How can you describe RPG, Sup Forums?

How can you describe RPG, Sup Forums?

A game in which you play a role with a predetermined adventure set up by a dungeon master.

I game in which you roleplay.

>story
>hopping into the role of another person
definitions so broad it makes every single game an rpg.
>levels
>items of value and rarity
not exclusive to rpgs

A game that is based off of tabletop roleplaying games.

World of Warcraft isn't based off a tabletop roleplaying game.

You can trace the roots of its mechanics back to games that were trying to ape rpgs on computers, so it's an rpg as far as anyone gives a fuck.

Choice and consequence, its not a choice if you can choose everything, and its not a consequence if its impact is trivial.

The time long past when the word RPG really meant something, nowdays every game is a RPG in the eyes of people, including Destiny, Shadow of War and other games that belong to the action genere but since they have loot and leveling system, it magically becomes a RPG.
A RPG needs to fill cretin aspects to become one, its needs stats, levels, loot, character creation (this one is a problem), a map that the player can freely explore and all that jazz, but what makes a RPG a real RPG is the player choice, always.
RPGs in their essence are a game of pretend, where the game gives you the tools to be able to pretend be whatever you want in a already established world, where the choices you make can change or shape the world by small or big consequences, if you dont have the choices afecting the world around you, then is not a RPG.
That is when JRPGs come into play, they dont fit anywhere else, they have all the points that make a RPG a RPG BUT the player choice and customization, so it became its own subgenere.
ARPGs are the same, no where else to go, no player choice, they became a ARPG.
Then we have a game like The Witcher that has a heavy emphasis on player choice and pretty much all of the points of a RPG BUT the character customization, that is shit hits the fan when describing a RPG.

Stats
Character creation
Some kind of decision making that effects the game
Fleshed out story/world

JRPGs aren't really RPGs for the most part, they're more like turn based strategy games.

When playing a real roleplaying game you aren't just controlling a character within the game. The character becomes whoever you want them to be.
Their personality, skills, strengths, faults, are all determined by you. The way they socialize, the way they solve problems, and pretty much their entire character arc is up to the player.
You can be good, you can be bad, you can be neutral, and any combination of these. You could be good until something terrible happens that makes you snap and turn evil, or you could have the opposite happen. You could also be a murderous psychopath with no real alignment. It's all up to you in a roleplaying game.

At its core, it's got to offer the player choices, the chance to play a role of the player's choosing. It needs a mix of gameplay choices, which could be something as simple as stat allocation to make your character your own, and story choices, which could even just be an optional questline or few. All this makes the experience and progression of the story and character feel at least somewhat unique to you.

Dialogue choices + branching story + leveling up and getting better gear = RPG
Game only has 1 or 2 of those features = Game with RPG elements
Game has all 3 = RPG

Was that so fucking difficult?

FUCKING
THIS

Arbitrary numbers that give the illusion of depth

Nice pen & paper definition, children. Right from the very beginning computer RPGs never had any focus on role playing and yet it was those role playing free games that defined the term's usage when referring to computer games. Therefore an RPG, in the context of a computer or video game, does not need to include role playing.

I get what you're saying but your wording is the problem. You mean to say a game that is influenced by tabletop RPGs, not based on them. There is a profound difference between the two terms.

Needs stats level-able or not. Same with skills or abilities.

it used to be about levels and stats when I was a kid but now everything has that so who knows

>Therefore an RPG does not need to include role playing.
bruh

I remember when Bioware said COD was a RPG

You play the role of Mario

In pacman you can choose to go left or right, the consequences can mean life or death.

>Some kind of decision making that effects the game

Every descion to press a button does this.

>Stats
All games have this. All of them. Even the most simple games have dozens of hidden variables such as health, attack speed, movement speed, gravity scale, hitbox size.

there is literally nothing that's "exclusive to RPG's" though

any game ever has RPG elements at this point

If it is powered by the collective imagination of multiple players

Mechanics derived from classic table RPGs like D&D and so on.
That's what made games like Wizardryand so on RPGs. Not because of the opportunities to "roleplay".

imagine having this much autism.

>Right from the very beginning computer RPGs never had any focus on role playing
I dunno, Ultima had a pretty big focus on getting into the role of the avatar and you could make a lot of moral choices in those early games.

