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Now that the dust has settled, what is an RPG ?

Mortmal

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My little nephew gave me the perfect definition " A shit game i am too young to play".
 

Bruma Hobo

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Bitches please.

Role-playing games are adventure games that let the player create his own character(s) so he can experience a more personal and unique adventure in a simulated world. That's the whole purpose of stats, classes, algnment systems and so on since the early days of D&D, to let players explore a setting on his own terms and forge his very own narrative.

But of course, if the game itself is mechanically weak and all these choices end up being cosmetic, they become pointless and there's no RPG. This is why a proper RPG has to constantly test a character's strengths and weaknesses, and by far the easiest way to do so in a consistent way is through combat. This is why most RPGs are combat-centric games (combat's not a defining aspect of RPGs, but it's stillvery important), and why turn-based combat is usually superior to real-time gameplay that would override some character attributes.

This is of course how our founding fathers coined the term Choices and Consequences, before retarded storyfags twisted its original meaning. Today when people talk about C&C they mean superfluous stuff like branching storylines and dialogue choices, but back then it was all about character customization options allowing unique playstyles, and a gameworld supporting them.


So, which games qualify as RPGs according to this classic definition?

  • Wizardry: Plenty of customization options, plenty of deadly combat testing character builds and providing consequences, some little moral choices allowing even more player expression, highly randomized outcomes and perma-death making adventures even more unique to the player.
  • Ultima: Weak customization options and combat, but allowing plenty of freedom in how to approach the world and game mechanics, so each player will master the game at his own pace and order, making each adventure unique. They have also quests with multiple solutions and some moral choices affecting how the adventure unfolds.
  • Sword of the Samurai: Poor customization options, but plenty of ways to solve problems, moral choices with consequences, quests with multiple outcomes, and so on. The game allows the player to make his own character and forge his own adventure through its mechanics, so it's an RPG.
  • Quest for Glory: Plenty of customization options allowing different playstyles, plenty of quests with multiple solutions testing character builds... Despite playing like a point and click adventure, this is a straight out RPG.
  • Some JRPGs like Shin Megami Tenesei or Uncharted Waters: Full chargen, some customization options beyond just combat-related skills, and a world reacting accordingly.
  • Planescape: Torment: Plenty of ways to make disctinct main characters, not only through stats and classes, but also through actions and dialogue options that let the player choose personality traits, that would later have consequences in how the experience develops.
  • Expeditions: Conquistador
  • Disco Elysium: I haven't played this game so I can't tell for sure. If the game's mechanically strong, with non-cosmetic customization options allowing unique playstyles, then it's an RPG. On the other hand, if character builds are cosmetic and consequences consist only in fluff text, then it's just an adventure game, or better yet, a non-game.

If the game doesn't care about character customization or letting the player forge his own adventure through game mechanics, then that's probably a tacticool game with stats, an adventure game with stats, or an action game with stats.
  • Plenty of old-school JRPGs like Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Dragon Quest IV, and so on, which are actually adventure games with random encounters and grinding.
  • The Linear RPG
  • Questron (it cloned the grinding parts of the early Ultimas, but it never allowed the player to make his own character or forge his own path, as it was deprived of everything that made the first 3 Ultimas good role-playing games).
  • Plenty of modern action games that are just gamifying their systems with level ups.

There are many ambiguous cases though, these games don't care too much about what RPGs are about, but due to convention or heritage they kind of offer some options anyways.
  • Dungeon Master
  • Lands of Lore
  • Diablo
  • JRPGs like Dragon Quest III and Final Fantasy V that let you customize your party members, despite being too concerned with suppressing player expression in favor of their rigid tales.
  • Dark Souls
  • Fallout 4
  • The Witcher 3

This is what moved this genre forward, if you don't like it you can always play squad tacticool titles and wargames.
 
Last edited:

Infinitum

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Let's try brevity. "An rpg is a game using an abstracted ruleset to simulate actions, where the playable characters are customizable".
 

PorkaMorka

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Let's try brevity. "An rpg is a game using an abstracted ruleset to simulate actions, where the playable characters are customizable".

Often characters in RPGs are not customizable, you just grind their stats up without any major input in how they develop
 

Infinitum

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Examples given? Major/minor input is plenty subjective mind, and I'd argue even the latter qualifies under the above description.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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(Copier 2005) "...fantasy role-playing as a commercial product was developed in the 1970s as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, 1974) by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was based on a combination of their interests in table-top wargaming and literary fantasy."
 

Bruma Hobo

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Dave Arneson said:
In general, characters in CRPGs only develop their fighting techniques or learn more spells. A character's alignment is represented only by occasional comments from the computer to"Not be such a goody two shoes." A character's profession is still Fighter/Magic User/Cleric/Thief. Players get to name their surrogate robot . . . er . . . adventurer, assign a few numbers, and give the character its marching orders. Whoopee! . . .

