RPGs vs. "Computer Games"
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Apprentice
Member # 6802
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 08:21
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Hello everyone. I've posted here but once before, with a dumb question (converting Doom as a Blades of Avernum scenario). I hope this isn't such a stupid topic: I work with this goth who says that Computer RPGs AREN'T properly role playing games. I disagree. We both have histories with older paper 'n' pencil RPGs, btw. He plays the newer games, whereas I played D&D and Runequest when I was a kid (which is why I like Spiderweb games so much). Overall, I'd say he's full of crap. Avernum is certainly a role playing game--albeit with only one player. (Reminds me of the old solo dungeons for D&D, et al.) Have you all heard this opinion before? What do you think? [ Wednesday, May 03, 2006 08:47: Message edited by: Gnarzuul ] Posts: 3 | Registered: Thursday, February 16 2006 08:00 |
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Shake Before Using
Member # 75
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 08:52
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A lot of games sold as "role-playing games" cannot honestly call themselves that using the dictionary meaning of the term. On the other hand, everyone knows this and just accepts that, as far as video games go, "role-playing games" include any number of games like Diablo and Final Fantasy X as well as games where you actually play a character instead of following a script such as Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Morrowind. Posts: 3234 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 6581
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 10:07
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Of course, RPG on papers are more RPG than Computer Games... But the last ones cost less and are more easy to find them. -------------------- Download Geneforge 4: Rebellion You have 6 posts. Nobody cares what you think. - Thuryl Wikipedia may be your friend, but UBB is not. - Dikiyoba Posts: 1310 | Registered: Tuesday, December 20 2005 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 10:15
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quote:FYT. :D -------------------- Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. I hate undead. I really, really, really, really hate undead. With a passion. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 6670
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 10:50
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I think we need to classify 'fantasy' games in sub-genres. Avernum, and especially Geneforge and Nethergate, are role-playing games. You have to find a role for your character(s) to play, and the gameplay is responsive to your choices. Compare this with MicroSoft's Dungeon Siege (my favourite example of a non-RPG). You start out as a farmer, but that's only important for the first five minutes. There is absolutely no choices in the games, not even the usual "Hmmm... should I take a left or continue going straight in this dungeon?" Games like this shouldn't be classified as CRPGs. Maybe "Action-Fantasy". By Ephesos: quote:FYT. :D :D -------------------- IF I EVER BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD: No matter how much I want revenge, I will never order an underling "Leave him. He's mine!" Posts: 1509 | Registered: Tuesday, January 10 2006 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 11:34
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Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, and, from my limited knowledge, The Elder Scrolls games are all CRPGs with real RP between the C and G. No, they're not the same as games you play with a pencil and paper, but you come up with a role and you play it. Geneforge is in this category too, I think, although I haven't finished any Geneforge. The Avernums fit in with the majority of CRPGs. They have a set plot from which you can't really deviate, but you have your choice of where to go when, how to develop your characters, and minor things you'd like to do. You can actually deviate far from the plot, but it usually just means the game stops responding to you besides (often) everyone attacking you, and the game is unwinnable. Diablo and Dungeon Siege are the far end of the spectrum. There's really no role at all. You are a character or group of characters and you kill stuff. That's the kind of game your friend rejected, probably, and I agree that these games aren't really roleplaying games. Fantasy action-adventures, maybe. —Alorael, who now must bring up the time-honored debate over Zelda: RPG or not? It's one of the fruitless arguments that makes the internet worth inhabiting. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Board Administrator
Member # 1
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 13:19
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"I work with this goth who says that Computer RPGs AREN'T properly role playing games." He's half right. Some games really do encourage you to pick a role and play it. Fallout and Planescape come to mind. I've tried to put some of that into the Geneforge games. The essence of role-playing is, in my view, being forced to make decisions, seeing those decisions have an effect, living with their consequences, and then make more decisions. Computer games can and sometimes do achieve this. It takes a lot of work, though, and a large portion of the gaming populace just wants to hit things. Which is why don't don't see so much of that. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 6403
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 14:18
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Nice job of overplaying the goth part, though. -------------------- ??? ?????? ???? ????? Posts: 883 | Registered: Wednesday, October 19 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 15:06
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How does he define the distinction - between pen and paper vs. electronic, group vs. single-player, plot vs. graphics or even story-telling vs. playing? So far, I've referred to the games you can win or lose as "RPG", and everything else as "roleplaying" or "RP". I haven't played pen and paper rpgs - except for a single session of one game (The Dark Eye) back when I was 11. I'm not sure if by the above terminology I should place it among the RPs or RPGs. However, one could argue that the GM is the pen&paper equivalent of the game engine and AI in the computer game - simulating your opponent and making sure the rules of realism are followed. That would make it an RPG like a computer game. I wouldn't make the medium the primary distinction - RPG is RPG, whether the dice are plastic and regular Euclidean polyhedrons or electronic. The plot quality is more important, but that is a fuzzy border. I thought Geneforge, compared to Avernum, placed too much weight on combat and "creating cool monsters" as opposed to a believable world and story, but I would still call it an RPG. I won't deny that many games sold as "RPG" these days aren't by any definition of the word. But my point is that there are computer games that are RPGs - the medium isn't very important. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 4445
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 16:07
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Wait, maybe I'm just too young and haven't been part of the scene, but why disqualify games because they're primarily scripted and linear? The difference is simply between playing a well-defined role with a gaming experience tailored around that role and a somewhat more flexible, but also generic, system in which the player's "role" is primarily self-imposed. An RPG is simply a game that encourages identification with the player character, not necessarily one that gives the player total control over the PC. I've never even touched pen-and-paper, so I don't have much to add on the main topic. I mostly just think FF7 deserves the name RPG, and tailor my definitions around that. :D Everyone's right about "action-fantasy," too. [ Wednesday, May 03, 2006 16:09: Message edited by: PoD person ] Posts: 293 | Registered: Saturday, May 29 2004 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 2238
