Has C&C become the cancer of RPGs?

[Gangrelrumbler]

PnP RPGs, the historical root of cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of necessity) with flexibility and some social aspects. Computer games are rigidly defined ('coz algorithmic) formal systems that can often sport surprisingly rich mechanics and content ('coz it's XXI fucking century and both computing power and memory are both fucking cheap).
Most of the time cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of stupidity) with rigidity, because they are still computer games, but try to mindlessly ape PnP mechanics (by design intended to be patched dynamically by players and GM) instead of trying to find a way to replicate the intent without replicating the workings which would yield system playing to the strengths of the medium.
Then you have developers trying to keep simplicity but make things more videogamey, and further generations of devs repeating the process.
Mechanically cRPGs tend to literally be recursively bad, and they pollute other genres with their condensed badness known as "RPG elements" as well.

If only someone made a proper RPG focusing on RPGish goals instead of "RPGish" means...

Instead we have the OP and his thread.

I agree with the RPG elements being cancer most of the time when used outside of RPGs. Withcher being the prime example. Sure it technically is an RPG, but most RPG mechanics are an useless bloat. As for 'replicating the intent'. Isn't that exactly what Looking Glass Studio tried to do with UA and later Deus Ex?

 

[DraQ]

PnP RPGs, the historical root of cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of necessity) with flexibility and some social aspects. Computer games are rigidly defined ('coz algorithmic) formal systems that can often sport surprisingly rich mechanics and content ('coz it's XXI fucking century and both computing power and memory are both fucking cheap).
Most of the time cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of stupidity) with rigidity, because they are still computer games, but try to mindlessly ape PnP mechanics (by design intended to be patched dynamically by players and GM) instead of trying to find a way to replicate the intent without replicating the workings which would yield system playing to the strengths of the medium.
Then you have developers trying to keep simplicity but make things more videogamey, and further generations of devs repeating the process.
Mechanically cRPGs tend to literally be recursively bad, and they pollute other genres with their condensed badness known as "RPG elements" as well.

If only someone made a proper RPG focusing on RPGish goals instead of "RPGish" means...

Instead we have the OP and his thread.

I agree with the RPG elements being cancer most of the time when used outside of RPGs. Withcher being the prime example. Sure it technically is an RPG, but most RPG mechanics are an useless bloat. As for 'replicating the intent'. Isn't that exactly what Looking Glass Studio tried to do with UA and later Deus Ex?

And actually succeeded. Note that the "RPG elements" are still pretty meh in DX, with skills being very poorly balanced, augs only somewhat better, viability of stealth not being affected by build and so on.

And the RPG elements tend to be just as misused in actual RPGs - for example try making a non-laughable case for levels not being a cancer - I'll wait.

 

[Ventidius]

Come on. This is a ridiculously inadequate way to describe what’s going on. Arcanum just has a few extra lines of dialogue and different ending slides? Play as a wizard then play as a gunslinger/mechanic—it’s a different goddamned game.

In everything I mentioned, the consequences kick in long before the endgame and account for a hell of a lot more than a few lines of dialogue, or even a lot of dialogue. They open or close different quests, open or close different ways to complete quests, change who your enemies are (unlocking new encounters), in some cases they unlock totally different areas, in some cases there’s so much branching that you’re getting totally different content (act 2 of Witcher 2 being the most obvious example). In Tyranny (and I admit this wasn’t implemented well) your dialogue choices vis-a-vis the different factions gave you new abilities once you inspired enough fear or loyalty. The spirit eater gauge in Mask of the Betrayer speaks for itself.

This stuff is hardly cosmetic. Again, everybody’s talking like only BioWare makes RPGs.

There are couple of different points here to address.

They open or close different quests, open or close different ways to complete quests, change who your enemies are (unlocking new encounters), in some cases they unlock totally different areas, in some cases there’s so much branching that you’re getting totally different content (act 2 of Witcher 2 being the most obvious example). In Tyranny (and I admit this wasn’t implemented well) your dialogue choices vis-a-vis the different factions gave you new abilities once you inspired enough fear or loyalty. The spirit eater gauge in Mask of the Betrayer speaks for itself

Notice how all of the things that you are referring to are aspects of scripted content, not of mechanics. As I pointed out above, C&C through mechanics is the one that actually comes closest to PnP and, perhaps more importantly, the one that actually grants the player actual agency over the gameplay. When a PnP group chooses to do something unexpected they have the possibility of carving out a new direction for the campaign that DM did not foresee, but has to react dynamically to. This is not the case in cRPGs, where the developer has laid out a static campaign plan that, in the best of cases, merely allows for some limited variety in the experience. In other words, agency is here an illusion, even if it's a carefully crafted illusion.

Furthermore, in many - perhaps most - cases reactivity isn't even a matter of content overall (including unique encounters and areas), but merely of quests. The quests themselves differ only in their symbolic aspects(e.g. what they represent in the story), they don't differ dramatically from each other in terms of gameplay. A different questline more often than not simply means walking around and fighting, same as in the other questline, the only difference being the symbolism assigned to the walking and fighting in question. Yes, some games like Arcanum, Fallout, and New Vegas allow some quests to be resolved with some mechanical variety (stealth, magic, etc), but:

1) Such games are in the minority, if you made a list of all the story-based games beloved by the Codex, maybe half (likely less than that) of them would have this kind of diversification. And even in the games where this happens, a large chunk of the diversification comes from quest narratives, not from mechanical variation.

2) Wouldn't you be able to do exactly this without committing yourself to the quest-based paradigm? Instead of investing resources in developing intricate quest networks, a better choice would be to expand on both the mechanical options and the AI and gameworld systems/content that can be acted upon. It is as good a time as any to clarify that the issue here is as much quest-driven game structure as the emphasis on dialogues.

This is not to say that there should not be quests, they do add to a game where they are present (even many Wizardries and Wizardry-likes include questing and quest-like elements), but the whole game should not be structured around them anymore than it should be structured around a linear narrative. Quests are narrative elements, often of a non-linear and relatively interactive kind, true, but their main contribution is to add symbolism and "immersion" to the existing game experience, they are not the game experience itself any more than a story is. That is why, like the story, they should be the handmaiden of gameplay, not the other way around. Icewind Dale had plenty of cool quests and reactivity options in some of its dungeons. This added to the game, but the main structure of it was that of a dungeon crawler and the game was the better for it. Indeed, I would take IWD's structure over that of BG2's Athkatla any day of the week. You could replace the dungeon crawling structure with more overland and city exploration, as Morrowind does, and it would still be functional, so long as it is not dominated by quest or story elements.

3) A lot of the games that tried to combine quest reactivity and story branching with mechanical diversification ended up with undercooked and/or broken mechanics. No one expects the stealth in something like Fallout to be on par with something like Shadow Watch or Invisible Inc. RPGs will always, of necessity, be inferior to dedicated games when it comes to specific mechanics, their strength lies in diversification. However, games must still be engaging, fun and challenging to play, so a certain minimum of mechanical polish for each option is a must. However, most games that devote resources to both quest design/branching and mechanical diversification end up with mechanics that are passable at best. In fact, it is often only combat that meets this modest standard, and on many occasions it doesn't. Of all the story/quest oriented games that you'll find in a Codex Top 50 only maybe two or three (if you are generous) have decent gameplay and mechanical diversification, not exactly a good argument for the viability of this design school.

This stuff is hardly cosmetic. Again, everybody’s talking like only BioWare makes RPGs.

The difference with Bioware is one of degree, not style. As I pointed out, the games that you mention create the illusion of agency, this is the same MO of Bioware. The difference? Bioware are lazy. Bioware try to create that illusion by throwing a few token acknowledgements to the player. You are right that I exaggerated the flimsiness of the BIS-inspired approach, but at the end of the day, both this approach and that of Bioware rely on symbolism to simulate agency, the only difference is that in the case of the former the symbolism is more pervasive.

You could counter that all gaming is symbolic, in a way, which is true. But this doesn't change the fact that there is a substantial difference between mechanical symbolism, which facilitates agency and exertion on part of the player, and "immersive" (for the lack of a better term) symbolism, which relies on the player's suspension of disbelief and "immersing" himself in the story rather than engaging in actions that abstract and simulate certain types of activity. Obviously, I consider the first kind to be superior, since the latter is the analogue of LARPing, while the former involves actual participation and agency on part of the player.

Pen & Paper doesn’t substitute for video games, though. That’s like saying you should just play football instead of playing a football video game. Or, hey, why bother playing a dungeon crawl when you can go reenact the battle of Marathon with a few hundred buddies and some plane tickets to Greece?

Those are some very odd analogies though. PnP is a form of simulation, just like videogames, videogames do not emulate PnP but they do seek to emulate some of the same things that PnP emulates. So the relationship is not the same as that betwen playing football and playing a football game. It is a comparison between two kinds of simulation, not between simulating an activity and engaging in it.

