What do you think of when you hear RPG?
I used to play a lot of RPGs, back when genres were just a thing that gaming magazines used to talk about; the players never used to call them by name. My dad always used to call them "Quest Games", which I think is fitting. Yes, you can argue that most any game centers around a quest, just like most any game involves playing a role, but that's going to be true unless you're playing Tetris, so some variance needs to be allowed. I do agree that RPG should be relegated to those that retain more elements from Pen & Paper RPGs than just a leveling system or "teh maen karektur has a sord", so something like Planescape Torment would be a rare example of something that still would count as a Role-Playing Game.
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seems that most people agree that it has to be heavy on Story elemnts and choices that can change the outcome of the game.
and while this is great for the player. its hard to create a story that would change for every player, sure you can have few different endings, but the storyline should be somewhat linear
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Agreed; I made part of my living as a writer for a while, and something like this would take a lot of time and effort to put together, if you want it to be worth much of anything. That said, I don't think that should hold it back from that becoming what the genre means, just because it would have very few examples. Genres are allowed to be rare; I can't think of much else quite like Katamari, but it certainly stands as a genre all its own, unless you want to make some long, convoluted Frankenterm to describe it.
Of course, I understand the frustration: coming up with a great solution and getting people to use it are 2 totally different problems. I've been trying to get people to stop saying Metroidvania for years, because it's ugly (though not as ugly as the old term, Castleroid) and it gives credit where it isn't due; Metroid didn't start it (first 2 Metroid games don't really even qualify), and Castlevania didn't add anything essential to it (most of its "innovations" can be traced to other games, especially Super Adventure Island 2). It's logical, but I still wind up on a street corner with my cardboard sign, yelling into the wind.
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I like the rant. I've actually pondered this myself. Because obviously you're right: there are way more games that involve playing a role than there are games that get classified as role playing games. (Though not every game involves role playing. The clearest example is abstract and arcade games like Tetris or Pinball which provide an aim without a narrative.)
With a lot of things, not just video games, our categories seem to involve more of a "family resemblance" than precise criteria. We have certain "paradigm" cases of something, examples of the type, and then we decide how well something fits in a category by how much it resembles those examples. For example, it seems like this is how most people use the label 'fruit'. Sure, there's a more precise scientific definition, but most people don't know it, and they instead seem to determine what should and shouldn't have that label based on how similar it is to paradigm instances of fruit, like apples. (This is actually really cool. It means you can ask people which fruits are more and less "fruity" and their answers will be surprisingly consistent. Apples are consistently considered very fruity, bananas much less so.)
I think this is how 'role playing game' works as a title for games. Its meaning isn't games that involve playing a role, but rather games that sufficiently resemble paradigm RPGs--the central one being classic D&D and some of the classic attempts to translate that kind of play to video gaming. So it does sort of describe game-play and mechanics, in that they are some of the features people look at--character progression, interactive dialogue, character customization, skill checks, etc.--but none of them is an essential part of the definition. (Character progression seems to be the closest. When people say a game has "RPG elements" this is often all they have in mind.)
And I'm with you: this means the category is kind of broad and imprecise. I find some of the sub-genre terms more useful. If somebody describes something as a JRPG or ARPG I have a much better idea what to expect. Two key things I want to know are (a) how much is the story "on rails", and (b) what sort of tasks does moment to moment gameplay mostly consist of?
So:
FF X: Scarcely open at all, there is a single story with pre-rendered cut-scenes, even character progression is pretty fixed / JRPG-style, turn-based fights + sports if you feel like it
The Outer Worlds: Quite open ended sub-plots, somewhat open overall plot, huge customization of player character / simple FPS squad combat or stealth + deep dialogue trees
Shadowrun Dragonfall: fairly linear mission structure, multiple endings based on important decisions / turn-based strategic squad combat based on positioning and cover + simple dialogue trees
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But if you cant imagine you are the ball you failed in pinball :D
on a serious note, family resemblance is a very interesting term. i guess thats how we have Souls-like and Metroid-like.
what im more concerned about here is the "what sort of tasks does moment to moment gameplay mostly consist of?" as its the core of the game, and this should be clear from the first few words i read about a game.
of course every game should push forward and try to be creative. but thats what makes a game unique and better than whatever it copies
and that can be by adding features like interactive dialogue, character customization, skill,,etc. but that is not the core of the playing mechanics.
i recall a game i played (Hand of fate)[https://www.store.steampowered.com/app/266510/Hand_of_Fate], that has a mix of Deck bulding card game and 3d fighting. i would still call it a card game as thats was most of what you do, and it controls the action parts.
