I’m curious to find out what do you think - What makes a game an RPG to you?
For me it’s about creating a sense of great story by playing a role with my character. If I can create a character and play the game through the eyes of that character, then it’s an RPG. It has nothing to do with the setting, age, enviroment or the types of characters that are being played.
Also, I like the possibility to do nothing if I like, just to take a nice walk through wilderness…
I’m interested to hear what others think that really is definition of an RPG for them.
To me a RPG is where you can:
create your own character(s)
improve and customise that character(s)
based on soem kind of stats/characterists (rather than players reflexes/skill)
some semblence of story
choice of quests/what to do next
stuff like NWN, baldurs gate, Morrowin Arx Fatalis etc.
closly related is adventure game
more story driven (large plot to work through)
not really any customisation of character (you get what your given)
stuff like monkey island/beneath a steel sky.
then you get action rpg which is stuff like diablo, not really rpg though.
anyone else?
I guess to me, RPG just means that the abilities of the character I am playing as, are not based on what I can do, but on the skills the character has learned. That doesn’t mean it has to be a good RPG, just that it is an RPG. Otherwise it’s an FPS, or simulator or something else 
Endolf
it’s all about playing a role. 
seriously though when I think of RPG I think about stats. what level your sword is, what level you are, how many experience points you have… etc. also you have to have a massive quest and you have to find mystical items that nobody else in the RPG world seems to have found 
Hi!
I think that RPG is used in two very different ways nowadays.
One way is “classic approach” such as NWN, Baldur’s Gate, etc. They pretend to simulate what a paper game would be but with lots of things on backstage (I’ve played them a lot but never used a virtual dice xD).
The other, which I like most, is using some of the features of a RPG in existing genres (Diablo for example). Are they pure RPG? I don’t know but I enjoy them.
I think that character leveling is one of the best contribution made to games in last years. All pure RPG players should be proud of it!
See you.
Thing is, many people and comps equatet that to a ‘RPG’ yet do we not play a role in every game?
Even something like ‘stats’ is not applyable as many games today have stats.
F.i. the recently made-freeware Swine where each unit had Xp and levels.
RPG for me is role playing. PnP ported to PC.
Playing a character in character.
Most of what is running around today (and before) are imho NOT RPGs, even if I play them.
I’d concider most of them Action/Adventures.
Though NWN was close to but, not close enough. Even if I played it on a presistent roleplaying cluster for over a year.
It seems that we all more or less agree there is significant distinction between RPG and “action RPG”; to me, it is really important that my character can do what HE can do, so that my abilities have to be non-dependant on my reflexes etc… After all, that iswhat “playing a role” is about. That way you can play fast fighter chars even if you are painfully slow
do we not play a role in every game? 
Not in the sense of the word ‘role playing’.
‘Figures’ is what might fit more, as we might do certain things but we do not try to ‘live’ and ‘be’ the character.
Lets say in a game you have two figures.
While both would play the ‘figures’ (run left, right, gut the woman, rescue the orc… or something like that) ‘role playing’ would mean you play the character as if playing a movie role.
One might be the shy type with a hippy past where the other is a brash and loud type.
Two paladins in WoW… usually only differance is their collection of items, skills and spells.
In roleplaying one could be a zealot while the other the caring type.
I cannot count how many hours I have spent roleplaying and never leaving the area.
I suppose in PacMan we played a role, but there is a major distiction here. We all played the same role. Imagine a persistant world filled with PacMen that all interacted with each other and the world in the exact same limited way. There is no means of self expression to distiguish one from another. An extreme example of course But it holds true even when applied to modern RPGs.
Lets take World of Warcraft. What allows someone to create a role for themselves, its not clothing or stats. Every leather wearer at some level will be wearing Hillman shoulder pads. There are nine classes with 3 variations, so 27 types of character functionality for several million people. Clearly players (including myself) enjoy playing dress-up, finding a set of armor that looks good together. Making descisions about talent distribution are fun choices, but the “good choices” are limited and do not create more than 27 varieties.
There are quests that deliver the story of the Warcraft world, but any alliance player can play every story and with a bit of persistance complete them all. There are no real choices here, so no consequnces, no real playing of a role. If we can all do the same thing or quest, like the PacMen, what makes us truely unique?
I think we can all agree that people are very unique. A successfull RPG needs to allow people to express that uniqueness, of themselves or their character through the game system. This is different from giving people a fully featured chat panel. WOW has a decent chat system but even on RP servers most people dont use it for playing a role.
The story and quests should be delivered to the player in a way that allows them to make choices that matter and have consequences. Basically a tree structure. But branching in a MOG is a nightmare, so nobody does it. They focus on making more sets of armor, more quests that everyone does, because people do like those things too.
I think a possible solution to the branching problem is to create a program that creates quests. It also needs to create the consequences. It would be seeded with developer created content. In this way stories could be more dynamic rather than fixed like in WOW. Image that the story creator had an AI running it, making choices about its next move, then pushes an army of Quillboar into the Crossroads town. Land control games are easier to write this way since the concept of a story AI is there to make the moves.
While individual players can change their own state they cannot change the world. It would take the collective effort of many players over a week(s) to make world changes.
Considering that a top quality MOG costs over 30 million to make, its unlikley that they would be spending even more money to make a dynamic world/quest system. At least not yet.