What's more, I didn't even say that PnP was superior to videogames tout court, in fact, I think videogames can simulate some things far better than PnP. Real-time combat is an obvious example. However, even in some areas like tactical turn-based combat videogames have some advantages such as rapid, automated number crunching and convenient and connective online multiplayer possibilities (as in PBEM games). My argument was that when it comes to interactive storytelling videogames don't hold a candle to PnP, just as they don't hold a candle to books or movies in terms of pure narrative, so why should videogame designers waste their time and effort either in trying to ape interactive storytelling in a suboptimal medium or even stay in the medium at all?

The idea that there’s a huge trade off between good C&C and good gameplay is, I think, based on a misunderstanding. Age of Decadence has both! Kingmaker has both! Exhibits A and B for why games should try to do both, because it’s fucking great.

Why do they work? They were both designed for niche audiences.

The notion that AoD has good gameplay is highly contestable. Yes, the game was voted as one of the best RPGs ever by the Codex, but just one look at the Top 10 list should give you an idea of the demographic that drove that vote and the kind of thing that they look for in games. In other words, most people probably voted for it primarily due to the story/reactive elements. Meanwhile, the game is not held in such high regard by gameplay conoisseurs, regardless of whether these are the mondblutian/powergamer crowd, the Wizardry/dungeon crawler guys, the tactics aficionados, or the exploration enthusiasts. It'd be interesting to scan the voting thread for people who consistently voted for gameplay-centric titles and see how many voted for AoD. There are probably a couple of them, but it doesn't seem to be the rule. I personally think AoD's focus on questing and dialogues combined with its eschewing of exploration seriously cripples its ability to deliver a satisfying gameplay experience. However, I don't want to derail this thread into an argument about the quality of AoD's gameplay, there have been plenty of those. But citing it as an undisputed example of good gameplay and BIS-style C&C begs the question, because it assumes that the things that AoD replaced exploration with are the sorts of things that would appeal to anyone who doesn't already buy into the goals of the BIS/ITS school of design.

As for Kingmaker, it is a solid game, but mostly because of its mechanical/gameplay core, which is the focus of the game: the combat, powergaming/character building, and exploration. To the extent that there are C&C aspects, they merely complement that. I never said that was impossible, my argument is against games that primarily revolve around questing/story/dialogues/scripted reactivity/etc.

CRPG gameplay sucks because there’s a huge audience of people who play these games for the story: they want combat to be easy and exploration to be spoonfed to them. It’s not like developers are skimping on the systems budget, they’re deliberately designing shallow systems to attract more customers. Market forces are a bitch. That sucks, but I don’t know that there’s a solution to it other than do like VD or Styg and make your own game.

Yes, but the emphasis on story is not limited to the main narrative, and also includes things such as quests and dialogues. Games that prioritize the latter are certainly more interactive than linear narrative-driven games, sure, but they still 1) perpetuate the misconception that RPGs are about "story" and 2) generally lead to an unacceptable cut back on mechanical substance. I'd argue that the decline happened because of the proliferation of C&C, quest, and dialogue elements that happened in RPGs during the late 90s and early 00s, which led - through neglect - to a devolution, in the Western RPG industry, of the state of the art in areas such as character systems, combat engines, and dungeon and encounter design.

The developers who made the classics of that age grew up playing games like Wizardry and the Gold Box series, which is why many of them still had a solid mechanical base. However, the next generation grew up on "story" driven games which led to 1) the ingraining in the minds of the new generation of the misconception that RPGs are about "story", a misconception that bore poisoned fruit when many failed to realize (or didn't care about) the distinction between linear and non-linear narratives and opted for the former (e.g. Mass Effect) and 2) a disinterest in building up on and refining the techniques of mechanics-driven content design inherited from Golden Age RPGs which led, in turn, to the decay of craftsmanship in this area to the point that after the hangover period that followed the Silver Age/Renaissance (e.g. the NWN-Dragon Age era), we ended up with a modern Western scene where, despite many attempts (the Kickstarter era and its aftermath), the result seems to be that no one even remembers how to design quality gameplay in RPGs.

Add to that the fact that most of the legendary writers of the industry seem to have run out inspiration, and we are left with a wasteland in which neither quality gameplay nor quality story elements are to be found, an age of mediocrity and blandness. Yes, there may be some games with decent gameplay here and there (such as Deadfire and Kingmaker), but at least in my view, even the best modern Western games are not only deeply flawed (that's par for the course), but much more so than the best games of the Golden and Silver Ages, to the point that there is a qualitative difference. In any case, even if you buy into the thesis that we live in an Age of Incline, the fact remains that this was only achieved after many painful years of groping in the dark, and very strenuous efforts to recover something that had once been taken for granted. The difference between Deadfire and PoE (or indeed between PoE 3.0+WM and PoE 1.0) or the fact that it took until 2018 for Kingmaker to come around are illustrative of this process.

Mind you, I am not saying that innovation and experimentation are bad, or that the games of the Silver Age were worse than those of the Golden Age. With the exception of a few timeless gems (most of them in the Wizardry catalogue), I think the Silver Age was better, overall. The problem came when a peculiar tendency- the one we are discussing here - of that era took over the genre completely and stifled what used to be the core design traditions of the genre.

 

[sullynathan]

When your goal in Deus Ex is to infiltrate a hostile base and your options are to use lockpicks at the back door, stack crates to reach a broken ladder leading to the roof, or shoot your way through the guards at the front gate, there is direct gameplay C&C. You shoot your way through the front door? The consequence is that the base is now on high alert. You manage to stack crates and climb to the roof? The consequence is that you can easily reach your target on the top floor and skip most of the building. Etc. And you don't make these choices by picking one of several dialogue options. You make these choices by doing the thing you want to do. The designers present you with a situation you need to solve, you look at your toolkit - the weapons and consumeables you have, the skills and augmentations you invested in - and decide which of your tools to use for overcoming the obstacles. The flavor consequence of NPCs reacting differently depending on whether you go for a stealthy non-lethal or frontal assault lethal approach is also a perfect example of this. You don't choose to be a stealthy guy by telling people "Yeah I'm a stealthy guy" and you don't choose to be the rambo guy by telling people "Yeah I'm the rambo guy". You choose to be these kinds of character by solving obstacles with this approach.

This is exactly what I had in mind in terms of "gameplay c&c".
You give the player large amounts of varied ways to complete objectives (outside dialogue) and it remains creative, viable and fun doing so.

 

[Covenant]

Come on. This is a ridiculously inadequate way to describe what’s going on. Arcanum just has a few extra lines of dialogue and different ending slides? Play as a wizard then play as a gunslinger/mechanic—it’s a different goddamned game.

In everything I mentioned, the consequences kick in long before the endgame and account for a hell of a lot more than a few lines of dialogue, or even a lot of dialogue. They open or close different quests, open or close different ways to complete quests, change who your enemies are (unlocking new encounters), in some cases they unlock totally different areas, in some cases there’s so much branching that you’re getting totally different content (act 2 of Witcher 2 being the most obvious example). In Tyranny (and I admit this wasn’t implemented well) your dialogue choices vis-a-vis the different factions gave you new abilities once you inspired enough fear or loyalty. The spirit eater gauge in Mask of the Betrayer speaks for itself.

This stuff is hardly cosmetic. Again, everybody’s talking like only BioWare makes RPGs.

There are couple of different points here to address.

Damn, Ventidius did a far better job defending my point than I could have done. To those people who skip long text posts, his last two are definitely worth the read. I particularly liked the bit about focusing on the holy triad rather than the gravy of C&C (though I prefer my salt metaphor ).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

(...)
That would make for a much better game than one where the story is deep and meaningful but it's entirely linear and you never get to have a say about your character's decisions. Why even make it a game then? Why not a movie or a novel? Those are much better mediums for telling linear stories.

If you want to put a complex, ambitious, but completely linear and immutable story in your RPG, just make it a backstory.

are you the guy behind the massive loredumps every character in PoE threw at me?

 

[Shadenuat]

I thought it was Alex but I think he still uses his old account.

I'm not sure I entirely agree on everything though. Roleplaying is simulation of a story, and PnP rules simulate most other things with numbers and dice (and sometimes even interactions with NPCs and such); computer games simulate combat and stealth, and they try to simulate social interactions and that is all - mechanics. I guess what I want to ask is: what exactly makes dialogue trees and C&C an undesirable simulation when compared to any other simulation? Interactive football doesn't hold a candle to real football either, no? Sure, it is all hard to do, but through character system it is still affected by all the other mechanics (stats, skills, bribes, whom you killed, whom you saved) so it is also just... part of the mechanics.

My opinion? Biggest strength of RPGs is not diversification, but the story elements giving real meaning to mechanical elements and vise versa. I am probably a storyfag tho.

