Help me understand, GAF: What is an "RPG"?

[Vex_]

What are some defining traits that only RPGs have?

I feel like almost every trait this genre had, has been absorbed by other genres like Buu absorbed Gohan in DBZ.

I mean, technically... Everything is a roleplaying game now. Cod even has a skill system that lets you unlock more abilities as you level up. Sound familiar?

Why is ffxv an RPG, but not shadow warrior 2? There's even colored weapon drops.


I know, I know. "THAT ISNT THE SAME, STUPID VEX!"


Well why not? Because I'm this close to calling infamous an RPG also. That game has a skill tree.


Here's my question:what defining traits are left exclusively to RPGs?It doesn't seem like there are much left if any. And THAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE.

Do you agree with me? Or nah?

 

[Kwame120]

What's a JRPG?

 

[Arulan]

Why RPGs are so hard to classify and evolve?

 

[mullet2000]

The term RPG has basically become useless becuase, as you said, virtually everything has RPG mechanics now.

Narrower terms such as "JRPG", "WRPG", "Loot game", "Souls-game", etc, are essentially required to understand what someone means when stating a game is an "RPG."

 

[Izuna]

A role playing game

--

it used to refer to levelling and loot progression systems

 

[Fireblend]

Labels are silly and a byproduct of the brain's obsession with coming up with and matching patterns.

 

[PSqueak]

Usually RPG gets slapped on games that have base stats that progress and dictate several of the thing your character does by calculating the stats, random rolls might be involved but not necesarily.

Why are games built on stat systems like that are called RPGs? Because all traditional RPG videogames spawned from the concept of Dungeons and Dragons as the ground work of the gameplay system for building and leveling up characters and combat.

As this gameplay mechanics got more streamlined, the label got blurry.

 

[Steel]

The term RPG has basically become useless becuase, as you said, virtually everything has RPG mechanics now.

Narrower terms such as "JRPG", "WRPG", "Loot game", "Souls-game", etc, are essentially required to understand what someone means when stating a game is an "RPG."

but wut is a jrpg

 

[L Thammy]

Halo is an RPG because you play the role of Master Chief.

 

[mcz117chief]

A role playing game

So everything? Unless you play yourself like online chess I guess.

 

[Tyrus]

"It's a continuing debate. In my opinion, an RPG is an RPG due to character development, character customization, significant character choice and effect on the world, ability for growth (both stats and psychologically), and the ability to genuinely play a role, preferably the wider, the better. There's probably a lot more aspects, but those are the ones that jump to mind." - Chris Avellone

That's what I think it is.

 

[Corpekata]

The last RPG left is getting into semantics debates over definitions of video game terms.

 

[L Thammy]

"It's a continuing debate. In my opinion, an RPG is an RPG due to character development, character customization, significant character choice and effect on the world, ability for growth (both stats and psychologically), and the ability to genuinely play a role, preferably the wider, the better. There's probably a lot more aspects, but those are the ones that jump to mind." - Chris Avellone

That's what I think it is.

Doesn't think remove a ton of JRPGs from the running?

 

[sjay1994]

Role Playing Game

typically defined by more involved character progression, player choices, etc

or

Rocket Propelled Grenade

a thing that makes a big boom

 

[Taruranto]

What can change the nature of an RPG?

 

[PSqueak]

but wut is a jrpg

JRPG is what commonly refers to RPG inspired videogames where there is little to no character customization and it sends you on a linear path assuming the role of an already established character you have no way to alter (except for the name some times), the J comes because this style of RPG videogame was popularized by japanese devs, while most western made RPG videogames were more akin to elder scrolls and fallout where you have full control and customization of how your character is rather than taking the role of a pre-stablished character like Crono or Cloud.

 

[Corpekata]

Doesn't think remove a ton of JRPGs from the running?

There's a reason the WRPGS and JRPGs are often separated, and it's not just because of where they are developed.

 

[Tyrus]

Doesn't think remove a ton of JRPGs from the running?

True, didn't think of that.

I lean towards Western RPGs these days (Alpha Protocol, Divinity: Original Sin, Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas, KOTOR 2, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines) but I do love me some JRPGs.

I don't think I've really consciously thought of the last couple of JRPGs I've played (Tales of Zestiria, World of Final Fantasy) as role-playing games, though. Still love them but yeah view them as more linear story-based affairs. There's usually very little true customisation of the characters, or meaningful branching choices in the story in JRPGs.