Yet popular user-defined tags for this product are (Roguelike/Deckbuilding/Action Roguelike/RPG) don't really explain what to expect
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Hey--I prefer to imagine myself a pinball wizard!
But yeah, in general the vocabulary for this sort of description doesn't seem very well worked out. It isn't just a problem for "RPG" either. "Rogue-like" is just as bad: some are platformers, some turn-based tactical games, some dungeon crawls. And "platformer" gets used for things as diverse as Super Mario World, Dead Cells, Spyro, Hollow Knight, and Cuphead. Part of the issue is that different of the categories refer to different aspects of game play.
I suspect, though, that these rough groupings, which often start out as a single game and its imitators ("rogue-like" "doom clone" "metroid vania") are a lot easier to use than truly precise descriptions would be. I like your idea above of answering key questions about a game with a brief description, but that description is going to need quite a few parts to really do its job.
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If your character gets stronger over time, through experience points, skillpoints or any form of similar system, and it's a "core" part of the game, then I would say it's a CRPG. That's the definition the gaming industry has settled on at the very least. Games where it's not a core part are instead said to have RPG-like mechanics, or something along that line. And if a game happens to have all the requirements for an RPG and all the requirements for being in another genre, then it's both.
Tales of Maj'Eyal, Eye of the Beholder, Final Fantasy, Diablo, Skyrim, Pool of Radiance, The Witcher 3, these are all RPGs under this definition.
I don't subscribe to the idea that RPGs have to either have you play a role (you play a role in pretty much any game that has a main character...), or are based on pen & paper games (the early CRPGs were inspired by the likes of D&D, but original D&D is very different from what came after it, and it's incredibly hard to simulate the pen & paper RPG experience digitally, once you move past the tactical combat that the first edition of D&D was really all about).
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survival games would fit here as well
i think RPG would fit more as a game feature and not a genre
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Runescape was the first RPG I played but I automatically think of Morrowind.
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Maybe it's because I'm Japanese but JRPGs come to my head when I think of RPG
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Well, first I think about Bard´s Tale, Ultima, and the SSI Gold Box games. Yes, old stuff...
Nowadays many games have RPG elements... maybe >50% of all "big" games.
And Dark Souls or Borderlands would never come to my mind if I would need to describe RPG ;)
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You're just overthinking it but it's not a big deal. And I played Skyrim in 3rd person because I hate playing anything but FPS in first person, and I wanna see my custom character.
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Well, aren't they already kinda divided into subcategories ARPG, CRPG, JRPG, Roguelike, etc. It could be argued that all games are hard to categorise because a lot of them cross over into a few different categories.
When I think of a JRPG, for example, I am expecting to see something with turn-based/ party-based mechanics similar to Final Fantasy, or of course something like Ni No Kuni. (I don't play crappy RPG maker stuff, I hate them, so those don't count in my head. :P).
ARPGs, I'm thinking Bastion, Torchlight and so on.
Maybe everyone has a different idea of what games can be counted as an RPG, but it's so broad anyway.
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I don't play crappy RPG maker stuff, I hate them,
This kinda saddens me tbh. You'd be surprised how many genuinely good RPGMaker games are there nowadays ;)
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Steam is flooded with so so many terrible RPG maker games that I avoid them like the plague. That is, unless one has been recommended by a friend who's taste in games is similar to my own. =)
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When it comes to computer RPGs, I think of any game that simulates a tabletop RPG experience with the computer acting as the dungeon master. Generally it's a game where you create a character or characters, and/or gather party members along the way and go on an adventure. You use your character's skills, not yours as the player, to solve problems, not just in combat, but in conversations and the environment. The perspective (first person, third person, isometric, etc.) doesn't matter.
As for Disco Elysium, I do consider it an RPG. I've seen arguments about if it's an RPG or not before. Some people call it a point and click adventure, or say it's not an RPG because it doesn't have combat. I don't consider combat necessary to be an RPG, in fact I like RPGs that give you alternatives to combat if possible. I can kind of see the point and click similarities, but I've never seen a point and click adventure that has character creation, with attributes and skills that determine how or if you can complete quests. DE does sort of have combat though in a few places, it just plays out as a conversation.
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Best RPG of all time.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Rpg-7.jpg/300px-Rpg-7.jpg
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i think using subcategory would be best, like this:
Genre
---Horror
---Adventure
------RPG
------Point & CLick
genre could be swapped to graphic, POV, etc. as long tag is complete it should be doable
sure it's quite technical, but if everyone using it, eventually it becomes the norm
how come no-one made this yet?
