What is core gameplay in an RPG?

[HiddenX]

I made a little checklist some time ago.

 

[Matalarata]

Here's a screen from a typical RPG. I'd say "trigger" is the core gameplay mechanic, but you can't be sure.
Much of the flavour comes from the "target" objective, which is missing in this picture since it can be quite :incloosive: in execution.

 

[Shin]

I'd still say that character building (the ability to make them better adapted to whichever hellish world you may find them in) is the most important, followed by skill checks - whether used in a combat system or not. Take those two things out and you might as well play an 'adventure' game.

 

[Animal]

I'd still say that character building (the ability to make them better adapted to whichever hellish world you may find them in) is the most important, followed by skill checks - whether used in a combat system or not. Take those two things out and you might as well play an 'adventure' game.

I agree that this is what people expect when they hear RPG. But the denomination "role playing" is a bit different than character building. Role playing should be a game where you could put yourself in the skin of whatever archetype you wanted and progress in it. Combat mechanics and character building / progression, paired up with a linear story may make a good game, but it's a bit of a nonsensical convention to call it an RPG.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Filling the bars, cleaning all points on the map and chop/slash/shoot stuff.

 

[T. Reich]

The core gameplay in any RPG is meeting interesting, stimulating people of rich, ancient cultures and then killing them for loot and exp.

 

[laclongquan]

1. The progress of your character. At the end of the game, your char must be different from your starting state. Without your char, your game is not RPG. Without progress, your game is not RPG.

2. Combat. Without combat RPG is not RPG. Adventure, visual novel, whatever, notRPG.

That's it. Core gameplay of a RPG.

 

[epeli]

There are two parts of RPG core gameplay. Someone might even merge those two into one and call it "role playing". I'll just imitate the writing style of marketing assholes and explain them incredibly abstractly:

1. Character development and challenges.
   
   • This is the mechanical side of the game, the ruleset.
     
   • Intricate character system and good gameplay mechanics designed around it. Basically, the thing Styg gets right while no one else even tries.
2. Experiencing the game world and story.
   • This is the content side of the game.
     
   • Level design, quest design and reactivity, writing, the audiovisual representation of it all. Some of these apply only to CRPGs, but hey, that just proves P&P RPGs are inferior.

That should cover the expectations of combatfags, storyfags, explorefags, systemfags and whateverfags. The two numbered core elements include all sorts of *RPG genres, but things like action-adventure games (eg. GTAs and modern Bethesda games) are excluded because they fail #1. The bullet point details of #2 conveniently exclude similar subgenres like MMORPGs and ARPGs through their failures at those elements.

 

[Leitz]

This!

Spoiler

 

[Fowyr]

Oh, it's one of these threads.

Character system - combat - exploration and world's reactivity
Goal is to emulate one of the average PnP sessions. One of or both kinds, dungeon crawling kobold stomper and "city" talkie-talkie modules.

Remove or dumb down one of the ingredients too much - you will get non-RPG.
Move goal - you will get non-RPG as well.
Dumb down combat - Diablo
Remove character system - Veil of Darkness.
Move game's point of view from party or single character to overland map with easily replaceable "party" members - JA2.
FPS combat and weak character system - SS2.
And so on.

Fowyr is out, re-playing this old Microprose MtG simulator. BTW, it's not-RPG too.

 

[Sensuki]

Some shit that some faggots write in a design document because reasons, but usually because trying to save money.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I made a little checklist some time ago.

Cool post. Easy to read, understand, and rings some bells.

 

[Neanderthal]

I made a little checklist some time ago.

Yeah this is great, but it kind of reinforces my point, there is hardly anything that cannot go into an RPG and almost anything can be a core feature. I mean I fucking baked bread in the Black Gate, and this was entirely an optional quest that I could undertake at any time, it seems that customers (well not Codex) spend too much time excusing developers who give us less and less content in favour of what we've had to grow used to: Which is largely combat, conversation and oodles of copypasted crap to collect.

