Thread by @Ursidice, So, a while back, I said that RPG is a language and [...]

So, a while back, I said that RPG is a language and some people always need a phrasebook to speak it. I was supposed to write a reason why and then, welp, bad brain.
Anyway, this is what I meant by that:
A pre-amble - I post my games on Reddit, to /RPG and so obviously get to

have conversations with people who read the rules and want to either critique, or make suggestions. Occasionally (it's happened, maybe twice out of 18 games), I'll get a question or comment that goes along these lines "I don't know what to do" or "I don't know how I'd play this"

I found this really interesting and have tried to approach why this line of thinking has come up for that individual. Through these little discourses, I've noticed that there are some things that these people felt they needed to be able to run the game. A lot of these are things

you'd notice, if you picked up a copy of the world's most popular roleplaying game, developed from wargaming in the 1970s, but some of them are more based around the idea that in a wide enough space, someone will never walk forwards.
For context, the games I put out are small -

they're one or two (sometimes 3!!!) pages, max. That means that there's things you need to include and things that you have to hope players can intuit.
One of these musts is theme, or a prompt "You are X, trying to Y, however Z" is the easiest way to describe this. Now, here's

where we get to the phrasebook, or lack thereof.
Looking at a game like Fiasco, which is one of the furthest (well known) places you can get from the DnD, you have a whole book that is designed to give you X, Y and Z. The parts in between that are up to the players. In terms

of the language analogy, Fiasco is basically someone writing down the word they need on the back of their hand, hoping it doesn't rub off before they need to use it, and working through life on the rest of their understanding of the language.
DnD is like having the entire

dictionary, a book about grammar, and a phrasebook, to help you through each individual situation. To be clear, I'm talking about what the game gives you, not that it's mandating that you play it like that.
So, now that we've established two different ends of the spectrum in

terms of phrasebooks, let's look at the language itself.
The simplest form of the language is "We are X". It's RP, but is it enough to be called G?
In one conversation on Reddit, I was sent a link to an article called "what is a game" (it was an OK read, but I also didn't agree

with a lot of it, because it was trying to define a game by nature of having specific mechanics and was fairly rooted in BG design).
I like to think of Game as this: "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.", we can sit round a table, use that single prompt and

begin. "We are X" is enough of a prompt for some people to begin playing. It's purely roleplay, but it could, just as easily, be called improv instead. So let's look at the phrase again: "You are X, trying to Y", OK, it gives us more of a prompt, but, again,

it's an open world. People can play from that, but in terms of the language analogy, you're giving them every sound a human can make and telling them there's a language there.
So, let's look at the full version "You are X, trying to Y, however Z". "However Z" can be a prompt

- it can be the "and this is your adversary", or "but your emotional burden is great", or "you are a bear, attempting to do crime", or "at this point in the game things happen to make your situation complex" a la Fiasco. These give the players a board to jump off and, again,

can be enough for some players.
So, Z can be a prompt, but it can also be a mechanic. "You will succeed in trying to Y if you can Z." or "Z drives forward the narrative in your attempt to Y". At this point, we've almost gone past Fiasco, but we're not at the school of languages

yet. So we create a mechanic that determines what happens when a player attempts to Y, or even acts in a way that would bring them closer to Y, whether Y is placing your character into a position of emotional power in a scene, killing a monster, or stealing honey. That can also

be enough for some players, but maybe "However Z" can have more to it. It can be a mechanic (or series of mechanics), it can be a single prompt, or it can be a series of prompts (you could call these jumping off points, or encounters etc). The further we stretch out what is

involved in X, Y and Z, the more comfortable some players get and the less comfortable others get. In the same way that the less we give players in terms of X, Y, Z, the more comfortable some players can be than others.
There's a one word RPG on Itch called We Are But Worms.

That pushes this even further - it can be played and it can fit that definition of "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun", in fact, it's actually a fantastic example of the power of a concept for play. If you gave that prompt to a room full of kids, they'd know

how to play that game and they would have a hell of a good time doing it. They'd not be concerned about how to "win" or the fact that there wasn't a structure to guide them.
So, back to language - honestly, I'm rambling and I won't go on much longer, it's very, very hot - some

people will always require a hugely in depth version of X, Y, Z to be able to sit down at a table and play a game. Some people will only need X (although WABW technically sits somewhere before this, and has a mechanic - it's included in that one word and is how you play). Some

people will only need X, Y, some people will only need X, Y, Z, but what makes a game playable comes down to the language of RPG that the player is used to and where they approach that language from. Some people will always need a phrasebook, even if it's not a detailed one.

Anyway, I think that made my point. I love a good random table in a game and I also love sitting down with one mechanic and talking to each person at the table to work out what the world is and where we go in it. I have players in regular games who love to take a concept and go

with it, and I have players who need to ask what they can do. When those people GM, it can be a complete reversal and they can just take off into running a game without needing rules and others need a mechanic for everything.
RPG is a language, on which lots of other languages

(games) are based and founded and no matter which language it is, some people will want the engine to be able to construct a sentence for them and others won't.

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