LARPing in strategy games

[RK47]

Fall from Heaven mod presents good RP choices. although it does not really react or respond very well to it.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Whereas, when presented with C&C the non roleplayer usually either goes for the option with the most reward, or the one that moves the story in a way they personally like (rather than what their character would like) or just the one that doesn't sound dumb (see the failed evil responses in Bioware games).

I do this, so I guess I'm a "non-roleplayer" whatever that means, but I still like having C&C. It's like how I enjoy action movies, but also movies with less action that have good plot and character development.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

Using a more specific example, look at race selection in Arcanum and Baldur's Gate 2.

In Baldur's Gate 2 I always play a human because race selection doesn't matter and I don't want to have to LARP the world's reactions to me, so I just ignore that part of the game and kill stuff in pretty environments. Shallow, but fun.

In Arcanum I'm able to select what race I am and see how people in the world react to it without doing any background reading or LARPing since it's all in the game. It gets you more immersed in the setting. And fantasy, long before role-playing and D&D, was about setting, read Conan or LotR and see how many pages are dedicated to descriptions of the environment, or the workings of some strange culture. Arcanum stays true to that, and that's a standard far older than rolling 20-sided dice.

 

[Zomg]

The Codex-original use of LARP (basically meaning taking "characterizing actions" with no feedback from the gameworld or more directly, gameplay) was actually useful as criticism even if it was a silly shaming word appropriation. There has to be feedback in the game into and from roleplaying - that's what makes it a roleplaying game. You're still playing to win the game, in an attenuated, exploratory and trivial single player way, like solving a Rubik's Cube or untying a knot, that contextualizes everything else.

 

[MetalCraze]

Computer LARPing was defined here as "pretending to do something that doesn't have any effects on the gameworld". Like playing Oblivion and pretending to be a noble and dressing up in fancy clothes and only traveling on horseback and only using silver weapons because that's what nobles do, even though it makes no sense gameplay-wise at all.

That's LARPing in Computer games. Doing something that doesn't have any effect on the gameworld but pretending it does.

JarlFrank makes too much sense.

It's not LARPing. It's just playing pretend.

Which LARP'ing is all about.

The Codex-original use of LARP (basically meaning taking "characterizing actions" with no feedback from the gameworld or more directly, gameplay) was actually useful as criticism even if it was a silly shaming word appropriation. There has to be feedback in the game into and from roleplaying - that's what makes it a roleplaying game. You're still playing to win the game, in an attenuated, exploratory and trivial single player way, like solving a Rubik's Cube or untying a knot, that contextualizes everything else.

Exactly.
It's also fun to watch how LARP'ing crowd cries about how they want C&C so hard and won't have the game the other way - but then praise Dragon Age which has none with various excuses which sometimes sound very close to "but I can select the option which makes my character join Grey Wardens willingly making him good!"
And then become offended when they are being called LARP'ers.

They just want to play dialogue-trees which is the only truth.

or, as according to the other camp, combat focus does

All RPGs are combat focused. The majority of stats, skills are all combat oriented. Flowers is not something you equip your character with. And as DA and SoZ showed LARP'ing crowd loves the combat just as well while bashing much better games, especially dungeon-crawlers - some of which have even less combat than this DA of yours.
Like Realms of Arkania where most of the time you spend exploring, solving puzzles and managing your party with some dungeons having as much as 2 or 3 combat encounters. Sweet lil irony there, aye?

 

[Wyrmlord]

Yeah, it just should be emphasised to the C&C crowd that ultimately -

all RPGs have combat. You can't escape it. Sure you can go and criticise a RPG for having too much combat and too little oom-pah-pah, but you're only doing this on the basis of an idealistic vision of a nonexistent game where there has only been oom-pah-pah and no combat, and that this must become the arbitrary standard by which all RPGs to are to be judged.

What complicates it even more is that people never really gave that serious a thought to what oom-pah-pah really is and how the oom-pah-pah should be, and even if they have, they have not done it on the basis of games that exist.

They want a brand of oom-pah-pah called shades of grey. Everybody and everything is half good and half bad, and there is a moral dillemma to everything, but this idea originates from there being a few isolated quests in a few games which involved such a thing, but they want to consider making an entire game out of it. But to what purpose? What will it achieve that other existing games have not already achieved? How does this arbitrary standard about one small thing make a game better any more than putting four pieces of ice or three pieces of ice in soda does?

