Thursday, November 01, 2007
RPS Takes On The "What Is An RPG?" Question
The far-too-clever PC gaming blog "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" has a take on a Eurogamer review of The Witcher, and takes up once again the question of what makes a computer RPG an RPG in the article, "What Sort of RPG Is The Witcher?"
Not that this isn't ripe territory for discussion. Hey, I've done it... twice! At best, my attempts managed to include just about every game commonly considered an RPG, and to exclude almost all others. But it's fuzzy territory to say the least.
The two criteria Gillen brings up are the following:
#1 - You must have control over your character's progression or creation. The bone he has to pick with the Eurogamer review (by Dan Whitehead) seems to be over whether or not you must be able to create and customize your character from the very beginning in order for it to qualify as an RPG (a requirement that would exclude nearly every jRPG ever created since the advent of the SNES).
#2 - RPGs must be an indirect test of skill - the avatar's final success or failure include the result of some statistical abstraction.
So - is it still an RPG if you are handed the character to play? Or is Dan Whitehead correct in his implication that you need to have that customization from the get-go?
Well, my own useless opinion is this: Even before I rolled my first set of dice in a "Pen And Paper" D&D Game in 1981, there was a tradition of playing "pre-gens" for quick games, particularly in tournaments. I never once heard of anybody contending that because they were being handed the character sheet for Zinethar the Cleric for the Ghost Tower of Inverness that the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game they were about to play was now magically NOT an RPG.
Of course, I don't know if people were even calling D&D and similar games "role-playing games" when this practice first started. The game came first, and the name came later. For a while it was called "Fantasy Wargaming," "Fantasy Gaming," and even "Adventure Gaming" before "Role-Playing Game" stuck.
(Vaguely) related musings in roleplaying territory:
* What Makes a Great RPG - The Answer?
* Why Do RPGs Suck Now?
* But Is It An RPG?
* The Evolution of Computer RPGs
* The Rules of Role-Playing Games
.
Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:01 AM (Permalink)
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Wha...??? Just because you didn't create your very own super nifty character, now suddenly you're no longer playing a RPG?! Whoever thinks that is an idiot, straight up.
-Xenovore
-Xenovore
# posted by 
: November 01, 2007 1:04 PM
: November 01, 2007 1:04 PM
It is (or was, at one point) a common argument though. See any given "Final Fantasy isn't an RPG" flamewar.
Though there are so many RPGs that give you pregenerated characters to one extent or another that creating the initial character is more a signal of the type of RPG rather than a definition of the Genre.
Though there are so many RPGs that give you pregenerated characters to one extent or another that creating the initial character is more a signal of the type of RPG rather than a definition of the Genre.
I saw the "if you don't make your character from scrath, it's not an RPG" thing come up in the discussions here at 20-sided. I think it's a ridiculous idea, designed more to support the idea that western RPGs are the only RPGs.
I started a game of Morrowind recently, to get a feel for a wRPG (incidentally, I hated it). When you create your character, you have a few options for how deeply to customize your character, including the option where you answer questions (with no indication of the consequences) and the game generates a character for you. Does Morrowind magically become a non-RPG when I choose this generation method? This method provides you with a pre-generated character, except instead of you choosing it from a list, the game uses an in-game method to reduce your control. Does this really differ from choosing which party members to take with you in a jRPG?
This distinction seems to me to beas silly as if someone claimed that acting wasn't acting if you were following someone else's script.
I started a game of Morrowind recently, to get a feel for a wRPG (incidentally, I hated it). When you create your character, you have a few options for how deeply to customize your character, including the option where you answer questions (with no indication of the consequences) and the game generates a character for you. Does Morrowind magically become a non-RPG when I choose this generation method? This method provides you with a pre-generated character, except instead of you choosing it from a list, the game uses an in-game method to reduce your control. Does this really differ from choosing which party members to take with you in a jRPG?
This distinction seems to me to beas silly as if someone claimed that acting wasn't acting if you were following someone else's script.
# posted by : November 01, 2007 4:22 PM
: November 01, 2007 4:22 PM
I've also seen people make the flipside argument - that if you're NOT given a character to act out, you're not ROLEplaying, you're probably just being you! :)
I've never heard the "flip side" argument before... but I have heard the above argument more than once.