I see more and more why Codex talks of decline, we're getting less than we did twenty years ago with a few exceptions, and I think the "core experience" is one of the excuses for this.

 

[HiddenX]

In some ways it was easier to create RPGs with many options, C&C and branching 25 years ago, because nobody expected voice overs and super cool gfx and cut scenes for everything. You could read texts in an extra story book and had to imagine many things with your brain.
The gameworld interactivity of Ultima 7 was only reached in the Gothic series again.

 

[Neanderthal]

Divine Divinity tried quite hard as well in my book, though ARPG arguably.

 

[Lord Andre]

Roguey's right, whatever activity/activities you spend the most time doing in game. Usually in RPGs it's talk to people and kill shit for loot. And walk...a lot.

used in a sentence: "PoE has shit core gameplay because the combat is repetive, simplistic and overused to the point of being a chore."

 

[Animal]

Engaging derail drive:

The fact that combat is a chore is greatly helped by the fact that it gives no XP. Who the hell thought that was a good idea??

 

[gestalt11]

The core of an RPG game is an RPG system of rolled challenges versus skills/level/stats. Then layered on top of that is everything else that is typically something from other games. Some people will say story. But story without an RPG system is an adventure game. Some people will say combat but combat without the RPG system is a tactical game. Some will advocated for more simulation like gameplay, although this one is probably more modern it does harken back to some Ultima style stuff.

Most Old School cRPGs have a significant amount of both of those or in the case of some roguelikes; just the combat part. Therefore most people tend to identify that both of these are part of the "core" of an RPG. But they are not in reality as we have classic example of cRPGs that lack either one. Personally I am fine with a pure dungeon crawl with negliglible story and I am fine with a game with a great story and a only servicable combat system.

The only thing that can really be said reliably is that the core aspect of RPGs, the rolling/advancement/gear systems are never standalone because they are incomplete or at the least have too little meat on the bone.

In theory you can have an RPG that has no combat at all and its simply a game of stealth gameplay and lockpicking and looting. As long as the stealth and lockpick have rolled checks and the player has a way to build out the capabilities it would be an RPG, that sort of gameplay itself could of course be considered an extention of tactical combat play as you would need some sort of patrol style actors so that stealth made some sort of sense. Or you could have an RPG that was purely based on conversations which were a combination of puzzles and RPG rolled checks that could reward with XP and loot and truly have no tactical system at all.

So it could be said that what we are seeing as far as the general non-agreement is concerned is the fact that we have various RPG systems created and then melded into other game style and in fact we have always had this from the very beginning, but we are seeing even more nowadays where FPS and Action style games are also blending in. We then get a vast morass where people can't agree as an RPG system could be blended in with Adventure elements and one of Action, FPS, or Tactical gameplay. In the past cRPG all had some amount of tactical combat gameplay to put enough meat on the bone of the game and because most were influenced by table top systems which were combat heavy.

Personally I would say that the blends of FPS and Action should not accurately be called "pure RPGs" as the either aiming skill or action/platforming skill is necessary for winning the games and the RPG system while sometimes very strong in gameplay effect is secondary in the interface. However one could make a similar argument with tactical combat gameplay in that for very good combat oriented RPGs you need the requisite thinking oriented skills. Many roguelikes require fairly elaborate planning and tactical thinking gameplay, you don't win TOME4 on Madness difficulty by running up to everything and bashing it because you have great RPG stats/items or you just die fast and lose. So perhaps this differentiation that I have does not really hold water.

Anyway I think the non-agreement comes from expectations of the first crop of cRPGs and the original table-top games which tended to, in a general sense, blend aspects of both Adventure and Tactical Combat gaming into RPG systems of some sort. However even in the earliest examples we absolutely must admit to ourselves that there existed significant games that mostly lacked one of those. The easiest example is Rogue which all roguelikes are named after, this game is one of the earliest of cRPGs and lacks any real significant Adventure gameplay. Later roguelikes such as NetHack and ADOM add significantly more Adventure gameplay. And within the roguelike community you see fairly real divisions for people who like "Hack-likes" versus people who prefer a rogue-like such as Dungeon Crawl (Stone Soup for current builds). The people who are mostly about tactical combat will gravitate to Crawl, people who enjoy something with more Adventure-ish elements will gravitate to some for of "Hack like".