It would be interesting to hear VD opinion on this since there's another jab at AoD there.

 

[smaug]

Alex

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

PnP RPGs, the historical root of cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of necessity) with flexibility and some social aspects. Computer games are rigidly defined ('coz algorithmic) formal systems that can often sport surprisingly rich mechanics and content ('coz it's XXI fucking century and both computing power and memory are both fucking cheap).
Most of the time cRPGs are a genre combining rudimentary mechanics (out of stupidity) with rigidity, because they are still computer games, but try to mindlessly ape PnP mechanics (by design intended to be patched dynamically by players and GM) instead of trying to find a way to replicate the intent without replicating the workings which would yield system playing to the strengths of the medium.
Then you have developers trying to keep simplicity but make things more videogamey, and further generations of devs repeating the process.
Mechanically cRPGs tend to literally be recursively bad, and they pollute other genres with their condensed badness known as "RPG elements" as well.

If only someone made a proper RPG focusing on RPGish goals instead of "RPGish" means...

Instead we have the OP and his thread.

I agree with the RPG elements being cancer most of the time when used outside of RPGs. Withcher being the prime example. Sure it technically is an RPG, but most RPG mechanics are an useless bloat. As for 'replicating the intent'. Isn't that exactly what Looking Glass Studio tried to do with UA and later Deus Ex?

And actually succeeded. Note that the "RPG elements" are still pretty meh in DX, with skills being very poorly balanced, augs only somewhat better, viability of stealth not being affected by build and so on.

And the RPG elements tend to be just as misused in actual RPGs - for example try making a non-laughable case for levels not being a cancer - I'll wait.

It's the first time I've heard someone consider levels in general to be cancer. Sure there are some more elegant ways to replace them like letting players just buy stuff directly for experience points like in Bloodlines or any action games where you can ban new moves. I don't remember any game where they would be detrimental in any way. In fact in games based on DnD and Wizardry-likes it's allows an use of level-drain status effect, which be either impossible to implement or confusing for players in a more free-form upgrade model.

 

[Mastermind]

Anything that isn't strict simulationism is "cancer" to idiot sperg (literally, he's on the spectrum) draq, just ignore and move on.

 

[Alexios]

It would be interesting to hear VD opinion on this since there's another jab at AoD there.

If you're referring to the OP, no, I had no intention of making a jab at AoD. I was reacting solely to recent big-budget games made by the likes of Obsidian and CD Projekt and their constant repetition of the fact that the player's choices impact the story. In my opinion this became banal way back in 2007 when it was Bioware's only talking point for Mass Effect. I don't get a similar impression from Iron Tower at all. I've always felt like the main selling point of AoD has been the brutality of the combat and the diversity of class options.

 

[Beastro]

It's the first time I've heard someone consider levels in general to be cancer. Sure there are some more elegant ways to replace them like letting players just buy stuff directly for experience points like in Bloodlines or any action games where you can ban new moves. I don't remember any game where they would be detrimental in any way. In fact in games based on DnD and Wizardry-likes it's allows an use of level-drain status effect, which be either impossible to implement or confusing for players in a more free-form upgrade model.

Heard it elsewhere. Example: haven't watched this yet, but I've seen it pop up on Youtube:



Flipping through it it seems at least some of his issues don't actually fully apply to just levels, like grinding and how that can apply to anything in a game where the more you do something the better/stronger you are, as TES games prove all too well.

 

[Shadenuat]

That video is basically "hurr unrealistic", seen it.

I will never understand the whole This Arbitrary Game Mechanic Simulation > This Another Arbitrary Game Mechanic Simulation. I just like all of them - classes, xp, levels, classless, skill points, skills, even some games with growth on use skills.

In that respect, I indeed believe that diversification is a good thing in RPGs.

 

[Alex]

Alex

Hello!

Shadenuat

No, this is my first post in this thread. Alex is just a common name (which happened to be free when I finally signed up).

Still, this looks like an interesting thread, so I might as well interact, I guess. Thank you both for calling me!

I tried catching up fast, so apologies if I am missing something, but:

(...snip)

Pen & Paper doesn’t substitute for video games, though. That’s like saying you should just play football instead of playing a football video game. Or, hey, why bother playing a dungeon crawl when you can go reenact the battle of Marathon with a few hundred buddies and some plane tickets to Greece?

Those are some very odd analogies though. PnP is a form of simulation, just like videogames, videogames do not emulate PnP but they do seek to emulate some of the same things that PnP emulates. So the relationship is not the same as that betwen playing football and playing a football game. It is a comparison between two kinds of simulation, not between simulating an activity and engaging in it.

What's more, I didn't even say that PnP was superior to videogames tout court, in fact, I think videogames can simulate some things far better than PnP.

I think there is an important difference here that should be mentioned: pencil and paper gaming is not a simulation at all. It is true that it uses various forms of simulation in it; some of which can be quite ludicrous. Primetime adventures had a simple simulation of how a tv show might work to guide how the game was played; players would write each other's characters "fanmail", which could be used to favour the odds of a roll you took (basically, fate chips).

Anyway, my point here is that, as far as I can see at least, what defines pencil and paper rpgs as rpgs is that they are some simultaneous hybrid of storytelling and game. That is, an activity that is at the same time, storytelling (and since it is inherent to it, story listening) and a game, in such a way that you are never just playing a game or just telling a story. CRPGs, on the other hand, are actually a "simulation", of what an RPG is. That is, a CRPG is a computer game, that tries to play similar to how a P&P game might play. That is its defining feature, even if it has other elements of gaming in it and even if its rules are nothing like the ones in a P&P game.

Real-time combat is an obvious example. However, even in some areas like tactical turn-based combat videogames have some advantages such as rapid, automated number crunching and convenient and connective online multiplayer possibilities (as in PBEM games). My argument was that when it comes to interactive storytelling videogames don't hold a candle to PnP, just as they don't hold a candle to books or movies in terms of pure narrative, so why should videogame designers waste their time and effort either in trying to ape interactive storytelling in a suboptimal medium or even stay in the medium at all?

(snip...)

I agree with you that videogames have different strengths than P&P games. But story is not merely another aspect that can be emphasized or not; it is part of what is the defining feature of what RPGs are. Now, I want to make a detour here to explain what I mean by story, otherwise this will come off wrong. Old wizardry titles, for instance, didn't seem to have much story at all in them. There was a backstory in the manual, a few key points where you got some information and the ending text. Outside of that, you were mostly exploring the dungeon, levelling up, buying items, and such. But I am not trying to attack this kind of RPG, just like I would never consider that old D&D games were people mostly explored dungeons were somehow lesser than, say, White Wolf games that came later. The issue here is that the story these games are about telling is not so much like a fantasy novel or a thriller you might read in a book, but more like a campaign journal or explorer log where you are concerned with the details of an expedition. How did you manage to survive the perils? How many barrels of ration were lost in the storm and how did it affect the party? Etc.

So, what I am trying to drive at, is that it is dangerous to think simply in terms of gameplay vs storytelling. First, because you might focus on gameplay not only instead of a static story, or even a mildly interactive one, but instead of the actual storytelling the game is trying to deliver. I think a good example of this is Underrail. I thought Underrail is a really great game with many very well made aspects. But I think it shot its own foot on how it approached being an RPG. Things like having cool downs to throw grenades or having robots being able to withstand emps by turning on the safety mode don't make a lot of sense and hurt the very story the game focuses on. When your gameplay stops mapping to something that makes sense, the storytelling aspect is hurt.

Finally, I do think that interactive storytelling in computers has a future. No, it will never be ad hoc like we can do in a campaign, and it can never hope to even pretend to be so far reaching. But the storytelling aspects of a computer game do have some advantages, such as being able to do editorial work on it, whereas on a P&P game you have to pretty much do everything on the spot. But the main problem I see is that it is very expensive to do a branching storyline in a computer game, when you will need assets, level design and what not for stuff the player might never see. There isn't a simple solution here, but just as the general public aren't willing to forego graphics for a more interactive story, neither are they willing to forego storytelling, I think.

 

[Beastro]

That video is basically "hurr unrealistic", seen it.

I will never understand the whole This Arbitrary Game Mechanic Simulation > This Another Arbitrary Game Mechanic Simulation. I just like all of them - classes, xp, levels, classless, skill points, skills, even some games with growth on use skills.

In that respect, I indeed believe that diversification is a good thing in RPGs.

I find it an interesting assumption of people. Reminds me of watching the 50s thriller Bad Seed a few weeks ago then looking up reviews of it on IMDB. Everyone who disliked it had one common argument: They didn't like how much it imitated the stage play origins of the story. They all used "stagey" in a way that another review brought up, that there was a presupposed assumption in the word: that film shouldn't be like stage at all and always must try to ape reality as much as possible. The people couldn't see past that assumption and disliked the movie for being a filmed stage play.