And yet, for years eternal we have and for years eternal we will keep seeing people saying, "This game is not good, it does not have enough oom-pah-pah."

 

[Zomg]

Pbbblt, complete non-sequitur. Combat has shit to do with game. It's just a format.

Fuck, combat isn't even combat, there are a million abstract interpretations of violence, from chess to Quake, each having less to do with actual fighting than the last.

Edit - Full disclosure, I'm not a C&C guy, I've always preached some idiosyncratic shit. I'm just anti- hack'nfaggot. Wait for VD or some guy that is mainline C&C to reply if you want to hear what they're gonna say.

 

[Wyrmlord]

But you don't even like anything, Zomg.

Neither the new age stuff nor the older stuff nor anything in between.

You dislike blob games, but you are not big on many isometric RPGs either. All formats are bad you.

 

[Fezzik]

Yeah, it just should be emphasised to the C&C crowd that ultimately -

all RPGs have combat. You can't escape it. Sure you can go and criticise a RPG for having too much combat and too little oom-pah-pah, but you're only doing this on the basis of an idealistic vision of a nonexistent game where there has only been oom-pah-pah and no combat, and that this must become the arbitrary standard by which all RPGs to are to be judged.

Edit: I think I misread you a bit, but I'll keep the post here anyway, since I think it still holds to a certain extent, if a little more weakly.

What do you mean? That RPGs only have combat because that is one of the only major features that is contained in each RPG? I don't think that is a good way to say what RPGs are about, because it may be somewhat accurate (though not definitive, since other features are also ubiquitous, like gameplay based on stats), but if you take it one RPG at a time, you'll often find combat is not the focus.

For instance, Darklands has combat, but that is hardly the focus -- the character system and the multiple options at each screen are.

Or take Fallout. It has combat and there is a combat path, sure, but combat is certainly not the main focus of the game and it is not the core that the game was built around.

Or World of Xeen. There's combat, sure. But is that the focus? It would seem to me that this is ancillary to the basic goal of exploration.

I think you simplify things more than is justified for the sake of a conflict with the C&C fanatics. The arrangement of core ideas in a design for an RPG is nontrivial and that itself, I think, is more an indicator than having combat of whatever basic core there might be for RPGs in common, if there is any at all. The fact that combat is something that can be done well regardless of the particular focus of an RPG does not mean that RPGs are about combat.

And a semi-related remark: I don't get the conflict with the C&C fanatics around these parts. There are reasonable people who are somewhat in-line with the C&C crowd like bhlaab and janjetina who there is no sense getting flustered over because they're reasonable. And there are folks in the C&C crowd who like to be obnoxious sometimes like Hory, who again there is no point in getting flustered over because they are trying to act like obnoxious faggots and there's nothing to change that. Arguing for the sake of arguing, I guess.

 

[Zomg]

@Wyrm: Wat, I recommend shit all the time. I just usually qualify praise because I know pieces of things are shit and you have to know when to cut them slack, turn a blind eye to fuckups, etc. I run games down wholeheartedly either when there's no way to salvage the game or when I hate the people that like that game, which is what criticism is mostly for.

 

[MetalCraze]

@Fezzik:
Actually combat is in the core of those games. Nobody says it is the only element. But there are no RPGs where combat is secondary. That's how they are being built.

Going with examples that most of Codexers played and claim to be not like those awful DCs - just look at Fallout skills and stats - the majority are combat oriented. And Fallout is full of combat. Whether you can avoid or not - it's another question. Fallout does have dungeons that are filled to the top with guys that will try to blow your head as soon as they'll see you coming. And there are many locations like this. And your killcount can easily reach hundreds.

Or "so heavy on dialogues PS:T" - it is often being criticized for having all too much combat - but somehow is getting constantly praised by the same guys who claim to hate games with lots of combat.

C&C crowd even praises TW and calls it RPG even though it isn't one and all, ALL "stats" are only about combat - and 80% of the game time is combat.

Combat is one of the main elements of all RPGs - they can provide other stuff and they should (otherwise it will be just like with ToEE and god-awful SoZ (which C&C crowd praised) ) - but you always care about which weapon your character carries and which armour he wears and whether he can survive the inevitable attack.

