Role-Playing By Any Other Name
Brian "Psychochild" Green has his take on the meaning of "Role-Playing Game:"

What the "RP" in "RPG" Stand For

The contention here (and with the article he links to on the meaning of CRPG) is that the nature of the genre / category has come to mean "character advancement," particularly in the eyes of marketers. Limiting the definition to the trappings of making your on-screen avatar more powerful as an entitlement for longevity is inadequate at best. But it is what people typically think of when they talk about CRPGs.

I've got my own fuzzy characteristics that I use to define an RPG, and they have served me pretty well. But I'm also happy to admit that it is more of a set of guidelines than hard-and-fast rules. And I suppose that is as it should be. I really prefer a world where games overflow the boundaries of category definitions. But I also cringe a little bit when I see marketers throwing around the term "RPG elements" or even defining something as a role-playing game just because it has elves in it.

Does having predefined, pre-named characters preclude a game from being an RPG? I sure hope not, or I have no idea what to call Frayed Knights. Or all the jRPG games I like (including several that I help sell). I played D&D back in the old days when "tournaments" were common and pregenerated characters came with modules and at the Gen Con / Origins tables. Assuming the role of Sir Ffloric of Ruthgart in a one-shot sure didn't seem any less of roleplaying than rolling up a level 1 fighter tentatively named "Bill" until he proved he could survive to third level and proven worthy of a real character backstory.

I agree that there has to be more to it than character advancement. Simply having your on-screen persona get more powerful over time doesn't quite cut it. And as Brian suggests, sometimes the mechanics get in the way.

But I feel the emphasis on "role-playing" (a name which was loosely applied to the games years after their appearance) hampers the definition of the single-player experience. Role-playing has its origins as a social activity. Brian suggests how some aspect of role-playing might make it's way into a single player game, and I guess you could really practice some kind of Method Acting approach to playing a single-player game. But for me, role-playing is really something done with other people.

In a single-player RPG, the closest I get to the experience of role-playing is something more akin to role exploration, driven by the mechanics and quest design of the game. I had pretty tight constraints on who my character in Persona 4 could be. I was restricted to being an male teenager at a particular school who is generally a nice, likeable guy with enough sense of responsibility to shoulder the burden of solving a deadly mystery. I could choose which relationships to pursue, but my behaviors to see them to their completion were limited to only a few relatively meaningless variations. In Oblivion, the mechanics of the game encouraged me to play my assassin as the sort of stealthy predator who spent his time running and skipping through meadows picking flowers.

I guess you could say the roles played me.

It only smells like "role-playing" by a very loose interpretation which would cast a pretty wide net across the entire spectrum of game genres. This is why, ironically, I don't feel RPGs are best defined by their name. And why they mean so many different things to different people. But the name sticks, and it's about as good as any other.

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:54 AM (Permalink)