Crispy™ What is an RPG Attempt #186,091

[Shin]

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.

I think we should dismiss the opinions of the masses ('plebs') by the fact that they don't care. It's like a deaf person saying that Chopin is superior to Vivaldi, he might be right, but his opinion isn't valid once people who can actually hear the fucking music talk about it. That being said, I don't fully agree with your sentiment that once a term is coined, it can't be changed anymore. Words change, language changes and there's probably nothing we can do (even collectively) to 'protect' the term RPG. Most of the (other) retards outside this forum usually get into the 'BUT ITS IN THE WORDS!' argument of 'YOU JUST HAF TO PLAY A ROLE' which is beyond retardation imho, it's being as stupid as a brick.

But yeah, action RPG's are a legitimate genre, it's just that 'they' should name it something else as people ('plebs') get confused with 'real' RPG's. But again, this discussion is 'what is art' all over again.

 

[Stelcio]

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.

It's too narrow. Blackguards isn't an RPG by it (no living world). Shadowrun Dragonfall can be argued on the same premise to a degree. Betrayal at Krondor isn't an RPG by it (lack of true avatar, roster is changed from chapter to chapter, no character stays in the roster for whole game). Most team RPGs (Icewind Dale, Wizardry, Jagged Alliance 2) lack true avatar, especially if characters can be replaced (then they become resources which we can spend if needed). If we consider switching avatar, strategy games become RPGs with selected unit becoming our "avatar". Success determined by in-game skills is a poor requirement, because player input is always present and drawing a decisive line is impossible. Positioning, preparation, equipment management, even the way we fire a spell - all those influence the outcome as much as character's numbers.

I stay with my definition. You don't need an avatar, but you need a character (or few) to play around. His actions aren't entirely determined by in-game skills (that's impossible), but how we shaped the character in terms of his attributes, skills, traits, perks and any other unique properties (background we choose during character creation for example), influences character's gameplay performance and abilities, his overall options in given environment and scenario. Actions aren't core gameplay but only a realization of true gameplay, i.e. what we make of our character. It's not about beating the enemy but about being able to do it as a character, about fleshing out a character that is able, that can accomplish that objective.

 

[Naveen]

 

[Machocruz]

That being said, I don't fully agree with your sentiment that once a term is coined, it can't be changed anymore. Words change, language changes and there's probably nothing we can do

You are right of course, but I'm implying more intellectual rigor needs to be applied to make alterations to long standing terminology valid, not that terms can never evolve ever. Like the whole "walking simulator" debate. Too many people are using emotion instead of reason as their guide, while completely ignoring the established dictionary definition(s) of the word 'game,' and are basically fighting for elevated status (in their minds, conferred by the word 'game,' just like the word 'art' is used) instead of truth and accuracy. And frankly, their arguments on why holding forward while looking at scenery is a game just do not hold water.

 

[Lurker King]

The point was to show that an idea there's such a thing called RPG, which is definable in the same way as circle is, is flawed. The notion of RPG is just a summary of various elements. So you have it backwards: there are elements first including the element called "playing a certain role", then there's a summary of those elements (Meanwhile, the term role playing or playing a certain role is changing and part of its change is that it's artificialy aplied to elements which - when taken alone - had nothing to do with role playing in the first place, like inventory management for example. This is happening because of need to create a category for elements which were more or less arbitrarily joined together.) called an RPG and only because this process is not known, you are able to take this so called notion of RPG (summary of elements) as a subject and seriously demand a definition.

Your argumentation has a lot of holes. First, from the fact that a cRPG can have a lot of characteristics that are not their defining properties is trivial. A chair must be something that we can seat. From the fact alone, we can conclude that it must have solidity, mass, relational properties in space-time, it’s governed by the law of physics, etc. If that doesn’t show that chairs don’t have a definition, it also doesn’t show that cRPGs don't have a definition. Moreover, the idea that some of these additional properties are arbitrarily applied and have nothing to do with the nature of cRPGs is far-fetched. You mentioned inventory management. There is an obvious reason why most cRPGs have this feature. If we need to explore, gather items, fight, get the spoils of the fight, etc., it follows naturally that this feature is almost necessary, in the same sense that office chairs need to be cushioned. The same thing applies to journals, for instance. That are nothing even remotely impossible about defining cRPGs. What is impossible is to overcome simplistic prejudices about definitions of artefacts.

