RPGs defined

[kingcom]

Exactly. Turn Based RPGs are alot less RPG in my opinion, as you have less control over your character.

Personally I'm of the exact opposite opinion for the reason.

I feel that in an RPG you are playing a role, so when you can't play that role as much, it's less of an RPG, because random numbers are playing the role.

Fallout has you playing far more of a role than the games you have listed. You chose how you play the game, how your character interacts with the world. The only difference is that there is a number system to be able to demonstrate your level of competency. Fallout has a percentile which represents that in a perfect situation you will have this much chance of hitting of course due to many factors this number can change so that an "expert marksman" (meaning the player is rarely going to be one and as such requires a system of rules for the player to be able to partake in the activity without the training and practice required) is represented by a high skill score. I agree that a Final Fantasy game would not be an RPG due to its inability to allow a play to actually roleplay but ones ability to roleplay is not altered by the combat system. In fact the strongest form of roleplay takes place in a table top enviroment, which always uses a turn based system. This and for the same reason as a video game, helps to ensure that the strength of the Player Character is never determined by the Player's reflexes.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

RPGs are wargames wherein you control an individual defined by numbers so as to separate player skill/knowledge/ability and character skill/knowledge/abilty. It is not about choices, story or any of that bullshit. NetHack = RPG, Mass Effect = chest-high-wall-shooter.

Anyone agree?

Role playing game. Not Roll and Play the Game. Your defined the latest. But role-play means having a role stick to your characther. And to have a role, you need a story, a set, to fit that role in.

Role-play is primarily something defined by sociologists as what you do in society, what functions/duties do you fulfil and how does that fit in the whole of society and what contributions does it give to society.
Role-play is mainly associated with performing arts, you as an actor/actress, play your role in a giving story, with more or less freedom to choose and improvise depending on how much freedom you get from the producer/director to do so.
Role play is also largely associated with sex and sexual relations, as each intervenient will play a role to fulfil his/hers or both intervenients fantasies, like making a short story, an erotic one, but still a story, being so to such a point that it even gets to more formal situations.
Since the 70's a more recreational role-play developed, a bit before the first role play video games, role-play table top games and also the historical reanacting (and quickly spawned fantastic reanacting situations, both ancient and futuristic) demands from each participant to get into the story, personificating the caracther. In the first there is a dungeon master that gives out the guidelines, in the second there might be or not a game/reanacting master, but people will still have to be conscient of what the story is all about and what role do their caracther fulfils in it, and act accordingly.

Now just because you hate stories, and hate plots and hate choices, that doesn't mean you are going to change the definition of role play and particularly role playing games. Now if you tell me that role playing video games are just doing what you said and in many cases completely ignoring the rest or just make it as a nice decorative element on the background but very little related to the player's caracther actions (like on MMORPGs where your actiuons don't trigger any change on the storyline but instead they happen with the release of patches and expansions), in that case I can understand your point, just not expressed in the best way.

 

[Axolotl]

Exactly. Turn Based RPGs are alot less RPG in my opinion, as you have less control over your character.

Personally I'm of the exact opposite opinion for the reason.

I feel that in an RPG you are playing a role, so when you can't play that role as much, it's less of an RPG, because random numbers are playing the role.

But if it's decided by player skill your not playng a role, your just being yourself. If the RNG+stats are the primary determining factor of success or failure then you truly are assumning the role of another person because your skill is irrelavent it's thye characters skill that matters.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Nothing on a computer or console qualifies as a real RPG to this old fart. A roleplaying game involves two or more people at a table with some books and dice. "RPGs" on the computer are just using the name as shorthand for "This game has some math in it, and you can dress up your dudes." Nothing wrong with that, mind you, and I'm not really sure why anyone would get worked up over semantics and nomenclature.
CRPG, JRPG, Hack n' slash, action strategy shooter with inventory management and a side of fries? All that matters is whether or not you enjoy it.

True. I didn't mention on my post above, but making role play into video games limited much more the experience, and MMO ones actually make it even worse.

 

[MCDeltaT]

RPG's are normally separated into two categories: Western and Japanese. The difference is in their definition of RPG. WRPG's let you create a character to play a role in a greater story with choices to further define your character. JRPG's give you the character as your role, the character has always been defined in the games universe you just play that character.

 

[MercurySteam]

RPGs are wargames wherein you control an individual defined by numbers so as to separate player skill/knowledge/ability and character skill/knowledge/abilty. It is not about choices, story or any of that bullshit. NetHack = RPG, Mass Effect = chest-high-wall-shooter.

How someone defines an RPG is all up to them. The basic definition can be summed up by, of course, Wikipedia:

"A role-playing game (RPG) is a broad family of games in which players assume the roles of characters, or take control of one or more avatars, in a fictional setting. Actions taken within the game succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines."

For me personally, you make or take control of a character, customise their stats and equips as you level up, and (most of the time) choose a side of a moral choice system which may or may not alter the ending of the game.

Borderlands has most of these things, but no decent story or any moral choice system, Bioshock 1/2 have no leveling up and you can only customise plasmids tonics and maybe gun upgrades if you think they count. Dante's Inferno on the other hand has leveling up, a minor moral choice system and customisable relics yet it is an action adventure game.

You can have characteristics from non-RPGs in RPGs and vice versa. Mass Effect 1/2, Bioshock 1/2 and Borderlands are all unarguably RPGs, they just have different approaches.

In the end if a game dev says it's an RPG, then it's an RPG. If you disagree because it has more then just a stat system then it means you have an entirely different view of what an RPG is.

 

[MercurySteam]

RPGs are wargames wherein you control an individual defined by numbers so as to separate player skill/knowledge/ability and character skill/knowledge/abilty. It is not about choices, story or any of that bullshit. NetHack = RPG, Mass Effect = chest-high-wall-shooter.