>Therefore an RPG, in the context of a computer or video game, does not need to include role playing.
You're wrong.

every game is an RPG now apparently. Even sports games have levels and shit.

Having a game built on tight well tuned difficulty and engaging gameplay is now too hard for developers.

A game where you control a character that's not a digitalized (You) is an RPG.

>having to define RPG
fucking shit
do we really need a god damn thread about this?

So literally every video game ever made?
KYS

RPGs are games that feature any interactive elements designed with the expectation that players won't be meta-gaming. For instance in an RPG, players won't perform character customization just to win and be more powerful, they will instead also try to design a character they find interesting, fun, and/or unique. An example of this is players picking a class not because its the most powerful in the metagame, but because they feel like it suits their "playstyle", whatever that means to them. A non-RPG wouldn't bother to have suboptimal classes to begin with, at least not by design.

The problem with this definition is that almost every popular game has elements of this. For instance fighting games have low tiers, but players often pick them because they like them or identify with them. I would call that role-playing, even if it is an incredibly loose use of the term.

I think this is okay though, because even D&D has non-RPG elements i.e. you can win or lose based on your decisions. In other words there exists no pure RPG; if no decisions determine winning or losing, the interactive system is no longer a game. So for an interactive system to be an RPG it must have elements of another genre as well. Most classical RPGs including D&D are strategy games at their core, just with extraneous interactive potential in order to enable role-playing.

Well, besides the one that I made where I'm the player character, and the ones where I mod myself in like Skyrim and Fallout.

I'm not sure if it's ever had a generally agreed upon definition but it does seem to be increasingly used to describe games that are essentially just linear action/adventure games with some sort of shallow character progression through "perks" or powerup items. It's one of those terms whose original meaning is broadened to such a ridiculous degree as to become meaningless as normies apply it to any game with even a single vaguely RPG-like mechanic.

We've seen this happen with "rogue-like", "metroidvania", "Dark Souls", and a few others.

all of the day bro

If it has swords and magic and I can get rare loot, it's an RPG.

In my opinion a true RPG is like fallout 1 and fallout 2, or morrowind and before elder scrolls. That is a western style RPG. Like that guy said about a game needing character creation, loot, obvious weaknesses in your build as you progress. You should feel like your role playing something, like your role playing a bodybuilder or a fast athlete or a weak computer hacker nerd.

The problem is that in terms of video games, most people what are actually strategy games are RPGs because of their mechanics.
Most JRPGs are linear stories with no real opportunities for roleplaying, for example. In essence, they are not truly RPGs as a result.

I can say that NBA has a very robust system with the stats and the amount of shit you can chose from is mind blowing and totally fucking destroy other modern RPGs when you see them.

underrated

Well in FF7 for instance you can pick yuffie or cait sith even if they aren't the best characters because you like them, or you can pick materia that isn't the best because you think they are cool or fun. I would consider this role playing, even if its really simple.

It's also not really that much of a strategy game, because the decisions you make in battle are much less important than how much you grind. Its probably fair to call it a strategy game, but definitely not a deep one. So you could make the argument that the light role playing is more rewarding than the strategy mechanics that it is primarily a role playing game.

On the other hand, the real enjoyment of FF7 comes from the story, pacing, aesthetics, sense of adventure, and sense of progression/power. Much of this is either non-interactive or trivially interactive, and isn't really any sort of "playing" at all.

The most accurate label would be a fantasy interactive entertainment story-game with light role-playing and strategy elements. But that isn't easy to say, so people will just continue to call them JRPGs cause everyone knows what they mean by that.

For use in general? It is a game which allows you to play a role. More specifically, it is a game system which allows a group of players to determine the results of the actions they would choose to take, hence a role-playing game. I'd call something which was basically a game where you act out as part of it (i.e. Fiasco) a game with role-playing elements, or perhaps a "play-acting game" to draw a distinction. But like many things, the line can be hard to draw and it's mostly there to inform people of what the product is.

In the sense of video games, RPG means that a character has stats which increases over time as you play a game, and those stats primarily determine how successful the character will accomplish in-game tasks. "RPG" has become a title to stat-based gameplay for the video game world, and there isn't really much you can do to avoid that.