People just think that dungeon-crawlers = hack'n'slash which is wrong.

 

[janjetina]

Another successful troll by Wyrmlord. Jarlfrank defined LARPing well and there is nothing to add to that subject, but educating the ignorant is in order.

While the analogy is perhaps most obvious when it is being applied to Oblivion roleplayers or similar, once that analogy has been established, it can then be extended to other groups as a pejorative.

It can't unless you stretch the boundaries of logic. But logic isn't one of your strengths, is it?

Here it has, of late, predominantly been applied to CRPG gamers who (the speaker feels) place an excessive amount of value on the presence or absence of "Choices and Consequences", to the extent that they will forgive any number of other gameplay flaws. From here on I'll refer to these folks as "C&Cfags" for the sake of brevity. And certainly there is an element on the codex which values C&C way more than would be expected based on the (at times minor) gameplay benefit it provides.

When the player character is presented with a difficult multiple choice where each part has its own reward and drawback, and each choice will result in a different reaction in the game world, opening some possibilities and closing others, it has a significant (not minor, as you claim) immediate impact on the gameplay, as it entices the player to think on his actions. Additionaly, its effect on the replayability of the game is enormous, and everybody with brain knows that the replayable games are those that are considered the best, even decades after they are published, while one trick ponies fall into oblivion.

If one were to translate a "faggy goth White Wolf Vampire RPG roleplaying session" into a CRPG, the primary element that would distinguish it from other CRPGs would be lots and lots of dialog, with a comparatively higher percentage of gameplay derived from C&C and dialog based stat checks rather than battle and adventure like in a bog standard D&D game.

If one were to translate "Crime and Punishment" into a CRPG , the primary element that would distinguish it from other CRPGs would be lots and lots of dialog, with a comparatively higher percentage of gameplay derived from C&C and dialog based stat checks rather than battle and adventure like in a bog standard D&D game.



It would be instructive for everybody to take a look at the following topic: http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic ... torder=asc , with special attention to the posts made by Rosh.

Such a simple answer for anyone who's been around for a bit. Smile

Let's look at the history of "role-playing game", in a computer context, shall we?

Back in the origins of commercial computer gaming, there really wasn't a "role-playing" genre. "Adventure" had a good number of flavors, ranging from "action-adventure" (based upon the movie genre of the same), "text adventure" (from where everything CRPG started, really, as the interactions are what separates them from action-adventure moreso than text), "dungeon crawler" (which went along the construction styles of text adventure games, but the graphical change was mostly cosmetic when comparing the game structure as a whole), and "traditional adventure" (featuring games like Leisure Suit Larry, King's Quest, etc.), traditional being a bit misleading as it was one of the latest incarnations of the adventure genre but is the one most think of when speaking of adventure games. Only a few at that time, trailing a little from D&D, used "role-playing" in any context; most were sold by merit of adventure capability.

Take the text-based speech interface (but with pre-made responses), add in the point and click roam with world interaction, add in adversaries to be defeated through a stat system while exploring, add in a larger back story (than other genres) and character depth commonly found in many adventure games...whoa! Looks like what we think of a CRPG, isn't it? Hence coined such when it resembled all the combined aspects of tabletop role-playing, and not for the munchkin definition either. It's also interesting to mention that while a CRPG can be a dungeon crawler, a dungeon crawler isn't necessarily a CRPG. Figure out that one. Wink

There you have the literal definition of the CRPG genre and how it came about. So do not mock those old LucasArts and others' adventure games, in whatever form; they gave us what is the RPG today, along with the thousands of text-adventure game authors.

Please do ignore the uneducated kiddies when they tout out the "anything you play a ROLE in is a ROLE-playing game" and back it up with quite indefinite examples such as Diablo. Diablo, quite technically, is "action-adventure", mixed a bit with "dungeon crawler". Of course, to their kind of "logic", Super Mario Brothers is also a CRPG. Smile

Ahhh, an old post, but still relevant with some changes:

=================================

An RPG is a story, simply put.

You know those stories Gary made in the Greyhawk series?

Those were based off of campaigns of his in the early AD&D days.

But an RPG is more than that, when you place a free-thinking individual into the story, much less a game as well. Here's the most important aspects of an RPG, and why they are done the way they are. HOWEVER, this is not in order, but more along a list of what makes up an RPG/ideal CRPG. NPCs here are referring to non-party characters.

