Hey, this is my first post here. The direction this discussion is going speaks to my interests, so I just had to delurk for this.
Seldon2639 said:
Welcome to the argument of what constitutes an "authentic RPG". I'm, personally, more interface oriented. I like turn-based battles, and it's pretty rare for me to really like an FPS/RPG (Mass Effect). When the RPG elements (stats, ect.) seem tacked on at the end, it's less fun. The issue with saying Deux Ex is closer to an "authentic RPG" based on multiple endings, paths, ect. is that we can debate whether those make for an "authentic RPG".
There's an issue here because "RPG" as a term is very divergent.
I'm going to say "roleplaying" in air quotes a lot. When I say that I usually mean "what the average D&D player would call roleplaying." Not derisively but just to emphasize that it's ambiguously defined even within the pen-and-paper RPG community, though also a term that's idiosyncratic to that community.
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Here's my weird way of looking at it...
D&D was the original "roleplaying game." The system in D&D, especially early D&D, is pretty much a skirmish wargaming system. Turning the game tokens into full-on characters with personalities and motivations is an example of transformative play (akin to, say, speed runs or character-acting "roleplaying" in an fantasy MMOG). This stuff that pen-and-paper gamers call "roleplaying" -- chiefly in-character dialogue and paying some attention to the fictional persona's motivations, with elements of big-picture storytelling as well -- wasn't really directly supported by the rules, but the games were bendy enough that almost everybody started doing it. Over time, pen-and-paper RPGs became all about the shared fiction of play. The community was somewhat antagonistic towards players who didn't adopt the "roleplaying" style, and video-game wargaming really did a much better job of offering little tactical battles than RPG systems did.
The rules, however, didn't change all that much. Even the White Wolf games of the early 90s, which are notable for popularizing a certain outlook on RPG-as-storytelling, use a stats-and-skills-and-special-rules-for-combat system not too different from D&D or CRPGs (and they have a similar XP-driven zero-to-hero bildungsroman approach to character development).
In my opinion, there's a huge gap between the rules in the book and the techniques employed by the group during play. Simply put, I think most of the rules do absolutely nothing to help "roleplaying" or the creation of shared narrative. This is a somewhat controversial thing to say. (Usually on a pen-and-paper RPG forum you'll get responses like "You don't need rules for roleplaying!")
Anyway, that's a really long-winded way of saying that most pen-and-paper gamers -- and most of their gaming books, too -- use "roleplaying" to refer to a set of stuff that's pretty much completely independent of system.
Many also think of all RPGs as being defined by experience points and Strength scores and GMs and task-resolution rules systems. They just take all that stuff for granted because that's pretty much the paradigm that all the big commercially-successful-in-their-own-niche-market pen-and-paper RPGs have followed. D&D, GURPS, WoD, WFRP, Palladium, whatever... that's not to say they're all the same, but they're all designed around a very similar set of central assumptions.
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Video-game RPGs like Baldur's Gate can emulate the rules in a game book pretty well. The RPG genre of video games -- both Western and Japanese -- largely started out aping D&D, after all. Many RPG video games also try to emulate the experience of playing in a tabletop RPG game, e.g. by using scripted branching dialog in place of talking to a GM.
But there are big commercially-successful video games that don't use a D&D-style system but still have all kinds of cool story stuff happening. They still end up channeling a bit of the experience of "roleplaying" in a D&D game without using D&D-like rules.
So, video games have done a better job of disentangling the narrative techniques that define "roleplaying" from the other stuff they're just sitting on top of (like Strength scores and experience points), I guess. At least if you focus just on games that are well-known and mainstream in their respective markets.
(The skills system in Deus Ex definitely felt tacked-on to me, though. That's why I actually prefer the gameplay in its sequel, Invisible War -- even though that game is, overall, weaker.)
-- Alex