Well, at least, recently I feel. It didn't always used to be like that. Tales of Symphonia had some degree of choice and differing outcomes, and I appreciated it more than any other Tales game after it.

It really is a difficult genre to summarise.

 

[Swimmer9800]

a rocket propelled grenade

 

[Omega Kirby]

I still don't know whether to call Zelda an RPG or not

 

[dragonzdogma]

* RPGS are usually long games more 25 hrs+

* Allow your character (S) to level up

* Combat can vary from turn based/action/ but it normally is complex and riddled with stats,buffs,elemental damage, health points, exp.

* They are usually story driven games

So why is Castlevania SOTN not an RPG or super metroid, at-least to me

is because they lack one of the main elements I mentioned above.

In this case Castlevania sotn is not really a story driven game (sure it has like 5 cut scenes that's it, same with Super metroid)

I feel the same way about dark souls I guess.

 

[Ishida]

Labels are silly and a byproduct of the brain's obsession with coming up with and matching patterns.

Fireblend
No Member

 

[Ferrio]

I still don't know whether to call Zelda an RPG or not

I think Zelda 2 might be the only one that qualifies.

 

[Generalpsyduck]

but wut is a jrpg

Its like a regular rpg but with bad gameplay.

 

[PSqueak]

I still don't know whether to call Zelda an RPG or not

Zelda isn't an RPG, it got hit with that label because there were dark times where people threw that label at games they liked to be taken seriously, Zelda is more akin to an adventure game.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

RPGs are a broad classification of games that on some level derive mechanics from pen & paper RPGs. While the P&P RPGs got their name from the fact that you role-play some character in some kind of story, with significant amounts of player choice in many cases, the video-game adaptations were often rigid on the story and player interactivity front, and instead tended to copy the mechanical systems that existed to resolve combat and track progress on a statistical basis.

As a genre classification it's nearly useless on account of the proliferation of character progression systems into other genres of games. Attempts to classify videogame RPGs as games where you "play a role and have character choices / branching stories" inevitably fail because that disqualifies a huge number of classic RPGs, particularly the Japanese variety. But the genre as it exists with its loosest classification is so broad as to encompass everything from Final Fantasy I to Deus Ex to KOTOR to Diablo to Mass Effect 2.

 

[Ishida]

I still don't know whether to call Zelda an RPG or not

Zelda II may have a case going for it.

The rest are Action/Adventure games.

Its like a regular rpg but with bad gameplay.

So WRPG's are JRPG's?

 

[dickroach]

Final Fantasy

 

[Kwame120]

Why RPGs are so hard to classify and evolve?

Stats is an interesting way to think about it. But like the article says, practically every game uses stats now, such that it seems to become part of a wider body of parts that can be taken from to form an RPG. Though, the idea of growth does seem pretty central in an RPG. I can't think of any where growing isn't a significant part of the gaming system, though the genre is now enormous - I might have just never touched the RPGs where you don't.

Labels are silly and a byproduct of the brain's obsession with coming up with and matching patterns.

I feel like that's half correct. We label in order to find matching patterns, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Coming up with a strict backing that defines something can actually help creativity, as it establishes what can be changed. You gain an understanding of what can be experimented with, without changing the genre. Similarly with a game series, by understanding what makes a genre a genre, you can create spin-offs that are firmly in another genre, while keeping some parts that tie the series together. It's that genre knowledge which allows you to confidently make a leap, and the structure provides shape to your changes. For example, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon keeps the concept of Pokémon and to catching (building up your team) aspect, but uses the Mystery Dungeon template for a large shift in genre.

Relating to a different artform, it's like experimenting with musical forms in music. You understand the connotations and aroused feelings of a certain form, thus you can use that form to develop a musical idea - you see this a lot with leitmotifs. In FF6, you have Celes' theme, which is also the central idea in the Maria and Draco opera during the game. Obviously, an opera has certain connotations - due to the lyrics themselves, and the fact that in game - its an opera scene. But the musical idea links it to Celes. In full, labels aren't necessarily a bad thing - by understanding what defines a genre, we can then understand what tools can be used to have a certain effect, then knowingly use the genre to achieve that effect. We also understand what does not define a genre, thus what we can change to alter the mood - say if you were composing for a film, and had a ballroom dance scene, but it's meant to be chilling due to context. You can alter the usual chords but keep the 3/4 time and other classical aspects - to add that chilling feeling but still maintain the sense of a dance.