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 16:22
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The primary purpose of RPGs is to create a character, his/her motives, personality, etc. You could argue that playing a less-lethal Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell) is taking character development into account, but I think few would agree with you. Without choices to be made, and a path so well set, it's hard to actually play a character and have decisions have consequences (I probably could have worded that better). Thus, you aren't playing much of a role, other than the one the game has defined for you. D&D is far more of and "RPG" than FFXx and such will ever be. You are actively given chances to play out the thoughts of your character, and that will affect the rest of your adventure in very real ways. The Elder Scrolls series is close, as your actions do have effect. However, the quests tend to be one-sided, leaving lots of black or white choices; not really the games fault, but a design decision to ship the games within reasonable time. I'm a bit agitated at the moment, so this might come off as a rant, I dunno. And my chest hurts. -------------------- DEMON PLAY, DEMON OUT! Posts: 1582 | Registered: Wednesday, November 13 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 20:52
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The first computer RPG I ever played (the Dark Eye stuff was before this) was Albion. By the arguments given here, it sounds less like an RPG, even though it's turn-based (thus action doesn't figure so prominently), well-told and immerses the player in a detailed, coherent world that rivals even the fan-created Ermarian. This is because it uses only characters that are firmly defined - their skills, appearance, personality - and you follow a very linear plot, which only gives you a single quest to solve at one time, in a straight order. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Nuke and Pave
Member # 24
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 21:35
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I guess it really depends on what your definition of "role playing" is. Even if you take the DnD definition, there are computer games that give characters similar level of freedom. (Going off the edge of the map is theoretically an option in DnD, but is likely to result in quick death, unless DM is feeling very generous.) My definition of "role-playing games" includes all games in which my characters "live" in their world. In Diablo you interact with a couple of townspeople, but spend most of the time killing stuff in the dungeons. In Baldur's Gate, or Spidweb games, the amount of time you spend talking to NPCs is comparable to the amount of time you spend killing stuff. (You still spend a lot of time killing stuff, but town to dungeon ratio is about 1:3, rather than 1:20) -------------------- Be careful with a word, as you would with a sword, For it too has the power to kill. However well placed word, unlike a well placed sword, Can also have the power to heal. Posts: 2649 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Wednesday, May 3 2006 22:26
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It's best to just not try to pretend that "RPG" means the same when you say "tabletop RPG" as it does when you say "computer RPG". "RPG", as far as computer games go, is a marketing term used to describe games with a certain style of gameplay, and specifically a certain style of combat. To give a particularly illustrative example, there's no sensible non-gameplay-focused definition by which Final Fantasy 1 is an RPG and Megaman X isn't. Both are games in which your characters' abilities increase over time and which occasionally drop a bunch of plot exposition on you, but FF1 is an "RPG" because your characters' abilities are defined in terms of numerical values. (Turn-based combat in which you control a small group of characters also used to be characteristic of RPGs, but that's not so much the case any more.) Another significant difference between RPGs and non-RPGs, I suppose, is that in RPGs you tend to spend a lot of time doing things which are not obvious game-mechanical challenges (i.e. fights or puzzles as opposed to exploring or talking to people), whereas in non-RPGs you tend to spend most of your time doing one or two things for which there are specific, well-defined rules. By this definition, combat-based dungeon-crawling games like Shining in the Darkness or Angband aren't RPGs; lots of people don't really consider those to be RPGs anyway, so I'm comfortable with this. (On a side note, one could argue that the difference between the "RPG" genre and the "adventure" genre is that adventures tend to remove obvious game-mechanical challenges almost entirely, unless you count "use object X on object Y for non-obvious effect" as a well-defined game mechanic.) [ Wednesday, May 03, 2006 22:35: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Thursday, May 4 2006 00:46
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I just realized that by some criteria, Geneforge could be said to be drifting from an RPG towards turn-based strategy. The ability to create troops and operate them independently from each other is characteristic for the latter, although the essential Main Character (whose death ends the game) still remains, and there is no resource gathering either. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, May 4 2006 07:15
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Strategy games very rarely involve large amounts of dialogue. Diplomacy, yes. Trying to find out whose lost cat you can rescue for new gear, no. —Alorael, who considers "RPGs" that give you a set cast of specific characters a category by themselves. They're RPGs, except you don't pick the role and you don't really play it yourself, either. Interactive movie, perhaps? No, the term is not perjorative. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Friday, May 5 2006 00:57
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I'd say that the major defining characteristic of the "strategy" genre is player/NPC symmetry -- the NPCs play by more or less the same rules as you do. The computer opponent may or may not have different units available to it, but your abilities and theirs are not fundamentally incommensurable. This characteristic, of course, makes strategy games uniquely suited for a multiplayer mode. The genre can be further divided into: * tactical strategy games (Shining Force, Fire Emblem), occasionally referred to as "strategy RPGs", in which predefined units are available in each battle and the focus is on using them as effectively as possible, and * for lack of a better word, strategic strategy games (Starcraft, Civilisation), in which resources are collected to produce units, and long-term planning can be as important as or more important than combat. Note that by this definition, Geneforge isn't a strategy game in either sense; sure, your creations and NPC creations have the same stats, but there's no real symmetry between player actions and NPC actions. You hop around from zone to zone solving quests, while NPCs sit around passively and respond to your actions. I spend too much time thinking about the theory of game design. [ Friday, May 05, 2006 01:11: Message edited by: Thuryl ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |