What makes an RPG an RPG?

[DotCommunist]

was just thinking after some comments on the Tom Clancy game thread. Whats the core here? complete self determined many branching paths? character customisation? I've been deeply sucked in by Fallout New Vegas and it certainly plays like an RPG but there are guiders. Go off grid and its deathclaws this and rad scorpions that.

 

[BigTom]

Character stuff. You mate a character and gain XP, levelling up to get new skills/bonuses. Character skills determine tactical success rather than player skills, player skill is involved more with strategic decisions.

Story lines in games too, but I think it's the character stuff which makes an rpg.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Witcher 3 certainly requires a lot of player skills! I'm spending a lot of time looking at load screens right now.

 

[tommers]

Character building

Choices and consequences

This way lies madness by the way.

 

[Vintage Paw]

It depends what you class as an RPG. This is one of the greatest arguments in gaming, aside the console v. PC debate of course.

Some say choice, consequence and customization in a deep narrative.
Some say the ability to assign 5,000 stat points in endless different ways.
Some say to be able to actually, well, role-play, that you are the person you're playing.
Some say it must have all of the above, plus more besides.

There are generally 2 main camps: the technical and the narrative.

Technical = more interested in character 'builds' - increasing and developing stats; assigning points in various skill lines to create a build that works; the freedom to create a character that is yours in terms of how it plays. See also: dice-roll purists, pause-and-command purists, fans of isometric, etc.

Narrative = customizing a character in the character creator so they reflect who you want them to be; being able to choose different paths that reflect the morality of your character; developing and maintaining relationships of various kinds with NPCs; possibly inserting yourself into the narrative so YOU are the hero.

They overlap, of course, and there are multiple positions to be taken in both camps. But some think a game isn't an RPG if it doesn't have elements of both the technical and narrative things, whereas others are happier to call something an RPG if it only has elements of one of those things.

My experience has led me to believe it's better to avoid the question altogether.

 

[Scrap Palace]

Good question...

I suppose D&D was the original (or one of them) role-playing game...and the point there was that you could have whatever kind of character you wanted, in terms of personality and choices. Sure, there were things like strength and dexterity attributes, and classes...but those were more to formalise a framework around a shared world...

It's easy to see how games like skyrim and fallout fit in the RPG category - they're open world, you have a lot of freedom in where you can go, your playstyle, your appearance, how you interact with others...yes there's a main story, but you don't have to do it...or you can do it in various ways.

The division has elements of RPG - skills, customisation...and it's not on rails like bioshock infinite...but to me it seems more like an evolution of an FPS, since there is a certain lack of freedom...of course, in the PvP zone you could decide to hunt and backstab other players, so that's a "role" you've chosen for yourself.

I wonder about theme park MMORPGs - they have all of the customisation, emotes, outfits and everything...and they have massive worlds to play in...but realistically, a max level character wouldn't return to the beginner zones unless the game scales you (like GW2)...so it's more the illusion of freedom.

I guess the thing is, a computer game isn't going to be able to offer the same kind of freedom as a pen and paper RPG...there's always going to be rules and constraints of some kind...maybe the boundaries between FPS and RPG are so overlapping that they don't really meaningfully exist anymore...

 

[JamesGoblin]

Basically, your trip makes the difference.

In other words, it's much easier (while still controversial) to determine what is and what is not MMO than the same same for RPG.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Character stuff. You make a character and gain XP, levelling up to get new skills/bonuses.

I'd agree with this as the main determiner that a game is an RPG. They are the core mechanic that D&D introduced into tabletop gaming.

 

[mauvais]

Rocket propulsion. HTH.

 

[mwgdrwg]

You are a young teenage boy and are the only one that can save the world/universe. You have mysterious amnesia, an unusually large magical sword and you were betrayed by your master. Travel from your small home village with a similarly aged female companion and a trusty younger sidekick.

Every JRPG ever, and I love them for it

 

[moon]

If Bioware made it then it's a true RPG.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

You are a young teenage boy and are the only one that can save the world/universe. You have mysterious amnesia, an unusually large magical sword and you were betrayed by your master. Travel from your small home village with a similarly aged female companion and a trusty younger sidekick.

Every JRPG ever, and I love them for it

I'd say I could see where you going but

Spoiler: why you are wrong

some fundamental errors in that statement. Quite often you would not have a master being an absolute normal every day kind of person until you had to heed the call of adventure due the "the reason"

Also not to the trusty younger sidekick point. I would say that entity is more the male comic relief character. Sometimes is't the younger kid you can be a role model to and save from time to time but I would say it's far more likely to be you goofy best friend who is there to support you the best he can and ensure hi-jinx ensue. Some time they throw a bit of a different angle and make it your estranged uncle who use to be a bit shot adventure guy but now just spends all day loitering about the village wearing strange clothes drinking and desperately failing to pick up women.

Also there is choice of girls. You may have the mysterious girl who is strange and special and somehow mixed up in all this and os leading you on your adventure or you have the childhood friend type who is a tomboyish tsundereko who you always row with but stick with through thick and thin...

etc

Actually what people imnaging in their heads as a JRPG is actually the most close to european RPGs

The true JRPG is the visual novel

 

[Epona]

I actually think that BigTom made the point that I would have made - an RPG is primarily about building your character to be good at things, rather than being good at things as a player in terms of stuff like aiming or twitch reactions.

Looking back at PnP role-playing (which is where it all started), it's all just rolls of the dice and number-crunching, whether your character can do something is down to character skill and a random element provided by the dice roll. Where player skill comes into it is more strategic/tactical decisions such as character/party placement during combat, use of terrain, and working out the best time/situation to try to cast a particular spell or use an ability, in co-operation with your fellow party members.

Some of the classic old-school CRPGs did this superbly, they tend to be the old isometric view ones either turn-based or with an auto-pause after every round of combat - which is really quite faithful to tabletop combat in a lot of ways.

That definition has been muddied a bit by the advent and popularity of the "Action-RPG" which introduces FPS-style player skill (such as player-based aiming and fast combat reaction taking higher importance than character skill and RNG, and also with the advent of mini-games for stuff like lockpicking and hacking computers that require some player input rather than a character skill-check).

I don't have anything against action-RPGs btw (I play plenty of them!), just wanted to make a point about the fundamental difference between RPG and other types of games, looking back at the origins of the RPG genre.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

for really RPGish action RPG i still hold up the original deus ex which did stuff like made your FPS style aiming poor until you trained in gun handling.

 

[High Voltage]

Rocket propulsion. HTH.

And a grenade. Don't forget the bit that goes "bang" - otherwise it's just a rocket

 

[Epona]

for really RPGish action RPG i still hold up the original deus ex which did stuff like made your FPS style aiming poor until you trained in gun handling.

Deus Ex was probably the main influencing factor on Action-RPGs and their later evolution for many years, possibly even still. At the time, it was reviled by RPG purists, because it took some of 'their' RPG stuff into an action/fps game - watered it down worse than Diablo (which was viewed as hack and slash nonsense, ah those were the days...) but ultimately I do think that the mesh of things from different genres at that point helped to evolve and develop the modern action-RPG.

 

[ffsear]

To me RPG means Open World. The gave gives you very little direction, you explore, find your own path, play the game you want to play it.

No background scenery, every part of the game is explorable.

 

[Epona]

To me RPG means Open World. The gave gives you very little direction, you explore, find your own path, play the game you want to play it.

No background scenery, every part of the game is explorable.

That doesn't define an RPG though, it's just a setting/environment in which any type of game could potentially take place. I mean PnP was open world in that your group could say "no, we're not going to head into the dungeon of doom that you have oh so cleverly crafted for us, we'll go east into those nice looking hills instead" and the DM would have to come up with something to cover that scenario and make sure that we had an interesting game (even if we were sorely testing him/her to come up with something just to be annoying).

But you can have open world games on the PC (or consoles) without them being at all RPG. And you can have CRPGs in the very truest, most basic sense, that aren't at all open world.