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Well, for some people, if you argue that it is, it is.
I mean, many people still can't make up their mind over whether Zelda is or isn't.
You might also try http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/200...is-it-rpg.html for starters.
What is RPG?
Hello
How can I classify if a game is RPG or not???
Last edited by mohammedderhalli; 06-17-2008 at 09:18 AM.
Well, for some people, if you argue that it is, it is.
I mean, many people still can't make up their mind over whether Zelda is or isn't.
You might also try http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/200...is-it-rpg.html for starters.
My casual definition: An RPG is a fantasy game in a world similar to Lord of the Rings where you use ancient weapons swords/daggers/bows/crossbows and magic to slay evil doers and monsters in order to earn experience/treasure/weapons/magic/respect, so you can become more powerful and move on to slay bigger and badder opponents.
There are deeper (more nerdy) explanations on the net on what a computer RPG is or should be, but if you follow those, you'll doom yourself to obscurity and poor sales.On the other hand I was reading an interview with Gary Gygax the inventor of pen and paper RPGs and he said that computer games can't be true RPGs until artificial intelligence is achieved.
An RPG is essentially the world's most advanced and efficient D20 die-rolling device.
RPG is a rocket propelled grenade.
Or not.
In the original sense of the role playing game term, you get to play a role. In most cases this is pretty impossible to do in computer games - especially if the game is trying to tell a story - since people tend to want to play very different kinds of roles. Ever tried to be evil in baldur's gate? "Being evil" seems, in that game, to be "value money over morals", but you still want to save the world for some obscure reason..
So basically for most computer RPGs, being a RPG is based on stats which grow based on 'experience' (typically by using said skills), and the ability to customize your character (within limits). The customization, in most cases, is just a choice between whether you want to cause damage by doing X or by doing Y.
Or if you get to design a whole team, you had better have a magic user, someone who can heal, and someone to play the tank. Possibly also a thief. Leave any of them off and you probably hit some serious problems eventually.. which begs the question, why let the users choose? =)
Is Zelda a RPG? It doesn't have stats.. you do grow "stronger" through the discovery of new weapons and heart fragments though, so there's a development arc though. You get to play the role of whatever kind of elf Link happens to be in the game of your choice, but don't really get to have any say in what kind of a character he is. So basically I'd say "no". Zelda is an action adventure game.
Is GTA:SA a RPG? It has stats, which grow (and, in some cases, also shrink) based on what you're doing in the game. You can't really affect the story though, and the game doesn't really give you a choice whether to, for example, kill or not kill someone. I don't think anyone really feels that GTA:SA is a RPG, even though it has some RPG-ish elements.
Does it matter whether a game is a RPG or not? That's a better question.. =)
My schtuphh: http://iki.fi/sol/
I personally think that an RPG is a game in which you play the role of a main character following a defined story ("Role-playing game").
Adventures are similar to RPGs except that you can't affect the story and experiences your character will make during the game.
I think that this whole thing about scores and stuff isn't bad at all, but were created for (M)MORPGs or RPGs without a strong story (not including battle logics at this point). Don't get me wrong, I also love to see stats growing and all but thinking of the good old Lone Wolf books your actions should primarily affect the story not numbers.
But I guess that's not the present definition of RPGs (that's why I'm not into RPGs these days), at least within the mainstream.
So, if you take an RPG (by your definition) and replace swords with light sabers, crossbows with plasma rifles, ships with starships and castles with space stations, it's no longer a RPG. InterestingOriginally Posted by Davaris
I tend more to the definition of "a rpg is a rpg if the designer/ creator decides it is one". All other definitions seem to be either too narrow or too wide.
RPGs are usually adventure games and allow you to customize and or upgrade aspects of the character or group of characters your are playing. The improvement/ customization of the character is normally an important aspect of the game.
My definition would be along the lines of: includes character development and a story line that the player interacts with or creates in some way.
So, if you take an RPG (by your definition) Interestin
You didn't read this part of my post. You may might want to look up what casual means in terms of making games that sell online as it is a term that is in common use in these forums.My casual definition:
You can do all of that and call what you've made an RPG. But will it sell anywhere near as well as a fantasy RPG? Perhaps you'd like to find that out for yourself.and replace swords with light sabers, crossbows with plasma rifles, ships with starships and castles with space stations, it's no longer a RPG.
A game where a player plays the role of a character in a game.
