10 years on codex

[toro]

You can find more meaningful c&c in the many different options a game gives you to build a party and then allows that party to resolve conflict or navigate a maze, than you will find in a million guilds all recognizing what you've done for them. The first example with party building gameplay is real c&c while the 2nd example is simply writing stuff that applies to any game.

Remember what I said: real c&c is seperate from story, plot, or NPCs.

I disagree.

Your view of C&C is all about character builds, and how the world reacts to that / gives you options to use that build in the game. While that is true, C&C isn't limited to that. Actually, C&C about builds is the type of reactivity that's not exclusive to RPGs, since we have many games with RPG elements, such as tactical games with extensive character builds. Fallout Tactics, for one. Still for some that's all an RPG is, and even in PnP some players just play builds in tactical situations.

But the idea that was also advanced with C&C is that RPGs are more than character builds. They require roleplaying, as in playing a character, not just a build. Personality, morality, attitude, beliefs, background, etc. are part of what makes a character and part of what you roleplay. In PnP, that requires you doing actions that makes sense given your character definition, and the GM reacting and adapting what unfolds to that. But for that to be possible in a cRPG, the game must have implemented ways to express such features of your character, and a way to show the impact of those on the game, i.e. C&C. Otherwise you're just playing pretend in your head while the game makes not acknowledgement to it, i.e. LARPing.

Now, character choices, those involving personality, values, etc., will obviously be tied to story and NPCs. Why? Because that is often how your character enters in play. Your attitude, background, etc. will generally only be reacted to when you interact with other NPCs. See for example Arcanum: people react to your race and background and treat your differently. That can only happen in interaction with NPCs. It goes beyond tactics and character build. If you were playing only a build, your choice of a race would be purely for the mechanical benefits (or the looks), say for example you'd choose to play an Orc for the physical bonuses. But that choice can be more meaningful in an RPG that implements C&C / reactivity to that choice. Only then are you playing something more that a pure build.

Same goes with other parts of your PC's character. Morality, values, beliefs and motivations can be expressed in interaction with NPCs, but also very much in story choices / choosing how to resolve a certain situation. Get a contract to kill someone, realize the target is a kid / nice person, and if your character's morals are opposed to it, then you make a choice to resolve the situation differently if implemented in the game. That is C&C, because the game allows you to resolve a situation differently depending on who your PC is, not only what's his build. And that allows for actual roleplaying. The idea of branching story comes from there, in that who you are will influence how you deal with different situations and lead to different story outcomes.

Now I'm not dismissing at all the importance of reactivity to a character's build and the gameplay that results out of it. Just saying that that's not all that roleplaying is, not all that C&C is. And if you view roleplaying as playing a personality with a chosen background and personality, then the build C&C won't be enough. In such as view, a game with only build reactivity might not even be enough to qualify as a roleplaying game without some personality C&C.

This is nightmare fuel stuff.

 

[Ismaul]

This thread is a nightmare, I'm partly agreeing with two people who are trying to eat each other's guts and partly disagreeing on the matters that makes them most butthurt.

Nightmare? Why so torn?

C&C is the reason why a piece of garbage like DAO could be hailed during a RPG drought year, and why someone like Vault Dweller would sing its praise.

Man DAO sucked ass. I was appalled at the praise it got, but then again people like BG2 and were hungry for anything like it. But I'd expect it to be liked for its combat, not its C&C. IIRC people were laughing at the story, and story C&C falls flat when the writing is shit. Also there was that gift faggotry with companions. The only good thing about it was the dog.

On the other hand, I'm agreeing with Zed that C&C is not the end all, be all. [...] I'd sooner play a pure dungeon crawler with no C&C over replaying Derp Ages Origin.

I agree too. I enjoy many games with no C&C (understood as personality C&C). But I don't consider them RPGs. Build-only games are more appropriately called dungeons crawlers or tactical games instead. But it's all semantics yeah? cRPGs started divorced from their roleplaying roots, mostly focussing on character builds, and it took time for character and personality to be introduced back. So the name stuck. But PnP RPGs were started as a move away from pure tactics and into story, a tendancy which has received increased support over the years as PnP developed.

