Why Choices do Not Define a RPG.

[Cynical skeptic]

This is about on the same level as, "IN HALO, U PLAY TEH ROLE OF MASAR CHEF, THAR4 HALO IS RPG!"

The entire video game RPG genre was pretty much stillborn. So any attempt at real discussion on "what makes an RPG" is pretty pointless.

 

[Fire Daemon]

So now, by your definition, Battlefield 2 is an RPG?
Or maybe COD Modern Warfare is?


You grind some duches, get some new skills and use them to kill with greater effectivity.


... A question! Anyone out there calling Bioshock an RPG? :/

They sure are, on multiplayer anyway. How is CoD4 or BC2 that much different from DnD or something similar. Fight people, win, gain experience, gain acess to knew equpment/abilities, continue playing. The only major difference is that CoD4 has more of a focus on reactin time and shooting ability.

Also, plenty of people call Bioshock an RPG. An FPSRPG as the person above me said.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

If you look a the history of RPGs, then the only defining feature is that it's generally a lot like improv acting with stricter rules.

No, the only defining feature is of stats linked to the player which can be altered or controlled in some fashion.

That's just silly. There are plenty of 'statless' RPGs.

games like Football Manager and JRPGs are Role Playing Games and we all just have to come to turms with that.

terms

Anyway, suggesting that Football Manager is an RPG is the silliest thing I've heard all day.

the DM takes the roles of the monsters, a player takes the role of their army in a game of Warhammer, a player takes the role of Shepard in Mass Effect etc. However the taking of a role itself does not make something an RPG.

Yes, a GM can (and often will) take the role of monsters, but that's like saying the CPU takes the role of the aliens in Halo. Warhammer is a wargame, not an RPG. Stats are just as defining of wargames (and a lot of other genres) as they are of RPGs. Sure, stats are a significant part of most RPGs, but they are by no means a defining feature. Taking the role of Shepard is the only decent (if not entirely accurate, due to the limitations of videogames I mentioned before) example, since the player actually playing a role there that's more than just the mechanics of the game.

You still need the stats, if you didn't nearly everything. Every game will be an RPG, Bowling would be an RPG so would Poker and pin the tail on the donkey.

I find that the definition I supply to set the bar nicely and remove any confusion as to what is and what is not an RPG.

Name one videogame that doesn't use stats.

 

[Snarky Username]

The problem is by that logic every single game ever made ever is an RPG. Every game you play some sort of role. Role playing, by definition is...

Main Entry: role?play
Pronunciation: \ˈrōl-ˌplā, -ˈplā\
Function: verb
Date: 1949
transitive verb

1 : to act out the role of

Just because you're playing a game doesn't mean you are playing through the character. If that were true, watching a movie would also be role playing, reading a book would be role playing. Role playing is when you play the game as if YOU were that space captain/ medieval knight/jedi warrior/pedophile (if you live in Japan). It's all about projecting yourself onto the charater. Final Fantasy has stats, but you hardly can project the role of any of those characters unless you happen to be an angsty 20-something with a terrible haircut.

So no, stats do not define an RPG, choices do.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

A lot of text, and all you're basically are saying is "if the characters improve their stats, it's an RPG".

So I guess Football Manager 2010 is now an RPG?

When character advancement is the primary gameplay feature of the game, it is an RPG.

Footbal Manager's main feature is the simulation of managing a football team. Thus it is a sim.

Zelda lets you learn new sword techniques and gain new items, but that's got more to do with the story and to enhance the action and platforming sequences. Its generally labeled an action/adventure.

Final Fantasy involves fighting things, but your success revolves around how far your character has advanced, in terms of level stats and equipment.

Rather than there being J and W RPGs, I view them as choice driven, stat driven and free.
Choice driven - Focus on character advancement through choices during the story (still has stats for physical/technical/magical advancement)
Stat driven - Focus on achieving a level of character advancement high enough to tackle enemies.
Free - Generally focuses on stats but there is little to no story progression. Instead the focus is on creating your own goals and advancing your character to meet said goals.

Its probably not perfect since I'm tired, and they certainly can overlap, but this is how I see it.

I find the boundaries you set extremely arbitrary.

To keep with the same example, a game like Football Manager relies extremely heavily on stats. No matter how good your tactics, you won't be able to win a tournament with statistically crappy characters. I agree that it's not an RPG, but this has nothing at all to do with how important character advancement is.

On the other hand, there are plenty of games that are generally considered RPGs that you could win without ever 'leveling up'. Mass Effect 2 and Oblivion are two recent examples.