Edit: I suppose I should actually answer the question
RolePlaying (in a computer game):
The ability to express your character’s personality / priorities / morals through the game system, generally by the choices they make and how they decide to effect the world and other characters. ( Idealy the player will also use the chat system to RP, but the developers have no control over that)
Choice: A choice is a quest path that a player takes that excludes other paths.
There are some choices. You may go about completing a quest differently than I would, still within the limits of the game. Id is no different than Dungeons and Dragons. You have a quest, you go through the areas of the quest, but everyone has a different way of going about it. And there are still limits to what you can do. There are looser limits when you have a person as a DM, but there are still limits.
The choices you are refering to are combat tactics that are tied to the class you are. The choice is premade for you anyway in 27 varieties, a warrior will do a kill task with his best sword, there is no way to do it significantly differently that could be described as roleplaying.
I think the limits on a DM game are extremely loose and the limits on a computer game are very tight. Really hard to say they are similar when they are worlds apart.
The choices that I am talking about are like this:
There are 20 quests to chose from this week in your local area. But realisticly you only have time to do 8. So you must chose which ones to contribute to. The end result after 7 days will be a real world change.
Even on the 8 you did play there are choices like which side to act on. Maybe you dont want to kill those orcs. So all the quests are multi sided, you chose which side you act for. At the end of a week the consequences hit.
Very, very interesting idea. :o
Not to mention in an roleplaying game quest do not only revolve around bashing and fed-ex quests.
Also in a roleplaying game you have DMs, who can create quests and whatnot on the fly, and in any pnp game, once you die… you don’t respawn.
If you get a chance do yourself a favor and find a rp server/group for the game of your choice.
I am often amazed at the rp skills of the players in these games … and saddend at how their talents are waisted.
or to quote a friend’s tales of rp on a german WoW server: ‘yes nob, 17 is bigger then 3’
WoW and simiar are built for the general masses and they do not want to roleplay.
I have no doubt the makes could have programmed a system, but I doubt the management wanted to waste the money just for something only a few want and would actually use.
Bioware did it with NWN and imho it is after UO one of the few games that come close to the rpg definition.
Though it was usually a question of the mod designers and the community then the engine, but the engine gave you the (great but limited) tools.
@Tzan:
NWN had that kind of system. Thing was to restrictive to really be usable for a RP game because as simple as dialoge can be, the controling factors can be vast and complicated.
I think any could, but I dont think anyone in power has really thought about it much.
I worked at Turbine in 2004 and mentioned this several times. People had no idea what I was on about at first. A system like this is not on anyones radar right now. I would think the money issue is really the main reason not to do it.
Everyone would “use” it because all the quests would be made dynamic. So its not a question of whether they want to or not, they just will, they have no choice since its the only way to play. Since most people you talk to think the current method of static quests with no results gets old, most people will enjoy seeing their actions actually effect the game world.
Personally what i think makes an RPG is the process or starting with something small and simple and gradually as the game progresses it gets better like a level up system of some kind. Oh and not to forget it must have a good story line.
So it seems others have actually said what I was going to say, but jsut to say it.
As a Roleplayer going back to the real, original 3 little brown D&D books in the tan box, I’d have to draw a distinction between CRPG and RPG.
In general CRPGs don’t have any real roleplay. Roleplay is about the development of personality and personalities only really develop when they interract with other personalities. So far no computer has come any where near clsoe enough to simualting an interractive dynamic human personality to make that possible in a single player game.
What makes a CRPG a CRPG is a stat based character and an inventory. Thats the definition.
But in general thay aint RPGs.
You summed it up better.
I was off on a bit of a tangent there
There are things I would expect for a game to call itself an RPG. I should interact with the world through a single character (or a small party of characters). The powers of the character should play a significant role in those interactions, rather than being based on my skills and abilities like an FPS. And my character should be able to create a story of his/her own in some way.
[quote=“Tzan,post:10,topic:25901”]
In my experience, there are huge amounts of character choices in WoW. Provided you are prepared to define your character in the way it normally happens in this world, by their flaws. You only end up with a bunch of similar characters in WoW if you min/max. (which most people sadly do). Then you will end up looking like all the other min/maxers. But that is your choice, not a property of the gameworld.
Try playing a dwarf paladin that always walks. The World of Warcraft looks like different from that perspective. And you get instant bonding with those other rare souls who also walk through the world. Try playing an Alliance hunter who only kills animals, and wears home made armor. Then a rogue who only kills humanoids and wears his own loot. You will end up with very different looking leather wearers, and different paths through the quests.
Seems to me you are saying you choose to take the optimum path through the game, then wonder why everyone looks the same. Flawed characters make for better stories and unique stories. Perfect characters are all the same.
Well you are talking about something that sounds great! But wasnt the point I was making.
I was talking about quests, how devs make them and the way people do them. You were talking about playing RP outside the game system, which is great and everyone should do it, but less than 1/10 of 1% actually do.
General RP is something to be applauded. But is not a function of the game system.
Everyone does the quests in a different order and skip some. But that isnt really quest RP. I was talking about the quest itself have a consequence, which no WOW quests do because they are all static. There are no WOW quests that let your actions effect the world.
The way a character looks is not RP.
If I wanted the optimum path I wouldnt be a Druid