Thus, by understanding what makes an RPG and RPG, we know what we can experiment with while still maintaining an RPG feel, and how we can give a gaming series an RPG feel. Of course, this seems to happen already, despite RPGs being difficult to define. But that's a looooong philosophy tangent.

 

[Chilled_Eskim01]

That's a tough one, but let me give it a shot.

For me, the core mechanic that makes a game an RPG has always been the stat manipulation. It goes all the way back to the old table top games like Dungeons and Dragons, where you create the character and define who or what they are through skills, statistics and characteristics. You've got the basic stuff like Willpower, Strength, Constitution and what-not, and then you can start getting into stuff like weapon skills and all that.

Loot drops does not make any game an RPG . "Skill trees" (as generic and ubiquitous as they have become) don't make a game an RPG either.

The idea of the "Role" in the RPG moniker is a bit more difficult to pin down, but I like to muse on that every once in a while too. The player character needs to fulfill a role in the story, but that can be said about almost every video game protagonist. I like to think that you as the player help to define your character throughout the journey (game), even if you aren't necessarily comfortable with who that character turns out to be. Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher), The Nerevarine (TES III: Morrowind), The Last Spirit Monk (Jade Empire); these are all characters within the greater worlds of the games, rather than just another John/Jane Doe. You help to define who they are throughout the story, instead of heading down a narrowly determined path. Now the depth of that influence varies widely, but I feel it's important that the player helps to define the character through their actions.

If others are so inclined, we could have a fun discussion about what role we take in RPG actually means.

 

[Lumpy Onion]

but wut is a jrpg

Anime ruled by numbers.

 

[John Kowalski]

This is an historical question and cannot be disassociated from its cultural heritage.

 

[SkyOdin]

RPGs are game that have mechanically and stylistically descended from their progenitor: Dungeons & Dragons. D&D itself is a direct descendant of wargaming, except with a shift to focus on heroic individuals rather than military units.

The main defining pillars of RPGs are:
1) A focus on small teams of characters rather than armies.
2) Combat or core gameplay that is focused on tactical deciaions, instead of twitch-based reactions.
3) Characters who are defined by detailed numerical parameters, aka stats.

Notes:
* Choice and customization are not integral elements of the genre, but are instead a part of a particular style of the genre. This is as true for tabletop RPGs as videogame ones.
* The more action elements an RPG has, the more it moves into being an action-RPG hybrid or a complete action games.

 

[Budi]

So everything? Unless you play yourself like online chess I guess.

I always play as Garri Kasparov though.

 

[L Thammy]

To give an honest answer:

I think a lot of genre naming debates come from a fundamental misunderstanding of what genre is. There's no central authority that determines what a game's genre is, it's just classification for our own convenience. For example, the Tales series slaps their games with ridiculous labels like "RPG of Passion that Illuminates the World" but no normal human being would actually use that label because it doesn't help us at all.

Genres can be used to classify the attributes of a game or some other thing, but they also are used to classify histories or movements, and there's little effort to keep those two distinct. In the case of RPGs, the reason that they're RPGs is because of history. They descend from tabletop games where you actually were expected to play out the role of your character. Now RPG video games are so far removed that the name of the genre doesn't apply anymore, but it's still fairly easy to identify games that owe primarily to that lineage and give them the RPG label.

 

[Vex_]

RPGs are a broad classification of games that on some level derive mechanics from pen & paper RPGs. While the P&P RPGs got their name from the fact that you role-play some character in some kind of story, with significant amounts of player choice in many cases, the video-game adaptations were rigid on the story and player interactivity front, and instead tended to copy the mechanical systems that existed to resolve combat and track progress on a statistical basis.

As a genre classification it's nearly useless on account of the proliferation of character progression systems into other genres of games. Attempts to classify videogame RPGs as games where you "play a role and have character choices / branching stories" inevitably fail because that disqualifies a huge number of classic RPGs, particularly the Japanese variety. But the genre as it exists with its loosest classification is so broad as to encompass everything from Final Fantasy I to Deus Ex to KOTOR to Diablo to Mass Effect 2.

Thanks for this post. Particularly, the bolded.

I never thought about it like that. I always thought other genres (within gaming) would pull popular RPG systems into their feature set. Never thought it applied the other way around as well.

There's some overlap there.

