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1eyedking The defining core of RPGs

Mr. Hiver

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Yes, again.

I already wrote several times what really distinguishes the RPGs from other games and genres. Its not a quantum incomprehensible mystery despite how good it feels to repeat that old nonsensical meme. After all, we can recognize a RPG and something that isnt one, despite the fact that arguments rage over many examples somewhere in between.

This clarifies all of that.


The fundamental core feature that defines and exemplifies an RPG from other genres are limits imposed onto the game content and options within that content by various character abilities that the player cannot directly override with his own skills, but can and must enhance, evolve and develop strategically to unlock the game content and different options within it. In other words, to be able to play it.
These character abilities usually take forms of stats, skills, feats, traits, attributes and similar features but if they don't impose limits on the actual game content and options within it at all - its not an RPG.

It is this very act of imposing limits on the game content, options within it and so onto any gameplay created by the player - through character abilities that player skills cannot override - that actually creates different options AND the very concept of creating and playing a specific role as a specific type of a character. A ROLE playing game.

Thats what makes a Priest unable to sneak and steal, while a Thief can, yet he cannot cast Priest spells, while Wizards have their own skills, options and abilities not available to other character types, etc. A dialogue or speech stat limits what you can say or achieve in a dialogue, while Science stat limits what you can achieve with computers or understand from discovered scientific records and sometimes also limits options in dialogue, while if you have no Doctor skills you cannot heal serious injuries, and so on. And no amount of player skill can override this. The only way for you as a player to succeed in stealing something, or hacking a computer is to build, evolve and or enhance your character abilities to be able to achieve that specific task - i.e to overcome that limit.

It is not the stats and skills or a "role" that make a role playing game, but the specific way those are used.
You could say it depends on their specific role.

Confusion about this comes because the difference is not a binary extreme, but many gradual variations across different features specific to each game.
But it can be judged based on what influences the majority of game content and options within it.

Easy and obvious example of this fundamental difference is Doom, where you play a specific role and a specific character who has specific skills and stats only they are hidden and unchangeable, so all options in the actual content and gameplay depend solely on your own player skills. So, in case of Doom, or Half Life, the large majority of content (save some cut scenes) is "shooting" and since limits on that are governed specifically through movement of the "avatar" and aiming and firing weapons - which are completely controlled by the player skills.... the games cannot be RPGs despite the fact that you play a "role" and have "skills and stats" in both. It is also what makes those "action" games, although that doesn't need to be especially noted as everyone knows what playing a FPS shooter means and what you will be doing 99% of time in that game. Running and gunning.
And it is clear that the feature of First Person PoV exist and is specifically used to directly enhance and support the player skills overriding influence over the content and options within it. Which is what makes that kind of PoV fundamentally antithetical to RPGs.

Because these features and requirements cannot be separated into simplistic binary extremes the whole genre of RPGs has become a wide spectrum that also encompasses various types of action-rpgs and similar hybrids, distinguished by their variably increased influence of player skills in detriment of the importance and influence of character skills. First Person PoV is always used to this effect.

But they still retain at least some limits on the game content and options within it imposed through character abilities that players can and must enhance and evolve - which is what makes them belong into the whole wider spectrum of the RPG genre. As any specific game pushes these limits more towards the player skills influence and so reduces the character abilities influence over them, the more the game slides toward belonging to some other genre, but this is a very granular and gradual process. And the same gradual process of changing more and more into a RPG game happens to other type of games.


Think of it as... a huge Plane with very fuzzy and spreading borders where many hybrids and abominations also live. The border acts like a zone of alluring glowing goo into which other games occasionally fall into and get mutated with various results. Sometimes they become a hybrid, sometimes an abomination, sometimes a cursed failure. And that border zone also occasionally spits out an unworthy dessicated husk of something that was an RPG once long ago. Or tried to become one and failed.

While the glorious and pure holly examples of True RPGs habituate forever on the top of the crystal Spire in its very center. In a magnificent radiating City of Doors and portals reaching into every other plane of Art.



...
None of this means that every True cRPG is automatically a great game. Shitty RPGs either cannot ascend the Spire or enter the City of Doors, or are cast down from it and end up roaming the planes as wraiths and ghosts forever cursed to be scorned, laughed at and despised. Although, they are also occasionally loved for some small glittering gem of content, mechanic or a feature that sometimes, very rarely, gets picked by and incorporated into a really great True RPG.




...hmmmm... come to think of it... It may very well be that the original Nameless one original sin was invention of the First Person PoV that made him so obsessed with dying, and egoism, and threatened to destroy the planes, for which he was cursed to lose his ego over and over again as he endlessly died and became someone else. Only managing to break the cycle when resurrecting into glorious Cavalier Oblique PoV and becoming a great true cRPG.
Any thoughts, mr. Chris Avellone ?
 