Since I'm making an RPG (which I stridently maintain is an RPG) that assigns you pre-generated characters, I guess it's pretty obvious on which side of the table I'd sit in the discussion.
I've agreed to the contention (Whiner, was it you who offered it in the past discussions?) that you'd need to have some influence over the direction of your character's progression. Otherwise, it sounds more like an adventure game or a wargame - you are directing troops. But even that's a little bit on the flexible side (the older FF RPGs - which I maintain were RPGs - didn't give you much in the way of personal choice beyond what to equip).
So I'm in agreement with RPS, I guess. Though I've not yet played The Witcher, so I could be totally off-base.
Since I'm making an RPG (which I stridently maintain is an RPG) that assigns you pre-generated characters, I guess it's pretty obvious on which side of the table I'd sit in the discussion.
I've agreed to the contention (Whiner, was it you who offered it in the past discussions?) that you'd need to have some influence over the direction of your character's progression. Otherwise, it sounds more like an adventure game or a wargame - you are directing troops. But even that's a little bit on the flexible side (the older FF RPGs - which I maintain were RPGs - didn't give you much in the way of personal choice beyond what to equip).
So I'm in agreement with RPS, I guess. Though I've not yet played The Witcher, so I could be totally off-base.
I thought of another example where the "character creation is inherent to role playing" falls apart: character builds. If I use a build in a wRPG, this is essentially the same as the set characters of a jRPG. Does that change the nature of the game from RPG to something else?
You're right about the older FF's, though. Defining RPG is tricky since it's a moving target: the industry has changed over time. Nowadays I consider interaction beyond combat to be essential (hence Half-Life or SMB not being an RPG), but I cut my (RPG) teeth on Bard's Tale, where fighting monsters is just about it.
I think I personally use a very subjective method to decide if a game qualifies as an RPG: emotional attachment to the characters. Do I relate to them emotionally as I would to a real person? Obviously they aren't actually people, but it's the same as movies or books: we think of the characters as real, and talk about them as real, even though they aren't. (Have you ever discussed what happens next in a movie or book? Then you have this level of attachment.) Mario and Gordon Freeman have no mental existence beyond the confines of their respective games. Cecil and Kain, Edgar and Cyan, Cid and Cloud, etc., all do. Of course, this is of no use to anyone else.
You're right about the older FF's, though. Defining RPG is tricky since it's a moving target: the industry has changed over time. Nowadays I consider interaction beyond combat to be essential (hence Half-Life or SMB not being an RPG), but I cut my (RPG) teeth on Bard's Tale, where fighting monsters is just about it.
I think I personally use a very subjective method to decide if a game qualifies as an RPG: emotional attachment to the characters. Do I relate to them emotionally as I would to a real person? Obviously they aren't actually people, but it's the same as movies or books: we think of the characters as real, and talk about them as real, even though they aren't. (Have you ever discussed what happens next in a movie or book? Then you have this level of attachment.) Mario and Gordon Freeman have no mental existence beyond the confines of their respective games. Cecil and Kain, Edgar and Cyan, Cid and Cloud, etc., all do. Of course, this is of no use to anyone else.
# posted by : November 02, 2007 4:12 AM
: November 02, 2007 4:12 AM
I thought Kieron Gillen's point was that any semantic division of RPGs leads to absurdities cropping up. He also implied that RPG was more a historical than objective term so he avoided giving any definition. This seems the most sensible tack.
# posted by : November 02, 2007 5:33 AM
: November 02, 2007 5:33 AM
It seemed more of a case (I thought, but maybe I was reading something different into it) that you COULD take those two defining characteristics to an extreme where they didn't make sense, which is why he falls back on the historical definition for ease-of-use.
But it seemed like he still gave some credit to those two tropes as general rules-of-thumb (while attacking the third proposed characteristic or RPGs), while acknowledging their weaknesses.
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But it seemed like he still gave some credit to those two tropes as general rules-of-thumb (while attacking the third proposed characteristic or RPGs), while acknowledging their weaknesses.
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