 

[Lurker King]

how would you define a chair without the features that make it a fucking chair??? that's all a chair is, a fucking sum of the features a chair has to have. if the ideal chair happens to define every chair, i'm not gonna argue, and if it's a mattress, maybe we haven't been sitting around as comfortable as we should have.

My point is that if people named different things that we can seat “chairs”, some retarded would question your tastes saying that a mattress is a great chair, and that is what happens when are talking about cRPGs. There are so many misconceptions about the genre, that obvious examples of action games, such as Diablo, are considered cRPGs, and obvious examples of cRPGs, such as Age of Decadence, are considered CYOA, because they have reactivity and too much text.

 

[Lurker King]

a cRPG is an attempt at porting a RPG into the media of video games. You can define pen and paper RPG afterward, but that is gonna be much more easier.

We have a more intuitive understanding of PnP RPGs because the publishers didn’t fuck up the medium in the same way they did with videogames, but there is still some room for controversy. For instance, do you consider Universalis a PnP RPG? I don’t, but some retards do. The difference in that case is that they are a minority.

 

[Lurker King]

For example, it's easy to distinguish Diablo and its clones from other games. It's also easy to distinguish Fallout and its clones from other games. We need terms for these groups of games. But "action RPG" vs "isometric/party-based/classic RPG" are shit terms because it makes us think Diablo and Fallout are similar games when they aren't, it makes us think that Diablo isn't an isometric game even though it is, it makes us think Fallout is all about the party when you don't even want one, and it makes us think Diablo developed out of Fallout when it didn't. Basically, calling both games RPGs make us less informed.

This. A lazy crunch that attracts unwanted attention from players with very different interests, and makes the very nature of the medium obscured. This way of labeling games is repeated because people either don’t know any better, or are too lazy to know any better, or are too coward to question the prevalent wisdom.

 

[Lurker King]

The first necessary condition for being a cRPG is that the developer having the aim to take some of the core elements from PnP RPGs and incorporate them into games. If a game maker only take the combat and the character-progression from a RPG, them the end product cannot be considered a cRPG, but just an action or strategy game. That would explain how some developers could take some of the RPG elements present in cRPGs and implement in other genre, and still.

The second necessary condition is having the core elements from PnP RPGs that we can implement given our technology. The precise list is hugely controversial, as everything else, but an initial list would include skills, stats, system, character progression, setting, narrative (or story), exploration, dialogues, NPCs and, above all, reactivity.

In every game your choices matter to some degree, so is prima facie arguable that in every game that is reactivity to some degree. The difference is how reactivity is present in cRPGs. When your choices amounts to “kill X number of enemies to save the city”, you have two choices: kill the enemies and save the city, or don’t kill all the enemies and fail. What we expect from a cRPG is a wider range of instrumental choices that are means to the end of saving the city, for instance, instead of just being able to kill your enemies to save the city, we should be able to convince them to leave. Moreover, we expect different end choices, for instance, we should being able to save the city, but we should be able to help the monsters, or abandon the city. Ideally, we also want that the stats, skills, race or background to affect the availability of choices. That is why playing Fallout 2 is so different from playing Diablo. Instead of just killing things with different weapons, you can have sex, betrayal, etc. Therefore, the difference between the reactivity in cRPG and other games is that (1) the reactivity is integrated in the gameplay and the narrative; (2) its systematized as one of the main elements of the game and not just an indirect outcome of the gameplay.

Notice that in the same way that other games can take some of the RPG elements without being proper cRPGs, like stats and character progression, cRPGs can take elements from other games and incorporate them as mini-games (races, gamble, etc.) or a gameplay mechanic (housing, etc.). The difference persists, because in a cRPG the character actions are associated with a systematized reactivity integrated in the story, but not in an action game. cRPGs became more articulate about their own nature over time if we compare games such as Fallout with previous games, in the same sense that PnP became more articulate over time, if we compare the first D&D books with the most recent ones. Saying that cRPGs is not a genre anymore because people label anything that has swords and character progression as cRPGs is a simplistic and lazy reasoning.

