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Has "Roleplaying Videogame Game" become a meaningless nomenclature?

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
Lucas I think its time to stop spurging about RPGS and Fallout New Vegas mods and go outside.

How do people even remember my name is amazing, I can only remember a handful of avatar/username combinations.
 

ortucis

Prophet
Joined
Apr 22, 2009
Messages
2,015
It's all about hybrid games now. Take bits and pieces out of different genres and stick them in your game. It's fun for the players and fun for the designers as well.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
33,052
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
RPG = game inspired by D&D and other pen and paper RPGs = game originally intended to be a fantasy wargame where you control single characters

Since cRPGs are inspired by pen and paper RPGs they should strive to emulate that experience

Original P&P RPGs = dungeon crawlers where you explore dungeons, kill shit, get loot, level up. You choose your character class, sex, race, and sometimes get a choice of what to improve on levelup
Therefore, all oldschool dungeon crawlers are RPGs because you build your own party where you choose their race, class, sex, and go crawl dungeons and get loot and level up. Just like in original D&D, the first P&P RPG.

Some newer P&P RPGs that popped up in the 80s and 90s, like World of Darkness, focused more on the storytelling element of RPG gaming.
But still you choose your character and you make choices in the story. You're not being told what to do you can decide it yourself.
So games with choices that are acknowledged by the game are also RPGs as long as you still have some basic original RPG elements, which is choosing skills to level up and all that jazz.

Essentially, what both types of RPGs have in common is: you make your choices on who your character is supposed to be. Either by choosing class, race, sex, and choosing which stats to raise on levelup. Or by making choices in the story that actually have an impact, and therefore define your character's personality.

If a game is 100% linear and you can't choose anything, like in some JRPGs, it's not an RPG.
 

Lurker47

Savant
Joined
Jul 30, 2017
Messages
721
Location
Texas
I think your point on roguelikes is silly. Spelunky, Isaac, Gungeon, Nuclear Throne, etc, etc are basically just roguelikes without the turn-based combat. That makes them "roguelites" but that's like saying Baldur's Gate isn't a CRPG because it isn't turn-based. Roguelite is just a silly term, especially considering how the actual "roguelike" genre is pretty much dead.

And, yes, "RPG" is overused and consequently, so are shoehorning in RPG elements. This shouldn't come as a surprise.
 

Courtier

Prophet
Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Messages
441
Spelunky is a platformer. Isaac, Gungeon, Nuclear Throne are shmups. Citing the Berlin Interpretation:
"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue". The genre is represented by its canon. The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.
They are a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by level randomization, permanent death, grid and turn-based movement. CRPGs are not such a specific subgenre. You mention RPG is overused but seem to want the term roguelike to be over- and misused in the same way.

On what basis do you think the genre is ''pretty much dead''? Besides it often being the case that these games keep being updated for decades to this day (e.g. ADOM, DCSS) new games and forks of existing ones appear at a slow but steady pace. To name a handful in active development: Infra Arcana, Elona+, Brogue, ToME, Caves of Qud, Tangledeep, Demon, UnReal World. If your definition of ''alive'' is being popular; it's a niche genre that has never had many players OR devs, which would make it not more or less ''alive'' than it was to begin with.
 

Lurker47

Savant
Joined
Jul 30, 2017
Messages
721
Location
Texas
Spelunky is a platformer. Isaac, Gungeon, Nuclear Throne are shmups. Citing the Berlin Interpretation:
"Roguelike" refers to a genre, not merely "like-Rogue". The genre is represented by its canon. The canon for Roguelikes is ADOM, Angband, Crawl, Nethack, and Rogue.
They are a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by level randomization, permanent death, grid and turn-based movement. CRPGs are not such a specific subgenre. You mention RPG is overused but seem to want the term roguelike to be over- and misused in the same way.

On what basis do you think the genre is ''pretty much dead''? Besides it often being the case that these games keep being updated for decades to this day (e.g. ADOM, DCSS) new games and forks of existing ones appear at a slow but steady pace. To name a handful in active development: Infra Arcana, Elona+, Brogue, ToME, Caves of Qud, Tangledeep, Demon, UnReal World. If your definition of ''alive'' is being popular; it's a niche genre that has never had many players OR devs, which would make it not more or less ''alive'' than it was to begin with.
I stand corrected. Thank you for the clarification and interesting information. I'll be sure to check some of these out.
 
Joined
Jan 17, 2015
Messages
781
Just goes to show you argies have awful taste in everything, go back to losing the world cup and looking for indians.
 

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