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after all, every video game is a role-playing game...I think games are to be categorized by play mechanics
I agree so much with this, that for the longest time, I just assumed everyone else thought that way, too. That's why I always think of JRPGs when I hear "RPG": they're the only ones that don't play like anything else. Every other type of RPG has game-play that can also fit into another genre just fine: Elder Scrolls? Hack 'n' Slash. Baldur's Gate? RTS. Disco Elysium? Point and Click Adventure. Fire Emblem? Turn-Based Tactics. Sure, you could argue that games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are also turn based and also require some level of tactical strategy, but then how would you separate their game-play from ones like Fire Emblem where grid movement is part of said strategy (instead of movement being limited to "front row/back row" at best)? Even something like Chrono Trigger wouldn't quite fit as an RTS since you can't move your characters mid-battle.
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JRPG are basic turn-based combat that seem to be coming back (darkest dungeon), and if you add movement it becomes tactical
but modern JRPG are odd action/menu combat (hopefully we get FF7 soon)
all im asking for is using terms that set the expectation of gameplay. we cann add tags like RPG and story-rich all we like,but what are my interactions with the game going to be?
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In video games the term 'rpg' most often simply gets used to describe some kind of leveling or loot system. When a game has 'rpg elements' it usually has loot progression and skills you can level up. Even many so called rpgs don't have much to do with an actual role-playing game, they're rather action or strategy games with a level up system and loot.
A true role-playing game should allow you to play the person you want to play without restrictions. Your choices and the way you play should have consequences on the story, the game world and NPC behavior. It doesn't even need skills you level up, loot or combat. That's why there are hardly any video games that would even remotely qualify as role-playing games, it's simply very hard to do properly. I don't think Skyrim for example is a role-playing game, it's just an action-adventure. You hardly have any choices to make and if you have they don't really matter much.
The term 'action rpg' is even worse. Diablo has nothing to do with an rpg at all.
I believe it will take a while until rpgs are truly possible, until then people will keep using the terms for games that make use fo the typical basic rules of pen & paper rpgs.
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Even paper RPGs don't necessarily have much to do with roleplaying. I certainly played enough such games where it all amounted to using your character's abilities to advance the story, and have your character stats and gear grow during the game. Yet still, that doesn't make these games 'not RPG'. They are part of the pen & paper RPG genre. I think it's a rare GM that would really allow players to stray from the story, and a good amount of GMs would run games which are nothing more than levelling and loot fests, and consist mostly of combat.
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You don't need to stray from the story (would require a one of a kind GM to be able do that), but you should be allowed to do everything you want within the constraints of the story.
I know that some rpg sessions are only about rolling dice and getting loot, but then it's not an rpg you play. I mean, it's in the word itself - it's a role playing game. If you don't play a role, you don't play a role playing game. Actually there are rpgs that have no loot or skill levels at all. These are more rpgs than a game like Diablo could ever hope to be.
Now of course the term 'rpg' has been used for decades, even in computer games. And obviously people use it for dungeon crawlers like Eye of the Beholder, clickfests like Diablo or action-adventures like Skyrim. So it doesn't matter what I think. But a true rpg in the sense of the word is something different for me.
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I think that in P&P RPG, even if you're playing for loot, it's still a roleplaying game, at least by my definition. You still have a character, you're called by that character name, and you describe things from that character's viewpoint. For example you say 'I attack the troll'.
In a video game, that doesn't apply as such. Some people would say (and have said) that most games are roleplaying. In a platformer, you control a character, and in essence play that character. You don't describe it in words, like in a P&P RPG, but you still give instructions, via the controller, of what your character would do. You, as the roleplayer, attack creatures in the game.
Of course there's a lot less freedom in what to do. But if you were playing a P&P RPG that's mostly combat, the difference won't be huge.
In a game like Skyrim (and I personally haven't played Skyrim, though I played at least a little of all Elder Scrolls games before it) you have, in some senses, more freedom than in a P&P RPG. That's because there's more of a world than most GMs would create and you can go through it, discover things and do things. Granted, most of what you do would be combat, advancing your character, and learning lore, but again, not much different than you would in a P&P game.
Sure, the GM is crappy. In Oblivion I broke into a house by mistake, attacked someone I was trying to help by mistake, ... So it's bad controls coupled with the GM not letting you take that mistake back. But still...