Since stats and character advancement is far more important in Football Manager than it is in Oblivion, would you say that Football Manager is a better RPG than Oblivion? I'd find it hard to take you seriously if you did.

 

[tzimize]

OP you make a definition of an RPG and you succeed. Because it is YOUR definition. As far as I know there is not a universal definition of an RPG. You have a word/concept and it will look/feel/be understood different by everyone that hears it.

To me an RPG can mean several things:
A game ->focused on<- (not just containing) stats/level progression.
A game where you roleplay (which again can mean at least 2 things. 1: A game where you play a predefined role or 2: a game where you create your own role to an extent).
A game that takes a bit more effort than your average fps.

An idea will never be the same to two people as long as we dont talk about definates/mathematics. As long as two people have the same knowledge about mathematics they will usually understand the same thing.
One plus one equals two. There is no other answer (and I am sure some mathwiz will disprove this somehow, but you get my point which is the important thing).

So. While choices may not define an RPG nothing else does either. I guess.


I'm not sure I contributed in a useful way to the thread :s

 

[wkrepelin]

I get what you're saying and those things definitely do count as well. If we go back to what started rpgs (D&D) we'll see that it is not acceptable for you to act out of character and can ultimately lead to a reassignment of your class and allignment. I think that sort of flexibility is awesome but is still not available on consoles or PC's so what we get are games with RPG elements and if they have enough of them then they are considered an rpg.

Your points are interesting and well taken though. Choice alone is not what defines an rpg.

 

[cornmancer]

I hate to sound like an ass TS, but I started trying to respond to this, but ultimately realized you really hadn't said anything. You did a lot of talking, but not a lot of speaking. Yeah, you have a point, but it was ultimately a statement made for it's own sake and rather pointless.
And might I point out, that what, in my mind, makes Fallout 3 or Diablo an RPG where Final Fantasy games (usually) aren't, you can choose what stats you can level up. In Fallout or Diablo you can choose what stats you put into your character and decide what character it is, whereas a lot of JRPGs say, "This character is a mage," and tell you how to level up. In FFX, you have the sphere grid, and your character progresses on that one path along it with you having little choice in what stats you level up. Yeah you can take a character into another grid, but then you just progress along another linear path.

 

[veloper]

The problem is by that logic every single game ever made ever is an RPG. Every game you play some sort of role. Role playing, by definition is...

Main Entry: role?play
Pronunciation: \&#712;r&#333;l-&#716;pl&#257;, -&#712;pl&#257;\
Function: verb
Date: 1949
transitive verb

1 : to act out the role of

Ugh, another one.

Just as "starboard" is not some engineered wood with stars on it (it's the rights side of a ship), the meaning of RPG is not the sum roleplay + game.

The meaning of "role" here goes back to the wargames the rpg was derived from.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

OP you make a definition of an RPG and you succeed. Because it is YOUR definition. As far as I know there is not a universal definition of an RPG. You have a word/concept and it will look/feel/be understood different by everyone that hears it.

To me an RPG can mean several things:
A game ->focused on<- (not just containing) stats/level progression.
A game where you roleplay (which again can mean at least 2 things. 1: A game where you play a predefined role or 2: a game where you create your own role to an extent).
A game that takes a bit more effort than your average fps.

An idea will never be the same to two people as long as we dont talk about definates/mathematics. As long as two people have the same knowledge about mathematics they will usually understand the same thing.
One plus one equals two. There is no other answer (and I am sure some mathwiz will disprove this somehow, but you get my point which is the important thing).

So. While choices may not define an RPG nothing else does either. I guess.


I'm not sure I contributed in a useful way to the thread :s

It's not a useful answer perhaps, but I think it's an accurate answer nonetheless, especially when it comes to computer/console RPGs.

The term "RPG" has become so muddled in videogame-land that it has lost all semblance of a proper meaning. If you'd start dividing all games called "RPGs" by features that both define their essence and clearly set them apart from other genres, you'd end up with at least half a dozen different genres, where the extremes have next to nothing in common with each other. And yet, they're all referred to as "RPG".

 

[Abedeus]

A lot of text, and all you're basically are saying is "if the characters improve their stats, it's an RPG".

So I guess Football Manager 2010 is now an RPG?

I never said that every stat game is instantly a RPG.
Genre's overlap and take gameplay modes from each other.

Why not?

What's the difference between Mass Effect, an obvious RPG, albeit with third person shooter mechanics, Fallout 3, even more of an RPG with only an FPP and crosshair and that Football Manager? If anything, FM has MORE RPG elements than those games, since it's in turns (sort of), it has stats, characters...

