Crispy™ What is an RPG Attempt #186,091

[ClaviculaZ]

An RPG is never a game itself, but a game has or has not various RPG elements (character progression, choices and consequences, inventory management etc.). In other words: the term should be used as a predicate not a subject. Thus, when comparing Mass Effect with Age of Decadence for example, we're comparing games with different amount of RPG elements. It's obvious now that asking which one is or is not an RPG is meaningless. Unless of course you decide, which RPG elements are essential for calling a game an RPG. But that's arbitrary. A simple listing of various RPG elements is the closest thing to definition.

As you can see, I have solved the problem, because I have discovered that the logic behind question "What is an RPG?" is fundamentaly flawed. So It's ok now, after all these years, you can finally put the issue to rest. You're welcome guys. For my undisputed intellectual prowess, I demand a tag.

Spoiler

But what is an RPG?

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

An RPG is a game in which the player plays a role. Don't get hung up on tropes or concrete definitions. Systems, C&C, narrative can all fuck off. If you feel you are playing a role and the game is intended for you to do so, it's an RPG.

K0DP is pretty much CYOA by most definitions but who didn't feel like they were really playing the role of a chief?

 

[Onholyservicebound]

For me a game is an RPG when the game reacts to the character(role) I play in a meaningful way.
Could be in combat (If only combat = ARPG)
could be in story (If only story = interactive storyfag RPG)
or otherwise(Exploration)(Environmental interaction)(Crafting)(etc)

The role could be one I defined in character creation, or one I define by playing.

 

[Jaesun]

A cRPG is an attempt to create a video game that resembles a Pen and Paper role playing session.

 

[Stelcio]

Let me have a shot at it, because I think you guys fell into some critical errors in your attempts to define (c)RPGs.

First of all, you seem to mistake what does "role-playing" even mean. It doesn't mean playing a role, as it's commonly understood here. It actually means playing WITH a role, i.e. establishing one, whether in character creation, by progression, or by interaction with the world and the story. The character or the group of characters is the centric point of the game. RPG is not about progressing the story or winning the battle, it's about what your characters are and become in the course of your playthrough. Story, world, battles, items, NPCs, they all exist for one sole purpose - for player to flesh out their characters in a unique, one-of-a-kind way. Now for it to be unique it has to be (among other things) meaningful from gameplay perspective as well, because if your established role has little affect on gameplay, it has no uniqueness at all. If a game allows player to establish, create a unique role for their characters in course of playthrough, which meaningfully affects the gameplay - it is an RPG indeed.

Coming from there you guys commit another error by trying to create a list of hard, necessary elements of cRPGs and define cRPGs by whether they include these elements or not. While coming from my definition of an RPG it's not about what the game has implemented, but what purpose do these implemented elements serve. Levels can be a tool to flesh out character by providing skill points and reflecting character's progression (in power) throughout the story, but they can also be a raw number that reflects your experience in the game, but with no influence on gameplay or your in-game role at all. In latter case it's RPG-inspired at best. Inventory can be a tool for fleshing out character's role by equipping him with certain role-supporting items but it can also be just a tool to create puzzles (adventure games). Branching story can be a tool to establish your character's morals and behaviour, but can be only an art of itself without real impact on who your character is and what he becomes.

Now I used some vague terms here and there. What is unique? How do we define meaningful? Where is the line? Well, there isn't and there won't be. Those are purely subjective impressions (RPG as a genre is very much about impressions) and there will always be borderline cases, where people will disagree whether character development is deep enough to classify the game as RPG. It's the nature of the beast. Still I think this definition is both thorough enough and vague enough for everybody to come into agreement with it.

 

[King Crispy]

I have no idea what an RPG is.

 

[Siveon]

An RPG is a game in which the player plays a role. Don't get hung up on tropes or concrete definitions. Systems, C&C, narrative can all fuck off. If you feel you are playing a role and the game is intended for you to do so, it's an RPG.

K0DP is pretty much CYOA by most definitions but who didn't feel like they were really playing the role of a chief?

So, every video game ever made is an RPG. That's cool.

 

[Machocruz]

You don't role-play in every video game, you control a pawn in most.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

So, every video game ever made is an RPG. That's cool.

Especially Tetris.

 

[Siveon]

Especially Tetris.

Of course, I'm playing the role of someone controlling tetrominoes. What immersion!