In the end, it's up to you to define what it is 'to play a role'. If what you're looking for is complete freedom of verbal interaction, no, you don't get that in a CRPG. But you do often get a chance to choose your actions, and you can, to an extent, define to yourself what your character is like and follow that definition to the best of your ability. Or you could choose to min-max and have the best stats. But you do have that freedom. If your character isn't one to go into houses and open chests, don't do it.
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General categories, genres included, are always vague. You can't define something precisely.
I think games are to be categorized by play mechanics, what do you see (POV) and what you do (Actions)
That's what tags are for. Even you found out that it doesn't really work. For someone who's interested in story, for example, your definition doesn't mean that much.
Yes, a lot of people have over time complained about how genre definitions are inaccurate, but they are descriptive enough to mean something. You know that 'adventure' and 'action adventure' are different things, even if it may be annoying that they're both using 'adventure'. But that's true for almost anything in language. Language is inaccurate. The idea of communication is to try to understand what others mean, not argue that they're not speaking right.
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I luckily don't touch Rocket Propelled Grenades as a genre.
I blame Richie Branson for that joke.
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I have a few RPG categories 😄
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I'm asking to see what's inside these tags. Specially the comedy
Also very neat library, how is your room looking?
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2 examples:
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My room is nothing special. I'm a couch gamer 😊👍 A solid TV and Wireless keyboard and mouse. All I need.
Here's the whole library though. And yes, it's neat. I can easily find what I'm in the mood for:
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i like it!! except for the RPG part XD
was scratching my head with the funny RPG part until i remembered Southpark.
thanks for sharing
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Yeah there's a bunch of comedic Rpg's out there 😊 Weirdly though, I don't own that many.
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Oh lord. then comes a tactical roguelike comedy-RPG with pixelart and takes up 4 slots D: that was the main reason why I only tied depressurizer once, having overlapping categories cluttered everything so much (search for a title, and get multiple results for them, category headers further cramming up the screen )
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Mine are only placed into 1 category each though.
If it's a tactical roguelike comedy-RPG with pixelart.... It ends up in Roguelike, since I personally consider that the Core aspect.
And if you look at the newer pics. I made Rogue-Like/Lite it's own entity 👍
So yeah, keeping this crap organized is... Troublesome.
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So yeah, keeping this crap organized is... Troublesome.
I have 3 or 4 different categories for games that I should play soonish ( or sooner than the rest), that kind of shows what amount of control I have over my library xD
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To me, "RPG" is a game in which you can customize your character and pick your playstyle (and/or make your own path through the in-game world).
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None of those, but if i have to choose one i stand with Divinity: Original Sin 2, i think there're a lot of other game that better represent the RPGs, also i belive that a FPS with an inventory is nor a RPG, a hack and slash with skill tree is not a RPG, the true is that on this times what define a RPG is blur since you can take their features and use perfectly on other kind of game defining a new sub genre. I remember the Borderlands trailer,
"the RPG and the FPS made a baby!"
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Wow that game looks outdated
While I do love it, I wouldn't call it RPG or FPS
It plays a lot like Skyrim with guns, and less features
So 1st person action with guns for spells
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but its not like Doom or CoD
its less about the shooting and player skill and more about the numbers and your character "skill/spell"
is it the right type? what level? did you build and skill for DMG?
its like RPG and FPS had a baby dammit XD
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I really liked it described as a "looter-shooter", or basically Diablo, but FPS. :P Or FPS but with skills and weapon-loot. While it's not "pure" FPS, that category still carries so much info to it that still applies that it's super informative.
This reminded me of Strife which is an RPG done with Doom's engine, sooooo :D :D
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RPG is now an umbrella term with a lot of sub-genres. I can't really describe an RPG, but I know it when I play it.
To me, the quintessential 'pure' RPG is Baldur's Gate. That contains all the elements that could possibly be assigned to an RPG, and has them in abundance. Pillars of Eternity, Divinity, Planescape, etc. are all very closely related. Fantasy is the most common setting, but not the only setting, as South Park Stick of Truth & Fractured But Whole can attest.
Before that, I played Wizardry and Might and Magic when they were still young, as well as the Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance and its sequels). These games did their best to translate old paper roleplaying games into computer games, so I guess I'd call them CRPGs. I've also heard them referred to as dungeon-crawlers.
