Well this thread here is mostly to prove a point to my friend so here goes. Earlier today we were watching a review of Valkyria Chronicles and every times the reviewer mentioned "RPG" he stated that its not a *real* rpg. I asked him what were a real RPG and he said that a real RPG has a character creation system. He also stood by his statement and proclaimed the FF series of not being actual RPG's. I know some might not classify Valkyria Chronicles as a true rpg, but it has all the things a true rpg needs.

Well my point is that theres different genres of RPG games, But a rpg game does not have to include a character creation system. Besides, If you give a player the freedom to create whatever character he would like, It could screw up the story on some levels.

Well, do you stand on my side or my buddy's? Oh yeah the final fantasy series is a true and true rpg series.

A role playing game. A game in which you play a role as someone.

For me the phrase has come to refer to the genre of games in which outcomes of actions, even if just in combat, are determined by visible statistical attributes of characters and, in some cases, situations. The more detailed the statistical representations and the more control over them the player is given, the 'deeper' the RPG is (though not necessarily better).

That said, I tend to prefer deeper RPGs like Fallout and D&D-based games over the simpler systems typically used by JRPGs.

Usually a shaped charge propelled by some sort of... oh wait you're talking about the other RPG. To me an RPG really only needs to focus on an engaging and interactive storyline with some character creation put in but not necessary.

I'd say the only RPGs that really (for me) fit the idea of playing a role where I can influence the story were Planescape Torment and Mass Effect.

A game where you take a role of a hero or saviour that isnt a fps
You can level up
Characters creation is bollocks.

character creation just makes the game that much better but isn't neccesery(SP).

Um, define "character creation system" for me, please?

Some *tabletop* games don't have a "character creation system", but they're very definitely RPG's. An RPG is a GAME you PLAY in which you take on and control the ROLE of a particular character. It doesn't matter whether you picked that character's initial stats or someone else did or whether those stats ever change, what matters is that you control the ROLE of that character.

Thus games like Prince of Persia where you control the Prince's physical actions but not the dialog are not RPG's because you're not dictating his ROLE. Diablo II isn't an RPG because your ROLE is dictated by the game, all you can control is the killing-things-and-taking-their-stuff aspects.

If you are controlling the role of your character even to the extent of having them complain about what's going on even though they can't really control it, it's an RPG. It's expressed, generally, through dialog because that's the only real means a game has of accessing how a given character thinks/feels about what's going on.

JMeganSnow:
Um, define "character creation system" for me, please?

Some *tabletop* games don't have a "character creation system", but they're very definitely RPG's. An RPG is a GAME you PLAY in which you take on and control the ROLE of a particular character. It doesn't matter whether you picked that character's initial stats or someone else did or whether those stats ever change, what matters is that you control the ROLE of that character.

Thus games like Prince of Persia where you control the Prince's physical actions but not the dialog are not RPG's because you're not dictating his ROLE. Diablo II isn't an RPG because your ROLE is dictated by the game, all you can control is the killing-things-and-taking-their-stuff aspects.

If you are controlling the role of your character even to the extent of having them complain about what's going on even though they can't really control it, it's an RPG. It's expressed, generally, through dialog because that's the only real means a game has of accessing how a given character thinks/feels about what's going on.

This is a more elloquent example of what I was trying to get at...

I really liked Mass Effect and Torment because I felt they got the characters feelings and throughts across better than other games. I felt like Cmdr. Sheperd was a real character, since so many of the reactions/dialogue choices had fully voiced feeling behind them. This is similar to the Nameless One.

Oblivion sucks as a true RPG because your character HAS no thoughts and feelings, or at least no means of conveying them into the game world. Even Fallout 3 really sucks at this.

popdafoo:
A role playing game. A game in which you play a role as someone.

By joe I think hes got it! :D

I define an RPG as a game that has character DEVELOPMENT as oppose to creation. Just about any game where your character improves through leveling and the like has RPG elements.

As an example, the FF series is defiantly an RPG despite having almost no character customization, however (as a for instance) Saints Row 2 wouldn't really count as an RPG even though you can completely customize your character.

Personally I like my RPGs to have a nice bit of story behind the characters, and for their stories to be told during the course of the game. But this doesn't always happen.

'Rocket Propelled Grenade'
Generally an RPG means more than 20hrs playtime. At least to me.
And it's quite common for JRPGs to have very little customisation...