1. The story.

2. The character.

3. The setting (including NPCs)

4. Interaction between the character and the story.

5. Interaction between the character and other possible player characters.

6. Interaction between the NPCs and the story.

7. Interaction between the NPCs and the character.

8. Interaction between the NPCs and other NPCs.

9. Interaction of the setting and the story.

10. Interaction between the player and the setting.

11. Interaction between the NPCs and the setting.

12. Variety.


That's FAR from everything that makes up a good RPG. Let me further these points so it's easily understandable.

1: A story is not an excuse for the action, combat, or general repetitive combat. It should be first and foremost at the player's mind, and never set to the back burner.

2: The character should NEVER rely on the reflexes and/or abilities of the player. It's the character the player is playing, thus you use the abilities of the character. True, as a player you might get used to the game and be better at playing it, yet as a player you still have to rely on the stats of the character.

3: Post-apocalyptic? Fantasy? Modern? What's the setting and theme?

4: What is the protagonist's (main character's) purpose in the story? They are there to just go through endless quests, or are they there to serve a mission of great importance? In a good RPG, what the player does is reflected back in the story - hence, nonlinearity. The character indeed does have an impact upon the story, but no good RPG would be without another great detail - how does the story affect the character?

5: Are they a group of bland characters, or do they each have a personality of their own? If each character is played by a person, then it's possible, however doubtful it is to find those good at RPing a character. If they are 'played' by the computer, then do they convey a good sense of personality? A good example would be Planescape: Torment.

6: This only points out what purpose the NPCs have on the story. Are they there to tell you the sword is behind the waterfall over and over, or will they actually match the setting and act in it? A good RPG will have the latter.

7: Is the player character idolized or shunned? It depends on his actions, and the NPC reactions to his actions. This is the dynamic part of an RPG that is indeed hard to accomplish in a CRPG.

8: How do the NPCs 'mesh' into an environment or a 'community'? Are they independent little robots, or are they apparently free-thinking individuals of their own? Do events in the story have them interact with one another, and bring the player in to interact with that aspect of an RPG?

9: This is a very big point. And where a lot of RPG games fail. It seems simple, yet so many fail. You have to 'capture' the feeling of a game through the setting to make the story believable and enjoyable; to give the RPG depth.

10: What does the player do to change the setting? This ties hand in hand with number 7, and creates an environment for the player to explore and mold into how they play.

11: What do the events that the NPCs do that tie into the setting? This ties into the story and everything else.

12: No two games played in a particular CRPG should be the same. Each time should be a near or totally unique experience. Non-linearity is the epitome of this trait of RPG games.

Wasteland was a beginning, Fallout was a shining example. Planescape: Torment was a brilliant introduction to the CRPG genre, and it's held to be the best CRPG to date by many, mainly faulted for the engine chosen.
==============

A CRPG is comprised of the above because if it were lacking significant elements, then it would fall into the genre that quite adequately already categorizes it. Without a deep back-story and character interaction? Then it would likely fit into action-adventure/dungeon crawler. No character interaction and no real setting or story? That pretty much makes it into an action-adventure/dungeon crawler as well. Just character interaction? Sounds more like a text adventure or a traditional adventure (which, believe it or not, most hentai games follow). Yes, a CRPG can be devoid of any obvious stats like exp or hp, but there needs something to denote (even behind the hood, so to speak) what progress and influence the player's character(s) have made upon the world/people/environ. It takes all these elements in combination to deliver as close to a P&P role-playing experience as possible.

The Sims and GTA fail to be a CRPG on many accounts. With the latter, there's not much free action to go around as the game is linear with progressive paths. It sorely misses the interaction with NPCs (no choices at all, really) and the world on any scale other than to kill hordes of enemies and...hey! There's already a genre for that. The Sims is nothing more than character interaction and environment interaction, but it really misses because there is no story, no real setting. It is more akin to...oh, hey, there's already a genre for The Sims. SIMULATION! Smile

That is why I had brought up one of the major origins (no pun intended) of the CRPG genre, Ultima IV (Wasteland, some of the TSR games, included). Here is a world in which your conduct is reflected in how various people react to you. Most every action had a reaction by the world and not in a "guards see you steal and kill j00!" simplistic kind of way. At this point, people in the world would respond to you in various ways depending upon your virtues, which was pretty much unheard of and not practiced anywhere outside of P&P RPGs.