Role-playing is participating in an act where one assumes the role of a fictional or non-fictional character, often not themselves.
A game is a form of engagement that contains rules which condition a win or loss by the participants, often in the form of maneuvers.
Putting them together, you have an engagement where players assume the roles of characters while participating in a game environment.
Because it is a game, there are rules and conditions which determine how the players can engage their characters and the game environment.
Because of its close ties to acting and stage-play, the role-playing game often features a story telling aspect.
Often times, in more complex role-playing games, a neutral party must moderate the game play in order to referee the comprehensive interaction between the players and the game environment.
In order to facilitate a rich game-play experience, role-playing games were designed with vast layers of character definition and environmental condition through a large set of statistics.
Because these games required ease with numbers and math, the early players were all super nerdos, and because of the free form design of the games, many game designs and story concepts were geared toward fantasy and science fiction environments which the super nerdos felt comfortable, even enthusiastic, playing inside.
Many modern-day computer based role-playing games carry on the alienating tradition of revealing the design mathematics to the players.
Often times this is because those early role-playing game super nerdos are now designing and running modern day game design studios.
Some day we'll remember that role-playing comes before game.
Someday perhaps you'll also realise that many people ENJOY the numbers. Different strokes for different folks.
AFAIK the ties to acting are actually much more recent than the ties to numbers, since the traditional RPG came out of wargaming. I do enjoy a good freeform, though... and I'm supposed to be writing one at the moment...
What ever do you speak of, Willis?
Actually, I think what dannthr meant, is that role-playing was around before games INCLUDING wargames. Make-beleive, king of Mardi-Gras, and other forms of pretending to be someone else are all forms of role playing and are all way older than stats based war games.
I also think that modern day rpg settings could potentially be popular with a casual audience (the dinner dash crowd might find it more easy to understand than high fantasy) especially if there is little number crunching and hardcore combat involved.
Basically, yes, that's what I meant to do by separating role-playing and games.
Although, I would be willing to argue that pretending is, in its own way, a game.
There are rules to pretending and there are conditions which must be met in order to evaluate a good or bad performance.
I'm not an RPG player, but I always regarded them as some sort of in-between-simulation between adventures and action games:
- In (typical) adventure games like Monkey Island, you play a role, but you only explore the world and use objects with each other and solve puzzles. You don't have energy or any other numbers, and you're rarely able to die. Enemies are "fought" by solving puzzles as well.
- In action games (which includes Jump'n'Runs and so on, in that case) you have things like energy, score, and you really have to fight enemies. You can die, you can upgrade your abilites, etc.
So, RPGs are something in between, it's an adventure with puzzles (quests), but combined with action (fighting), and you have stats and I called it "simulation" because it's a bit more "realistic", since you have more stats than just energy and score, and you can often also trade your goods for money and so on.
As I said, I'm not an RPG player, but to me this definition makes sense
Definition by convention, I believe, results in debatable points. Whereas abstract and theorhetical considerations allow for a more malleable position.
The purist in me wants to say that what an RPG *should* be is a game which encourages the player to imagine himself in the role of his protagonist and make decisions based on the character's motivations, not based on what will give him/her the best chance of winning the game, especially if the latter would require using information that the player has but the character wouldn't. That's the idea of a pencil and paper RPG, after all.
The de facto definition is quite different, and is more or less along the lines of what some others have said here: character advancement, collecting of items, storyline with some degree of non-linearity, gameplay a mixture of exploration, dialogue and combat...
ExactlyWell, for some people, if you argue that it is, it is.
Back in the days when no one got wargaming confused with rpg playing, there were real (ie: book/boardgame) rpgs. Then, there were computer versions of real rpgs, and then there were computer adaptions of rpgs. Then, westerners stuck the name to Japanese games with numbers in them, and now as long as you call it an rpg, it's an rpg.
Tomorrow, driving simulations will be called fps games.
That's actually not that far from reality. When I added mouselook to Meridian 59, a ton of players whined that I was turning the game (MMO) into an FPS.
Genre definitions are a tricky thing.
"Role-playing game" used to be anything with a story where the character had some kind of important role. These days every game has a story and a role for the character so the definition has changed to anything where your character improves over time and has a certain amount of statistical strategy going on.
I associate RPG with the experience points and level up thing. But then there are lot of sub-genres to define it, like Action-RPG (Diablo) or Hardcore-RPG (Arcanum)...
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