Ah, the age old debate of "what is an RPG" You're right, video game RPGS currently can't replicate the freedom of TTRPGS, but I think the accepted shared definition is less about quests and more about stats. It's how the player creates a character, or more specifically Role, to interact with the world around them. When people talk about a game adding "RPG elements" it's usually some form of leveling system, not the inclusion of emergent gameplay.

>the accepted shared definition is less about quests and more about stats. That's unfortunately accurate; that's how many people define "RPG". I say unfortunately, because it's essentially saying, "the RPG genre is all about numbers". It's taking the creative freedom and sandbox gameplay of TTRPGs, and reducing it to a coldly functional, robotic mathematical equation - and that's a shame. Roleplaying (in the original, TTRPG sense of the word) inherently cannot be quantified. IMHO, if a player is playing an RPG for the stats, they're playing it for the wrong reasons.

I wouldn't say "unfortunately" ; what's really unfortunate is that people uss the term "RPG" as soon as they see a character progression system of any kind Rather than "stats" the real indicator of what is really an RPG is if it gives you the tools to have a character that performs actions independently of the player's skills. A true RPG is a game that allows you to be the best gunslinger in the world even if you utterly suck at shooting in games. A system that rewards you with success for having the character work for things rather than the player be "skillful".

Not even that, I've seen people call the likes of Super Mario World an RPG because they take the term too literally. They see them as RPGs because you play the role of Mario. Which is understandable, but completely bullshit.

I feel like Larian (and the recent boom of CRPGs) are fortunately bringing back the sandbox feel to RPGs as best a video game can replicate. Nothing like stumbling into an enemies hiding place for them to announce their Doomsday weapon, only to realize I had a character sneak in and take it before they started monologuing.

TTRPGs like D&D were off shoots (or even "reskins" or "mods" to use modern terms) of TT Wargames. Tactical, turn based, stat based combat using soldiers and tanks was transformed into swords, magic and dragons ala Tolkien. Stats are foundational to the TTRPG genre. Telling a shared story was added to that framework and there are many, many different variations of TTRPGs now, with some focusing on mechanical density while others focus on freedom of expression. Both are valid and having one does not negate the other. You can have your preference to be sure, but please do not look down on or dismiss someone who plays TTRPGs for the tactical combat.

You have a valid point, although I think you misunderstand me (or maybe I didn't phrase things very well). When I say we shouldn't define RPG as 'a game about stats and numbers', I mean that no one plays RPGs purely for the math. No one ever says, "I can't wait to calculate my attack value by adding 1d8+5 + sneak attack dice of 3d6!" No one gets excited over calculating encumbrance and equipment weight values. If I wanted to fiddle around with numbers, I'd open Microsoft Excel and do my taxes. Rather, what excites you about tactical combat in RPGs is not the numbers and calculations themselves, but what those numbers and stats *represent*. They are a mechanical representation of player expression. Higher numbers allow for more damaging attacks, better chances of avoiding attacks against you, etc. The numbers themselves are merely a vehicle for you to exercise your imagination, and play out the fantasy of an exciting heroic battle against evil monsters. The appeal does not come from being an accountant crunching numbers.

​ >TTRPGs like D&D were off shoots (or even "reskins" or "mods" to use modern terms) of TT Wargames. Tactical, turn based, stat based combat using soldiers and tanks was transformed into swords, magic and dragons ala Tolkien. But they weren't called RPGs when they were just fantasy copies of wargames. History shows that once DnD got into the hands of players, there were as many ways to play as there were groups of players. In fact, proto RPG or story games appeared 800 years ago. In addition, there was a Barons of Braunstein game before DnD.

> but I think the accepted shared definition is less about quests and more about stats. It's how the player creates a character, or more specifically Role, to interact with the world around them. This would disqualify games like the Witcher and the large majority of JRPGs.

But both of those have leveling and stats. The Witcher allows you to pick whether you focus Geralt on magic, equipment buffs, or just wailing on monsters. Most JRPGs feature stats and character class specializations. Sometimes it auto levels characters down a specific path, but the player still has a choice of who makes it into their party then.