Well, The Witcher didn't have a character creation screen whatsoever, and I consider that to be one of the best RPGs of the past several years. What made it an RPG? Customizable character development and the ability to truly affect the story and its outcomes. The same goes for Deus Ex. There is a minimal character creation screen (VERY minimal), but the role-playing experience is easily one of the best ever.

JMeganSnow:
Um, define "character creation system" for me, please?

Some *tabletop* games don't have a "character creation system", but they're very definitely RPG's. An RPG is a GAME you PLAY in which you take on and control the ROLE of a particular character. It doesn't matter whether you picked that character's initial stats or someone else did or whether those stats ever change, what matters is that you control the ROLE of that character.

Thus games like Prince of Persia where you control the Prince's physical actions but not the dialog are not RPG's because you're not dictating his ROLE. Diablo II isn't an RPG because your ROLE is dictated by the game, all you can control is the killing-things-and-taking-their-stuff aspects.

If you are controlling the role of your character even to the extent of having them complain about what's going on even though they can't really control it, it's an RPG. It's expressed, generally, through dialog because that's the only real means a game has of accessing how a given character thinks/feels about what's going on.

Well said, though I do disagree with a bit because it discounts things like WoW, where 'role' applies to combat, whether you're tanking, doing dps, or healing, but story-wise you're just one a few million dudes with pointed bits of metal or wood or what have you. And, if not for your last little paragraph, it'd discount pretty much every game because you're always the protagonist. I can't think of a game you can start up and say "this playthrough, I'm going to take over the world/universe/whatever" instead of "Save the universe/whatever". It's pretty much just "I'm going to save the universe while being a dick" or "save the universe while being a pretty nice guy," or "Save the universe while being a dick and nice."

Also, no it doesn't need character customization to be a RPG. Your friend is an idiot.

Well, I voted yes, since I think that a character creation is necessary in order to truly understand your character. Either that or a customization option before the game truly starts. Otherwise I don't feel like it is MY character but just something someone created in order to railtoad me towards an end (yes I know that crpgs are mostly railroading the player but a good crpg hides it well). Even if I get a pre-made character in a table-top rpg we get some time and a few points to customize it.

Good morning blues:
For me the phrase has come to refer to the genre of games in which outcomes of actions, even if just in combat, are determined by visible statistical attributes of characters and, in some cases, situations. The more detailed the statistical representations and the more control over them the player is given, the 'deeper' the RPG is (though not necessarily better).

This. And after over ten years of playing these things I still don't know if I prefer the Western or Japanese style. >_>

popdafoo:
A role playing game. A game in which you play a role as someone.

this

DirkGently:

Well said, though I do disagree with a bit because it discounts things like WoW, where 'role' applies to combat, whether you're tanking, doing dps, or healing, but story-wise you're just one a few million dudes with pointed bits of metal or wood or what have you.

Sort of--there's gray area, of course, there almost always is. I would say with an MMORPG, you are controlling the role your character(s) take in the imaginary society that is the game world, so to that extent it's still an RPG--you just type your dialog instead of selecting from a list because there are actual people around to read it and respond to it.

And, if not for your last little paragraph, it'd discount pretty much every game because you're always the protagonist.

I'd say this more has to do with the limitations inherent in the medium--RPG's started as tabletop games and moved, imperfectly, to computers. But you can still distinguish pretty easily between games that are trying to be like tabletop games (CRPG's) to the extent of allowing you *some* choices and role-selection and the ones that eschew this idea completely.

What really annoys me is when people define an RPG as "a game where you level" or some otherwise totally irrelevant attribute.

PedroSteckecilo:

Oblivion sucks as a true RPG because your character HAS no thoughts and feelings, or at least no means of conveying them into the game world. Even Fallout 3 really sucks at this.

It's definitely not my favorite TYPE of RPG, but I'd say that Oblivion does allow you to define a role for your character pretty well by what quest lines you choose to pursue. Of course, even saying that much is awkward because given enough time you can do EVERYTHING with the SAME CHARACTER, so you're never really making a choice where doing one thing precludes doing some other thing.

Well, no, there are SOME sidequests where you can actually make permanent and irrevocable choices, but they're not even remotely involved with the main push of the game. So I'd say games like Oblivion probably belong in a subcategory that's similar to RPG's but not quite the same thing. Isn't that why most people call them "sandbox games" as opposed to RPG's?

It is role playing if you play a role, it does not mean that you create a role.

An RPG also known as a Role Playing Game. This is a game where you pretend to be someone you're not.