 

[Machocruz]

I play a role at my job, but I don't role-play at my job. The plot thickens.

 

[Ranselknulf]

You have ap oint there machocruz. We spend so much time focusing on the role aspect of rpg's but it's really the "play" aspect that sinks any rational discussion.

Play isn't something that can be rigidly defined so it confounds any attempt to lock down what a role playing game is.

 

[Machocruz]

Well, role-play is a specific type of play among other types of play (while "playing a role" can mean to role-play or carrying out your real life or imaginary position in a group or event). The practice has existed before DnD, where people pretend to be someone else to see it how it feels, play around with a different perspective, learn empathy, etc. If a person can't even understand what role-play entails, then they will be lost. You can say PnP games took two different play concepts (role-play and war-games) and put them together.

ZOMG maybe that's the key!!! The character acting is the Role Playing, and the war game shit is teh Gaem! It's a portmanteau or something!

But seriously, since I'm convinced of the importance of origin, whatever the original coiner of the term 'role-playing game' meant is what defines what it is. If they themselves weren't sure, then fuck it it's not our problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Edit: but seriously some more, what if the war game part is just as necessary? What? Hey, fuck you if your RPG doesn't have combat. You failed to make one then, poseur. /2strict4u

 

[Reapa]

Well, role-play is a specific type of play among other types of play (while "playing a role" can mean to role-play or carrying out your real life or imaginary position in a group or event). The practice has existed before DnD, where people pretend to be someone else to see it how it feels, play around with a different perspective, learn empathy, etc. If a person can't even understand what role-play entails, then they will be lost. You can say PnP games took two different play concepts (role-play and war-games) and put them together.

ZOMG maybe that's the key!!! The character acting is the Role Playing, and the war game shit is teh Gaem! It's a portmanteau or something!

But seriously, since I'm convinced of the importance of origin, whatever the original coiner of the term 'role-playing game' meant is what defines what it is. If they themselves weren't sure, then fuck it it's not our problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Edit: but seriously some more, what if the war game part is just as necessary? What? Hey, fuck you if your RPG doesn't have combat. You failed to make one then, poseur. /2strict4u

if you don't put combat in it it's a visual novel.

 

[Telengard]

The main purpose of terms like "strategy game" and "RPG" is in aid of nublets - when they walk into a store, notice a game, and ask "What is this ar-pee-gee?", they can get an encapsulating definition in a couple sentences. Well, at least they could in the old days when the definition of RPG was "A type of strategy game where you and your friends play cooperatively instead of competitively, and each of you will only control a single unit, and you will keep that unit persistently from one game session to the next." That, while a crpg is much the same thing, except it's for friendless autists, who can thusly control the entire party (of one or more characters) entirely on their own.

The above definition works. It's functional, and actually quite helpful for both store owner and customer. Only, these days the definition has devolved and been whored about so much to things like walking simulators and soapy action games, it's lost much of its original definition. At this point, there's only one trait that all modern "RPGs" have left in common: gameplay is defined by character stats, not player ability. And you gotta know, a single trait is not enough to make a classification definition by.

*

'Course, we don't even really have that last trait anymore, anyways. With the advent of Dark Souls, not even "character stats, not player ability" exists anymore. These days, player-skill action games can now be RPGs. Which essentially means "RPG" has no real meaning left as a term. It is now as meaningless as the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Just a word that evokes a relational feeling in peoples heads, and not much else.

TL: DR - "RPG": now as meaningless a term as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

 

[baturinsky]

A cRPG is an attempt to create a video game that resembles a Pen and Paper role playing session.

This. RPG is related as much to roleplaying as roguelikes to rogues. Genre's name is just a reference to something that it was inspired by.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I don't think it is entirely accurate anymore to assume that P&P emulation is the benchmark. While it was initially, there are some significant differences in medium.

 

[Jaesun]

That's what a cRPG is. The rest is bullshit...

 

[khavi]

TL: DR - "RPG": now as meaningless a term as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Hear, hear! The RPG is dead! Long live the RPG!

 

[Stelcio]

I have no idea what an RPG is.

Elaborate, you presumptous piece of shit. You didn't make a single counterargument and your pity attempts at RPG definition have flaws I pointed out.

if you don't put combat in it it's a visual novel.

