prearranged decision graph and sometimes simple mechanics to resolve fights), and make meaningful decisions at each node where you can choose one of serveral courses of action.