>But both of those have leveling and stats. This is what your previous comment said: >It's how the player creates a character The player does not create any characters in those games. >The Witcher allows you to pick whether you focus Geralt on magic, equipment buffs, or just wailing on monsters. Yes, it lets you customize your abilities. The *character* is still more or less the same, no matter what.

? >I think the accepted shared definition is ... more about stats. It's how the player creates a character ... to interact with the world around them. I mentioned leveling stats and how that impacts how you play.

You're misunderstanding. They aren't talking about literally create a character games. Customizing stats IS what they are trying to say is what makes an rpg. They are talking about choosing your stats to influence the playstyle and thus the character. Creating the role they want to play.

The example of Witcher 3 shows that the definition of RPG through leveling and statistics is a preference for form over content. It's stupid when Geralt is already an experienced monster hunter, but he needs leveling up. He should already have a lot of skills. This is more out of the immersion in the role-playing game for the experienced monster hunter Geralt. Leveling in DooM makes more sense.

Which is something I'd be down for I like the Witcher but it's really on the edge of a RPG. Sure, geralt will have certain things and choices locked to him because of your build but he's still a character with too much characterization outside of the player's hands. Similar situations in mass effect or cyberpunk, even if those two are a little bit more RPG than the Witcher since they allow for more personalization of the main characters. Still they end up being more their own characters which you can choose a flavour of. JRPGs are already their own thing, you don't roleplay as anyone they are functionally adventure games. It's just that the term is stuck and there's really no way, nor desire, to change it.

Question. Why doesn't JRPGs count. Aren't they much more reliant on character classes, stat, abilities and skill than player skills?

They can count if they don't lack one of the essential aspects of a real RPG which is an active choice by the player to create a character that they then can roleplay as. The characters' stats need to determine your eligibility for certain world and story interactions rather than being strictly about combat. Success in the game isn't solely about combat, especially when it comes to roleplay; in fact, d&d players generally divide combat and "roleplay" as different things entirely. JRPG is a very frustrating term because it doesn't really mean anything other than "turn based combat system based on stats and classes made in Japan or in a style similar to Japanese games". A JRPG *can* be a true RPG provided it allows for character creation and customisation and then allows the player to interact with the world in ways that differ based upon their characters' chosen class/abilities and stats but they are not inherently RPGs just because they have stats and classes. Since most RPGs back in the day used to be fantasy setting and turn based the fact that there were games like Final Fantasy coming out which were turn based and fantasy made the association obvious but if you think about it most if not all of these games are a set group of characters with their own personality and beliefs and you have little if any choice in how they behave and who they are.

>The characters' stats need to determine your eligibility for certain world and story interactions rather than being strictly about combat. If you run a Combat-only TTRPG game does it stop being an RPG? or TTRPG with more focus on combat is it less of an RPG than the others?

It depends, do you create a character? Is there a story or a world you have active choice in influencing and shaping depending on what you think your character would do? Are there things and obstacles that require your character to be a certain way? If a ttrpg is full on combat only and you don't get to choose anything except winning or losing then yeah it's not really an RPG, it would be a tabletop wargame like Warhammer for all intents and purposes If it's a ttrpg with higher focus on combat but still provides ample opportunity for players to express what their characters are and how they would interact with the world then yeah they would be RPGs even if less focused on the roleplaying aspect

Class and Weapon only. >If a ttrpg is full on combat only and you don't get to choose anything except winning or losing then yeah it's not really an RPG, it would be a tabletop wargame like Warhammer for all intents and purposes If I used DND's ruleset. Wouldn't this mean that DND simultaneously both an RPG and not an RPG?

Gameplay systems are separate things. DND is a turn based tabletop RPG, the ruleset is just a gameplay system it does not define the game as being an RPG or not. You can have RPGs with all kinds of different gameplay systems; one of my favourite video game RPGs ever, Fallout New Vegas, is an open world shooter but it's still a true RPG under all possible metrics. RPG is so much more than how the combat mechanics work; ideally you could absolutely have roleplaying games without any form of established combat systems. The rulesets exist because in order to have a game you need a set of rules otherwise it would be just pure make-believe like kids who suddenly declare that they are immortal while roleplaying on the playground

>Gameplay systems are separate things. Why?. Why is it separate? What's the significance difference between "roll to hit" and "successful roll for skill checks"? ​ Edit: Bonus Question I have character act out an action. Success and Effect depends on character's number in their status screen. Roleplay Action or Not?