 

[yophlow]

I agree that the specific definition of RPG as "role-playing game" is pretty outdated. But as a general label, it still makes perfect sense to me, and probably to everyone else. It's just a classifier now that's become part of common lexicon, even if the original intention or meaning isn't technically relevant anymore. That's how language evolves, so I'm fine with it.

For example, if someone says hey, this game is an RPG, then depending on the context (platform, genre, company) I'll known what they mean. No further clarification necessary. If someone says hey, Battlefield is as RPG because it has levelling stats and you play this character, I'll be like no. It's an FPS and will always be that.

So it's not about the specifics of definitions, it's a convenient label that works in modern games discussion.

 

[Boney]

Usually RPG gets slapped on games that have base stats that progress and dictate several of the thing your character does by calculating the stats, random rolls might be involved but not necesarily.

Why are games built on stat systems like that are called RPGs? Because all traditional RPG videogames spawned from the concept of Dungeons and Dragons as the ground work of the gameplay system for building and leveling up characters and combat.

As this gameplay mechanics got more streamlined, the label got blurry.

That's where I stand. It has to be primarily dependant on stat or loot growth to further progress into the game.

 

[Fou-Lu]

Its like a regular rpg but with bad gameplay.

I feel like the opposite is generally true.

JRPGs haven given us tons of amazing battle systems from games like Final Fantasy X or Radiant Historia to games like Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma.

WRPGs... Elder Scrolls has awful combat, the Witcher has awful combat, most CRPGs have good writing and plotting and pacing and dialogue but the combat? Ehhhhh.

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

I like the Colonel's definition in MGS2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8j9I90ueM

Skip to 0:30.

 

[mcz117chief]

I always play as Garri Kasparov though.

In that case every game is an RPG

Really though, if you classify RPG as just a "role playing game" then that literally covers 100% of all games unless you play yourself in that game but even then you still assume a different role from the one you are in real life. The exception would be if some football star would play himself in a Fifa game or an Olympic athlete would play himself in a Olympics game.

 

[I.R.I.S.]

An RPG will always have statistics that determine your character's traits and that the game checks against to determine how strong/skilled you will be. It usually also lets you raise those stats to become more powerful as the game goes on.

Otherwise there's not much that defines it.

 

[Aizen.S.Kennedy]

The last RPG left is getting into semantics debates over definitions of video game terms.

It's actually my favorite rpg of all

 

[CharminUltra]

 

[SciencePilot]

Genre don't really have defining traits. A genre is more like a set of shared traditions, history, tropes, etc. Jrpgs are, for example, the set of games that loosely follow in the legacy of games like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Pokemon. You can't really pin it down in a more concrete way than that.

 

[Aters]

Stats.

Its like a regular rpg but with bad gameplay.

What? WRPG combat sucks ass. TW3 is one of the best WRPG in recent ten years and the gameplay is shit.

 

[Budi]

"It's a continuing debate. In my opinion, an RPG is an RPG due to character development, character customization, significant character choice and effect on the world, ability for growth (both stats and psychologically), and the ability to genuinely play a role, preferably the wider, the better. There's probably a lot more aspects, but those are the ones that jump to mind." - Chris Avellone

That's what I think it is.

The bolded part is most important for me when defining RPG. Just having xp and levels doesn't yet make a good RPG. And there aren't many better people to define rpg than Avellone, imo.

Stats.



What? WRPG combat sucks ass. TW3 is one of the best WRPG in recent ten years and the gameplay is shit.

Not really, to both of those statements about gameplay and combat. And gameplay is more than combat.

 

[MoonFrog]

Cluster of design choices point towards RPG (these are neither meant as necessary nor as sufficient conditions):

-character growth through levels, with ability growth, stat games, equipment games, etc. developing a growing role for the character.

-focus on story, characters, world for immersion in the role that's being played.

-choice in character growth, world traversal, NPC interaction, etc. Looser gameplay checks to accommodate a variety of player choices. Focuses on letting you figure out and fill out a role rather than on providing a tight gameplay experience.

-typically map gameplay and battle gameplay is differentiated, with map play being low key, gameplay nonintensive and battle gameplay being the more idiosyncratically gamelike portion.

 

[Steel]

In all seriousness, it's mostly just a marketing term in the AAA space nowadays. There are common threads if you go lower budget and lump them into subclasses.

 

[DigtialT]

At this point the dna of RPGs have been fused with almost every genre that its pretty impossible to define.

If I had to try I'd say maybe a story focused game which has a skill system or character progression system.