so how do you define games that are almost identical except they only have one character?
I define them as
bad games not to my taste.
They're not blobbers because they don't have a party. Single character RPGs are their own thing. We could classify them in a number of different ways, but I haven't payed that much attention to how they'd be classified, because it's easy enough to avoid them by checking if they have a party or not.
I would agree with you that blobbers play more like single character games. That's not necessarily a positive thing for blobbers, blobbers have been streamlined so the party is more like a single character in some ways.
What about the "first person party based dungeon crawler RPG" definition?
That 7-8 word phrase is fine, but blobber communicates the same thing in one word, I see it as more likely to actually get used.
What is "blob combat" and how do you define it?
RPG combat that streamlines or eliminates the positioning of individual party members. Instead of moving each party member around individually in combat the party remains glued together in a blob (or formation).
This eliminates the pseudo-tactical wargaming / miniatures aspect and puts the focus more on rolling dice, min maxing mechanics and checking who has higher stats. Like in certain early JRPGs. That's actually a very significant change to how combat plays and feels.
Not every pen and paper roleplaying game used miniatures (we often didn't), but in my limited experience there was always some element moving your individual party members around and taking positioning into account, we almost never did pure blob combat where you JUST roll dice, that's boring.
The pseudo-tactical aspect helps prevent the game from devolving into an exercise in pure dice rolling and checking who has higher stats. Even if the player's moves are often rather obvious, allowing him to make those moves enhances the feeling of player agency, creates a feeling that the combat has the potential to go in different ways (even if it really doesn't), gives the combat more of a dramatic adventure story feel and obscures the often simplistic dice rolling mechanics.
Are you sure you're not just with yet another distinct personal interpretation on what the word ostensibly means, thereby proving my point that it is a fundamentally redundant and pointless attempt at a definition which has survived only through each individual making his own interpretation of the term based on the name "blobber"?
I'm using it right (and I remember how it was originally used), some other people might be using it wrong, but if so I haven't seen their posts. I don't think it's that hard to figure out what's a blobber and it's ok if there are some edge cases. I'm sure you could nitpick it but that's true of any definition.
It doesn't seem like something worth complaining about, either it will catch on or it won't, I'm just defending the term because it's been helpful to me for a long time, having a word to classify these games helps me understand why I don't like them as much as other RPGs.
?
?
