What makes a game a RPG?
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yhatzee said it best its all about specialization if you create something that you can do but you cant do nothing else thats a role you not just can but must go into a role like a warrior or a mage not heres a sword heres a spell have fun
This is one of those "I know it when I see it" things, and what makes it unclear is that not only is there a sliding scale of RPGness but there are also different types of RPG, which might have different qualities and yet qualify as RPG as the sum of their parts rather than because of the parts themselves.4RM3D said:
Personally I would say that an RPG ought to contain most of these things but not necessarily all:
* The ability to customise and or develop a character or characters.
* Some element of adventure by either story or exploration or both.
* Some complexity in equipping your character and or crafting items e.g. loot, upgrades, crafted potions.
* A variety of ways of approaching many instances of gameplay, usually depending on how you have customised your character/equipment, e.g. stealth, persuasion, various types of combat or dialogue trees, morality compass etc.
Now thats clearly not arguing from first principles but rather rather defining the thing from its observed properties, its not pretty but I think its pretty much what we mean by RPG these days and it has become something of a grey term. One thing RPG is not is "Role" "Playing" "Game", people who wheel out this definition clearly have no conception of how language evolves in its usage.
You can't ask for a definition of an RPG and also say we need to use the cookies to make the mold. What if Mass Effect is not an RPG? We need to define what it SHOULD be first, then use that definition to determine whether or not some things that have been called "RPG's" actually fit the definition in whole or in part.
I think an RPG has to include ALL of the following (which may be shared in part by non-RPG's)
1) The game-play action is NOT the primary focus of the game. Sports games, puzzles, platformers, shooters all have the actual gameplay interaction as the #1 focus.
2) Exploration is a major part of the game. This includes interaction with other characters. Many other kinds of games include exploration elements, but an RPG has to have it. There should be a sense of discovering an entire world as opposed to getting from one end of the screen to the other.
3) Story, plot, and character interaction is a major part of the game. Essential, really.
4) You play a character who is not you, and you must adapt your approach to the game to fit within that character's motives, abilities, environment, influences, etc. This line is many times represented by the control interface - that you select the action but the character carries it out.
5) The character(s) you control develop over the course of the game (ideally with you having some ability to direct or influence that development). Sure you can develop player skills in some sports games, and explore some in platformers, but the primary focus is on the action, whereas in RPG's the primary focus is not the action.
Many games have RPG elements, but would be intact without them. An RPG must have these elements or it will either be nothing or a different genre of game.
Adventure games like Zelda have many RPG elements, but the basic gameplay is combat/action focused. I would say Mass Effect was a borderline (or bad) RPG, and was really more of an adventure game with limited RPG elements. FF13 is an RPG, but due to its extremely limited exploration element, it's a bad RPG.
A good example of the lines between Genres would be comparing KOTOR to Jade Empire. Same game engine, same production company, but while in KOTOR you select a command an your character carries it out on screen (traditional RPG), in Jade Empire you're actually hitting the fighting buttons in real time (action RPG) which is offputting to those who want to role-play not fight.
I think an RPG has to include ALL of the following (which may be shared in part by non-RPG's)
1) The game-play action is NOT the primary focus of the game. Sports games, puzzles, platformers, shooters all have the actual gameplay interaction as the #1 focus.
2) Exploration is a major part of the game. This includes interaction with other characters. Many other kinds of games include exploration elements, but an RPG has to have it. There should be a sense of discovering an entire world as opposed to getting from one end of the screen to the other.
3) Story, plot, and character interaction is a major part of the game. Essential, really.
4) You play a character who is not you, and you must adapt your approach to the game to fit within that character's motives, abilities, environment, influences, etc. This line is many times represented by the control interface - that you select the action but the character carries it out.
5) The character(s) you control develop over the course of the game (ideally with you having some ability to direct or influence that development). Sure you can develop player skills in some sports games, and explore some in platformers, but the primary focus is on the action, whereas in RPG's the primary focus is not the action.
Many games have RPG elements, but would be intact without them. An RPG must have these elements or it will either be nothing or a different genre of game.