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Mr. Hiver

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That would be a very concise description of hack and slash gameplay, but not much more than that. Good try though.
 

Tweed

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The defining core of RPGs are numbers, numbers that usually begin low and go up over time, once the numbers are high enough you can stop playing and feel like you've accomplished something.
 

Goromorg

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C&C is the thing that turns a game into an RPG.
Take any game, slap C&C onto it = voila, you got an RPG. No matter how shitty the game is, now it's an RPG.
Convince me otherwise.
PS. In before some retardo posts "different way to shoot/stab is an example of C&C".
 
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DalekFlay

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Didn't read your way too long post, but I've pretty much decided there is no definition or core concept that effectively separates a hack n' slash game with upgrade trees like God of War and an action RPG, so nothing matters. Dark Souls is on the Codex's top 10 of all time (and was PC Gamer's number one I believe) and has barely more RPG depth than the new God of War or most openish world action games. It's a wild and wooly world.

P.S. The Avellone begging is embarrassing.
 

Ismaul

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Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech A Beautifully Desolate Campaign My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
It is this very act of imposing limits on the game content, options within it and so onto any gameplay created by the player - through character abilities that player skills cannot override - that actually creates different options AND the very concept of creating and playing a specific role as a specific type of a character.
Good try at a definition. I think it's very close.

Though I'd add some things you might disagree with, on the nature of character stats. Usually we think of those in terms of abilities of the character taken in isolation. What he's good/bad at.

But I can imagine a character defined entirely by relational properties, where attributes/abilities are about relations to factions and people. Basically a highly detailed reputation system, maybe with personality reputations included. Those relational properties, which evolve and develop during gameplay, would be the what's imposing limits on the unfolding content. Previous choices, faction reputations and existing relationships would limit available options and unlockable game content.

Oh hey look I've just described (story) C&C!
 

adrix89

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"What can change the nature of the RPG?"
:shredder::shredder::shredder:

We have been through this before. Wargaming --> Tabletop RPGs.
So RPGs are nothing more than Tactics Games with a more limited number of characters in play that have progression,stats,skills and all that jazz.
The Narrativefags are nothing more than CYOA Books and Wannabe Actors(LARPers) in disguise.
 

Martyr

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what is a RPG?

answer:
woodgrain111.JPG



the defining aspect of RPGs?
stats decide the outcome of every action.

since the dawn of time there have been two opposing styles of computer RPGs:
220px-Wizardry_pgotmo.jpg
and
71285_LB_231x326_en_US_%5E_2014-04-30-15-16-54_e1bd3a7c895efe3c7febb559066d7b2e75141a81.jpg


which one of those two is closer to PnP RPGs (= a true RPG) should be obvious.

so here we've got the style of the
- tactical combat RPG, which also includes games like Pool of Radiance and Dark Sun.
- open world, free roaming, sandboxy RPG, which also includes games like Skyrim and Witcher 3. it should go without saying that Skyrim/Twitcher have managed to drift even further from the original concept of roleplaying. open world sandbox roleplaying games done right include the glorious Daggerfall & Darklands.

/thread
 

Mr. Hiver

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Good try at a definition. I think it's very close.

Though I'd add some things you might disagree with, on the nature of character stats. Usually we think of those in terms of abilities of the character taken in isolation. What he's good/bad at.

But I can imagine a character defined entirely by relational properties, where attributes/abilities are about relations to factions and people. Basically a highly detailed reputation system, maybe with personality reputations included. Those relational properties, which evolve and develop during gameplay, would be the what's imposing limits on the unfolding content. Previous choices, faction reputations and existing relationships would limit available options and unlockable game content.
Oh hey look I've just described (story) C&C!

We never think about character abilities in isolation to the gameplay of cRPGs, quite the opposite. What he or she is good and bad at is just the beginning, and you constantly adjust, change, enhance, improve and evolve those abilities corresponding to various obstacles encountered in the game in order to not just solve them but solve them in specific ways. And the very act of doing so changes the future obstacles you will encounter as they will reflect your previous choices through specific consequences corresponding to your previous decisions. In one way or another. Which then forces you to develop character skills in specific ways.

As to your addition, as long as those reputations depend on your character properties, whatever they may be - that you can improve and enhance - its a RPG. Any such mechanics are included into my description.
I simply listed the most common types of character specification ... properties.

On the other hand if such reputations and relations are divested and separate from character abilities or properties (whatever form they may take) and depend only on your own choices in dialogue, or any other type of gameplay, then you are not playing an RPG. No matter what limits those may create.
Neither character abilities, nor limits on content alone create specific defining style of RPG gameplay.
It is only when they work in a specific way as i described that we get the distinctive RPG gameplay and all other RPG features emerging from that core.