I actually found that part of it a big part of its charm, as is the case of many other 50s media, like TV shows like the Twilight Zone. When it comes to realism in games in general, I can appreciate it, but I wouldn't want it to dominate especially in RPGs where abstraction can produce a lot of fun stuff.

 

[Artyoan]

When your goal in Deus Ex is to infiltrate a hostile base and your options are to use lockpicks at the back door, stack crates to reach a broken ladder leading to the roof, or shoot your way through the guards at the front gate, there is direct gameplay C&C. You shoot your way through the front door? The consequence is that the base is now on high alert. You manage to stack crates and climb to the roof? The consequence is that you can easily reach your target on the top floor and skip most of the building. Etc. And you don't make these choices by picking one of several dialogue options. You make these choices by doing the thing you want to do. The designers present you with a situation you need to solve, you look at your toolkit - the weapons and consumeables you have, the skills and augmentations you invested in - and decide which of your tools to use for overcoming the obstacles. The flavor consequence of NPCs reacting differently depending on whether you go for a stealthy non-lethal or frontal assault lethal approach is also a perfect example of this. You don't choose to be a stealthy guy by telling people "Yeah I'm a stealthy guy" and you don't choose to be the rambo guy by telling people "Yeah I'm the rambo guy". You choose to be these kinds of character by solving obstacles with this approach.

I agree that this is ideal. I would just add a possible negative point that shows up in this type of area design sometimes. A lot of games provide an incentive never to take shortcuts for the sake of exploration yielding its reward. If I'm to choose whether to bust in the front door and kill everyone in a castle, or sneak in through the sewers and go directly for my quest target, I am likely to take whatever path gives me full exploration rewards, which is often the most brute force way of accomplishing the objective.

How often do you find yourself taking a shortcut, and then wondering what you missed because you chose an easier or less expansive route? It can make sneaking feel like a net negative if I get less experience/gold/items etc because I used it.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

When your goal in Deus Ex is to infiltrate a hostile base and your options are to use lockpicks at the back door, stack crates to reach a broken ladder leading to the roof, or shoot your way through the guards at the front gate, there is direct gameplay C&C. You shoot your way through the front door? The consequence is that the base is now on high alert. You manage to stack crates and climb to the roof? The consequence is that you can easily reach your target on the top floor and skip most of the building. Etc. And you don't make these choices by picking one of several dialogue options. You make these choices by doing the thing you want to do. The designers present you with a situation you need to solve, you look at your toolkit - the weapons and consumeables you have, the skills and augmentations you invested in - and decide which of your tools to use for overcoming the obstacles. The flavor consequence of NPCs reacting differently depending on whether you go for a stealthy non-lethal or frontal assault lethal approach is also a perfect example of this. You don't choose to be a stealthy guy by telling people "Yeah I'm a stealthy guy" and you don't choose to be the rambo guy by telling people "Yeah I'm the rambo guy". You choose to be these kinds of character by solving obstacles with this approach.

I agree that this is ideal. I would just add a possible negative point that shows up in this type of area design sometimes. A lot of games provide an incentive never to take shortcuts for the sake of exploration yielding its reward. If I'm to choose whether to bust in the front door and kill everyone in a castle, or sneak in through the sewers and go directly for my quest target, I am likely to take whatever path gives me full exploration rewards, which is often the most brute force way of accomplishing the objective.

How often do you find yourself taking a shortcut, and then wondering what you missed because you chose an easier or less expansive route? It can make sneaking feel like a net negative if I get less experience/gold/items etc because I used it.

My opinion was the complete opposite when reading his post: Why would someone want to storm through the front door and kill a bunch of people if they can sneak through the sewers?

 

[Shadenuat]

Maybe it's the fastest way and only way to save the hostage they're taken who is a character you care for.

Otherwise players would always choose either gameplay they just find more fun or a route which provides most locked containers with things inside them.

 

[Ventidius]

I think there is an important difference here that should be mentioned: pencil and paper gaming is not a simulation at all. It is true that it uses various forms of simulation in it; some of which can be quite ludicrous. Primetime adventures had a simple simulation of how a tv show might work to guide how the game was played; players would write each other's characters "fanmail", which could be used to favour the odds of a roll you took (basically, fate chips).

Anyway, my point here is that, as far as I can see at least, what defines pencil and paper rpgs as rpgs is that they are some simultaneous hybrid of storytelling and game. That is, an activity that is at the same time, storytelling (and since it is inherent to it, story listening) and a game, in such a way that you are never just playing a game or just telling a story.

I agree that the term "simulation" is inadequate to describe PnP games if one strives for semantic exactitude. Then again, cRPGs, and most videogames with the exception of dedicated sims, are probably not simulations either by that standard. My point in that section of the post, and this is a more exact way of putting it, is that they are both types of games or gaming formats and thus it is possible for one to be a substitute for the other in a way in which playing football in real life is not a substitute for a football videogame or simulation (one of the examples brought up by the other user.)

CRPGs, on the other hand, are actually a "simulation", of what an RPG is. That is, a CRPG is a computer game, that tries to play similar to how a P&P game might play. That is its defining feature, even if it has other elements of gaming in it and even if its rules are nothing like the ones in a P&P game.

I'm not sure I'd call cRPGs simulations of PnP gaming. I mean there are actual PnP simulators such as Fantasy Grounds, but it seems to me most cRPGs developers have from the beginning been keenly aware of the differences between both media and have thus tried to tailor the design of their games to the limitations and possibilities of PC gaming, which has resulted in cRPGs developing a rather distinct identity when compared to PnP. I would say it is more accurate to say that cRPGs are games that have similar design goals to those of PnP RPGs because they are products of the same genre made in different media. The relationship between them is more akin to that between a horror movie and a horror novel than it is to the relationship between business transactions and business simulations.

That said, I do approve of cRPGs making use of the wisdom of experience that their PnP predecessors accumulated throughout the decades, which is why I consider games that draw inspiration from PnP rulesets (such as D&D) as having an advantage over games that attempt to reinvent the wheel in the way that Sawyer attempted to with his homebrew ruleset in Pillars of Eternity. That this is likely the case is easily seen in the results.

I agree with you that videogames have different strengths than P&P games. But story is not merely another aspect that can be emphasized or not; it is part of what is the defining feature of what RPGs are.

At this point, we are getting into "definition of RPG" territory. My own view on this is that RPGs can be defined in two ways: synthetically (and specifically, historically) and analytically.

According to the synthetic definition RPGs are essentially wargames with two elements added to them: character building/customization and exploraiton (which can be of the dungeon or overland variety.) This is based on the fact that this is how RPGs started out when Gygax pioneered the genre. It is from here that the The Triad of RPGness comes from: tactical combat, exploration, and character building. If a game has these three features it is an RPG, if it lacks even one, it isn't. Such RPGs are what we might call traditional - or Gygaxian - RPGs, and they are the paradigm of the genre.

As the user Telengard put it:

And the core of the rpg was defined long by the people who laid its foundations. And they did that, they put down that definition, for the very reason that they were making something new, and so they wanted to explain to people what they were doing in as smooth and efficient a means as possible. Their definition is no secret, it's not even something special. And they said: An RPG is a turn-based strategy game where each player controls a single character instead of controlling a large military force (or in the case of crpg, the player controls a group of individual characters and pretends he has friends), each of said characters is persistent across many sessions, unless they die, and each of said characters progresses as they continue to survive. That is all.

To this, Zed Duke of Banville added:

Arneson and Gygax added several exploration-related aspects to what had been turn-based tactical miniatures wargames, in addition to character progression/customization/persistence, forming a Holy Trinity of combat-related, character-related, and exploration-related aspects that in combination define what is an RPG. By the time original D&D was published in January 1974, their campaigns had abandoned the use of miniatures for greater abstraction of gameplay, personal combat was still dealt with in a fairly abstract manner stemming from its roots in mass battles (something that several early imitators would attempt to rectify in various ways, by making combat more complex and detailed), and character customization/progression was largely limited to choosing a class and gradually advancing levels; exploration from the beginning was paramount in gameplay.

Thus we can see that from the beginning PnP RPGs were defined by those three elements that I have taken to calling The Triad. This carried over to cRPGs such as the first Wizardry, laying the foundation for the genre in the process. For a long time - most of the Golden Age - it was games of this kind that dominated the scene, and in particular the Gold Box games and the Wizardry series. It is easy to see why, as not only was such design still considered a valid take - indeed, the definitive take - on RPGs, but it translated much better to the computer gaming medium than the school of RPG design that focused on interactive storytelling. I'd say to this day, traditional RPG design still translates better to the medium than interactive storytelling.