I also want to add that I don't really care if people misuse the term RPG. I just wanted to provide the definition that makes the most sense to me and my reasoning for coming up with it.

>For use in general? It is a game which allows you to play a role.
All games do this

>More specifically, it is a game system which allows a group of players to determine the results of the actions they would choose to take, hence a role-playing game.
Role playing games can be single-player

I'd call something which was basically a game where you act out as part of it (i.e. Fiasco) a game with role-playing elements, or perhaps a "play-acting game" to draw a distinction.
All games feature players acting as a part of the interactive system

>In the sense of video games, RPG means that a character has stats which increases over time as you play a game, and those stats primarily determine how successful the character will accomplish in-game tasks.
Why does the game being digital change the definition? Is Fiasco suddenly not an RPG if implemented digitally using VR or something?

>"RPG" has become a title to stat-based gameplay for the video game world, and there isn't really much you can do to avoid that.
So is NBA 2k18 an RPG cause it has stats and leveling up?

>Role playing games can be single-player
True, and some actually do play this aspect up. Tunnels & Trolls specifically had single-player game rules, for playing the game with yourself.

>>I'd call something which was basically a game where you act out as part of it (i.e. Fiasco) a game with role-playing elements, or perhaps a "play-acting game" to draw a distinction.
>All games feature players acting as a part of the interactive system
The difference between those two are if you are making decisions based on an imagined scenario, and then translating that into functional game mechanics (a RPG) or if you are making a decision based on game mechanics available, with acting out a character's role being either unrelated or separate to the mechanics (a board game).

And yes, I've called D&D4e a board game before.

>Why does the game being digital change the definition?
For the same reason that you seem to be confusing table top roleplaying with video game roleplaying games. It's a different market, with different language and different understandings to how things work. Most video game players understand RPGs to be something "like D&D" or something "like Final Fantasy."

>So is NBA 2k18 an RPG cause it has stats and leveling up?
You might be surprised to see other people making that comparison as well.

THE ONLY THING THAT DEFINES AN RPG IS ITS RPG SYSTEMS YOU FUCKING RETARDS

>legend of zelda is an RPG
>mario is an RPG
people are silly.

A Story isn't necessary, game-changing consequences for actions are.

Not only is a leveling system necessary, the leveling has to be a means by which you define your character and differentiate them from a generic character.

Items are necessary as a means by which to define you character and their growth and progress.

The other person can't be locked to a pre-determined storyline, backstory, and progression.

A game whose design and elements are primarily based on systems originating in tabletop RPGs. Levels, stats, armor, etc.
That's literally all it means. Literally "playing a role" is not actually what the term means, it's just referencing old pen and paper role playing games.

>Super Mario RPG
whoooaaaa

>"playing a role" is not actually what the term means

What? It's completely true. Almost every game ever is a "role playing game" by that definition. "RPG" reference role playing game elements, which are independent from playing a role.

Rpg's are based of the old pen n paper rpg's of yore. Hence all the stats and rng. Rng is s'posed to represent the dice rolled in the old rpgs, that's why they're turn based. Everything else is just has rpg elements in it and called rpg's because it's just easier than cobbling a handful of genre's in one string description.

A game where you have freedom of choice over the personality and competencies of your avatar.

By this logic, the new Prey and the Dishonored games are RPGs.

I agree, not very good ones mind you but yeah

So many games are described as RPG these days, and yet none of these games allow you to play in a way that isn't orchestrated. A true RPG needs a very flexible framework. It needs to allow the player to play in a wide variety and combination of ways, and then it needs to conform the game content to the way the gamer is playing. In other words, a game should be able to be thoroughly evil and destructive to the world, and the world should react accordingly. That player should be able to choose to be a magic dealing wizard or an axe-swinging barbarian or a sneaky assassin thief, or any combination, while at the same time choosing to do either evil or good or neither, while at the same time being either an animal, human, elf, or alien, and every action and choice should affect the world and the quest lines and the way the NPC's react.

The ability to play a role of the players choosing is the single most important aspect of RPG. If the game tells you who you are and what you are meant to do, it is not an RPG.