It also failed to fall into any of the Adventure sub-genres at that point because it more resembled all of the sub-genres, heralded at the time of its release and for a long time to be a real computer role-playing experience (or at least as best as could be at that time). Many of the kids around the gaming industry are a bit too young to remember that game well, I'm afraid. Many were still having their drawers scraped out by their mothers when Ultima IV came out and many more are too vapid to get over the graphics.

Another one, Wasteland, was also around before "CRPG" got popular. The cover tag-line for this one was "Adventure in Post-Nuclear America". You could even check out the back of the box to see...absolutely no mention of "role-playing game", but instead there's a lot of detailing of all the aspects of CRPGs that we have come to expect from such a genre. The same goes with the Bard's Tale series, I believe, which was always filed under "Adventure". Yes, it is because of games of that construction that a more defining genre title came about. Newbies to the game industry think that Wizardry originated as a CRPG (which it had not), or that the CRPG genre has been around a long time. In some ways, it has, but has only been called such recently. Beforehand they were instead called "bloody good games with a lot of play". Smile

The only ones to really benefit from the obfuscation of the CRPG meaning are publishers who want to capitalize upon that market and those who want Diablo (or some other stat-driven game) to be considered to be a CRPG in some vain fanboyism to excuse Blizzard or whomever from calling it and Diablo II the best-selling role-playing games to date.

It is ironic that Rosh, Siant Proverbius and VD would be labeled as "LARPers" by some mondblutians and their newfag followers like PorkaMorka.

EDIT:
Roshambo's post easily disposes with the false dichotomy between story and combat, or C&C and combat that is pepetuated by some mondblutians and trolls like Wyrmlord. Indeed a RPG should excel in all the aforementioned elements and there is no valid reason against it - combat engine, story and setting design don't necessarily compete for the same resources.

 

[Wyrmlord]

You have to do way way better than Saint and Rosh.

Saint's old threads show him making criticisms of games for the most arbitrary and juvenile reasons, like disliking Civ IV because all religions are the same in it. I remember Trash saying that he and his like were "just a bunch of skyways".

Rosh's disdain of Diablo and obsession with characterizing and differentiating it is a very pointless endeavour on his part, considering that Diablo was just a real-time version of roguelikes, which have largely been considered RPGs out of convention. It's only a matter of general similarity, nothing more, but I am amazed by people who dedicate so much time and effort to "proving" Diablo is not a RPG.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

cRPGs are extremely shitty combat games when compared to playing a good tactical wargame in multiplayer.

 

[MetalCraze]

It is ironic that Rosh, Siant Proverbius and VD would be labeled as "LARPers" by some mondblutians and their newfag followers like PorkaMorka.

Not really no. If you can see they both bash the "Diablo is a RPG" view and "RPG is where you play a Role" (the one that C&C crowd holds so much to) together with talking about how character skill must be the only thing there not the player's skill (something evil mondblutians talk about).
What they bash is the new (at the time) breed of action-RPGs and Diablo clones e.g. unrelated to this topic.

Roshambo's post easily disposes with the false dichotomy between story and combat, or C&C and combat that is pepetuated by some mondblutians and trolls like Wyrmlord. Indeed a RPG should excel in all the aforementioned elements and there is no valid reason against it - combat engine, story and setting design don't necessarily compete for the same resources.

Except modern "RPGs" don't have half of things Rosh has on his list.. The problem is that in current "RPGs" dialogues serve no other purprose but to fluff stuff up - as in don't do anything - thus LARP'ing. And yes - they are mostly about combat too, putting everything else on the secondary places game-time wise. Like C&C-crowd favorites SoZ, TW, Mass Effect and now DA which is an epitome of LARP'ing with 4 dialogues leading to the exactly same outcome and none C&C that influence the plot in any way at all. The combat is also awful in all 4 of them as other things like character development and exploration sacrificed in the name of dialogue-tree-fluff.

A good dungeon crawler in fact has more of what Rosh wrote than what we have these days - except instead of selecting dialogues and pretending that it will change something you type in keywords or in case of Dark Sun - selecting actual dialogues. And last time I've checked Dark Sun wasn't called a "LARP-RPG". I wonder why?