Moving on to the analytic definition of RPGs. In my view, analytically defined, roleplaying games set themselves apart through, well, roleplaying. However, a genre's nature is more than those features that can be captured by its name or labeling, and even considered as a coherent archetype in the abstract, it usually involves a more complex web of elements than the simple actions that the labels often denote. This is why the term "roleplaying" here denotes something more complex than the usual understanding of the term, and incidentally, the latter usually aligns with associating roleplaying almost exclusive with "social sim" elements. To clarify what I mean by roleplaying as the analytically definitive feature of RPGs, I'll quote a previous post of mine from an older conversation:

This seems like an arbitrary way to define roleplaying though. Why is roleplaying only valid in the context of a story? Why not in the context of a combat operation? In the latter, different units or unit types can play different roles. Scouts, snipers, assault troops, they all have their roles in the operation. In old-school CRPGs you also have different character types that have their roles both in the context of dungeon exploration and in combat. Mages, clerics, thieves, and fighters - and mixtures thereof - all play different roles. Again, if you don't read anything into the term "roleplaying", this is valid as well. The main feature that distinguished RPGs from wargames, historically, has been character customization (exploration too, but that is less important). RPGs, both PnP and computer alike, always have had elaborate character systems that allow the player to build their character or party in different ways.

The "role" has never in practice been a composite of in-game actions (let alone dialogue choices), but an abstraction (usually quantitative) fashioned from the possibilities offered by the ruleset and the character system, and RPGs have always been notorious for offering a large variety of such possibilities or options, at least compared to other genres. Of course, these possibilities have often also allowed different playstyles, but the mechanics of those playstyles are not exclusive of RPGs. For example, many RPGs allow for stealth mechanics which you can access - or at least only use optimally - only when you build your character as a thief, but the stealth gameplay as such is something you could find in stealth games proper, and in more sophisticated form. This is the case regardless of whether the stealth "minigame" is a full implementation of real-time virtual sneaking, or a heavily abstracted pnp simulation.

What I am trying to say is, RPG gameplay can be anything, it can be CYOA, wargame-style turn-based tactics, dungeon crawling, or stealth. That is not what matters, what matters is that the gameplay interactions are driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system. This means that, for example, Age of Decadence does count as an RPG, since the dialogue options and quest resolutions that are available to you are heavily dependent on your character build. On the other hand, interactive movies/novels such as Telltale games do not count as RPGs since dialogue options and resolutions do not depend on character build. In that sense, RPGs are a very unique genre since they are not defined by their gameplay components, or at least that is the case in so far as one does not consider character/party building a gameplay element, though it might well be taken as such, as it constitutes an implicit strategic layer that, even in games in which one does not have to micromanage this aspect too much, tends to be the most decisive factor in conflict resolution and the tactics available to the player at any given time.

Thus roleplaying refers to the systemic matrix that allows for the creation, development, and expression of diverse and discrete character configurations in a game. One could also see this as the element of character diversification that I discussed above, but that perhaps would require certain qualifications, given the context in which I used that term.

It should also be noted that cRPGs are, of course, games, which for me are input-output devices that combine aesthetic stimulation (storytelling is part of this) with a platform for human agency and/or exertion, as I put it in another thread:

Good gameplay should give you the feeling that you are figuring out the workings of a complex Turing machine, and tinkering with it. Of course, the degree to which a game is able to provide that experience also depends on the player; some people are so good at problem solving that anything short of Gary Grigsby games or Dwarf Fortress will not really give them the feeling their faculties are being exercised. It is analogous to physical training in that sense; the more fit the athlete, the easier the exercises. Objectively though, more complex systems usually mean better gameplay, provided we are talking about genuine complexity and not mere convolutedness. That said, gameplay is not everything, and atmosphere, charm, lore, story, graphics, music, art direction, interface, etc. do play a role in our preferences. Otherwise we'd be all just be doing math exercises instead of playing videogames. It is to the extent that good presentation and solid gameplay meet that we have good entertainment. But we should always keep in mind that due to the interactive nature of videogames as a form of entertainment, the centrality of player agency to the medium will always require robust gameplay as its foundation.

So in conclusion, cRPGs are 1) games that involve 2) roleplaying. Given what's implicit in these terms from the discussion so far the overall inference is that games can involve, and to an extent necessitate storytelling of some sort, but the extent to which I think this is the case can probably be glanced from the above considerations.

Now, I want to make a detour here to explain what I mean by story, otherwise this will come off wrong. Old wizardry titles, for instance, didn't seem to have much story at all in them. There was a backstory in the manual, a few key points where you got some information and the ending text. Outside of that, you were mostly exploring the dungeon, levelling up, buying items, and such. But I am not trying to attack this kind of RPG, just like I would never consider that old D&D games were people mostly explored dungeons were somehow lesser than, say, White Wolf games that came later. The issue here is that the story these games are about telling is not so much like a fantasy novel or a thriller you might read in a book, but more like a campaign journal or explorer log where you are concerned with the details of an expedition. How did you manage to survive the perils? How many barrels of ration were lost in the storm and how did it affect the party? Etc.

I agree that this a perfectly valid way of understanding storytelling, in the case of combat and exploration focused games this kind of storytelling is closely linked to the sense of adventure that they try to evoke and that often complements the mechanics admirably, however, it clearly is not the whole of the experience, as the latter also includes the challenges that the player must overcome and the discovery of new content and approaches.

So, what I am trying to drive at, is that it is dangerous to think simply in terms of gameplay vs storytelling.

Both are necessary and symbiotic to each other, to an extent. But, as I explained above, I don't consider either games in general or cRPGs in particular to be primarily about storytelling. There are games that are pure abstract puzzles that differ little from solving mathematical equations, they are more akin to mental exercises than stories. Most cRPGs are not like that, but this highlights the fact that games, and cRPGs are no exception, are as much about challenge and mechanics that allow the player to exercise his faculties as they are about storytelling. Indeed, I'd go as far as saying that mechanics thus understood are more important than storytelling. The ideal proportion of mechanical focus vis-a-vis storytelling should, in my view, at least be 60-40 in favor of mechanics. Again, this does not imply that the elements are opposed. Think of it as a healthy meal that has a given combination of carbs, protein, etc. Some of the elements will have to be present in a greater quantity than others, but the meal comes together as a healthy course as a whole.

First, because you might focus on gameplay not only instead of a static story, or even a mildly interactive one, but instead of the actual storytelling the game is trying to deliver. I think a good example of this is Underrail. I thought Underrail is a really great game with many very well made aspects. But I think it shot its own foot on how it approached being an RPG. Things like having cool downs to throw grenades or having robots being able to withstand emps by turning on the safety mode don't make a lot of sense and hurt the very story the game focuses on. When your gameplay stops mapping to something that makes sense, the storytelling aspect is hurt.

You seem to be talking about 'simulationist' elements here. I'd agree that making the gameworld believable and realistic has its perks, but it really depends on the game in question and its design goals. Obviously, in actual sims this element is essential. But Underrail is largely a classic style cRPG centered on exploration, character building, and combat, with the caveat that it is single-character and uses some inelegant modern mechanics like cooldowns (which are some of the reasons I don't hold it in the high regard some folks here do.) However, as many flaws as the game has (and I think it has many), I don't think it really needs to be a simulationist game.

Finally, I do think that interactive storytelling in computers has a future. No, it will never be ad hoc like we can do in a campaign, and it can never hope to even pretend to be so far reaching. But the storytelling aspects of a computer game do have some advantages, such as being able to do editorial work on it, whereas on a P&P game you have to pretty much do everything on the spot. But the main problem I see is that it is very expensive to do a branching storyline in a computer game, when you will need assets, level design and what not for stuff the player might never see. There isn't a simple solution here, but just as the general public aren't willing to forego graphics for a more interactive story, neither are they willing to forego storytelling, I think.

I have no problem with innovation or cRPG developers who seek to explore different possibilities outside of the Gygaxian paradigm. What I disagree with is the notion that a style of gameplay that is largely experimental (reactivity-based cRPGs) should take the place of the actual traditional template upon which the genre was founded and held up as the paradigm according to which the cRPG-ness of a cRPG should be judged. In this case a strange inversion is performed in which the paragon is marginalized and an outlier is held up as the exemplar.

It may be asked, how does this inversion happen? In many ways. Here at the Codex, for example, it was for a very long time practically the universal consensus that reactivity/quest design/dialogues/etc. are what makes an RPG. Another, perhaps more important, way was how this notion enthralled most of the major Western RPG developers for a long time, including Black Isle, Troika, and Obsidian. Indeed, even Bethesda and Bioware - two companies that didn't initially care much for this - eventually started going out of their way to clumsily imitate this sort of design (usually failing in the process.) The only exception were perhaps Blizzard and their Diablo series. Interestingly, this notion seems to have been stronger among Western cRPG developers than it was in the market itself, as games like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, and Morrowind were much more successful than games like Fallout, PS:T, and Arcanum.