I couldn't be arsed to give a shit about the fact that a game gives me choice and consequences if none of the choices appeal to me and the characters are dull as bricks.

Agreed. Fallout 3 is a good example of terrible C&C.

 

[Shadenuat]

See for example Arcanum: people react to your race and background and treat your differently. That can only happen in interaction with NPCs. It goes beyond tactics and character build.

Your race is part of your build.

I would say Aweigh point goes beyond build. Aweigh just points out that CYOA c&c is not the only type of c&c and that it is overrated, and may not even be the most important one, that it is most interesting to solve problems, whatever their nature is, with your character, through systems provided by game. For him it might be more important type of reactivity and there are good arguments for why it is so.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

How old is the codex?

Check out the join dates of guys like Dark Underlord and Saint Proverbius.

 

[Ismaul]

Your race is part of your build.

It can both have mechanical or tactical effects (build), and roleplaying or personality effects (NPC/story reactivity). I was pointing out the second aspect.

Aweigh just points out that CYOA c&c is not the only type of c&c

And I agreed.

 

[aweigh]

cRPGs started divorced from their roleplaying roots, mostly focussing on character builds,

You actually have it backwards. Focusing on "character builds" is the core experience of "role playing".

...would you like to take a guess as to what the D&D manual introduced as a basic example of role-playing? I'll tell you: one of the examples given is of how a player with high strength can bash down a door, whereas a character with lesser strength would not be able to. Decisions that stem from the "character build" exemplify role play, and can thus a character can do things like bashing down doors and alter the way the rest of the adventure may potentiall play out.

Role playing comes from the character "build", the attributes, the skills, the feats, the class qualities, the proficiencies, so on and so forth; and what the player does with these is what defines their role; everything else seperate from this, everything else divorced from this, is theater.

 

[CryptRat]

I enjoy many games with no C&C (understood as personality C&C). But I don't consider them RPGs. Build-only games are more appropriately called dungeons crawlers or tactical games instead.
[...]cRPGs started divorced from their roleplaying roots, mostly focussing on character builds, and it took time for character and personality to be introduced back. So the name stuck. But PnP RPGs were started as a move away from pure tactics and into story, a tendancy which has received increased support over the years as PnP developed.

Meh, I didn't care much about your discussion but now I want to react to that. CRPG is the genre which adapted tabletop RPG rules to computer, the rules, not the "have a beer with your friends" part. The reason I got to like the genre, compared to other genres, is controlling and developping my own party crawling through dungeons, fighting monsters and solving riddles. You say it's about divorcing from their roleplaying roots, I'd say it's just having challenge as a main purpose, because that's what games are about. Granted I only played some D&D when I was young so yes that's how I see tabletop brung to pc and no game feels as much as a p&p campaign than Pool of Radiance or Blade of Destiny to me. I don't care that youngsters don't like playing games anymore and then obviously when it comes to (tabletop or computer) RPGs they just want to replace challenge with storytelling. I don't mind story choices, Pool of Radiance has its dose of story choices and these games I like the most are not the most abstract ones, but the most important is that I can control my own party with each character filling his or her own role in the party.

we have many games with RPG elements

Sure, but not every video game is about the player's party making its place through a game world or exploring a dungeon with stats controlling everything. Not every video game has a fixed party you create at the start, freeform exploration, inns, trainers, various light, jump and create food spells and various pickpcketing and trap disarming skills. I really don't see how all these things combined are not the mark of a CRPG.

I have nothing against extra personality than the ability to kill monsters and disarm traps, like acrophobia making one character not want to cross a bridge or all the characters having their own dialogue option based on race, class, and skills like in Hearkenwold, these are very fun things. However my problem with those main games praised for Choices and Consequences is they are generally games which force me into playing as one special one with or without less important companions.