Adventure games like Zelda have many RPG elements, but the basic gameplay is combat/action focused. I would say Mass Effect was a borderline (or bad) RPG, and was really more of an adventure game with limited RPG elements. FF13 is an RPG, but due to its extremely limited exploration element, it's a bad RPG.
A good example of the lines between Genres would be comparing KOTOR to Jade Empire. Same game engine, same production company, but while in KOTOR you select a command an your character carries it out on screen (traditional RPG), in Jade Empire you're actually hitting the fighting buttons in real time (action RPG) which is offputting to those who want to role-play not fight.
The Mass Effect series is one of the few series that ARE RPGs. A RPG is about making dialogue and story choices, not leveling up characters. A RPG doesn't even need a combat system or leveling. A RPG is all about choosing what to do and where to go outside of combat. JRPGs aren't RPGs because there are no decisions to be made that do not pertain to combat.believer258 said:
I personally find a game to be an RPG when it contains a story where you can make decisions[sup]1[/sup] to affect the outcome. You don't need to control statistics (especially number heavy, crunchy statistics) for it to be an RPG.4RM3D said:
So by my definition, the following would be RPG's:
Mass Effect
Dragon Age: Origins
Knights of the Old Republic 1&2
Many visual novels
Etc. Etc.
Any game that does not have choices to affect the outcome is not an RPG in my opinion. Those games would be in a separate category.
[sup]1[/sup]Note: This does not include purely tactical decisions.
States and levels mostly. Mass effect is an RPG because it has levels. games that have "RPG elements" usually have levels or some sort of customizable states that come at intervals in same way levels do. More generally its about the ability to customize your character and make decisions in some capacity as well. The title "role playing game" is ambiguous as hell since in any game your playing some character and thus some role but RPGs usually have a focus on choices and customizations in some sense rather then on any other particular item, like racing or fighting monsters. It's certainly not as cut and dry as the fighting game genera or racing games but it's also not so nebulous that all RPGs could just be absorbed by other generas.
I went into a lengthy explanation before, and then the thread got shut down so I couldn't respond to a respondee. To put it bluntly there is a simple answer to this question, though it's going to piss a lot of people off because of how people want to define RPG.4RM3D said:Games have different genres, e.g. adventure, FPS. Now RPG is also a genre, but I have always found it to be ambiguous. When asking people to name an example of a RPG, you will get answers like Final Fantasy or Fallout or Skyrim. But when I name a racing game (e.g. Need for Speed) then that's not a RPG but a simulation game. I understand, but I have been thinking... Aren't you "roleplaying" a race driver and doing some insane stuff on the race track (or in case of GTA, off the track)?
The question I ask you: What makes a game a RPG?
It can't be a story, a moral choice or an open world, because some RPG games don't have any of those (like Final Fantasy XIII. Stats (statistics) you say? The ability to customize the character you are playing? Nope. Mass Effect 2 is a RPG (an action RPG, but still), but it rarely has customization apart from choosing a class.
What then? Is there a checklist of requirements for RPGs and does it have to have a combination of things to be called a RPG? The lines between the RPG genre and some other genres are fading, but we can still classify something as a RPG... On what grounds?
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not here to bash games. I am not saying Mass Effect or Final Fantasy are bad games. I am just talking about the RPG aspect.
So, I ask once again: what classifies a game as a RPG?
We can all identify RPG games, but can we explain it?
Speaking strictly in terms of fact, this is how it is:
RPGS are all about statistics determining the results of actions, rather than the abillities of the player. The idea being that in a regular game you can't get past your basic limitations as a person, such as being weak, slow, dumb, or inherantly unlikable, in an RPG the idea is that someone can effectively take on the role of a character that is nothing like themselves and control it indirectly.
In absolute terms the litmus test as to whether something is an RPG or something simply claiming to be an RPG is whether or not your abillities as a player are determining the outcome. Despite what the name appears to mean, it's not about playing a role in the sense of acting, but rather that the role is what plays the game and determines the oucome. Super Mario Brothers is not an RPG for example because it's your coordination and timing that determine success or failure at the game.
To understand what RPGs are you have to look at where they were invented, which also explains the meaning of the term. They did not just appear magically one day with an unknown origin, indeed we know pretty much where and when they were invented, and even who made them popular and put them into circulation.