Anyone agree?

No. Story, choices and all of those are RPG things. Mass Effect = RPG, whether you like it or not.

This man speaks of the truth.

If in a conversation, someone says Hello and you are given a choice between responding with G'day or Fuck Off then you are playing the character's role, and therefore you are roleplaying.

If it dresses like and RPG and farts like an RPG then there's a good chance it's an RPG.

 

[Axolotl]

It's supposed to be YOU,

And that's where you're wrong. It isn't supossed to be you, it's supposed to be siomebody else, that's the point of role-play. If you skil is important then it's not role-playing. You assume somebody else characteristics and skill not your own.

 

[MercurySteam]

I also remembered this:

NetHack = RPG, Mass Effect = chest-high-wall-shooter

Actually, NetHack belongs in an RPG sub-genre [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike].

Plus, NetHack is a game from 1987 with ASCII graphics, while Mass Effect 2 is a futuristic Sci-Fi RPG-shooter, released in 2010 also built with the latest Unreal Engine and made by a company that defines Western RPGs.

It's a bit like comparing Pac-Man with Brink.

 

[Hiphophippo]

RPGs are wargames wherein you control an individual defined by numbers so as to separate player skill/knowledge/ability and character skill/knowledge/abilty. It is not about choices, story or any of that bullshit. NetHack = RPG, Mass Effect = chest-high-wall-shooter.

Anyone agree?

I do not. Nethack clearly IS an rpg, but you lose this thread in the name RPG alone. You play a ROLE as designed by the character and not the game's creater in Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 blurs the lines a little between genres but honestly, who gives a shit?

Arguing genres in games the lately is a lot like arguing sub genres in metal music, if you're familiar with that. It's almost entirely pointless and the only thing that matters in the end is whether it's any good.

 

[Dexiro]

Wouldn't they just be any game where you take control of a character or characters?

Stat building is a common feature of RPG's, but you can also have story RPGs too.

 

[Axolotl]

It's supposed to be YOU,

And that's where you're wrong. It isn't supossed to be you, it's supposed to be siomebody else, that's the point of role-play. If you skil is important then it's not role-playing. You assume somebody else characteristics and skill not your own.

No, you're playing as a fictional version of yourself. In J"RPG"s, you're controlling J. Random Douchebag. In WRPGs you are controlling you're own digital creation that is your stand-in for yourself.

Since when? RPG's have always been about creating a character for the world. Right back to the Blackmoor campaign they aren't a representation of the player, the whole point is to be somebody else with their own strengths and weaknesses.

 

[bismarck55]

Snip

I'm well aware of the definition of role-play, thank you. It is nearly irrelevant to this discussion, as actual real world role-play has next to nothing to do with role playing games, which as far as I can tell arose when Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson decided to try tabletop wargaming on a small scale by adapting chainmail rules to suit combat between individuals, with players controlling those characters, rather than an army. thus everyone was "playing a role", rather than "role playing".

Unfortunately, the (terrible) name stuck, and now we have people making downright absurd statements about PRGs such as "they are games in which you play a role". So Halo, Super Mario Bros. and Hungry hungry hippos are all roleplaying games? Lolwut?

 

[Samurai Goomba]

I challenge the internet to show me a statistic-lacking game that is unarguably an RPG. If someone can find this, well then I suppose I'd have to disagree with the OP.

I'd like to see a game without statistics. Show me that and you'll have divided by 0.

You mean in a programming sense? If we're talking about invisible statistics, then yeah, that's impossible. If we're talking about overt, obvious statistics which can be measured and quantified by the player, there are plenty of games (something like Hitman: Blood Money or Escape from Butcher Bay) which almost entirely lack that kind of thing. Hitman has 3 measurable types of information, Riddick has 1 which isn't always visible, and another that also is often not visible. Comparatively-speaking there are games out there that, when contrasted with the likes of Morrowind or Final Fantasy Tactics, might as well be a zero on the statistics scale.

 

[bismarck55]

It's supposed to be YOU,

And that's where you're wrong. It isn't supossed to be you, it's supposed to be siomebody else, that's the point of role-play. If you skil is important then it's not role-playing. You assume somebody else characteristics and skill not your own.

I've been waiting to see someone who actually understands this ages now, thank you. It is one of the most basic concepts in RPGs, yet seems to be understood by so few.

 

[MercurySteam]

So Halo, Super Mario Bros. and Hungry hungry hippos are all roleplaying games? Lolwut?

Really? Who told you that?

Halo is a Sci-Fi FPS, Hungry Hungry Hippos is a talpbletop game and Super Mario Bros is a....... Nintendo game.

If you didn't play the role of a character in any game then what would you do? Fiddle with the game settings?

 

[Samurai Goomba]

It's supposed to be YOU,

And that's where you're wrong. It isn't supossed to be you, it's supposed to be siomebody else, that's the point of role-play. If you skil is important then it's not role-playing. You assume somebody else characteristics and skill not your own.

No, you're playing as a fictional version of yourself. In J"RPG"s, you're controlling J. Random Douchebag. In WRPGs you are controlling you're own digital creation that is your stand-in for yourself.

Strange that I'm always very muscular, ruggedly handsome and can't wear the types or even fashion of clothes that I prefer to sport in real life, then. Jade Empire and KotoR were very much Western RPGs, and I never once felt like my character was a representation of myself.

I mean, in real life I look like William Petersen. Where's the Young William Petersen character model? Why do I have to pick between The Rock and Arnold all the time in these games? Well, The Rock, Mr. Schwarzaneggar and a lingerie model. Sometimes Emperor Palpatine is in there, too.