What makes a game a RPG?

[Continuity]

What makes a game a RPG?

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.

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.

 

[Aircross]

Which was first, the chicken or the egg?

The totipotency chicken cell came first.

 

[cefm]

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.

 

[DEAD34345]

You can say 'im my mind' or 'to me' all you want, but that doesn't change facts.

Indeed, but it indicates that I am talking about what I consider to be an RPG, and that I don't consider any other definitions to be wrong as such.

So... what's your point?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yes, some people do still define ME2 as an RPG when it's most clearly not.

More like a third person shooter with experience points and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of talking.

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.

A role-playing game(RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development.

 

[Zen Toombs]

The question I ask you: What makes a game a RPG?

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.

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.

 

[Twilight_guy]

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.

 

[Therumancer]

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?

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.

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.

 

[DEAD34345]

You can say 'im my mind' or 'to me' all you want, but that doesn't change facts.

Indeed, but it indicates that I am talking about what I consider to be an RPG, and that I don't consider any other definitions to be wrong as such.

So... what's your point?

Sorry, wasn't trying to be argumentative. It's fine that that's your opinion, but facts concerning where Video Game RPGs come from say otherwise. It's ok that you think that FF isn't an RPG, but you're factually incorrect.

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.

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).

 

[walrusaurus]

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.

Thats some backwards reasoning. Your saying ME2 is a RPG. ME2 didn't have character choice. Therefore character choice cannot define rpgs.
When it is much more logical to claim that RPGs have choice. ME2 didn't have choice, therefore ME2 is not an RPG.

In both your making an assumption. But in the first your assuming a definition of RPG that inherently doesn't have X in order to prove that rpg's don't have X. There's a name for that but its been 5 years since i've taken a logic course so i don't remember what it it.

 

[Thaius]

A game that is deep and involved (both in story/world and gameplay), and allows player customization over one or more elements of its design.

That is to say, both Mass Effect and Final Fantasy have deep and involved stories/worlds. Final Fantasy has intense player customization of the battle system, and thus is an RPG. Mass Effect has intense player customization of the protagonist and, by extension, the story, and thus is an RPG.

The idea of an RPG is that you get to play a role in a deeper way than most games; you don't just control movement, you control details. It is not required that it be a specific type of details, or all details, just a specific type of details beyond controlling the movements and actions of the character.

Keep in mind the existence of genre mixing; so while I would classify, say, Bioshock as a first-person shooter before an RPG, the RPG elements are certainly there and make it a deeper experience than your average shooter.

 

[4RM3D]

The term RPG refers to gameplay elements borrowed from DnD and other tabletop games, the only element of said games that could be fully replicated in video games. It was originated by Richard Garriot's Ultima series, and the Wizardry series, which later inspired the first true "JRPG' as we know it, Dragon Quest. Therefore, games that continue from that lineage, and share that gameplay- level ups, epic quests, character growth and story, customization, etc., are RPGs. Not all games that HAVE those elements are RPGs, but the culmination of all these elements do. That's why Final Fantasy is an RPG, and why Skyrim is an RPG, and why Call of Duty or Gran Turismo are NOT RPGs.

Thanks for pointing that out.

*snip*

An interesting read... thank you for elaborating. While I do not disagree with your standpoint, it does make me wonder one thing. You refer to the past and how RPG games came into being. But don't you think that definition might be outdated with the new(er) generation of games; that maybe we have altered the meaning to a new acceptable standard?

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Yes, some people do still define ME2 as an RPG when it's most clearly not.

More like a third person shooter with experience points and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of talking.

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.

A role-playing game(RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development.

Uh, no.

A role-playing game must have some sort of leveling and experience. That's part of it. In fact, that's a big part of it. Besides, according to your definition, JRPG's are not actually RPG's and I would beg to differ on that one a great bit, even though I'm not a big fan of JRPG's.

Mass Effect 2 does have that leveling and experience but ultimately the game is driven by two things 1) Talking and 2) Shooting.

Let me say something about these "choices" you claim the game has. Oh, it has them alright, but it's a poorly veiled illusion. You essentially have a plot map that Bioware laid out for you with a few different branches for the choices you made and... that's it. These choices have no real impact on changing the way the narrative plays out, except for the ending of ME2. So what if you chose to let everyone but Shephard die in ME2 and carried that save over to ME3? Again, I doubt it will have much impact on the story line of the next game beyond some different details and different characters in different spots.

Shooting, just to say something about it, depends far more on the players' third person shooter skill than it does on the player's current level of experience. Even after playing the game for a good amount of time, I cannot tell you if experience has any real impact on your character at all.

Mass Effect is in no real way a full RPG. It's got some of those elements, but it is most definitely an action game with lots of talking.

