General Disarray
Scholar
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2019
- Messages
- 171
Yeah I agree with this. A "CRPG" where you can't actually get immersed and roleplay is only a tactical game.Abstraction is the substitute for actual simulation due to the limited capabilities of hardware and/or software
Not really anymore.
We already have the technology to make simulations with computer games. I'd argue the more an RPG leans towards simulation, the less of an RPG it becomes, because it's trying to simulate something instead of being a game, with its own rules. You can see this trend in Bethesda games from Morrowind to Fallout 4 actually. This isn't all or nothing in CRPGs though. But an RPG does intentional use abstract rules over simulation for player character skill expression, which is at the very core of what it is.
A simulation is something "with its own rules." The logic of rules in an RPG (including the logic of character skills) derives from its nature as a simulation (albeit in the tabletop and CRPG context, variously abstracted and simplified simulation).
Even the game aspect does, because everything about the game that's related to contention and challenge, the use of intelligence to solve problems, or the possibility of winning or losing, is derived from the simulated world being a hard reality that the player (character) bumps up against.
Again, as with the analogy of alternative geometries and number systems, there are a bazillion possible rule systems out there in possibility space, and many of them are turned into games, but only one subset of those possible rule systems - those that describe, more or less abstractly, more or less explicitly or simply, a virtual world in which the player plays a role in that virtual world, are properly called "RPGs" or "CRPGs." Everything either gamey or story-like derives (or I should say, is best derived) from that, not the other way round.
The precursor wargames were also simulations and roleplaying games. Think of it this way: if you're playing Guderian or Alexander or whatever in a campaign, if it weren't a simulation, then there would be no meaning to the idea of "what if it happened differently, what if Alexander had done this instead, how would it have turned out?" For different outcomes to be possible, the thing you're acting and making choices "inside of" (so to speak) has to be the simulation of a world with its own rigid natural laws and rules.
I think some people are mixing up simulation with the "sim" genre. Like say a flight sim - a flight sim is not definitionally an RPG, for you are not (at least not typically - it's possible you might get immersed enough) playing a pilot in the virtual world, typically you're playing as yourself flying a virtual plane in a videogame, and even if there are gamey elements (like moving up a notional professional ladder) that will typically be just you the player "beating the game," it's a meta stance, not an immersed stance. (I know this goes a bit against the thread title I made, but it was kind of throwaway.)
It comes down to this: for roleplaying to be possible at all, it has to be roleplaying within a simulated, virtual/counterfactual world. You can't just "pretend to be a character" tout court, you can pretend to be a character only in a virtual world, with its own funny little ways. It's like two halves of a split boiled egg, each matches perfectly the other.
I think that for rpgs as a genre we must insist on abstraction, at a minimum for the player charcter. A system where you have good and bad skills. But I agree that those skills could be represented through either simulation or abstraction, like in Deus Ex weapon sway system or Morrowind roll to hit behind the scenes when you swing.
Immersion I think should be its own quality. And to qualify it with becoming immersed in the world as well, like one do when playing Morrowind. But I'm with you, I don't enjoy rpgs where you only play an avatar and can't truly play a role. As far as I'm concerned they are all blobbers, and that's not a compliment. Where do place games with fixed protagonist?