More signs that SE keeps getting worseFollow

As a sidenote, it's simultaneously very hard and extremely easy to munchkin in Nobilis.

Well, yes, and for the reason that the name includes the phrase "role playing". But I'll humor you anyway! :)



Not really. What's happened is that one genre of games, seeking to get away from the label of "violent shooters and/or battle games", slapped some incredibly simplistic plots into their games and labeled them Role Playing Games. Now while many computer games with that label haven't always been very deep in terms of RP, the assumption was that CRPGs would get "better" in this area as technology advanced and the ability to put more complex plots, choices, and consequences into the games emerged. By console games with nearly zero RP in them at all re-labeling themselves into RPGs, it basically sent the entire genre backwards.

The games you call RPG have never really been RPGs.



Yes. They describe the thing they name. So one would expect that a "role playing game" would be a game which includes some reasonable amount of "role playing" in it. If you buy a "Real time strategy game", you kinda assume that it should include some strategy and be played in real time, right? So if the game consisted of random outcomes generated only after you complete a set of choices with no time limit, then you might think that the game was mislabeled, right?

Or perhaps if you bought an action movie, you'd expect it to have action in it, or a drama to have drama, or a comedy to be funny.



That's a cop out. To the extent that we make any distinction between an RPG, or a FPS, or a RTS game those words have some meaning. There are certain elements we expect in an RPG. And just navigating choices between actions isn't it. No one ever called Monkey Island a RPG. It's a "puzzle game". And so should many of the games now called CRPGs (or, more annoyingly just RPGs).




Absolutely. But there's a certain additional annoyance when someone says that the measuring stick for a good RPG is that it has very little role playing in it. It only highlights just how much those games should not be called RPGs.



Excluded middle. It's not that the game has to be "all about the RP", but that it should contain a sufficient amount of it before it can be called an RPG. I get that some games fall in between simple descriptions. However, the current crop of what so many people call RPGs simply have no RP in them at all. They have as little RP in them as Duke Nukem 3d did, or DOOM. You make choices, which in many cases are nothing more than navigation choices (do I follow this path to the end, or that path?). There is no depth to the interaction with the world around you.

Sorry. It's that depth that makes a game a RPG. It's the degree to which there are multiple choices, not all of which affect the path or outcome of the game, but which may have consequences to the character you're playing in the game that make it an RPG. Ultimately, and while very few computer games accomplish this, the goal of RPGs is to have the player writing as much of the story as possible, not just following a script someone else wrote. The more it's the former, the more it's an RPG. The more it's the latter, the more it's *not*.


It's really not about over the top emoting and bad acting, and "getting into character". I've seen enough of those guys too, and trust me, that's not really RP either. Honestly, the degree to which a game is an RPG also kinda depends on how much you care about what happens to the character you're playing, even in terms of things that aren't about the game goals. And that only tends to happen in games where you have more complex choices than "turn left or turn right". I've seen very very few console games that even approach that.

Edited, Mar 18th 2011 7:09pm by gbaji

Yes. Now try a harder one like the aspect of mixed metaphors and the letter y.

I'm not quite sure you followed me there, but I'm not in the mood for a semantics debate right now. *shrug*

I didn't say that. I said that the games they are enjoying aren't RPGs, and that it's silly for them to negatively view games that are by claiming that they are "bad RPGs" (which is what you did, when you said that what makes an RPG bad is when it requires role playing).



I made no statement at all about which is the better or lesser game type. You did that, actually. I just said that it's unfair to call a game a bad RPG because it has role playing in it. You're free to say that you don't like games which have role playing in them, or even to say that you don't like "Role Playing Game". But that would require accurate naming of the genre of game you do prefer.


I just find it disconcerting that the label has shifted so far in such a short time that someone would make the statement you made with a straight face. My entire point is about how absurd it is that the games you label as "RPGs" are games with little or no RP in them at all, and you've adopted this label to such a degree that you could make that statement without even realizing how ridiculous it is.

It's exactly like my meatloaf example. You've so turned the definition around that you now define something in the exact opposite way to which it originally was defined.



The strength carrying rules of a game have nothing at all to do with role play. Those are game mechanics, usually designed to create game balance between classes which use different type of gear. While role playing is certainly helped along by semi realistic rule sets, what makes a game more of a role playing game are the choices you make along the way which may affect outcomes other than just the ability to pass through future stages of the game.



This is because the RPG in MMORPGs is handled via player interaction, and not so much the game engine itself. But when you look at single player (or small team) games, much more of the game rules and game environment have to contain role playing elements (or at least opportunities for RP) for it to be a role playing game. If all I'm doing is making choices which affect a path to an endpoint (do I do the quest that gets me the fire sword, or the one that gets me the blue shield of power?), then I'm not really role playing at all.



It's not the stat based systems that made any game a role playing game though. Those are just game mechanics.