 

[Joe Krow]

Step 1: replace the character combat stats with emo bullshit; instead of strength- sadness, instead of constitution- cleverness (wisdom and intelligence can stay but only as relates to expressing the character's mood).

Step 2: Design a resolution system that is solely based on these stats and that is as intricate, versatile, and open as the combat in rpgs currently is. (I'd suggest dialogue trees /sarcasm).

Two simple steps that no one has been able to follow. What are we doing wrong guys?

 

[PorkaMorka]

When the player character is presented with a difficult multiple choice where each part has its own reward and drawback, and each choice will result in a different reaction in the game world, opening some possibilities and closing others, it has a significant (not minor, as you claim) immediate impact on the gameplay, as it entices the player to think on his actions. Additionaly, its effect on the replayability of the game is enormous, and everybody with brain knows that the replayable games are those that are considered the best, even decades after they are published, while one trick ponies fall into oblivion.

I don't deny that C&C adds to gameplay, it's a nice feature for a game to have. But let's not pretend it's more than it is.

In it's most common form, the dialog tree, C&C based gameplay involves reading a bunch of dialog, then reading several dialog options, and trying to guess what consequences the developer will provide for each option, then reloading if you guessed wrong and the developer put in consequences you didn't like, or you needed higher stats to get that option to work.

It was somewhat fun back when it was called choose your own adventure books, and it's still somewhat fun today, but it's also rather shallow, as ultimately you're not thinking logically to solve a problem, but rather you're trying to guess what the developer if going to make happen if you pick this option, which is often something extremely counter intuitive.

A lot of times the option that you like the sound of actually ends up doing something completely different that you couldn't reasonably have predicted, which involves your character doing or saying things you'd never have had them do.

Dialog tree based C&C is a guessing mini game pasted on top of the guts of an RPG: the character development, combat and adventure systems. The actual consequences of the actions will be resolved using these systems, and these systems will still make up the majority of the time spent *interacting* with the game, while the gameplay of dialog trees still comes mostly down to (semi)blindly guessing at an option.

As for re playability, I really can't agree, but I generally don't replay even the games I liked.
For me, RPGs need to stand up on their first playthrough as the RPG is not the type of genre I'd want to play over and over again, too much time wasted, re-reading the same plot, re-doing quests I now know the ending too, re-clearing the same trash mobs etc.

Only games I really will replay are games like JA2 (or X-Com or SMAC) where most of the time is spent on gameplay, rather than something like P:ST where I'd mostly be re-reading the same plot.

If one were to translate "Crime and Punishment" into a CRPG , the primary element that would distinguish it from other CRPGs would be lots and lots of dialog, with a comparatively higher percentage of gameplay derived from C&C and dialog based stat checks rather than battle and adventure like in a bog standard D&D game.

It'd be better as a book though, as there is no way they'd actually let you choose not to kill the pawnbroker, that would cause too much forking of player routes, they'd have to kill the pawnbroker in a cut scene early on and then start the C&C afterwords.

And you'd have to make a lot of correct guesses in a row to get the real story.

I'll stick to the real Crime and Punishment not the choose your own adventure version.

Roshambo's post easily disposes with the false dichotomy between story and combat, or C&C and combat that is pepetuated by some mondblutians and trolls like Wyrmlord. Indeed a RPG should excel in all the aforementioned elements and there is no valid reason against it - combat engine, story and setting design don't necessarily compete for the same resources.

I agree, it is a false dichotomy.

Which is exactly why Arcanum ought to be judged as a substandard, flawed game with potential, rather than a classic.

Arcanum has C&C but it fails at providing enjoyable combat (despite having hours and hours of combat) and it fails at character development in an epic manner, as non min-maxed characters (which conform to obvious archetypes and thus should have been noticed in testing) can easily break the game to a ridiculous degree. Both these factors actually came into play in ruining my first and only playthrough of Arcanum, actually.

You don't see me bashing Fallout, because it actually did everything right or at least mostly right.

So if a game *can* have good combat, good C&C, good story and good character development, Why isn't Arcanum getting penalized for hours of shit combat and an objectively broken character development system?

The answer is ... fanboys.

 

[janjetina]

It is ironic that Rosh, Siant Proverbius and VD would be labeled as "LARPers" by some mondblutians and their newfag followers like PorkaMorka.