That's just silly. There are plenty of 'statless' RPGs.

...Like?

Name one videogame that doesn't use stats.

Please tell me you are joking. Okay...

Mario - +2 jump? +10 Koopa resistance? Critical Hit on Bowzer? Basically 95% of non-hybrid FPSs are stat-free. Ammo, health and armor don't count as "stats". Lots of action games where the only stat is health or ammo. Many indie games, like World of Goo.

 

[Snarky Username]

The problem is by that logic every single game ever made ever is an RPG. Every game you play some sort of role. Role playing, by definition is...

Main Entry: role?play
Pronunciation: \&#712;r&#333;l-&#716;pl&#257;, -&#712;pl&#257;\
Function: verb
Date: 1949
transitive verb

1 : to act out the role of

Ugh, another one.

Just as "starboard" is not some engineered wood with stars on it (it's the rights side of a ship), the meaning of RPG is not the sum roleplay + game.

The meaning of "role" here goes back to the wargames the rpg was derived from.

So you're saying you don't role playing role playing games? Would you mind enlightening me to what you do in role playing games, then?

 

[Fire Daemon]

That's just silly. There are plenty of 'statless' RPGs.

Those would be group writing or group improv acting sessions then, not RPGs.

games like Football Manager and JRPGs are Role Playing Games and we all just have to come to turms with that.

terms

Anyway, suggesting that Football Manager is an RPG is the silliest thing I've heard all day.[/quote]

Apart from picking apart spelling mistakes and calling my argument silly do you have any actual argument to put against that quote? Any at all?

Yes, a GM can (and often will) take the role of monsters, but that's like saying the CPU takes the role of the aliens in Halo. Warhammer is a wargame, not an RPG. Stats are just as defining of wargames (and a lot of other genres) as they are of RPGs. Sure, stats are a significant part of most RPGs, but they are by no means a defining feature. Taking the role of Shepard is the only decent (if not entirely accurate, due to the limitations of videogames I mentioned before) example, since the player actually playing a role there that's more than just the mechanics of the game.

Going back to my original post you seem to have ignored:

'alterable stats linked with the player/characters which form attributes which determine the course of play'

If a stat is not linked with a player (as in a person playing the game) and their character(s) it is not an RPG. It is also important to note that a computer can not change the stats as it wishes, only a human can do that. It is possible for a game to change in difficulty and hence change some aspect of it's stats but in doing so the computer would be acting out the wishes of the programmer, it would be the programmer changing the stats themselves by acting through the program. The programmer is the one in control of the aliens, but it's telling the computer to roll his dice.

Warhammer is an RPG, anyone who's played it would probably realise this. Even if we assume that your definition is correct it would still fit as an RPG. A ton of games have people acting (yelling, giving heroic speeches etc) which isn't so far from a game of DnD. The only thing that seperates it from a traditional game of DnD is the lack of a story, but is entirely possible to create a campaign for Warhammer and in essence create a story. By all accounts it isn't that different from DnD. As I said before, a game of DnD will still be an RPG if the play was left and any story and acting was removed because you would still be in the role of the player, making the choices with the spells/abilities etc. The same goes for Warhammer where you make the choices with the spells/abilities etc. The only difference is that the role is limited to a select few characters but to an entire army or perhaps a single character (the General) in control of an army, but probably the former as when the General dies you don't always instantly loose.

You believe that Mass Effect is the closest to an actual RPG because you take the role of Shepard, but in Warhammer you still take the role of an army and in DnD you take the role of whatever character you make. The only difference is the level of characterization these roles have, leading to an RPG being based on how in depth the players character is. But that would mean certain games of DnD will not count as an RPG because they use shallow stock characters (or maybe even less) while other games of DnD would count as an RPG because they use more sophisticated characters. That is a loose definition which can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, meaning that it's closer to garbage than a definition.

You also said before that you wouldn't consider Final Fantasy an RPG yet these games have immense amounts of characterization. The games revolve around the characters. Your definition doesn't make any sense.

Name one videogame that doesn't use stats.

I can't because non exist except for perhaps the old CRT games. That's beside the point if you go and check out the definition I provided above. Mind you, I've been able to come up with some ideas as to why my definition is faulty. The Stock Market uses stats and it even has 'players', no characters but I'm sure that some people treat it as a game. I wouldn't consider it an RPG and I don't think that many others would either, so maybe I should go back and put in some more words for clarity. If you have anything else that actually goes against the definition I provided I would like to hear it.

 

[Snarky Username]

That's just silly. There are plenty of 'statless' RPGs.