RPGS are the child of wargames, which was where people would sit down and command armies to similate historical battles using sand tables and a lot of minatures, with statistics to represent each piece, and dice to determine the roll of fortune as to say whether an unreliable weapon like matchlocks were going to fire. As time went on they moved from historical simulation, into alternative history, and then eventually into pure fantasy as people found ways to try and simulate things like orcs and elves using the same numbers. Due to the price and complexity of entry you started also seeing these games reduce in scale from massive clashing armies, down to smaller, skirmish based confrontations where there was an increasing focus on invidual units and equipment. This eventually turned into the idea of games where each player would take on the role of a specific warrior and conduct the battle purely with statistics and dice.
It's a ROLE playing game, because you would basically be rating the relative values of say the armor and equipment of a Samurai vs. that of a Spartan, and then rolling dice for the oucome. Sort of like say "The Deadliest Warrior" with college nerds... purely an intellectual exercise.
This turned into the idea of people creating specific characters based on fantasy to fight, and see who would win, and then into the idea of coming up with reasons for battles, etc... etc... until you saw the formation of things like Dungeons and Dragons.
RPGS on computers were simply when people decided to take that format and have a computer crunch the numbers and take on the role of a GM (albiet not as adaptive).
Strictly speaking, an RPG requires no plot, no world setting, and nothing else but for an action to be simulated statistically without any kind of action on the part of the players.
If you look at some of the most detailed fantasy worlds out there that came from RPGs, like say The Forgotten Realms, or Grayhawk, and read about the people who created them, the simple truth is that they did not start out as these monsterous piles of plot and color. They literally began as pointless monster pits. The Forgotten Realms for example was based around a dungeon called "Undermountain" and the town of "Waterdeep" was developed as a place for the PCs to spend their money, and the world was built outwards from there as the desires of the GM and players expanded. This is how you wound up with quirky things like a guy building a bar directly on top of the dungeon entrance in Waterdeep (Durnan's "Yawning Portal") Durnan was the character of one of the original players, and I believe he came up with that idea when he was like 13 or something from when I was reading... but it became an immortal part of one of the most developed RPG worlds of all time. Grayhawk is similar except it was all built around the dungeons of castle Greyhawk.
Now, to be honest as time went on and these games got furhter and further away from their roots people began to associate the trappings of an RPG with what makes an RPG what it is. Oftentimes focusing on what makes the game appeal to them, and yes spawning plenty of arguements about actual role-playing, roll-playing, and the needs of player freedom compared to that of the story and whether the GM should adapt to them, or vice versa, and so on and so forth. Most of which misses the point that none of that matters in the end, what matters is that when you play, you as the player don't do anything, but rather speak for a character far differant from yourself. You don't swing a sword, but will say "Dwarg swings his sword" and then the results are calculated mechanically, all that matters is your intent....
Thus, even if a game claims to be an RPG, in the end if the big determining factor is you working the controls, it's not an RPG. A final fantasy game where you select "attack" and the computer determines the results based on the relative abillities of character and monster is an RPG, it's storyline, etc... have nothing to do with that. Something like "Dark Souls" might have RPG elements since stats do influance things, but are not an RPG because in the end you have to aim and swing your weapon, and avoiding traps and attacks and such depends as much, if not more, on your abillity to control things as a player than the raw statistics of your character.
It's not nice to say so, but RPG has gained a sort of intellecual association (due to it being largely a mental exercise), it's one of those terms used to make a game see unusually highbrow, and where players... whether they realize it or not, want to be able to have that "smart people" distinction. This is why so many people will argue the point, or try and be clever based on the term "role-playing" and point towards acting, without realizing it that it's role-playing in the terms of assuming control of a single role/character, as opposed to say a squad or army.
I disagree. Final Fantasy is generally accepted to be an RPG, it isn't factually an RPG. Many people disagree about what an "RPG" is, and since the whole idea of an RPG is not a natural concept (it's a man-made idea) that also means that there is no "factual" definition, and therefore no "factual" RPGs.pg.shadowrunner said:
Final Fantasy is usually called a JRPG, which in my experience seems to mean it is the exact opposite of what I consider to be an RPG for some reason (though from what I hear the Persona games would fit my definition somewhat).