A RPG does NOT need character leveling or experience. There are several pen and paper one-shot RPGs (like Ninja Burger) that obviously don't having leveling as it's one play session and you're done. And yeah, JRPGs are not RPGs as every story point and line of character dialog is predetermined (you have no choices to make in JRPGs). I like a good JRPG better than a good WRPG because giving you dialog and story freedom in a video game is harder than creating a game with a completely pre-defined story and characters.

Yeah, Mass Effect doesn't have a great deal of choice in the main storyline (because that is hard as hell to do in a video game) but you get pretty big choices to make in the side stories (mainly loyalty missions). Plus, you get heaps of dialog choices to define your character (your Commander Sheppard). Have you ever played a pen and paper RPG? Because there is more talking than combat. Deciding what your character says is a core component of a RPG.

Combat is not nearly as important to a RPG as you make it out to be, combat is not even a requirement for a RPG. Also the combat system can literally be anything from turn-based combat with swords and magic (standard DnD) to straight shooting (like Mass Effect). RPGs are so flexible, they can have any type of gameplay; a RPG could be a platformer. Heavy Rain would be a great example of a RPG if it had dialog choices as there was a decent amount of story choices but the dialog was pretty much all pre-determined, and you couldn't go anywhere you wanted either.

Both authors and major publishers of tabletop role-playing games consider them to be a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling. Events, characters and narrative structure give a sense of a narrative experience, and the game need not have a strongly-defined storyline. Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player at a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story. Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story.

 

[Stemer]

Once I played a really great RPG.
I could chose what kind of person I wanted my character to be, I could be a pacifist, a warmonger, a bully, a bigot, a peacekeeper, a diplomat, a scientist, a crazy man, hell anything I wanted. The best bit was that I was free to write my own story rather than follow a pre-determined path.

It was stat heavy from the start, and even on the lower difficulty settings you still had to keep loads and loads of figures and percentages in check every turn. Stats affected every part of the game, from shooting and stabbing to negotiating.

It was a bit sparse on NPCs but it made up for it by tracking not only my relationship with them, but also the relationships they had with each other, and this affected game play significantly, with them fighting amongst themselves, or forming there own alliances.

In fact I think I might go play some CIV4 right now

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

You seem slightly angry.

What you described, by the way, seems more like a feature of a game than the game itself. What is the ultimate goal in such a video game? Certainly combat isn't necessary to make a game, though I admit that my enjoyment of any game often leans toward how fluid the combat and movement is.

No, I have not played pen-and-paper RPG's. Any of them. I could have sworn that we were talking about video games, though. While video game RPG's did descend from tabletop RPG's, they are at this point their own entity, similar to how rock music descended from gospel.

And if how you put it is so, then Bioshock is an RPG. So is any game with multiple endings that depend on your choices throughout the game, presence of other common role-playing elements (XP, leveling) be damned. Star Wars The Force Unleashed would also be one as there's a choice in that one as well.

It's just that if your definition is true, then the term "RPG" encompasses so much that it almost becomes irrelevant. Instead of being a genre, like it has been considered since it became part of video games, it becomes a feature of a game. You could say "RPG" all day and by your definition, no one would have any idea what to expect with the gameplay.

Regardless of yours or my own opinions, Mass Effect 2 leans far more toward being a third person shooter with lots of talking than being anything akin to an RPG like Dragon Age or Baldur's Gate or whatever else you count as an RPG (a video game one).

I guess here I should also note that I know that Baldur's Gate was a DnD inspired RPG before you blurt that in your retort.

I get slightly irritated when people say Mass Effect isn't a RPG, it's a shooter. Bioware is one of the few devs that actually try to incorporate actual role-playing into their games.

How can you get my definition of a RPG so wrong? I even stated that a game like Heavy Rain is NOT a RPG because there is no (very little) dialog choice plus you can't go wherever you want. The game has a pretty decent amount of story choice and multiple endings and I said it's not a RPG. So, how do you get that I consider any game with multiple endings a RPG? Bioshock is pretty much the complete opposite of a RPG because there's an actual plot point that ensures the game is not a RPG.

Any game that emphasizes dialog choice and story choice is a RPG. The gameplay can be literally anything. I would say the game would need to have an open world feel to it so you have the ability to choose where to go as well.

The term RPG refers to gameplay elements borrowed from DnD and other tabletop games, the only element of said games that could be fully replicated in video games. It was originated by Richard Garriot's Ultima series, and the Wizardry series, which later inspired the first true "JRPG' as we know it, Dragon Quest. Therefore, games that continue from that lineage, and share that gameplay- level ups, epic quests, character growth and story, customization, etc., are RPGs. Not all games that HAVE those elements are RPGs, but the culmination of all these elements do. That's why Final Fantasy is an RPG, and why Skyrim is an RPG, and why Call of Duty or Gran Turismo are NOT RPGs.