Many players and reviewers have reflected on this robotic mentality. Another deficiency is games that over-emphasize "Combat Mechanics." When major player decisions revolve around whether Marfeldt the Barbarian will use his #3 Axe or #7 Mace to deal with monsters, it hardly seems like role playing (rather "roll" playing).
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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As with other genres of games, RPGs can be defined by their particular combination of game mechanics, which for an RPG consists of certain exploration-related elements, combat-related elements, and character-related elements. Dungeons & Dragons originated in miniatures wargaming, and part of its development and divergence from that existing type of game was to not only provide players with a single character (which would already be the case in a squad-based game with multiple players on one side) but to have this same character, if surviving, progress by gaining experience and levels over the course of an indefinite number of gaming sessions constituting a campaign and also to allow for some measure of character customization such as class and ability scores. However, people when discussing RPGs all too often become fixated on this aspect of the divergence and decide that anything is an RPG if it has character progression/customization, forgetting about the other aspect of the divergence, namely all the exploration-related aspects, as well as the game mechanics that RPGs have in common with squad-based tactics games, namely all the combat-related aspects plus character inventory/equipment.

If a game doesn't have exploration then it isn't an RPG, and if a game doesn't have combat (or possibly some substitute form of conflict) then it isn't an RPG, regardless of the character elements. :M
 

PorkaMorka

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Often characters in RPGs are not customizable, you just grind their stats up without any major input in how they develop

Early PC RPGs and JRPGs where characters come in pre-defined classes and you just level them up.

Sometimes they have fixed stat gains, other times the stat gains are randomized, they may develop new abilities as they level up but the player has no input in what those abilities are.

Extensive build customization was relatively rare until recently.
 

Cryomancer

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Any game with romanceable elf companions. Just kidding. A honest question. If I pick a shooter and add stats and skills, I will have a RPG? Eg - If Hexen 2 had stats and skills, it would be an RPG? What if also had NPC's and quests? Actions and consequences? How much RPG does a RPG game needs to be to be a RPG?

Eg - Mod that adds stats/skills to a "shooter"


I love Heretic and Hexen but I would't consider both RPG's if they had stats/skills. TBH Hexen has more RPG on it than a lot of self entitled RPG's like Diablo 3 and the 16685468165 wow clones that are all about cooldown managing and gear farming.
 

samuraigaiden

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RPG Wokedex
A computer language that generates programs from the user's specifications especially to produce business reports
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Progression.

RPGs without progression can exist.

RPGs without customization cannot exist.

The core of an RPG is customization: you get to choose what kind of character to play, and different characters must differ at a mechanical level.
Thief can pick locks.
Fighter can hit stuff good.
Mage can cast spells.

Imagine an RPG like Fallout or Arcanum where you create a character at the start, with very detailed character creation, dozens of stats and skills, different races, and even stat differences between the two sexes... but you never get to level up during the game.

It would still be an RPG.

Many D&D pen and paper sessions play out without levelups, it takes three or four sessions before you level up sometimes. Does that mean all the sessions without levelups weren't proper RPGs?
What about a mini-module for a level 8 party? You start at level 8 and end at level 8, no levelups during gameplay, but you get to customize your level 8 character according to the rules in as much detail as you want.

The important part about an RPG is that you make character choices that matter and make your character mechanically different from all the other characters.
 
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Any game with romanceable elf companions. Just kidding. A honest question. If I pick a shooter and add stats and skills, I will have a RPG? Eg - If Hexen 2 had stats and skills, it would be an RPG? What if also had NPC's and quests? Actions and consequences? How much RPG does a RPG game needs to be to be a RPG?

Eg - Mod that adds stats/skills to a "shooter"


I love Heretic and Hexen but I would't consider both RPG's if they had stats/skills. TBH Hexen has more RPG on it than a lot of self entitled RPG's like Diablo 3 and the 16685468165 wow clones that are all about cooldown managing and gear farming.
I'm going to go ahead and say it: there is no fundamental difference between looter-shooters and Diablo-clones besides the camera perspective and control layout. Such games are only "not" RPGs in a stylistic sense, but in a technical sense, looter shooters and games like Far Cry under Ubisoft and the Assassin's Creed series are RPGs. That is, unless you want to exclude Diablo, from the list. Just because a game is shit, or you don't like that the game doesn't put RPG-mechanics first and foremost, that doesn't mean you get to exclude that game from the definition. That's not how definitions work.

There is now a separate term, CRPG or cRPG, to refer to games that have descended from the tabletop tradition, as opposed to the cargo cult (see 1, 2) rehashing of popular video games' mechanics that still plagues the industry following the success of Diablo and World of Warcraft.
 

KeighnMcDeath

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.

Many D&D pen and paper sessions play out without levelups, it takes three or four sessions before you level up sometimes. Does that mean all the sessions without levelups weren't proper RPGs?

Who uses a pen in pnp? Lot's of erasing unless one really loves the pen.
 

Bad Sector

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Eg - If Hexen 2 had stats and skills, it would be an RPG?

Hexen 2 does in fact have stats and skills :-P. Also levels. You just can't choose how they are distributed as they start with a somewhat random distribution based on your "class" when you start the game. Also your HP and Mana increase whenever you level up (a bit randomly again, but also based on your class) and you get some skill every few levels (each skill depends on the class and has some special effect, e.g. reviving you after death).

Considering the stats it has and how some aren't even used (AFAIK intelligence isn't used at all) it does feel like Raven initially wanted the game to be more of an RPG than what was finally released.
 

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