What is a role-playing game? How can you define it?

"In Video Games, having any part of the gameplay subservient to the story is a terrible idea that has been attempted many times and has never resulted in anything of quality."

No. Story should always come first. Gameplay should be based on how you want to tell the story, not the other way around.

Ah, that's a fair point.

I would agree a game that plays poorly but reads well would be better off stripping the game systems out in favour of just choosing the story.

...What.

Okay, I'm officially done with this thread. see ya laters.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:24:00 PM by unnown

^^^Gameplay is the subservient part of a game?

Yeah, no, let's just agree to disagree.

And if anything needs to be renamed, it's these new abominations of fake choices and flavour dialogue and nothing else. The old RP Gs that derived from Pn P RP Gs are just fine, thanks.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:24:30 PM by ShadowScythe

@101 Then what about the early games that didn't have stories to be built around? Are they arbitrarily bad then because gaming hadn't evolved enough as a medium to effectively tell a strong story?

edited 5th Mar '12 7:29:27 PM by hnd03

Edit that before I become offended

EDIT: Then it turned out I had to edit mine! This amuses me.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:25:00 PM by VutherA

Haha, what are you talking about? That edit tag is just from me uh um-- proofreading. Can't make things look unreadable y'know. Heh.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:27:12 PM by hnd03

I explained in mah edit.

Yes, old games without story are much, much worse and boring [/myopinion]

You know, the thing I always liked most about tetris was the story. You know that one scene with the L block and the square block, it was such a tearjerker.

"@101 Then what about the early games that didn't have stories to be built around? Are they arbitrarily bad then?"

I never said any of the games are bad. I love quite a few of the classic RP Gs. A lot of them are genuinely great games.

I just think RPG is the wrong name for them.

I roleplayed the L-block.

You got to choose which direction he went. Was he vertical or horizontal? Such an insane depth of choice. And the consequences, OH GOD THE CONSEQUENCES!

Tetris is a roleplaying game guys.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:30:38 PM by ShadowScythe

The S-Block is a Complete Monster.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:35:19 PM by VutherA

Slowly but surely this somehow summoned strawmanning silliness...

edited 5th Mar '12 7:42:28 PM by setnakhte

Late (sleeping), but...

@Shadow Scythe: Recent? Isn't that like the whole reason why it's called RPG in the first place? Yanno, the tabletop one? Or you forgot?

edited 5th Mar '12 7:43:03 PM by onyhow

The straight block may be the cruelest video game character ever.

Tiamatty, you're avoiding the question. You said that story should be first when making a game. What does this mean if a game lacks a story, or due to limitations does not have one at all? This isn't an RPG/Not RPG question.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:44:27 PM by hnd03

I'm pretty sure that we were talking in terms of RPGs here.

@Tiamatty: You realize that the term "role-playing game" was created for those early, mostly storyless games. If anything, modern RP Gs need to have their names changed.

Action-adventure isn't much in use. Or we can stick with the term "RPG" and make sure that it's as broad a term as possible, with a wide-open and accepting community.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:46:32 PM by Watashiwa

All it means is that "roleplaying" does not define an RPG, as it never did from the start.

What does is how it's played.

Let's stop the strawmanning, but the point is gotten. In every game(well, almost), you directly control a character. That in itself is roleplaying. That's why we don't use it to directly define an RPG, but use the game mechanics instead.

The story does not define an rpg either, as that's directly related to the roleplaying only. What always defined it from the start was the actual literal gameplay. The story, however, helped keep non-rpg's from being mistaken for them. Sometimes. A lot of games have RPG Elements, but the focus is rarely on the mechanics itself.

This is one genre I hate to define, but I just say the core statistic mechanics as the main focus overall is what makes it an rpg. Level Grinding is by far the biggest contributor to help tell them apart. There's some exceptions to that rule, like Illusion Of Gaia has no Level Grinding, but it sure as hell has Level Ups like any normal rpg.

Also, turn-based is not in every rpg, but it's almost always used in an rpg only. I can't think of any actual non-rpg's that use it, besides stuff like Card Games.

What? Nah, that'd be me saying "HURR DURR, RPG VIDEO GAMES ARE GAMES WHICH HAVE NO RELATION TO THEIR NAMESAKE BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I'M USED TO".

A viewpoint I would not consider for being needlessly rude.

I just found Scythe's reply to be humorous.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:47:21 PM by VutherA

@onyhow: Dialogue options as Tiamatty describes them (flavour dialogue that exists purely for defining the personality of the character) is pretty recent to the genre.

Yeah, you could kind of make a character in tabletop games but as I understand it, it was more about the actions of the character rather than the dialogue and the dice rolls and stats were what determined the outcome of the actions. It's not like players sat around a table romancing each other or discussing their opinions on God or anything like that. I mean, there might have been some of that (certainly nothing that I've experienced in the one or two times I played Dn D) but it wasn't the focus.

So even in Tabletop RP Gs it was more about players saying "This is what I want my character to do" and stats and dice rolls determining the outcome of that.

Most RP Gs that have derived from that stick with that formula while adding their own ideas using the gameplay medium.

^^If you're interested, Jagged Alliance 2 has some of the best turn based combat around. I wouldn't call that an RPG. It's purely a turn based strategy game.

edited 5th Mar '12 7:52:02 PM by ShadowScythe

Actually, I consider Turn-Based Strategy as long as it has some kind of stats an RPG.

However, I don't consider Football games an RPG, although it does employ the stats, it's clearly Sports.

I got Quest 64 for my RPG-loving.

"Tiamatty, you're avoiding the question. You said that story should be first when making a game. What does this mean if a game lacks a story, or due to limitations does not have one at all? This isn't an RPG/Not RPG question."

It depends on what the developer is trying to accomplish, I suppose. If they're trying to tell a good story, then gameplay has to be subservient to the story. That's going to be true whether it's an RPG, an FPS, or even a platformer.

However, if they're trying to make just a simple game, where the story doesn't matter at all (like a lot of early games), then that's different.

Ok fine level-grinding games can keep the RPG label, I don't particularly care.

I do care about games which break away from such hoary old mechanics while retaining some way for players to build their characters. Lets define a name/genre for them.