The book's "Second Person" the 1st chapter's "Tabletop System" description of (p. 1-5)

In the chapter that begins this section, Greg Costikyan elegantly oulines a spectrumof game-story forms - all of which are discussed, sometimes at lenght, by other contributors to this book. Costikyan, who began his career in tabletop game design before he became a respected designer and scolar of many different types of games, still retains a noticeable fondness for the tabletop role-playing game (RPG) form, as do the editors of this book.

The quote was rewritten directly from the book chapter's description.