The Fundamental Aspect of an RPG is...

[Jim Cojones]

RPG must have a character development system as a core mechanic (so the skills have an impact on most actions during the game) that allow you to play different kinds of character.

You can't have an RPG without it what can't be said about any other feature.

And one where your LARPing is the game - what is that? Hypothetically.

It's definitely not a game.

 

[spectre]

If it didn't have stats it wouldn't be an RPG at all, it would just be an adventure game

Well d'uh. Strip any rpg off its stats and you either get: an adventure game or a tactical game.

 

[Armacalypse]

If it didn't have stats it wouldn't be an RPG at all, it would just be an adventure game

Well d'uh. Strip any rpg off its stats and you either get: an adventure game or a tactical game.

Yes, that was my point. Who praises the stat customization in PS:T? You should put everything in wisdom and intellect and then just play it like an adventure game.

PS:T is a jRPG

Well, I read that it took inspiration from Final Fantasy 7.

 

[spectre]

Yes, that was my point. Who praises the stat customization in PS:T? You should put everything in wisdom and intellect and then just play it like an adventure game.

And yet the game allows different builds. You can play an 18str fighter, just for the heck of it. You won't get as much out of the game, but you may try anyway. And there are a few dialogues where you can do some intimidating, so it's only slightly less than pointless.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Dicksmoker, what's wrong with your reading comprehension mang?
But anyway the examples you made only prove my point. Out of those the majority does not affect anything in how TNO turns out to be at all as it either doesn't mean anything in the end

Actually, I think that TTO acts differently towards you based on your alignment at the end. At least that was the plan. Perhaps it was scrapped. But that's irrelevant anyway. What's you're basically saying is that consequences of your actions are only valid if they happen at the end. Now just think about that. Imagine a game where you don't see any results from your actions until the very end. That would be a terrible rpg. Sure, Fallout, Fallout 2, and Arcanum had ending slides, but they also showed numerous consequences throughout the game before the ending.

(like in-party LARPing or the curse you remove with a spell)

Losing party members is hardly in-party larping. That means you can't use them in combat or any of their skills, as well as in a few quests. That's a gameplay difference. And if you don't have the remove curse spell you're in a pretty shitty situation.

or sends you to the same place you would've reached anyway.

So? In Fallout you have to get the water chip from Necropolis, and then destroy the millitary base and confront the Master under the Cathedral. What's your point?

Shit I imagine TNO getting hiccups makes him a totally different person from a TNO without hiccups. LARPing shit. Way to miss a point too.

It means he keeps stopping frequenty while he's moving across the map. Very annoying. In that way the game makes you feel what your character is feeling.

 

[phanboy_iv]

If it didn't have stats it wouldn't be an RPG at all, it would just be an adventure game

Well d'uh. Strip any rpg off its stats and you either get: an adventure game or a tactical game.

Yes, that was my point. Who praises the stat customization in PS:T? You should put everything in wisdom and intellect and then just play it like an adventure game.

PS:T is a jRPG

Well, I read that it took inspiration from Final Fantasy 7.

I think Final Fantasy 8 is mentioned in the credits section of the manual.

 

[MetalCraze]

What's you're basically saying is that consequences of your actions are only valid if they happen at the end

"doesnt matter in the end" means "doesn't matter as a result of your actions", not literally "in the end" of course.

Losing party members is hardly in-party larping. That means you can't use them in combat or any of their skills, as well as in a few quests.

Except that is also the case in every single dungeon-crawler which does not have any C&C you want. And it brings the exactly same effect.

So? In Fallout you have to get the water chip from Necropolis, and then destroy the millitary base and confront the Master under the Cathedral. What's your point?

My point is that even in precious Fallout there are enough of sand-in-the-eyes C&C meaning that it is by far not the main element of RPGs as they are there to fluff things up (and that's great because it worked as an addition to all other well done gameplay elements)

It means he keeps stopping frequenty while he's moving across the map. Very annoying. In that way the game makes you feel what your character is feeling.

Which is exactly a LARPing I dislike. Your character could also get blindness in combat, I guess in a way that will make you feel pity for him. No in context of my discussion I meant f.e. that no matter how much evil TNO will do in Sigil in those rare cases that he can - nobody will ever react to that.
Yet PS:T was heavily concentrated around this while not caring about the elements you don't consider fundamental which hurts it as a game very much even though it has shittons of what you call C&C

 

[Joe Krow]

The only choice that matters are those made while selecting attributes for your character. The only significant consequences arise from them. The rest is larping.