Besides, even if in both games the stats modify both the story and gameplay at least a bit, I prefer the replayability of Dark Disciples whose focus is on providing different challenges depending on what options your weak stats lock out to the replayability of Torment whose focus is on altering the story bits with high stats providing additional options.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I agree too. I enjoy many games with no C&C (understood as personality C&C). But I don't consider them RPGs. Build-only games are more appropriately called dungeons crawlers or tactical games instead.

Not only is CYOA the new RPG, but Quantic Dreams has proven itself the greatest CRPG developer by providing amazing Choice & Consequences in its hit RPGs Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human!

 

[sullynathan]

reminder, you can't make an rpg without combat

 

[santino27]

I am posting in this thread as a form of protest. Or celebration. Whatever.

 

[JDR13]

You want a cookie or something?

 

[Ismaul]

The reason I got to like the genre, compared to other genres, is controlling and developping my own party crawling through dungeons

the most important is that I can control my own party with each character filling his or her own role in the party.

not every video game is about the player's party...

PnP roleplaying has never been about controlling a party, but rather one protagonist with whom you identify and portray. When the table-top experience was transferred to single player computer games, players were often given control of a full party to mimic the table-top experience where you play with friends to make a party. But controlling a party isn't required at all for RPGs. If anything, controlling a party is more the domain of wargames. RPGs diverted from those to evolve from the pure tactical scenarios and challenges to something more dramatic, character focussed, in which the same protagonists progressed from scenario to scenario in a campaign.

But I don't dispute your liking of party-based RPGs with a bigger tactical bent. That's fine too.

I don't care that youngsters don't like playing games anymore and then obviously when it comes to (tabletop or computer) RPGs they just want to replace challenge with storytelling.

So now I'm a youngster eh? Nice jab, but I'm way too old for it to land. Newfag.

Seriously though, no one talked about replacing challenge with roleplaying / story choices. I like my games hard. It's possible to have both, see Age of Decadence. It's also possible to enjoy different types of RPG experiences my man.

 

[Ismaul]

...would you like to take a guess as to what the D&D manual introduced as a basic example of role-playing? I'll tell you: one of the examples given is of how a player with high strength can bash down a door, whereas a character with lesser strength would not be able to. Decisions that stem from the "character build" exemplify role play, and can thus a character can do things like bashing down doors and alter the way the rest of the adventure may potentiall play out.

Role playing comes from the character "build", the attributes, the skills, the feats, the class qualities, the proficiencies, so on and so forth; and what the player does with these is what defines their role; everything else seperate from this, everything else divorced from this, is theater.

We're talking in circles here. I use build to mostly refer to combat stats and abilities, and you have a larger use for it. I'm not disputing that using your character build is roleplaying. I'm saying that roleplaying characters are more than their stats, they are more than their capacties of interaction in the world, they are also how they choose to interact with situations and other characters. And that's been there since the beginning of RPGs. Sure, having a high Str allows you to bash a door, that's an easy example. But having a high Str also allows to bash guy A or guy B. And if you have to choose given the scenario you're playing, because you're allying with one or the other in order to resolve the scenario and they are enemies, that is also roleplaying, and that's not readily apparent right there on the character sheet.

I'll make things clearer. I'm opposed to what you said earlier:

Mutually-exclusive content and branching nodes are nice but they don't really have much to do with what makes an RPG an RPG, nor are they even genre exclusive; whereas gameplay-driven consequences that arise from the interaction between the game's mechanics and the player's conflict resolution skew much closer to the heart of the matter.

But the door-bashing example you provided is an example of mutually-exclusive content. You bash the door in and alter what happens versus if you don't open it.


My overall point is this. In order for character build (the way you mean it) to be fully roleplayed in RPGs and not be simply "theater", there needs to be some branching and story C&C. Why? Because some features of the character build are made to have such an effect. Even OD&D has a Charisma stat and Alignment, and they're made to have a significant impact on what unfolds, which amounts to branching.