Not really no. If you can see they both bash the "Diablo is a RPG" view and "RPG is where you play a Role" (the one that C&C crowd holds so much to) together with talking about how character skill must be the only thing there not the player's skill (something evil mondblutians talk about).
What they bash is the new (at the time) breed of action-RPGs and Diablo clones e.g. unrelated to this topic.

That's why I wrote some mondblutians (those who flinch at the very mention of the words "story", "choices", "consequences", "world reactivity"), not all of them.

What is related to this topic is an all-encompasing view of the elements a RPG should, in my opinion, contain. "C&C" by itself is a meaningless buzzword, but many of points made by Rosh deal with reactivity and interactivity, and that's what it's all about. This is by no means a negative judgement of combat (which is one way of interaction between the PC and the NPCs and represents an implementation of the concept conflict, which influences the mutual interaction of the PC, the NPCs, the setting and the story).

Except modern "RPGs" don't have half of things Rosh has on his list.. The problem is that in current "RPGs" dialogues serve no other purprose but to fluff stuff up - as in don't do anything - thus LARP'ing.

That is the problem with such RPGs, not with C&C as a concept. Players who look for the choices in the game to matter and affect the game world are not satisfied with such games.

And yes - they are mostly about combat too, putting everything else on the secondary places game-time wise. Like C&C-crowd favorites SoZ, TW, Mass Effect and now DA which is an epitome of LARP'ing with 4 dialogues leading to the exactly same outcome and none C&C that influence the plot in any way at all.

I wouldn't call these games "favorites of the C&C crowd". They are definitely not my favorites. Each of these games has its own set of weaknesses (and their own set of strengths, apart from Ass Effect, which has no redeeming qualities) and putting them all in the same category is counterproductive - instead we can discuss their particular problems. Even their common problems, like bad combat system, bad encounter design and linearity stem from different errors in design, so it is more prudent to discuss them separately. "Favorites of the C&C crowd" are games like Fallout, Arcanum and Prelude to Darkness.

The combat is also awful in all 4 of them as other things like character development and exploration sacrificed in the name of dialogue-tree-fluff.

This is the false dichotomy I was talking about. Combat, character development (you mean stat-wise development, I assume) and exploration are not "sacrificed in the name of dialogue trees". They are sacrificed in the name of the shiny graphics. First of all, character system and combat system are done separately from the story, setting, characters and dialogues. The way that dialogues are realized has absolutely no bearing on the combat system. This should really be obvious to anyone with the ability to think. Fallout is the prime example, but seeing that some don't like its combat, I can put forward Prelude to Darkness, which excels it everything, except in stability.

A good dungeon crawler in fact has more of what Rosh wrote than what we have these days

That's good and it should be so.

- except instead of selecting dialogues and pretending that it will change something you type in keywords or in case of Dark Sun - selecting actual dialogues. And last time I've checked Dark Sun wasn't called a "LARP-RPG". I wonder why?

The difference between the full dialogue tree system and the keyword system is not in the amount of information exchanged between the PC and the NPC, but a thinking human being prefers the story to be presented in a natural way, using complete, well written sentences. The same set of stat-based and skill based restrictions, as well as restrictions based on previous actions can underline such a dialogue system. When such a natural interaction is implemented, some amount of fluff is naturally present, in order to enrich the narrative (i.e. the story) and the setting. This is inevitable, however the game should not be dominated by fluff, but by meaningful choices that affect the game world. These choices can be made in a dialogue with an NPC, while exploring an area and encountering something of an interest, or inside the combat. When different options and complexity are concerned, the more the merrier is the answer.

 

[Zomg]

I think you just don't understand how masculine it is to play easy-ass single player RPGs for combat bro. One time I lost a fight because I spilled my coke on the keyboard that's what I call impossible difficulty ha ha

 

[Sodomy]

First of all, character system and combat system are done separately from the story, setting, characters and dialogues.

I agree with most of your post, but this is pretty clearly not the case. The setting is going to inform the character system and the combat system- a combat system for a medieval setting is going to be quite different than a combat system made for a science fiction setting. The dialogues are going to be informed by the character system- they'll be written quite differently if you have, for instance, a sense motive/streetwise skill than if you don't, and, in a good RPG, stats that aid combat could very well aid in intimidation options (such as using weapon skill to intimidate bandits in Darklands or using STR to intimidate people in Prelude to Darkness).