 

[Ohlie]

The only choice that matters are those made while selecting attributes for your character. The only significant consequences arise from them. The rest is larping.

I don't believe this has to be the case. Consider, for example, a situation where town X is being attacked by ogres, and town Y is being attacked by hobgoblins. Your character can ride out in time to save only one of them. You--the player--can choose the PC's actions: save X, save Y, or let both towns burn. This choice is not dependent on your PC's attributes, yet it can still have significant gameplay consequences (e.g. branching the storyline, shaking up the gameworld, changing the PC's reputation, having major NPCs die off, getting quests offered by survivors, incurring the wrath of the ogre/hobgoblin factions, and so on).

 

[Winter Ale]

Bah!

This discussion is just so missing the point.

An RPG has dice under the hood and characters on top, which is what action games do not have, and strategy games sometimes have in part but without the characters.

The genre is a direct pedigree of pen and paper RPGs.

There's a good analogy for pen and paper play styles to games. Some GMs run a story based game. That's cool. Some players do lots of character work - 'actual' role playing. That's cool. Other people just break out the dry erase maps and start sketching out dungeons. Okay, fine.

You get every set of those styles sitting on top of the same dice roll systems. We can argue over what's the better style, and we might all think it's munchkin stuff if you're not actually playing a character - but in the way the games are actually played that's just flavor.

The system, combining dice rolls with characters - that's what an RPG is.

Okay. There's my arrogant two cents. Argue with me, or keep on arguing over styles if you like.

 

[Joe Krow]

I don't believe this has to be the case. Consider, for example, a situation where town X is being attacked by ogres, and town Y is being attacked by hobgoblins. Your character can ride out in time to save only one of them. You--the player--can choose the PC's actions: save X, save Y, or let both towns burn. This choice is not dependent on your PC's attributes, yet it can still have significant gameplay consequences (e.g. branching the storyline, shaking up the gameworld, changing the PC's reputation, having major NPCs die off, getting quests offered by survivors, incurring the wrath of the ogre/hobgoblin factions, and so on).

Are we going to call such a decision "roleplaying"? If so, I would just ask, in what way is this decision impacted by the character your playing? The answer is, it's not. I suppose it's easy enough to generalize and say that you're roleplaying a character who likes town Y over X, who hates ogres, or is afraid of hobgoblins but that's clearly larping. The player is arbitrarily imagining a personality for his character that is in no way tied to the game. You may as well go collect mushrooms in Oblivion.

 

[mondblut]

Re: Bah!

The genre is a direct pedigree of pen and paper RPGs...

You get every set of those styles sitting on top of the same dice roll systems. We can argue over what's the better style, and we might all think it's munchkin stuff if you're not actually playing a character - but in the way the games are actually played that's just flavor.

The system, combining dice rolls with characters - that's what an RPG is.

You are mostly correct, but when storyfags and larpers increasingly throw away dice because they "break the narrative", it's not merely "flavor" any longer. And in past 15 years CRPGs went such a long way to emphasize this or that flavor (be it "story" or "immersion" or whatever), they pretty much lost the "combining dice rolls with characters" part somewhere on the road, or shuffled it somewhere where it doesn't matter anymore.

 

[Winter Ale]

I don't believe this has to be the case. Consider, for example, a situation where town X is being attacked by ogres, and town Y is being attacked by hobgoblins. Your character can ride out in time to save only one of them. You--the player--can choose the PC's actions: save X, save Y, or let both towns burn. This choice is not dependent on your PC's attributes, yet it can still have significant gameplay consequences (e.g. branching the storyline, shaking up the gameworld, changing the PC's reputation, having major NPCs die off, getting quests offered by survivors, incurring the wrath of the ogre/hobgoblin factions, and so on).

Are we going to call such a decision "roleplaying"? If so, I would just ask, in what way is this decision impacted by the character your playing? The answer is, it's not. I suppose it's easy enough to generalize and say that you're roleplaying a character who likes town Y over X, who hates ogres, or is afraid of hobgoblins but that's clearly larping. The player is arbitrarily imagining a personality for his character that is in no way tied to the game. You may as well go collect mushrooms in Oblivion.

Or you might be playing Final Fantasy Tactics or something. It's kind of playing a role. That doesn't mean they 're playing an RPG.

 

[Joe Krow]

Re: Bah!

Some players do lots of character work - 'actual' role playing.

In single player CRPGs?

That's cool.

Not really.

 

[Winter Ale]

Re: Bah!

Some players do lots of character work - 'actual' role playing.

In single player CRPGs?

That's cool.

Not really.

