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I don't think that role-playing games are toys, given that our
language and culture makes a distinction between toys and games. Toys
are purely physical objects, and while they might feature in a game we
build up around them, they are inherently part of only the type of
play defined by their form; a doll or stuffed animal becomes a
creature of the given type, a cup and ball is for trying to get the
ball in the cup, a cardboard box embodies enclosure, and so on. We
might build up a larger game around that, but they are what they are.
We don't usually see board games as toys because there's a ruleset in
addition to the physical apparatus, and as as long as you know the
rules and board layout/pieces on a conceptual level, the actual
physical apparatus could be replaced with a sketch on a piece of paper
and any arbitrary set of randomizers and markers. (Or, indeed, by
nothing at all; blindfold chess, for example.) In this sense, role-
playing games are as far from toys as you can get, because they are
nothing _but_ rules; any physical objects are either there to hold the
rules (rulebooks) or are ways to sketch things on paper (pencil and
paper) or are arbitrary randomizers and markers that we have bought
separate from the game (dice and minis).

Maybe my minis are toys in the same way my stuffed animals are, but
they aren't an RPG; they're just minis. An RPG is a game that I play;
if I happen to draft my minis into service, that's great, but that
doesn't make a game that I can play by sitting around and talking to
my friends somehow a physical object that can then be designated a
toy.

In service,
M. Alan Thomas II

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