So we have, from the beginning, a confusing set of expectations. In most people minds the "classic RPG" is something like, for example, Ultima 5; a real and meaty combat system and an equally real and meaty world populated with free-form adventure style gameplay. But also from the beginning we really had many games that did not entirely meet this expectation. Now as things have moved on we see some games with adequate tactical aspects but huge emphasis on story like Planescape or Arcanum and then we start to see a heavy emergence of Action blends and FPS blends as well.

So we have gotten to a point where even though things were always somewhat murky and inconsistent, we can't really ignore the outliers in favor the expectations of the "classic cRPG". But many people still have this idea of a RPG system blended into roughly equal parts of story and tactical combat (or at least some kind of combat) and even worse people use RPG to designate all of them.

I would say it would probably be best to simply stop using RPG as a genre term entirely. I would say this as the RPG aspect is not really a standalone genre rather it is essentially a sub genre of many other genres and or hybrids. It is no longer even the case the "classic cRPG" is in the majority of game and the term "classic" is misleading anyway due to game like Rogue which certainly a classic on the RPG scene.

So what we have is people with varying preferences for OTHER genres saying an "RPG" is a bad RPG because its not a good representative of a different genre they like. This is just people saying the same thing in confusing ways because its all essentially defined in contradictory ways.

Some people who like Adventure style gaming and have a little care about combat or are able to tolerate OK combat will say games like Arcanum or Planescape are great RPGs. In reality they are saying they are great open ended Adventure oriented stories. Others who demand good tactical systems will say those two games are mediocre RPGs, but are really saying they are medicore tactical combat games but automatically fold this into the idea of what a "classic RPG" is. Compounding this to make it even more confusing is the RPG systems themselves since a poorly designed system can make the combat or the adventure gameplay seem considerably worse and people often don't separate this, i.e. for example overpowered RPG builds can make the combat system appear much worse than it is or poorly designed lockpick can interfere with adventure gameplay etc etc.

 

[gestalt11]

1. The progress of your character. At the end of the game, your char must be different from your starting state. Without your char, your game is not RPG. Without progress, your game is not RPG.

2. Combat. Without combat RPG is not RPG. Adventure, visual novel, whatever, notRPG.

That's it. Core gameplay of a RPG.

Nah I can make a completely non combat based RPG.

First I start with a game modeled after Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. Then genericize certain aspects of the game so I can have a character creator. Then I add in some stats and skills. Such as: Charm, Manliness (replaced by Feminine Wiles if female is selected), Dumb luck, Staying power, G-spot accuracy, Weaselyness, etc. Then create some perks, such as: Dirty Sanchez, Vasectomy, STD resistance, etc. Then I add various extra choices to the various dialogs and some skills/perk checks with some potentially different outcomes depending on existence or successful rolls so that figuring out and obtaining the right stuff is both Adventurish but also can be done is multiple ways that fit the RPG system, i.e. you can convince some one to do something with Charm or via Weaselyness or go through some elaborate Advemture puzzle. For example if I picked the STD resistance perk then having sex with the hooker may cause you not to get the STD that makes your crotch go on fire when done in a certain way. Possibly alter either some characters or how certain things play out for appropriate anatomy if the player chose female etc.

Voila a non-combat RPG.

 

[Neanderthal]

Am I missing out on a whole host of Adventure games with lots of D&D like aspects? I've never come across an Adventure game like Torment or Arcanum, can anybody list them?

 

[Jerker]

It's save scumming

 

[Karwelas]

What can change nature of 'What is an RPG?' question?

 

[Popiel]

What can change nature of 'What is an RPG?' question?

Kicking lim lims around.

 

[naossano]

If it doesn't have boobs, then they are missing a core content.

 

[HiddenX]

What can change nature of 'What is an RPG?' question?

The C

"What is a CRPG?"