However, the meme lives on nonetheless, and as OP points out, RPG developers go out of their way to advertise the supposed C&C of their games. There may not be much substance to these claims, and this battlecry may well have degenerated into a buzzword, but it does continue to perpetuate the stereotype.

My ideal state of the Western cRPG industry is one in which the flagship franchises are modernized (in a good way, not in the popamole sense) successors of Wizardry and the Gold Boxes - a state of affairs to which Japan is closer right now - while some other, more experimental games like Morrowind and New Vegas are made. Incidentally, I count the latter two among my favorites, despite the fact that they don't quite fit the Gygaxian paradigm (mostly due to the lack of tactical combat, but also due to some systemic idiosyncracies.) Innovation is fine, but there has to be a 'mainline' tradition of game design that keeps the genre grounded.

 

[Artyoan]

When your goal in Deus Ex is to infiltrate a hostile base and your options are to use lockpicks at the back door, stack crates to reach a broken ladder leading to the roof, or shoot your way through the guards at the front gate, there is direct gameplay C&C. You shoot your way through the front door? The consequence is that the base is now on high alert. You manage to stack crates and climb to the roof? The consequence is that you can easily reach your target on the top floor and skip most of the building. Etc. And you don't make these choices by picking one of several dialogue options. You make these choices by doing the thing you want to do. The designers present you with a situation you need to solve, you look at your toolkit - the weapons and consumeables you have, the skills and augmentations you invested in - and decide which of your tools to use for overcoming the obstacles. The flavor consequence of NPCs reacting differently depending on whether you go for a stealthy non-lethal or frontal assault lethal approach is also a perfect example of this. You don't choose to be a stealthy guy by telling people "Yeah I'm a stealthy guy" and you don't choose to be the rambo guy by telling people "Yeah I'm the rambo guy". You choose to be these kinds of character by solving obstacles with this approach.

I agree that this is ideal. I would just add a possible negative point that shows up in this type of area design sometimes. A lot of games provide an incentive never to take shortcuts for the sake of exploration yielding its reward. If I'm to choose whether to bust in the front door and kill everyone in a castle, or sneak in through the sewers and go directly for my quest target, I am likely to take whatever path gives me full exploration rewards, which is often the most brute force way of accomplishing the objective.

How often do you find yourself taking a shortcut, and then wondering what you missed because you chose an easier or less expansive route? It can make sneaking feel like a net negative if I get less experience/gold/items etc because I used it.

My opinion was the complete opposite when reading his post: Why would someone want to storm through the front door and kill a bunch of people if they can sneak through the sewers?

My thought was the same. I'm just saying that incentives for exploration and combat often run as a perverse incentive not to take a short cut even if it plays to the strengths of your class or was a cunning move on your part. Such as more loot/experience/quests/content being given for fighting every battle and rounding every corner.

 

[Ranselknulf]

Has realism gone too far?

 

[Quillon]

If you want gameplay to be sole focus of a game why obsess with RPGs, focus and be a fan of action games or tactical games or JRPGs etc.

Yes. To me the core tenets of RPG design are something like:

- Character development and advancement (includes party building, classes, skillsets, attributes, levelling, spell systems, root of player agency).

- Itemization and Power Curve (includes encounter design, overall resource management, determines the general feeling of enjoyment found in the progression systems; player psychology and player attrition).

- Exploration, (level and area design, overall game challenge, many aesthetic disciplines like atmosphere, and general game writing).

There is inherent overlap in all of these 3 areas, obviously, and the best outcome is when all 3 lead into each other organically. I'd also like to add that Exploration has "general game writing" parenthesized because that's mostly how a story is framed for the player in coherence with the plot, or overall narrative.

I'd add C&C(narrative & gameplay) to those tenets; if there is no player agency in the story its no RPG. "Root" ain't enough, it has to have the stem also, preferably with branches and leaves

What makes an RPG not compelling C&C-wise is scope(for C&C). When you try to replicate PnP experience you either fail or just ignore most things that should have reactivity logically. PoE games having reactivity for Chargen stuff like player's former job/pet/class/subclass/race/origin country etc did NOTHING for the game in the eyes of players, it is a lot of work but in the end no one points out that kinda reactivity as a plus when comparing it to Kingmaker, which just ignores all those choices you made during Chargen in the actual game and no one complains about any of it, they just subconsciously accept it I guess.

And what makes RPGs compelling C&C wise is when you limit your reactivity from the get go and set expectations accordingly. You can either expect players to not complain about "ignored reactivity" and give him all kinds of choices in Chargen, mostly with consequences seen in combat gameplay or limit the scope by giving the protag a name(especially if the game has VO. Preferably not an actual full name. A nickname like "courier" or just a last name), set race, set background, set gender etc. whatever you are willing to sacrifice. Then you'll have to do the actual content and make it compelling but I'm talking about not shooting yourself in the foot before you even began like Obs did with PoEs.

You know you have limited resources but you're still giving players choices just for the sake of giving them choices. f.i. why let the player name their ship when you can use its cool set name in the narrative with NPCs mentioning it? Don't you fucking know how iconic vehicle names can be? Ebon Hawk, Normandy, Jackdaw... sometimes choice ain't worth it.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

What's more, I didn't even say that PnP was superior to videogames tout court, in fact, I think videogames can simulate some things far better than PnP. Real-time combat is an obvious example. However, even in some areas like tactical turn-based combat videogames have some advantages such as rapid, automated number crunching and convenient and connective online multiplayer possibilities (as in PBEM games). My argument was that when it comes to interactive storytelling videogames don't hold a candle to PnP, just as they don't hold a candle to books or movies in terms of pure narrative, so why should videogame designers waste their time and effort either in trying to ape interactive storytelling in a suboptimal medium or even stay in the medium at all?

You see they actually can hold power to PnP in the same way the offer advantages in combat sphere. By providing more raw calculating power. A PnP game master can adapt to all the story choices on the fly, but everything he comes-up with is dependent on what one person can make-up on the fly or what one person can come up in-between the sessions. So basically what one guy can come-up with in one-two weeks. Video games, at least in theory have access to multiple world-renown writers working for years over the story. So you have gamers on 4chan of all places debating ethical choices in New Vegas or Kreia's teaching in KoTOR, but I doubt that many players have heated discussion regarding plot details their PnP session from over 10 years ago.

A single man cannot track agenda of dozes of NPCs, come up with memorable dialogue and twists as well as a professional writers with years to do prepare, just like he cannot make fast calculations for combat encounter where 100+ people take part, even though it's trivial for the computer. And the disadvanteges are the same in both areas. I cannot backstab an NPC if the team didn't think I'd want to do that, I use enemy as human shield if the devs didn't devise a 'human shield system.

The medium is not sub-optimal if what you want to achieve is an interactive story. In theory the games are in an awkward place between PnP and traditional stories, you can have an actual well-written, well planned story and at the same time allow players to make decisions to affect it. And unlike Visual Novels not completely derail it into a new direction. You can decide to recruit an old foe instead of killing him and just have him join your party and provide comments from time to time instead of entering a new "Dicksucker 69 lives route" like a visual novel would do. Now the obvious follow-up to that would be just doing away with an RPG elements alltogether, and make them a Telltale games done right. If people play Witcher 3 for dialogue and NPCs why have combat system at all? Why not make a similar game where you are just exploring the world and deciding fate of people. I mean most "waking sims" are criticized for lack of content, it's not like people hate walking around and talking to the NPC. The answer is that RPGs provide a good way to have a small CnC that would be impossible for such adventure game. Like having players access different shops for being affiliated with different factions. Gothic 2 was especially good about it since it tied your character progress with the faction that you've decided to support.

The problem now is simple "if it's so fine and dandy then why are RPG more often than not a bit fucked". Well the reason is that the game development for RPGs in the west is pathological. Take Japanese Shin Megami Tensei series. If started with rather meh Megami Tensei that was a straight-up dungeon crawler, but Atlus kept making those until creating universally acclaimed Nocturne, which was built on all the previous titles. Now compare it to Troika games which started with super-ambitious, super-big Arcanum with it's clunky mechanics, made 2 completely different games, and then went under. It's not that those games were mechanically sub-par because CnC and story focus made it difficult to iron-out mechanics. It's just that it's hard to make a big open-world game in a new engine, in a completely new universe using completely new mechanics and it's very easy to fuck-up. I'm sure that if they could then by Arcaum 6 we would have a perfectly working magic system with no exploits, good itemization and challenging combat, but no western RPG series lasted that long.

 

[Alex]

I agree that the term "simulation" is inadequate to describe PnP games if one strives for semantic exactitude. Then again, cRPGs, and most videogames with the exception of dedicated sims, are probably not simulations either by that standard. My point in that section of the post, and this is a more exact way of putting it, is that they are both types of games or gaming formats and thus it is possible for one to be a substitute for the other in a way in which playing football in real life is not a substitute for a football videogame or simulation (one of the examples brought up by the other user.)