 

[Fowyr]

Rosh's disdain of Diablo and obsession with characterizing and differentiating it is a very pointless endeavour on his part, considering that Diablo was just a real-time version of roguelikes, which have largely been considered RPGs out of convention. It's only a matter of general similarity, nothing more, but I am amazed by people who dedicate so much time and effort to "proving" Diablo is not a RPG.

Diablo and especially its copycats was fucking dose of slow poison administered to a genre.
Because of this nefarious crime Diablo was deprived of title "an RPG".

 

[Azrael the cat]

Computer LARPing was defined here as "pretending to do something that doesn't have any effects on the gameworld". Like playing Oblivion and pretending to be a noble and dressing up in fancy clothes and only traveling on horseback and only using silver weapons because that's what nobles do, even though it makes no sense gameplay-wise at all.

That's LARPing in Computer games. Doing something that doesn't have any effect on the gameworld but pretending it does.

JarlFrank makes too much sense.

It's not LARPing. It's just playing pretend.

Which LARP'ing is all about.

The Codex-original use of LARP (basically meaning taking "characterizing actions" with no feedback from the gameworld or more directly, gameplay) was actually useful as criticism even if it was a silly shaming word appropriation. There has to be feedback in the game into and from roleplaying - that's what makes it a roleplaying game. You're still playing to win the game, in an attenuated, exploratory and trivial single player way, like solving a Rubik's Cube or untying a knot, that contextualizes everything else.

Exactly.
It's also fun to watch how LARP'ing crowd cries about how they want C&C so hard and won't have the game the other way - but then praise Dragon Age which has none with various excuses which sometimes sound very close to "but I can select the option which makes my character join Grey Wardens willingly making him good!"
And then become offended when they are being called LARP'ers.

They just want to play dialogue-trees which is the only truth.

or, as according to the other camp, combat focus does

All RPGs are combat focused. The majority of stats, skills are all combat oriented. Flowers is not something you equip your character with. And as DA and SoZ showed LARP'ing crowd loves the combat just as well while bashing much better games, especially dungeon-crawlers - some of which have even less combat than this DA of yours.
Like Realms of Arkania where most of the time you spend exploring, solving puzzles and managing your party with some dungeons having as much as 2 or 3 combat encounters. Sweet lil irony there, aye?

Not true - the best implementations are those that combine dialogue trees with companion, faction, reputation, background and skill systems that have a major effect on the endings you can still achieve, the paths you have to reach the end of the game and their difficulty. One the best implementations is in the Geneforge games. Side with the main Shaper force, do some fucked up things for a (on their view) greater good, have the best teachers and equipment but know that using too much forbidden magic (canisters etc) will cause you to be fucked over by them in the end (as they can't trust the abomination you've become). Go with the servile/human rebels, fight on the most ideologically right side, but with increasing awareness that they don't really know what they're doing with shaping, and are fucking up the countryside, and possible letting the nastier aspects of the rebellion (drayks/drakons) into world domination - with plenty of access to canisters, but if you take too many, you'll start getting roid-rage and killing innocents, or attacking those who would have surrendered or let you through due to some perceived insults.

Or join the trakovites, knowing that as a miniscule anarchist group they'll have no ability to teach you shaping or canisters, will condemn you for using either, and that it's basically a handful of you (ideologically opposed against using the most powerful abilities, so you're going up against mages and shapers with ordinary weapons) against the massively more powerful 'big players', just trying to carry out strategic sabotages to keep the other sides killing each other until you can have your day. Oe go the 'evil power routes' with the powermad rogue shaper factions, the drayks and so on. Massive power, training, canisters, but low numbers and little support from them other than canisters/training.

Dialogue options affect your reputation with all sides (depending on whether it's plausible that word would reach them), and so it isn't just a matter of larping for the sake of character - every 'roleplaying' you do has an intricate effect on what counts as 'victory', and how hard it will be to achieve.

 

[Zomg]

Wow, which GF is that?

 

[JarlFrank]

Wow, which GF is that?

Sounds like 5 to me.

 

[Sodomy]

2, and to a lesser extent, 1.

The series really tumbled downhill after the second game, so if you haven't played the first two, I'd strongly reccomend it.