But to me Diablo is the quintessential dungeon-crawler. It can also be referred to as a hack & slash. In it and its progeny (Victor Vran, Grim Dawn, Van Helsing, Torchlight), the roleplaying is cut to a minimum, and instead there's a feedback loop whereby you go further into the dungeon to get better loot to allow you to kill stronger enemies to allow you to go further into the dungeon. Simple and easy. note that I just described Borderlands perfectly, so I do lump that game in here
Action-RPGs I find an awkward term that's overly used. Sure, it makes sense to use that to refer to Deus Ex, Dark Soules, System Shock, and the later Mass Effect games, as the emphasis is far more on action, yet there's enough role-playing elements to distinguish it from a shooter. But just about any 1st or 3rd person RPG gets lumped in with ARPG more often than not.
I dislike classifying games like Witcher and Skyrim and the later Fallout games as ARPG, I prefer to think of them as open-world RPGs, because the emphasis of the game is much more on exploring the world than it is on questing. That's what differentiate them from, say, Dragon Age, which hews much closer to Baldur's Gate, albeit in 1st person.
JRPGs are RPGs, but with a very distinct play style. It's weird to create a separate category, but they feel different enough to me that I just go with it.
I think there are a lot of games with RPG elements that are not RPGs, like Darkest Dungeon, which I think of as a roguelike, or Stardew Valley, which is a farming simulator. I don't consider Tactical RPGs to be a subgenre of RPG, but a sub-genre of Tactical games, as the focus is predominantly on the tactical part of the game. Whether Heroes of Might & Magic or X-Com, the RPG elements are just about getting better weapons or units to bring in to your next battle. TellTale games / Life is Strange aren't RPGs, they're glorified visual novels, or visual novels with Adventure elements ~now there's a mis-labeled genre if I ever heard one)
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Then maybe stop calling games RPG!!!. sure it can have RPG features/system
but the game is about the play loop, do you run sideways? do you shoot? click and read stuff?
being Fantasy/Story driven/Dungoun crawler/rougelike is more of a theme/system than gameplay IMO
and as games evolve thing will get more complex and integrated. so a category system based on play-loop will help define an expectation from the gameplay.
and telltale is more of an interactive movie to me.
EDIT: why is XCOM RPG? not enough stats/story into it (think fire emblem)
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Agreed, but
If I have no input to change an output, it's hardly a game. Regardless of how well it's written
I think a game needs a fail state. And player interaction as a minimum
Having a great story with non linear option and all the other features. Is just added features.
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This has bothered me since the 90s. Best of luck getting anyone to settle on a reasonable alternative. I still don't see traditional JRPGs as "RPG"s, but as long as I've been gaming, the genres have been conflated.
IMHO, the goal in attaching a genre label to a game is to give someone who knows nothing about the game a basic understanding of the gameplay. Then, they'll have a good idea of whether they might be interested or not. The confusion surrounding the RPG genre makes this determination more annoying than it should be.
So... what terms might describe the gameplay of these various RPGs (and related games) more uniquely? Well... I'm at the point where... I don't really care anymore. :) Maybe you'll get there, too (or maybe you'll change the way the world classifies games).
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Pokemon is not grindy, and the grind allow the lesser skilled to play by and feel powerful
Sure some of the mega bosses require a grind but most of them are optional to test your self
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Exactly, if I call a game souls-like and you have no experience with them it will mean nothing
But if I call it 3rd POV action game it would make much more sense.
If be missing the features details (RPG/hard combat), but you would understand how it plays at least
And the finer details can be sub-genre or explained with examples
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Lets just clear one thing, I love all RPGs.(LsSx) ALL RPG (5)
my problem is what we call them. i mean after all, every video game is a role-playing game.
this came to me as i was checking HB RPG sale www.humblebundle.com/store/promo/rpg-sale (ends in few hours)
all of them are nice, but they dont play the same. and i understand there are sub-genre and cross-genre.
But how can i recommend a game i cant describe.
Theory:
I think games are to be categorized by play mechanics, what do you see (POV) and what you do (Actions)
then we can go into minor details as game systems (leveling/looting/skills,,,). as any game can add Systems, but cant really change core POV/action
Sure some do mix POV/action, but very few are successful.
Testing:
Skyrim: 1st person Questing (FPQ) with a Fantasy setting and Character Progression. also Dragons
Witcher: 3rd person Questing (3PQ)? with a Fantasy setting and Character Progression. also sexy time
FFXV: ... Maybe i should rethink my theory
my latest game dilemma was Disco Elysium
I was trying to discuss it with friends and had a hard time explaining it to them, as RPG kept dropping and everyone had his own RPG in mind.
and i did not know any similar game.
anyway, this was all an excuse to make a GA or the giveaway is my way of saying sorry for the long rant
tell me what you think? how would you improve this? also hit the subscribe button and like this video
TL;DR
POLL
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