A Role Playing Game

I don't consider JRPGs to be true role-playing games since they're more like interactive stories/anime films, especially in recent years where you have games like Final Fantasy XII that almost literally play themselves with minimal input from the player.

I'm also a YOOGE (say that word in Mike Francesca's Noo Yawk accent for maximum effect) proponent of the avatar protagonist as seen in Elder Scrolls games and in Grand Theft Auto 3---I find a game more immersive if the development, motivations, and desires of the character aren't forced on me by some hack of a scriptwriter. Give me a game where I'm completely free to ignore at my leisure any sort of main story that may be going on and I'm going to latch on and love it to death in a manner worse than Elmira from Tiny Toon Adventures. I don't think you're truly shading into role-playing until you give the player that freedom.

The trouble is only in allowing yourself to be ruled by labels, in which "RPG" most assuredly is a label and little else. Rarely do two people have the same idea of what a word encompasses, and this realization is a part of Zen.

In terms of general societal use of the label, RPGs these days are generally games with some kind of alternate personae statistic tracking system and a focus on accumulation. Deep storylines, or even concrete roles, are not particularly required for a game to be marketed as an RPG.

geldonyetich:
The trouble is only in allowing yourself to be ruled by labels, in which "RPG" most assuredly is a label and little else. Rarely do two people have the same idea of what a word encompasses, and this realization is a part of Zen.

That doesn't mean they can't arrive at a mutual definition given some effort--if that were true, communication would be not just difficult but *impossible*.

In terms of general societal use of the label, RPGs these days are generally games with some kind of alternate personae statistic tracking system and a focus on accumulation. Deep storylines, or even concrete roles, are not particularly required for a game to be marketed as an RPG.

So Need for Speed is an RPG?

I could market my ass as an RPG if I wanted to but I'm not sure anyone would believe me.

JMeganSnow:

geldonyetich:
The trouble is only in allowing yourself to be ruled by labels, in which "RPG" most assuredly is a label and little else. Rarely do two people have the same idea of what a word encompasses, and this realization is a part of Zen.

That doesn't mean they can't arrive at a mutual definition given some effort--if that were true, communication would be not just difficult but *impossible*.

Not quite impossible. You see communication is a matter of near misses. When we say something, we're not conveying thought directly, but rather breaking it down into a series of abstract tools - words - which we use to convey the idea to another. A good analogy I've read is in comparing a television's resolution to reality - our ideas are the pixelated version of reality that can fit in our head, and these undergo further pixelation in being formed into words.

There is a certain attempt to arrive at a roughly equivalent concept of what something is, but we cannot realize reality directly through words - right down to the most base molecule - no matter how much knitpicking we do. I could describe a simple thing with 1000 different words, and still not describe the thing in its entirety (though your patience in decoding those 1000 words likely would not last that long).

Because we never have nor ever will break down a word into conveying exact reality, there will always be a disparity of reality between one person's concept of any word and another person's concept. There is no such thing as a 100% mutual concept, even in the most simplest words, because no word can be anything more than an abstract tool used to try to describe reality. At best, we can seemingly have congruent abstractions, but this is surely a misconception considering an abstraction, by definition, has a loose association with reality.

Disturbing, isn't it? (Granted, my definition of what's disturbing will vary from yours.) It's not so bad, we've been living your entire life like this fairly well. Awareness of this fundamental difference in definition will at least help with understanding others' inability to comprehend you at times.

a game where you start out as a character, witch they gradually build up. usually ending up more powerful and durable endgame than characters in other video games start out as and no it doesn't require a customizable character but i like the option

I would prefer at least a character customization system. I see no reason why we couldn't have a main character be your own avatar. You can still have plenty of other party characters that were pregenned.

geldonyetich:
Because we never have nor ever will break down a word into conveying exact reality, there will always be a disparity of reality between one person's concept of any word and another person's concept. There is no such thing as a 100% mutual concept, even in the most simplest words, because no word can be anything more than an abstract tool used to try to describe reality. At best, we can seemingly have congruent abstractions, but this is surely a misconception considering an abstraction, by definition, has a loose association with reality.

I might understand the argument when it comes to physical reality and feelings. But what about math? If we agree on axioms, go our separate ways to do a complicated calculation, and get together in fifty years to compare results, finding they are the same, does that not mean the result was always the same whether we found it or not? And does that not mean we must share a bunch of concepts fully?

Nutcase:
I might understand the argument when it comes to physical reality and feelings. But what about math? If we agree on axioms, go our separate ways to do a complicated calculation, and get together in fifty years to compare results, finding they are the same, does that not mean the result was always the same whether we found it or not? And does that not mean we must share a bunch of concepts fully?