Games weren't complex enough to have allowed for much story and dialog choice. Games have come much further along that you can now have role-playing elements like dialog choice and story decisions. Something like Alpha Protocol where you can choose to kill the weapons dealer is a great example of role-playing; do you kill him and lose the ability to buy guns from him or do you let him live so you can get better guns but the enemies also will have better guns. That one decision alone hinges on what type of character you are playing as (are you a killer?) and the playstyle of your character (are you focused on using guns or stealth/melee?), both factor into your decision.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

So an RPG is a game where you have both dialog choice and you have some choice as to where to go next?

I am sorry, but that is far too broad to be anywhere near correct or even relevant to anything. Anything at all. Either make something far more specific and concrete or this little debate is over (and Mass Effect stays a shooter!)

How is that too broad when very few games would be considered RPGs under my definition?

More talking than shooting, which is what makes Mass Effect a RPG. Plus, you don't even need to shoot much if you pick the Biotic or Engineer class.

 

[Bad Jim]

It's all about roll play. Stats maketh the RPG. A good RPG player is one who understands the game mechanics and creates his character with them in mind. Throw RPG elements into action games and the best players will still be the ones with the fastest reactions.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I understand what you're saying, but what does the game entail? If you say a game is a 3D action game, you can be guaranteed that you'll be doing a good amount of melee fighting with a 3D camera angle in fairly closed in spaces. If you say a game is a first person shooter, then I'd be willing to bet that you'll be using guns to shoot things from a first person perspective. If you're playing a puzzle game...

According to your definition, an RPG is a talking simulator with choices as to where you're going to go to talk to people. The brief definitions I gave of genres above is quite broad - "puzzle game" covers everything from Bejeweled to Portal - but at least you've got a good idea of what it entails. Solving puzzles. No RPG, video game RPG, that I know of is completely dialogue and traveling, ergo it's not a very good descriptor of what playing an RPG involves. Emphasis on playing - what is the game part of this going to include? Not that picking lines of dialogue from a list can't be engaging, as Bioware themselves have proven time and time again, but that's not really fully playing a role, it's just telling your character what to say.

The RPG genre is currently much more broad than my definition. Current RPGs have quite a broad range, and you have no idea how each game will play just based on the fact that the game is a RPG. The following games play nothing like each other: Final Fantasy XIII, Disgaea, Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dark Souls, World of Warcraft, Persona, Deus Ex, Dragon Age, etc. None of those games really play much like each other and they are all RPGs. The only constant is that they all feature leveling up your character(s) and being able to go where you want to a degree (tackle side quests and whatnot), but that doesn't describe the gameplay at all; the gameplay could be 1st/3rd-person shooting, standard or strategic turn-based combat, deep hack and slash mechanics (Dark Souls), simplistic hack and slash combat (Skyrim), etc.

At least under my definition, you can go into the game expecting dialog and story decisions being emphasized, and then the gameplay is up for grabs. And, as I've shown, the role-playing (dialog and story choices) AND the gameplay are already both up for grabs in RPGs nowadays; if you only know that a game is a RPG and nothing else, you literally have no idea of how it'll play, Dark Souls and Mass Effect couldn't be more different (and if you played Mass Effect, you wouldn't be able to infer the type of gameplay Dark Souls has just from your experience playing Mass Effect or vice verse). My definition is much much less broad than how the RPG genre is currently defined.

And picking what you character says can be more engaging than actual gameplay. Mass Effect's dialog and story choices are more engaging than COD's campaign gameplay. I like to play pen and paper RPGs because I can literally say and do whatever the fuck I want, I still enjoy the combat though but it's not the reason I play. In a game of Mutants and Masterminds, I was on a talk show shooting roman candles into the audience, that kind of freedom just isn't possible in a video game.

 

[ntw3001]

A game's RPG-hood is governed by the same process that governs whether that game is 'art'. If a term has no concrete meaning, it's a waste of time trying to figure out exactly where it is and isn't applicable.

I wish this acronym would die out, but I guess it won't. Not until some series of snappier, more meaningful acronyms take its place. Acronyms that actually describe something about the game! Who's with me?

 

[otakon17]

I think the most defining trait of an RPG is the fact that the choices of the player effect the outcome of the story and even the development of the other characters in the story. Not just in gameplay terms, like beating a certain boss or finding a certain item but in the choices of how they play their character.

Other things that have become synonymous with RPG's are of course stats and leveling, to show the growth of your characters as a hard number. Whereas platformers and adventure games usually show this by the growth of the skill of the player themselves, it's the growth of the characters in RPG's that reflects the progress of the player.

But, that's just the way I see it. On a side note, my favorite RPG's are Bioware made.