Including any story related C&C, which is also not a defining feature as almost all games have some form of C&C.

The C&C in RPGs is specific because it is imposed and limited through character abilities - and how you use them as a player, in strategic and meta layer of gameplay - that cannot override limits imposed by character abilities.



We have been through this before. Wargaming --> Tabletop RPGs.
So RPGs are nothing more than Tactics Games with a more limited number of characters in play that have progression,stats,skills and all that jazz.
The Narrativefags are nothing more than CYOA Books and Wannabe Actors(LARPers) in disguise.

Of course they are more then tactics games, by the very fact everything in the True RPG depends on character skills - which you evolve and develop and enhance.
The past origins dont matter here. Nobody is denying those, but the differences of basic core mechanics and the actual gameplay are so substantial and fundamental that those are two different genres now.

Narrative and options and C&C in it became a part of the RPG gameplay and is not different then any other content. In true RPGs it is handled in the same way any other content is.

While games become CYOA only when the player has no way to change, adjust and improve character abilities, but only choose between already premade options.
An RPG requires player input in specific ways. Which i explained.


Martyr

Nobody is asking you to list some examples of RPG games or posture under pictures of their covers.
The discussion here is what specifically separates RPGs from other genres.
And my answer already contains the difference between true RPGs and games that more or less belong to the general genre - and explanation of exactly why and how.
As well as an explanation why just stats and skills are not enough but i guess you are so fucking stupid you just felt the urge to pose like a bloated retard without bothering to read anything except the fucking title.
 
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Martyr

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Martyr

Nobody is asking you to list some examples of RPG games or posture under pictures of their covers.
The discussion here is what specifically separates RPGs from other genres.
And my answer already contains the difference between true RPGs and games that more or less belong to the general genre - and explanation of exactly why and how.
As well as an explanation why just stats and skills are not enough but i guess you are so fucking stupid you just felt the urge to pose like a bloated retard without bothering to read anything except the fucking title.

LÖL
everything you write is too fucking long to read. either shorten it or don't expect people to read it.
"As well as an explanation why just stats and skills are not enough" yeah right. the existing definition of what is a car is not enough, motorbikes shall be cars too from now on, right?! bitch plox.
D&D and it's direct implementation as a CRPG in the form of Pool of Radiance, Dark Sun, ToEE and the D&D-less Wizardry - these games are RPGs. everything else is a hybrid at best.

/thread
 

Mr. Hiver

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Threads for ousting yourself as complete imbeciles are in GD. I know you cant help yourselves but that doesnt make it any better.

everything you write is too fucking long to read. either shorten it or don't expect people to read it.
Nobody should lower to your imbecile standards. Cant read, you can just fuck off.

"As well as an explanation why just stats and skills are not enough" yeah right. the existing definition of what is a car is not enough, motorbikes shall be cars too from now on, right?! bitch plox.
Yes, thats exactly what my words mean, you laughable retarded cretin.

D&D and it's direct implementation as a CRPG in the form of Pool of Radiance, Dark Sun, ToEE and the D&D-less Wizardry - these games are RPGs. everything else is a hybrid at best.
/thread
The imbecile has spoken! Where the fuck have you fallen from you poor deranged dumbfuck...
 
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Edija

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I never found a RPG that portrayed belonging to a faction as good as the first two Gothic games. For me this was always important in a roleplaying game that gives you the opportunity to be a part of a faction. The countless, small, reaction lines where NPCs would just react to you being A or B added much to the game.

Not to talk about the way quests unfold, even if the result is somewhat the same. Remember Commander Garond (?) in the Valley of Mines. If you're a Merc he offers you money to do the quest, if you're a militiamen he straight up orders you to do it and if you're a fire mage he humbly asks you, if I remember correctly. If you take Morrowind as an example then you can see that many of these parts are entirely missing. More content needs to rule each other out so the world itself can make sense. Because that is role playing. I had my fair share of head cannon runs in Morrowind and they can be entertaining with self imposed rules, but this is the equivalent of jerking off, where Gothic is having sex, since the game itself, as a second entity, stimulates your roleplaying. Don't get me wrong, I love both games I cited as an example, but the small details like bullying Paladins as a fire mage when they won't let you through a gate or on a ship since you're ranked higher in the world hierarchy than they are is priceless.

Another thing that is great and often missed is a world that is changing. Age of Decadence did some of that stuff, but citing Gothic as an example again (which probably didn't do it due to the technical limitations of it's age): at a certain moment in the game the Paladin commander in Khorinis gathers his paladins in the Upper part of town for an expedition against the Orcs in the Valley of mines. I'd like to see more of this with tangible results, dead paladins, lifted sieges, ect. Gothic 3 tried to do this to some extend but it came down to clobbering Orcs in cities on your own, which isn't really the idea of a reactive world to me.
 

mondblut

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Genres are set by a precedent.