Sorry, I was really unclear on what I meant there. I wasn't making an argument about exactness, but about an important difference in between CRPGs and P&P RPGs. Let me try to explain:

I'm not sure I'd call cRPGs simulations of PnP gaming. I mean there are actual PnP simulators such as Fantasy Grounds, but it seems to me most cRPGs developers have from the beginning been keenly aware of the differences between both media and have thus tried to tailor the design of their games to the limitations and possibilities of PC gaming, which has resulted in cRPGs developing a rather distinct identity when compared to PnP. I would say it is more accurate to say that cRPGs are games that have similar design goals to those of PnP RPGs because they are products of the same genre made in different media. The relationship between them is more akin to that between a horror movie and a horror novel than it is to the relationship between business transactions and business simulations.

My point is that, as I understand it, CRPGs are defined by a specific kind of play that is somewhat unique to it. I use the word somewhat because, of course, it wasn't born in a vacuum. Older (I say older because I have no idea how people play those nowadays) tactical games both already had some kind of storytelling going on together with it. Stuff like jeepform and other storygames could share the definition I gave earlier. But my point here is that CRPGs have their specific difference from other computer games by trying to approximate what a P&P game session is in some degree. A CRPG isn't a real RPG, as I understand the term, because it can have no real storytelling, at least as it happens in a P&P game. A P&P game works as a conversation, with back and forth. While the game master (if there is such a thing) is usually the one telling the story, the players have to contribute quite often. That is why I say CRPGs are an approximation, whereas a real RPG is not trying to approximate anything as its ultimate objective.

(...snip...)

At this point, we are getting into "definition of RPG" territory.

Indeed. Some people may think this is a worthless effort, but I think having a clear idea of what RPGs are is crucial in designing new games. Otherwise, you may end up with something like Dark Souls, which are really good games, but which aren't much more of an RPG (as far as I can see) than X-Com.

My own view on this is that RPGs can be defined in two ways: synthetically (and specifically, historically) and analytically.

According to the synthetic definition RPGs are essentially wargames with two elements added to them: character building/customization and exploraiton (which can be of the dungeon or overland variety.) This is based on the fact that this is how RPGs started out when Gygax pioneered the genre. It is from here that the The Triad of RPGness comes from: tactical combat, exploration, and character building. If a game has these three features it is an RPG, if it lacks even one, it isn't. Such RPGs are what we might call traditional - or Gygaxian - RPGs, and they are the paradigm of the genre.

As the user Telengard put it:

And the core of the rpg was defined long by the people who laid its foundations. And they did that, they put down that definition, for the very reason that they were making something new, and so they wanted to explain to people what they were doing in as smooth and efficient a means as possible. Their definition is no secret, it's not even something special. And they said: An RPG is a turn-based strategy game where each player controls a single character instead of controlling a large military force (or in the case of crpg, the player controls a group of individual characters and pretends he has friends), each of said characters is persistent across many sessions, unless they die, and each of said characters progresses as they continue to survive. That is all.

To this, Zed Duke of Banville added:

Arneson and Gygax added several exploration-related aspects to what had been turn-based tactical miniatures wargames, in addition to character progression/customization/persistence, forming a Holy Trinity of combat-related, character-related, and exploration-related aspects that in combination define what is an RPG. By the time original D&D was published in January 1974, their campaigns had abandoned the use of miniatures for greater abstraction of gameplay, personal combat was still dealt with in a fairly abstract manner stemming from its roots in mass battles (something that several early imitators would attempt to rectify in various ways, by making combat more complex and detailed), and character customization/progression was largely limited to choosing a class and gradually advancing levels; exploration from the beginning was paramount in gameplay.

Thus we can see that from the beginning PnP RPGs were defined by those three elements that I have taken to calling The Triad. This carried over to cRPGs such as the first Wizardry, laying the foundation for the genre in the process. For a long time - most of the Golden Age - it was games of this kind that dominated the scene, and in particular the Gold Box games and the Wizardry series. It is easy to see why, as not only was such design still considered a valid take - indeed, the definitive take - on RPGs, but it translated much better to the computer gaming medium than the school of RPG design that focused on interactive storytelling. I'd say to this day, traditional RPG design still translates better to the medium than interactive storytelling.

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly do you mean by "synthetic"? Do you omean how they came by historically, or do you mean something more or besides that? If we are just examining the historical context, this is great because there is probably much here that is interesting and maybe even eye opening. But I want to make it clear that by examining what an RPG is, I mean what exactly it attempts to do, whereas the history can show only how they attempted to do it throughout the years. Apologies if I am unclear.

At any rate, this is an interesting history. I don't think this so called "holy triad" is a good measure of what an RPG is, but it is certainly a nice piece of history. But, combat, for instance, isn't something that I would consider essential in an RPG. I think it is telling that even some early P&P systems, like Call of Cthulhu had games where combat would take a much lesser role and that revolved instead around investigations. In CRPGs, I think Zork is a good example of an early game that tried to approximate what a P&P game is like without focusing on combat. True, most people, including Infocom, don't call Zork a CRPG, but that doesn't mean it isn't one.

Moving on to the analytic definition of RPGs. In my view, analytically defined, roleplaying games set themselves apart through, well, roleplaying. However, a genre's nature is more than those features that can be captured by its name or labeling, and even considered as a coherent archetype in the abstract, it usually involves a more complex web of elements than the simple actions that the labels often denote. This is why the term "roleplaying" here denotes something more complex than the usual understanding of the term, and incidentally, the latter usually aligns with associating roleplaying almost exclusive with "social sim" elements. To clarify what I mean by roleplaying as the analytically definitive feature of RPGs, I'll quote a previous post of mine from an older conversation:

This seems like an arbitrary way to define roleplaying though. Why is roleplaying only valid in the context of a story? Why not in the context of a combat operation? In the latter, different units or unit types can play different roles. Scouts, snipers, assault troops, they all have their roles in the operation. In old-school CRPGs you also have different character types that have their roles both in the context of dungeon exploration and in combat. Mages, clerics, thieves, and fighters - and mixtures thereof - all play different roles. Again, if you don't read anything into the term "roleplaying", this is valid as well. The main feature that distinguished RPGs from wargames, historically, has been character customization (exploration too, but that is less important). RPGs, both PnP and computer alike, always have had elaborate character systems that allow the player to build their character or party in different ways.

The "role" has never in practice been a composite of in-game actions (let alone dialogue choices), but an abstraction (usually quantitative) fashioned from the possibilities offered by the ruleset and the character system, and RPGs have always been notorious for offering a large variety of such possibilities or options, at least compared to other genres. Of course, these possibilities have often also allowed different playstyles, but the mechanics of those playstyles are not exclusive of RPGs. For example, many RPGs allow for stealth mechanics which you can access - or at least only use optimally - only when you build your character as a thief, but the stealth gameplay as such is something you could find in stealth games proper, and in more sophisticated form. This is the case regardless of whether the stealth "minigame" is a full implementation of real-time virtual sneaking, or a heavily abstracted pnp simulation.

What I am trying to say is, RPG gameplay can be anything, it can be CYOA, wargame-style turn-based tactics, dungeon crawling, or stealth. That is not what matters, what matters is that the gameplay interactions are driven by a sufficiently elaborate character system. This means that, for example, Age of Decadence does count as an RPG, since the dialogue options and quest resolutions that are available to you are heavily dependent on your character build. On the other hand, interactive movies/novels such as Telltale games do not count as RPGs since dialogue options and resolutions do not depend on character build. In that sense, RPGs are a very unique genre since they are not defined by their gameplay components, or at least that is the case in so far as one does not consider character/party building a gameplay element, though it might well be taken as such, as it constitutes an implicit strategic layer that, even in games in which one does not have to micromanage this aspect too much, tends to be the most decisive factor in conflict resolution and the tactics available to the player at any given time.

Thus roleplaying refers to the systemic matrix that allows for the creation, development, and expression of diverse and discrete character configurations in a game. One could also see this as the element of character diversification that I discussed above, but that perhaps would require certain qualifications, given the context in which I used that term.

Again, I am not exactly sure what you mean by analytic, although I think here we are getting to the heart of the matter I was trying to discuss. Still, if you think I might be misunderstanding something, please do correct me.

At any rate, I think you make a good argument and I especially agree with the way you define roleplaying. But I ultimately disagree with your affirmation that ultimately the gameplay interactions should be drive by the character system. Looking at P&P gaming, we can see that frequently, the roleplaying and interactions sidestepped the character system completely. For instance, when you had a thief look for traps in a specific way ("I check if there is any kind of trip wire on the door very lightly and push the ground slightly to check for pressure plates") rather than by rolling your chance to find traps. I am not trying to say that a formal character system shouldn't exist, I think quite the contrary, but that is not to say that it must exist for there to be an RPG. It is entirely possible to have good games where the roleplaying system exist entirely in non formalized concepts. And, more pertinent, it is frequently the case that it exists both on the formalized character system and the informal imaginative of the players.