[/quote]

No, not in single player CRPGs.

People do that sitting at a table with three to five other people playing Dungeons and Dragons, Deadlands, or what have you.

If we're talking CRPG, I'd call that the difference between lots of time on character conversations and viewpoints, when compared to, say, Pool of Radiance.

 

[Winter Ale]

Re: Bah!

The genre is a direct pedigree of pen and paper RPGs...

You get every set of those styles sitting on top of the same dice roll systems. We can argue over what's the better style, and we might all think it's munchkin stuff if you're not actually playing a character - but in the way the games are actually played that's just flavor.

The system, combining dice rolls with characters - that's what an RPG is.

You are mostly correct, but when storyfags and larpers increasingly throw away dice because they "break the narrative", it's not merely "flavor" any longer. And in past 15 years CRPGs went such a long way to emphasize this or that flavor (be it "story" or "immersion" or whatever), they pretty much lost the "combining dice rolls with characters" part somewhere on the road, or shuffled it somewhere where it doesn't matter anymore.

But that's the point. We're agreeing, here.

It's not merely 'flavor' for some of these games. Which is why quite a large number of these games are barely RPG at all, if at all.

Which is why we have a lot of old farts hanging around on forums bitching at every Mass Effect or Fallout 3 (that was flat out insulting) that comes out and saying 'Yay!' every time a Knights of the Chalice does.

I'm wondering if Emotional Vampire is actually getting any of this.

 

[Joe Krow]

18 posts and a year later, I believe you're catching on.

 

[Zeus]

What about an experience system?

Before the 90s games made C&C popular, most RPGs didn't bother. But you could always spot an RPG, thanks to its LEV's and EXP's.

When someone says a game has "RPG Elements", they usually don't mean you can Choose Your Own Adventure.

 

[Winter Ale]

18 posts and a year later, I believe you're catching on.

Could be, could be...

 

[mondblut]

What about an experience system?

Technically I can easily imagine an RPG where you're stuck with whatever you've got at character creation for the duration of the game. Even if none such games were actually produced on a computer, this is fairly common for a stand-alone tabletop module that neither develops into a campaign spanning years nor is set in Myth Drannor.

Hm, disregard that. Megatraveller 2. And probably 1, and maybe Space 1889 too. Not a single skill increase throughout the game, your characters remain the same as they were when they quit their 10-20 years of service spent in character generation subroutine. Didn't notice levelling at Planet's Edge either, although I didn't play it much.

So just having stats to compute for action successes is more of a deciding factor than increasing them in process.

 

[Zeus]

Well yeah, I never said a CRPG without statistical character growth was unimaginable, just exceedingly rare. Still, it's interesting to note that the titles you mentioned were all science fiction, rather than fantasy games. Maybe by removing the fantasy, they also removed some of the need for power fantasy as well.

Still, I hardly think that C&C is one of the fundamental aspects of CRPGs when it only gained popularity ten or twelve years ago.

 

[spectre]

Technically, it should be similar in Cyberpunk, too little time within a single game to increase skills, and at the end most of the chars should be either dead, or have had it. Otherwise you're doing it wrong. (And yes, I know there's a section for increasing skills in the rulebook).
Thing is, I'd treat rpging without stat increases as an exception, not the norm in the genre.

So just having stats to compute for action successes is more of a deciding factor than increasing them in process.

Hmmm. Tricky. The same can be said about all sorts of wargames. What is the difference between combat value of royal grenadiers and stats of any random rpg hero? Social skills? But these are actually the same, you just have to see all these persuasions and haggles as alternative means for solving problems.

I think the point here is to emphasize that player avatar skill when determining chance of success supercedes player skill. Ideally, it should go as far as to make the player see the gameworld differently depending on avatar stats.

Fuck yeah, let's define an arpegee discussion, there we go again.

 

[Imbecile]

Anyone ticking all 4 is copping out. I'll go with options 1 and 2. Being able to play in different ways, with different skillsets is key, but you also need those paths to be meaningful and have consequences. So really 1 and 2 almost combine into one option.

I also really, really like exploration in my RPGs, but can accept that while this might make it a much better game (to me at least!), it doesn't make it any more of an RPG.

 

[Jasede]

This is a horrible poll. Where is the Combat option?

If I have to go with the options presented I'll say 4 because the first 3 aren't that critical in RPGs. Not in the way I use the word anyway.

Mondblut! With our powers combined we are... the last 2 RPG fans left on the planet.

 

[MetalCraze]

The genre is a direct pedigree of pen and paper RPGs.

And this is what some people here don't understand.