I belong to a philosophy meetup. Before the virus, we were told that we would gradually cover the material in this book. I encourage you to read the brief description on Amazon. We will not be meeting again for a while, so I figured I would complete reading the book, which I got from the library.

The book claims that one of the necessary characteristics of a game is that there be a clearly defined goal and a set of rules for attaining the goal. It discusses childhood activities like playing cops and robbers or playing house, and says that they are not really games, and that children eventually grow out of them. This made me think of role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. As I understand it, these games tend to be more structured than children’s activities, but do not necessarily have clearcut winners and losers.

If any of you have played in such a game, could you give an idea of what might go on during a particular session? I checked the Wikipedia article on role playing games, and it was not clear to me just how they operate.