Gygax says this on Charisma in the AD&D 1e PHB: "Charisma [...] is important to all characters, as it has an effect on dealings with others, principally non-player characters, mercenary hirelings, prospective retainers, and monsters." Interaction with others is written into the game, so much that there's an attribute for it and language proficiencies, and it is intended that dealing with people can have very varied outcomes. Hell, it says you don't necessarily have to kill monsters you can deal with them! And if you do that, things are going to happen differently than if you kill them. The GM has to adapt. So story C&C is written in from the start in PnP RPGs.

Same with Alignment, whose main idea is to frame how you act and clarify your motivations (aside from some spell interactions). And alignment can shift relative to your choices and actions, so you're meant to do more than mere dungeon crawling, but also test who you are. I quote again from the AD&D 1e PHB: "It is probable that your campaign referee will keep a graph of the drift of your characteron the alignment chart. This is affected by the actions (and desires) of your character during the course of each adventure, and will be reflected on the graph. You may find that these actions are such as to cause the declared alignment to be shifted towards, or actually to, some other."

So non-combat and non-tactical choices are also part of what roleplaying is, and therefore personality choices and story C&C are also part of the roleplaying gameplay.


That said, there's this idea relative to computer RPGs that what happens in a dialogue box or when interacting in other ways with NPCs isn't gameplay, but that simply isn't true. You might say that this type of gameplay is not to your liking, or that you just want a smidge of it in your cRPGs, and that's fine. It is true that this type of gameplay does have limitations in cRPGs, in that it uses a method of interaction divorced from the other ways of interacting in the game. But notice that in PnP, verbal interaction happens often with others players / the GM (i.e other characters), whether you're fighting or talking with others. So in PnP there's not that much disconnect between tactical and story choices/interactions, you discuss what you do and then roll in all cases, we see what happens and the GM judges where it goes. So maybe that's why you view story C&C as something that is not "gameplay-driven consequences". But it is very much an integral part of what roleplaying is.

 

[Ibbz]

How old is the codex?

Check out the join dates of guys like Dark Underlord and Saint Proverbius.

Look at Deathy / Calis's accounts - the site was born from ex-Vault 13 members & #Vault13 on IRC.

 

[fantadomat]

with no exceptional deeds linked to my name

Take pride in your mediocrity,not everyone could be like me .

Spoiler

Joke aside.

 

[V_K]

reminder, you can't make an rpg without combat

It has already been done.

 

[Divine Blessing]

Codex version of FRIENDS, including a Seinfeld cameo? thats primetime in any basement, if Ellen could get more screen time...

 

[Falksi]

Morrowind excels in certain areas (atmosphere, magic system, the alien world etc.) whereas Gothic doesn't, but instead does everything very good.

Both are shit-hot games.

 

[Master]

Gothic excels at atmosphere too... Its called Gothic after all.

 

[Falksi]

Gothic excels at atmosphere too... Its called Gothic after all.

To be fair it does. Maybe I should have said originality.

As great as Gothic is, it's still a bloke fights goblins in a fairly standard world. Whereas Morrowind has some truly brilliant & individual alien elements, which give it a unique feel like no other game.

There were simply no moments in Gothic, or any other game for that matter, which matched me discovering that the centre of a community was the shell of a giant crab, or a series of intricately woven alien trees & mushrooms in Tel Fyr etc.

Fuckinghell, even just talking of these two games is getting my juices flowing

 

[Master]

Well Gothic is standard in that there are goblins and orcs. Luckily there are no elfs... But there are some twists to it and understated moments like when you find orc statues and ruins about, which made me think ''orcs had statues and shit? I thought they were just mindless beasts".

 

[Stella Brando]

Originally everyone had these cool 90's style names. Darkunderlord was known as 'TruCodexCru' and Crispy's moniker was '2Legit2Quit' - possibly a reference to his monk-like lifestyle.

 

[tindrli]

i dont even remember a year that i joined. my brain is a soup

 

[Andyman Messiah]

One of my first posts here I said KOTOR was bad and Vault Dweller replied and said we were best friends. Even though we never actually fucked or even acknowledged each other after that, I look back on it fondly. For a very long time he was my girlfriend who lives in Canada.

 

[Sergiu64]

So who did you marry in Crusader Kings 2 Andy?