Math is a system we completely invented ourselves as a form of measurement of reality. When you measure off 5 feet of something, you discard the "feet of something" and are left with "5" and that's how math is able to exist as relatively concrete: a level of abstraction heavily removed from reality. You can keep the "feet" as a measure of unit, but how do you express the "of something" (e.g. wood) mathematically? (What's more, the first 5 feet of wood could not be completely identical to the next 5 feet of wood, down to the individual molecule.)

To an extent, that 1 + 1 = 2 will still be 1 + 1 = 2 even 200 years from now acts to disprove math's connection to reality: things in life change, that which doesn't change has a strike against it in terms of being artificial. 1s may be 1s and 2s may be 2s, but the 1s we deal with today may not be the same 1s we're dealing with tomorrow.

It's interesting, really. Strictly speaking, when you distance yourself from reality and utilize aspects that exist only mentally - such as math - it's insanity. However, the funny thing about being human is that we've a tendency to bend insanity to a productive ends. Ideas are naive in that the only place they exist as we perceive them is in our heads, but ideas have power in that they can be tools that work... at least the majority of the time. When they don't work, when we act upon ideas that are faulty tools, we have a Challenger Disaster (to use an extreme example). When we forget the difference between reality and our ideas, it can have tragic results.

(Talk about beating the snot out of a "what's your definition of x" thread.)

Diablo 2 dosnt have one and its REALLY succeffull but its nice to have one any way

RPGs do not neccesarly need a character creation system. The first 2 diablo games did not have proper character creators you just picked an established character before you started the game. If neither those nor Final Fantasy or any JRPGs are RPGs what are they?

The main problem with gamers defining RPGs is that so many games that many of us CONSIDER RPGs really aren't RPGs by the original definition.

An RPG is a game in which you take on a role, as someone mentioned. Probably close to 100% of JRPGs are not TRUE RPGs, they have merely been lumped under the label over the years. "Buy Raven," you say, "FF is an RPG because you take on a role!"

The difference is that, in FF and many similar JRPGs, you don't actually effect or GUIDE the characters through this world. The game world has you following a set story, with no possibility to deviate beyond a few side quests here and there...And you don't even have the freedom to determine how the side quests play out; the limit of your ability to determine the outcome is "Will you help the farmer harvest his crops? -Yes No"

Simply playing in the shoes of another character does NOT make a game an RPG. If this was the case, Halo would be an RPG because you take on the role of Master Chief. The difference between the role you take in a true RPG and the role you take in other games is that, in a true RPG, your actions should actually have an impact on what happens. In a real RPG, you should have multiple choices to do something, and each of those choices has a different outcome. So long as that is the case, it doesn't matter if you create your own character or are provided with a preset character. A game in which you follow a linear path and linear story that do not change is technically an adventure game.

I've seen people claim that leveling up and stat-tracking and customization and such is what makes an RPG. That is an even bigger twisting of the genre than the last one. If that was the case, Madden would be an RPG because it tracks the stats of your team, or Call of Duty 4 would be an RPG because you gain experience, rank up, and customize your weapons and abilities in multiplayer.

Perhaps the MOST absurd definition of an RPG I have EVER heard is that RPGs need to be turn-based. That is bullshit. I've heard many a JRPG fan say that Mass Effect isn't a real RPG, and FF7 is, because Mass Effect isn't turn-based. That is NOT WHAT MAKES AN RPG! If that was the case, computer chess would be an RPG because it is a turn-based game.

So basically, a "true" RPG is a game where your character, be it custom-made or preset, takes on a role where your choices actually make an impact. Mass Effect is an RPG because your actions dictate the outcome of the story. The Witcher is a true RPG for the same reason. Oblivion is an action-adventure because your actions don't actually have any real effect on the world or story. Valkyria Chronicles isn't an RPG, it is a strategy game. Stats and character customization are elements found IN RPGs, but they don't MAKE a game an RPG. Games like Final Fantasy are marketed as RPGs, but they aren't "true" RPGs. However, the true definition of an RPG has become so twisted with time that JRPGs are considered RPGs now.

NO!

We had this thread, very recently, and it came pretty far. Look here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.79606?page=2#1023624

Use that thread. Please. We'll never get anywhere if people just start over and state the same things every time.

And no, levels does not equal an RPG, WoW is NOT an RPG, you do NOT have a role in WoW. (Just like it says in that very thread by the way.)