 

[Lurker King]

But of course, just because you have "elements" drawn from RPGs does not make you a RPG. First-person games today virtually all make use of one-to-one character-player equivalence, and are increasingly giving those characters stats you get to improve. Narrative choices & consequences are also not in any way unique to RPGs as we see in adventure games, action games, and so forth.

Not really, read the above.

 

[eremita]

The only "elements" of RPGs that were actually unique to RPGs are one-to-one character-player identification and narrative choices & consequences.

Before RPGs, the player was usually treated as a disembodied decision maker with no equivalence to any character under his/her control. The player could own/command units, buildings, etc., but had no physical presence as an avatar. RPGs made physical the player character via its rulesets.

As for narrative choices & consequences, RPGs actually predate choose your own adventure stories and were the first games to formalize the idea of "playing" through a story. Although such activities were done informally long, long before RPGs - say, between kids playing make-believe - RPGs were the ones to introduce it as the narrative component of what was otherwise a tactical strategy game.

The whole idea that games cease to be RPGs when they take player skill into account is inane. That's not an RPG idea. That's how practically all board/war games were structured. Nobody thought that to decide which soldier won when two of them went at it in a war game, the players had to act out the battle and decide with their "skill." Having stats decide battles is as old as strategy games.

But of course, just because you have "elements" drawn from RPGs does not make you a RPG. First-person games today virtually all make use of one-to-one character-player equivalence, and are increasingly giving those characters stats you get to improve. Narrative choices & consequences are also not in any way unique to RPGs as we see in adventure games, action games, and so forth.

The bottom line is that "CRPGs" are several different genres that, were they not all forced under the CRPG label, are all capable of having informative genre descriptions.

Iľl just quote my previous post here...

The point was to show that an idea there's such a thing called RPG, which is definable in the same way as circle is, is flawed. The notion of RPG is just a summary of various elements. So you have it backwards: there are elements first including the element called "playing a certain role", then there's a summary of those elements (Meanwhile, the term role playing or playing a certain role is changing and part of its change is that it's artificialy aplied to elements which - when taken alone - had nothing to do with role playing in the first place, like inventory management for example. This is happening because of need to create a category for elements which were more or less arbitrarily ijoined together.) called an RPG and only because this process is not known, you are able to take this so called notion of RPG (summary of elements) as a subject and seriously demand a definition.

 

[Lurker King]

Iľl just quote my previous post here...

Wich doesn't prove anything. I will try that one later on. Everytime someone disagree with me and point obvious flaws in my arguments, I will repeat the same argument as if this amounts to something.

 

[eremita]

Wich doesn't prove anything. I will try that one later on. Everytime someone disagree with me and point obvious flaws in my arguments, I will repeat the same argument as if this amounts to something.

Wrong quote, i wasn't fast enough to edit it :D Try again. I don't see any flaw.

 

[Reapa]

My point is that if people named different things that we can seat “chairs”, some retarded would question your tastes saying that a mattress is a great chair, and that is what happens when are talking about cRPGs. There are so many misconceptions about the genre, that obvious examples of action games, such as Diablo, are considered cRPGs, and obvious examples of cRPGs, such as Age of Decadence, are considered CYOA, because they have reactivity and too much text.

well, aod did basically remove the combat entierly from every talker playthrough. and it removed meaningful talk from any combat playthrough. it made you choose between being able to say smart things and hold a weapon as if some weird universal law prevented humans from being able to do both. then it served you that merchant master in the second town that bruteforced his way to the top of the merchants guild but still required you to put more and more skill points into the talker skills if you didn't want to end up thrown in to the street with no job. vd himself says playing a hybrid would be walking a very fine line and i'm gonna add it will get you locked out of a fucking lot of interesting content. you may be able to justify shit like that by saying well reality also has certain stat and skill checks, but if i wanted to play reality i wouldn't be sitting in front of the pc.

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.

what did i just say? yes, without the combat PS:T would have been a visual novel. The very fact that it had combat even if most people bitch about it gave the game depth in the way of being a game instead of something to just read. there is no shame in being a visual novel if the writing is good. there's no shame in reading a book if you don't feel the need play. just don't go around telling people your favorite book is a cRPG just to be hip.

 

[Stelcio]

what did i just say? yes, without the combat PS:T would have been a visual novel. The very fact that it had combat even if most people bitch about it gave the game depth in the way of being a game instead of something to just read. there is no shame in being a visual novel if the writing is good. there's no shame in reading a book if you don't feel the need play. just don't go around telling people your favorite book is a cRPG just to be hip.