So tons of meaningless combat is what makes Planescape: Torment an RPG then? If not for it, it would be visual novel and not an RPG? Combat as prequisite is not a good idea (nothing per se really is), even though most RPGs rely on it for their purpose of letting players flesh out roles for their characters.

 

[Shin]

I wonder if other genre-specific forums have these kind of autism induced discussions. Like a racing forums where people will argue BUT WHAT IS A RACING GAME? IS GTA A RACING GAME? DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED A VEHICLE FOR A RACING GAME? Or a strategy board where people will argue about shit like if a MOBA is technically still a strategy game. This is reminiscent of trying to genre-identify music/artists, sure there are a few very genre-heavy artists but outside the core are usually some genre-melding groups/artists which is an analogy for action RPG's I guess. If van Halen was Wizardry, is Linking Park considered Skyrim?

These are vary important questions, don't get me wrong.

 

[Stelcio]

I wonder if other genre-specific forums have these kind of autism induced discussions. Like a racing forums where people will argue BUT WHAT IS A RACING GAME?

Simulator forums do. Probably comes with complexity of the genre or the emulating nature of it (or both actually). Whether a game is considered a simulation or not is not dependant on if it is simulating anything, but more on if the simulation is deep and precise enough for player to consider gameplay close enough to realistic. The level of simulation that provides this varies between players. IL-2 Sturmovik is considered the most famous WW2 aerial combat simulator, and yet many people argue that the most recent release, Battle Of Stalingrad, is no simulator simply because it's too simple, especially compared to some modern examples like DCS. Yet at the same time BoS is deeper simulation than first instance of the game from 15 years ago. It only proves that simulators are highly impressional genre where what counts is what we expect and experience and not what is actually in the game.

Same goes for RPGs. Roleplaying is kinda simulating being someone else. But the lone fact of acting as ingame character is not enough to say it's RPG. We have to have deep impact on who our character is and what he becomes to make it an RPG. What is enough to give player that feeling of character development and impact varies between players, but the prequisite of a character as a centric point of gameplay remains. Highly impressional nature of the genre makes any hard conditional definition attempts vain though.

 

[Metal Hurlant]

A rpg is a role playing game.

 

[Naveen]

Seriously, it's not that difficult, some of you suffer from word indigestion. p&p RPGs have a unique system that defines them: You are playing in an imagined world, you say something -your desire- then some rules translate that into results, and that result is based on in-game arbitrary skills that have no resemblance to your own real-life skills or your button-smashing reflexes. That's why they are called RPGs: there is a role, like in theater, but your behavior is partly determined by a rule-system (the game) not by narrative necessity like in a book. So, a computer-RPG tries to translate that: Inside a virtual "living" world (not just a maze or a big puzzle), your avatar (not your pawns, resources, or whatever) wants to do something (the actions are more limited, of course), and your success is determined by in-game skills that your virtual avatar has. That's the ideal, copied directly from p&p RPGs, then there are all the hybrids and "games with rpg elements" you can think.

Seriously, it's easy ->

FPS: I want to shoot an enemy. I aim. (Quake)
RPG: I want to shoot an enemy. I click the "attack" button, my character attacks and succeeds or not according to his own internal rule-based skills. (Fallout)
Hybrid: I want to shoot an enemy. I aim, but my Weapons skill sucks so I do less damage and my precision isn't very impressive. (Deus Ex)
Game With RPG Elements™: Lol, I'm level 30 and I haven't even bothered to invest any skill points, I'll just headshot everyone and (Mass Effect 2)

 

[Machocruz]

With the advent of Dark Souls, not even "character stats, not player ability" exists anymore. These days, player-skill action games can now be RPGs.

That is something that is the most frustrating to me, now that you mention it. My question is "who says then can be? And on what authority?" Call me elitist, but I don't believe just anyone can validly alter meanings or classifications, I don't care how many other people do it with them. I think too much credence is given to what any random group of people thinks about all this. The term RPG isn't meaningless just because they have diluted it to mean whatever it is they want it to. Basically, if someone wants to alter something that was established well before they came along, the "burden of proof" is on them. Plus, Dark Souls is obviously an ARPG, a sub-genre that has been around since the early 80s. The first pioneers said "lets take the core play mechanic of arcade hack and slash games and add stats, level ups, and equips/lets turn this RPG into an action game." If the plebs don't even understand that, then we can safely ignore their opinion on the topic of classification because they literally don't know what they are talking about.