Now, a CRPG is a computer game and it lacks the capacity to leave anything that affects its play "informal". If you want to decide something based on how a player interacted with an NPC or a faction, you will need a variable to keep track of these, for instance. But that is not to say that these should be treated the same as attributes like strength or skills such as sneaking.

(...snip...)

Both are necessary and symbiotic to each other, to an extent. But, as I explained above, I don't consider either games in general or cRPGs in particular to be primarily about storytelling. There are games that are pure abstract puzzles that differ little from solving mathematical equations, they are more akin to mental exercises than stories. Most cRPGs are not like that, but this highlights the fact that games, and cRPGs are no exception, are as much about challenge and mechanics that allow the player to exercise his faculties as they are about storytelling. Indeed, I'd go as far as saying that mechanics thus understood are more important than storytelling.

The ideal proportion of mechanical focus vis-a-vis storytelling should, in my view, at least be 60-40 in favor of mechanics. Again, this does not imply that the elements are opposed. Think of it as a healthy meal that has a given combination of carbs, protein, etc. Some of the elements will have to be present in a greater quantity than others, but the meal comes together as a healthy course as a whole.

(...snip...)

You seem to be talking about 'simulationist' elements here. I'd agree that making the gameworld believable and realistic has its perks, but it really depends on the game in question and its design goals. Obviously, in actual sims this element is essential. But Underrail is largely a classic style cRPG centered on exploration, character building, and combat, with the caveat that it is single-character and uses some inelegant modern mechanics like cooldowns (which are some of the reasons I don't hold it in the high regard some folks here do.) However, as many flaws as the game has (and I think it has many), I don't think it really needs to be a simulationist game.

I think this is where we differ. See, I don't think most cRPGs, or even RPGs in general aren't abstract. I think they all aren't! You can't have an abstract, math puzzle game, and still call it an RPG. And if you do take RPG rules and simply fail to map them to a story, say all your characters are chess pieces and you play the combat as completely abstract, then you are not playing an RPG anymore.

My point is not that I think story aspects of an RPG are more important than gameplay, or even that the right balance is to have them equally important (whatever that would mean), but rather that they both need to be present at the same time. You don't play a game for a while and then talk a bit of story, but rather, both should be happening at the same time. Every gameplay mechanic is also a storytelling mechanic, and every story aspect is also (or should also) be a gameplay aspect. Which is the basis of my critic. If you focus on gameplay while losing track of how this is interpreted as a concrete scene rather than a simple game state, you can end up harming the RPG aspect of the game.

My point about Underrail is not simulationism. I don't think you need to be strictly simulationist to be an RPG. But I do think you need to make your systems somewhat similar to what is going on. Underrail fails to do this at several points and ends up alienating the player from whatever narrative he might build upon its systems. It is not an everpresent problem. In fact, if you play a psyker where the cooldown mechanic is not something completely unfitting, it can be a pretty good RPG in this sense.

For another example, consider hitpoints in AD&D. It is actually pretty hard to take hit points in account in a way that makes sense. But it is possible and on a P&P session, you can do so with some minor inconsistencies (like how ridiculously long it takes for a high level character to heal, either with low level spells or by time). In Underrail, the break between mechanics and what makes sense is rubbed on your face all the time.

Anyway, thanks for responding to my post. I don't think I really have anything useful to add to your other points.

 

[Ventidius]

You see they actually can hold power to PnP in the same way the offer advantages in combat sphere. By providing more raw calculating power. A PnP game master can adapt to all the story choices on the fly, but everything he comes-up with is dependent on what one person can make-up on the fly or what one person can come up in-between the sessions. So basically what one guy can come-up with in one-two weeks. Video games, at least in theory have access to multiple world-renown writers working for years over the story. So you have gamers on 4chan of all places debating ethical choices in New Vegas or Kreia's teaching in KoTOR, but I doubt that many players have heated discussion regarding plot details their PnP session from over 10 years ago.

Yes, videogames are a better medium than PnP when it comes to good narratives or writing, I did not deny that. Just as books and film are better at that than both.

However, this does not follow from that:

The medium is not sub-optimal if what you want to achieve is an interactive story.

A well-written story is not the same as an interactive story. An interactive story can be lacking in sophistication, that is not a problem because the appeal of it is the agency and freedom it gives to the player. Indeed, the control that a dev/DM has to exert over the narrative in order to craft something that can be memorable (to those who did not participate in the session) is more or less incompatible with letting the imagination of the players run wild. All that PnP requires on this front is a good setting, and there are many in the medium.

A single man cannot track agenda of dozes of NPCs, come up with memorable dialogue and twists as well as a professional writers with years to do prepare, just like he cannot make fast calculations for combat encounter where 100+ people take part, even though it's trivial for the computer.

This advantage of computer games mostly pertains to the realm of gameworld-building and gameworld dynamism, it is as relevant to exploration as it is to reactivity. Also, I implied in previous posts that if "true C&C" ever comes around to PC it will do so through character diversification, but this diversification would not be enough, as it would have to be linked with sophisticated gameworld systems and design.

Features such as this one that you mentioned are a part of that, and they are a strength indeed, but not one that ensures the success of the quest/dialogue driven school of reactivity that we have been discussing in this thread. The problems of the latter, which I have already discussed extensively on previous posts in this thread, are not compensated for by this feature. If a competent developer comes around and tries to emulate PnP style interactive storytelling through systems-driven gameworld design and character diversification, that'd be an interesting experiment. As of now, however, we are merely talking of hypotheticals.

I use enemy as human shield if the devs didn't devise a 'human shield system.

Odd point to make, if anything extra-ruleset actions such as using enemies as human shields is generally easier in PnP than in cRPGs because the latter are limited by the engine.

In theory the games are in an awkward place between PnP and traditional stories, you can have an actual well-written, well planned story and at the same time allow players to make decisions to affect it.

Yes, but this only applies to the story-driven school of games. Mechanics-driven games do just fine.

Now the obvious follow-up to that would be just doing away with an RPG elements alltogether, and make them a Telltale games done right. If people play Witcher 3 for dialogue and NPCs why have combat system at all? Why not make a similar game where you are just exploring the world and deciding fate of people. I mean most "waking sims" are criticized for lack of content, it's not like people hate walking around and talking to the NPC. The answer is that RPGs provide a good way to have a small CnC that would be impossible for such adventure game. Like having players access different shops for being affiliated with different factions. Gothic 2 was especially good about it since it tied your character progress with the faction that you've decided to support.

Rather, I'd argue that the obvious follow-up to the failed project of story-driven games is to return to what works: mechanics-driven games. If a vanguard of actually creative devs - instead of cargo cultists - wants to actually push the envelope and try to implement PnP style interactive storytelling in the meantime, more power to them. But that'd be nothing like a Telltale game, even one "done right", because the approach needed to do that (through character diversification and gameworlds) would be inherently different (probably even incompatible) to that which Telltale games take. Again, I addressed this in some of the previous posts.

The problem now is simple "if it's so fine and dandy then why are RPG more often than not a bit fucked". Well the reason is that the game development for RPGs in the west is pathological. Take Japanese Shin Megami Tensei series. If started with rather meh Megami Tensei that was a straight-up dungeon crawler, but Atlus kept making those until creating universally acclaimed Nocturne, which was built on all the previous titles. Now compare it to Troika games which started with super-ambitious, super-big Arcanum with it's clunky mechanics, made 2 completely different games, and then went under. It's not that those games were mechanically sub-par because CnC and story focus made it difficult to iron-out mechanics. It's just that it's hard to make a big open-world game in a new engine, in a completely new universe using completely new mechanics and it's very easy to fuck-up. I'm sure that if they could then by Arcaum 6 we would have a perfectly working magic system with no exploits, good itemization and challenging combat, but no western RPG series lasted that long.

Yet Wizardry was great from the get-go, as most fans of the series will tell you: to this day many of them still rank Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord as one of the best, if not the best, in the franchise, and they usually give compelling design-related reasons for this in the process instead of nostalgia. cRPGs based on The Triad worked well from the very beginning, and they continue to be the tried and true approach ro RPG design. And come now, it's not like BIS, Troika, and Obsidian didn't have plenty of chances to iterate on their design philosophy. Again, that doesn't mean I am against experimentation, but when the alternatives to the original paradigm of cRPG design are mostly hypotheticals, it has to be admitted that the best course for the industry would be to go with said paradigm.

That said, I doubt that will happen, despite the buzzwords both traditional cRPGs and cRPGs that seek reactivity lack popular appeal. It seems that the future of the genre lies with the cinematic action RPG approach pioneered by Bioware and picked up by CD Projekt.