Combat in PS:T didn't add any depth to a game except emphasizing the fact that you can't die - but it can also be conveyed without it. The game would be as complete and deep as it is even without it. If depth of PS:T as a game laid in its combat, people would actually invest in combat stats and we know the most effecient meta for PS:T is doing exactly opposite. If we consider combat as key defining element of an RPG, PS:T is one hell of a bad RPG and yet it's considered a milestone of the genre. That's because the combat is meaningless and doesn't make the game what it is and beacuse it is an RPG, combat cannot be a defining element of RPG. Classic contradiction.

 

[Reapa]

Combat in PS:T didn't add any depth to a game except emphasizing the fact that you can't die - but it can also be conveyed without it. The game would be as complete and deep as it is even without it. If depth of PS:T as a game laid in its combat, people would actually invest in combat stats and we know the most effecient meta for PS:T is doing exactly opposite. If we consider combat as key defining element of an RPG, PS:T is one hell of a bad RPG and yet it's considered a milestone of the genre. That's because the combat is meaningless and doesn't make the game what it is and beacuse it is an RPG, combat cannot be a defining element of RPG. Classic contradiction.

you don't seem to have understood my point. which is weird since i was pretty clear. must be somehow your fault. PS:T was a fantastic game, not a fantastic RPG. a fantastic RPG would have had great writing and great combat. you're trying to force the definition of a visual novel on the RPG genre, retard!

 

[Shin]

If we consider combat as key defining element of an RPG, PS:T is one hell of a bad RPG and yet it's considered a milestone of the genre. That's because the combat is meaningless and doesn't make the game what it is and beacuse it is an RPG, combat cannot be a defining element of RPG.

False. While I do think that 'the ability to engage in combat' is a milestone of the genre, it doesn't mean it actually has to be good or even have a strong emphasis on it. PS:T proves this by having shitty combat and still being an excellent RPG.

 

[DavidBVal]

you don't seem to have understood my point. which is weird since i was pretty clear. must be somehow your fault. PS:T was a fantastic game, not a fantastic RPG. a fantastic RPG would have had great writing and great combat. you're trying to force the definition of a visual novel on the RPG genre, retard!

Wrong.

I've played PnP without barely any dice rolls, and I've played PnP which was mostly combat and mechanics. All were RPG games. Sometimes great, sometimes crap. The fact a game is unbalanced towards mechanics or story doesn't make it any less RPG. It's merely different flavors.

 

[Stelcio]

PS:T was a fantastic game, not a fantastic RPG.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9453

Wrong site, idiot. It's been established THE BEST RPG here, many years consecutively actually.

you're trying to force the definition of a visual novel on the RPG genre, retard!

Have you even read my definition?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...pg-attempt-186-091.104449/page-7#post-4206799

Now tell me how it is of a visual novel and not of RPG.

 

[King Crispy]

Thank you all for coming. I think we can Retardo the thread now.

 

[Stelcio]

You still owe me a proper response unless you just admit being wrong (or dick).

 

[Ninjerk]

RPG games

 

[Reapa]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9453

Wrong site, idiot. It's been established THE BEST RPG here, many years consecutively actually.



Have you even read my definition?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...pg-attempt-186-091.104449/page-7#post-4206799

Now tell me how it is of a visual novel and not of RPG.

yeah, as if rpgcodex were a good reference for anything. ffs. also the best rpg doesn't mean it was the ideal rpg. it just means others managed to make even worse rpgs.

The game would be as complete and deep as it is even without it.

the game might have been as good as it is without combat but it wouldn't have been an rpg. over and out.

 

[King Crispy]

You still owe me a proper response unless you just admit being wrong (or dick).

I don't owe you a thing. Especially after your rudeness to me. Go fuck yourself.

 

[Reapa]

Wrong.

I've played PnP without barely any dice rolls, and I've played PnP which was mostly combat and mechanics. All were RPG games. Sometimes great, sometimes crap. The fact a game is unbalanced towards mechanics or story doesn't make it any less RPG. It's merely different flavors.

yeah, what you've played really proves me wrong... i've made no statement whatsoever regarding balance. i just said a game without combat is not an rpg. you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.