A "4x" is a code word for "plays like Civilization".

A "FPS" is a code word for "plays like Doom/Wolf3d"

A "RTS" is a code word for "plays like Dune 2/Warcraft"

A "RPG" is a code word for "plays like Wizardry".

Now find a more exciting use for your "crystal spire" :roll:
 

whydoibother

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Genres are set by a precedent.
A "4x" is a code word for "plays like Civilization".
A "FPS" is a code word for "plays like Doom/Wolf3d"
A "RTS" is a code word for "plays like Dune 2/Warcraft"
A "RPG" is a code word for "plays like Wizardry".

Not sure I'd use exactly Warcraft or Wizardry for these, but I agree that in video games, the categories (genres) are founded by an innovative and successful ancestor that is being iterated on.
Video game genres emerge, they aren't designed, and as such defining them in a few words is stupid. They don't necessarily make a lot of sense.
 

Mr. Hiver

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Mondblut,
This is not about precedents that set the genres but what actual mechanics and or specifics define them as distinguishable from others.

i.e what the fuck was it about Wizardry that made it establish and influence the creation of a whole distinct genre?

and we sure as fuck dont play endless exact copies of wizardry either.

I never found a RPG that portrayed belonging to a faction as good as the first two Gothic games. For me this was always important in a roleplaying game that gives you the opportunity to be a part of a faction. The countless, small, reaction lines where NPCs would just react to you being A or B added much to the game.

Not to talk about the way quests unfold, even if the result is somewhat the same. Remember Commander Garond (?) in the Valley of Mines. If you're a Merc he offers you money to do the quest, if you're a militiamen he straight up orders you to do it and if you're a fire mage he humbly asks you, if I remember correctly. If you take Morrowind as an example then you can see that many of these parts are entirely missing. More content needs to rule each other out so the world itself can make sense. Because that is role playing. I had my fair share of head cannon runs in Morrowind and they can be entertaining with self imposed rules, but this is the equivalent of jerking off, where Gothic is having sex, since the game itself, as a second entity, stimulates your roleplaying. Don't get me wrong, I love both games I cited as an example, but the small details like bullying Paladins as a fire mage when they won't let you through a gate or on a ship since you're ranked higher in the world hierarchy than they are is priceless.

Another thing that is great and often missed is a world that is changing. Age of Decadence did some of that stuff, but citing Gothic as an example again (which probably didn't do it due to the technical limitations of it's age): at a certain moment in the game the Paladin commander in Khorinis gathers his paladins in the Upper part of town for an expedition against the Orcs in the Valley of mines. I'd like to see more of this with tangible results, dead paladins, lifted sieges, ect. Gothic 3 tried to do this to some extend but it came down to clobbering Orcs in cities on your own, which isn't really the idea of a reactive world to me.

Most of those are examples of gameplay done right, but none of it defines what a RPG is as any of that can be found in other games. Maybe not done so well but thats not the point.
Faction gameplay, reactivity of the NPCs or the world, those are all additional features - but work in a specific RPG way only when they are gained through your character specific abilities or features that you cannot override with your skills. So, if your character is a Fire mage - you cant force NPCs to react to "you" as some other class.

Consequences that happen because of your character - happen because of your character, even if you as a player had led your character there.
 
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Martyr

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Threads for ousting yourself as complete imbeciles are in GD. I know you cant help yourselves but that doesnt make it any better.

everything you write is too fucking long to read. either shorten it or don't expect people to read it.
Nobody should lower to your imbecile standards. Cant read, you can just fuck off.

"As well as an explanation why just stats and skills are not enough" yeah right. the existing definition of what is a car is not enough, motorbikes shall be cars too from now on, right?! bitch plox.
Yes, thats exactly what my words mean, you laughable retarded cretin.

D&D and it's direct implementation as a CRPG in the form of Pool of Radiance, Dark Sun, ToEE and the D&D-less Wizardry - these games are RPGs. everything else is a hybrid at best.
/thread
The imbecile has spoken! Where the fuck have you fallen from you poor deranged dumbfuck...

reading comprehension, gaylord.
in my first post I've written just a few lines and you still fail at understanding them. that's pretty impressive tbh.

your question "what is a RPG/ what makes it a distinguishable genre?" has been answered multiple times: take a look at D&D for PnP and at Wizardry/Pool of Radiance for computer!
that's it! these games are true RPGs and everything they feature is that what makes a RPG different from every other genre.

and calling storyfag god Avellone for help in your first post is really pathetic. you knew you would get your ass handed by people who know what a RPG is and so you cried for help. but here's the news: Avellone won't answer. git gud bish.

/thread
 

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