Mr. Hiver
Dumbfuck!
- Joined
- May 8, 2018
- Messages
- 705
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 ?
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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