...Like?

Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain are both RPGs. You play the game as if you were the characters, what you would do. You make decisions that ultimately affect the entire game. You make decisions as if you were the main character, which is role-playing.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

That's just silly. There are plenty of 'statless' RPGs.

...Like?

Every freeform RPG ever?

Name one videogame that doesn't use stats.

Please tell me you are joking. Okay...

Mario - +2 jump? +10 Koopa resistance? Critical Hit on Bowzer? Basically 95% of non-hybrid FPSs are stat-free. Ammo, health and armor don't count as "stats". Lots of action games where the only stat is health or ammo. Many indie games, like World of Goo.

Why wouldn't health, armor, or ammo count as stats? And what about weapon damage, accuracy, firing speed? Kills? Score? Lives?

All these are numerical representations of certain aspects of your character. You know, stats. Just because they're not shown in a nice spreadsheet format on a character sheet doesn't mean that they're not present in pretty much every single game. How big of a role they play in the game varies, but every game relies on stats.

 

[Therumancer]

A lot of text, and all you're basically are saying is "if the characters improve their stats, it's an RPG".

So I guess Football Manager 2010 is now an RPG?

He is correct more or less. An RPG is a game where the stats of a character matter above and beyond the abillities of the player. Results are determined by the numbers.

Football Manager 2010 and other similar games are actually cousins to RPGs. RPGs decended from war gaming where people decided it would be cool to focus on increasingly smaller groups of units, and then down to the idea of conducting scenarios where each person controlled a single character. The "role" aspect coming not so much from acting, but from taking the role of one guy as opposed to controlling an entire unit.

Truthfully, the first RPGs had very little in the way of plotline, desicians, or interaction. It was pretty much all about "dungeon crawling" and combat, being like a personal scale war game where the intention was to fight your way through a specific scenario to the end using the mechanics defined for the game. While fantasy was almost always the backdrop, it wasn't until later on down the pipe that people started to build worlds, and add more reason... even if just in back text, for what was going on.

Things like "Castle Greyhawk" and "Undermountain" pretty much descended from early dungeon crawls by their respective developers. It can be argued that both worlds were gradually developed around the hallways of those dungeons as things evolved.

I am a person who argues that the most important aspect of something being an RPG is statistical management and resolution, without that you can't have an RPG. Storytelling and plotline can also be important, but take a distant second, not being part of the core definition. What's more to some extent I think such things can actually undermine an RPG
and it's management/problem solving aspects. When you start thinking in terms of "how does the GM want this resolved" rather than "how can my character resolve this" it arguably detracts from something being an RPG. This however gets into whole other arguements, and I want people to understand that I am not saying that games shouldn't have plots and such, or that they don't benefit from them. A game that manages to weave a story into itself skillfully will always be superior to one without it, however at a fundemental level something can be an RPG without much in the way of plotline at all. Indeed I will go so far as to say that "dungeon hacks" remain popular to this day in the form of Roguelikes, and
even certain "retro" PnP modules, since it can be fun to just head down into some deep, dark monster and treasure infested hole and see how much loot you can haul out without spending too much time thinking about it.... and that is quite frankly the first RPGs were when the term was spawned, and what you need to look at when you argue what an RPG is.

Things like "Football Manager 2010" simply took things in a differant direction, being more akin to the wargames that RPGs spawned from, as it deals with large scale events rather than the control of specific individuals. Management sims are pretty much what you got from people looking at wargames and saying "hmmm, this stat management & resolution stuff is pretty fun, I wonder if I can do something similar in a framework other than war and conflict".

 

[WorkerMurphey]

2 coppers worth...

If you have a sense of your character being different from another person's playing the same game you're working with some level of role playing as you're allowed to create some sort of individuality to your character. The more the game focuses on this personalization, the more of a straight RPG it is.

It's all on a spectrum of the ultimate RPG being a kid playing make believe on one end and a crossword puzzle on the other end (no real choices in an x-word).

 

[omega 616]

Fuck it, all games are now action/adventure. Case closed.

Seriously though, the main goal here seems to be to get JRPGs to be considered RPGs by everybody, which I agree with.

To me the people who say JRPGs aren't RPGs are like the people who say PCs are better gaming machines than consoles at 99% of everything. Both are built for gaming (well one is maybe, kind of modified to game on), so game on them.

Stop being elitist people, you just come across as arrogant. It's like saying GoW isn't a shooter 'cos it's not first person, it's just a different flavor of shooty goodness, much like JRPGs are RPGs just a different flavor.