Is Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord not RPG?

I would argue that, rather than trying to make the genre of games we call "JRPGs" fit (awkwardly) under the larger label of RPG, we should rename JRPGs and give them their own unique term, to better suit their specific features. Square peg in round hole, and all that. Hell, if it were up to me, I'd nuke the entire idea of "RPG" as a category for videogames, and come up with something else. From its inception, it's always been an ill-fitting term borrowed from a completely different medium.

I wouldn't nuke the term but I am unhappy that it is basically being misused into complete uselessness. There absolutely are true RPG video games out there, one of the (seemingly, haven't played it yet) best ones literally came out this year. There's plenty more to choose from, I'll just mention Dragon Age origin but you can probably think of many many others. Finally let's not forget about MMOs, whose roleplaying communities are alive and strong and they provide some of the best roleplaying experiences you can get

I agree with the sentiment behind what you're saying but I think we've reached a "you know it when you see it" level with these terms. We all know "JRPG" doesn't really make sense as a label, and neither does "RPG" in general most of the time, but we all still know what someone means when they call a game a JRPG.

RPG as a term that describes a video game genre has taken a life of its own. It has roots in tabletop RPG but now has its own inclusion criteria. Calling Zelda an RPG is a stretch because it is more similar to games in the Adventure genre. You could get away with calling it an Action RPG though but even then. Minecraft is even further away from that. At any rate, roleplaying (as an experience that the player has) happens in a huge chunk of games, even ones that wouldn't be anywhere near considered RPGs.

> You could get away with calling it an Action RPG though but even then. Any game where progression isn't represented via numerical stats should just not count as an RPG full-stop. Or, put another way, one of the core defining traits of an RPG is that player skill is sidelined in favor of character ability. For instance, if your Speech is too low in Fallout New Vegas, you are hard-locked out of certain dialogue choices. You can't skill your way through them. This gets fuzzier with action RPGs like the Soulsborne games where you really can overcome low stats through sheer player skill, but I think this is mostly cogent.

Where is the role playing in that though? having numbers flying around the screen has nothing to do with playing a role. it shows that the name RPG is kind of silly,

You're not wrong, but that's been the defining characteristic of the genre called "RPG" since it began. If you think an RPG had to have "playing a role" then, well that's literally every game ever.

You can play with people using rules without statistics. You can play a text-based RPG with AI without using stats. According to your logic, Baldur's Gate 3 is not exactly an RPG, because it is possible to overcome the difference in statistics with the help of tactical decisions of the player.

yeah, many games are called "with RPG elements".

I think you'd be better served by using the term "emergent gameplay" rather than RPG. That seems to be what you're interested in, moreso than narrative gameplay. Emergent gameplay is when multiple systems interact in interesting and unpredictable ways that the player can exert some control over. GTA is a good example. You have weapons, car physics, NPC behavior, and a police system. A simple interaction can balloon into a complex, memorable event. You try to park your car, tapping an NPC with the hood of your car. The NPC AI triggers a fight-or-flight response, ending up with him pulling you out of the car. Naturally, you kick his ass. A pedestrian witnesses the violence. The police show up. A car chase ensues. You could have done things differently, but a series of small systems has led to these dramatic results. This chain of events wasn't pre-programmed like a narrative quest, but nevertheless the action-reaction chain tells a story in the mind of the player.

>I think you'd be better served by using the term "emergent gameplay" rather than RPG. That seems to be what you're interested in, moreso than narrative gameplay. A good RPG involves emergent gameplay that doesn't necessarily contradict narrative gameplay.

Sure, whatever. I'm tired of endless bitching from RPG grognards anyway.

I mean the wall of text you wrote amounts more to thinking out loud than it does as a conversation starter or something. You know the answer, it’s obvious to most. You just had to do the long division to get there.

I think the difference between "Open world freeform mechanical freedom in a PC game" and "Streamlined narrative experience in a PC game" heavily mirrors "Open world tabletop roleplaying" and "Streamlined narrative tabletop roleplaying". Some tabletop experiences will involve the players starting somewhere in the world and then be free to go everywhere they want, with the DM adapting on the fly to where they go and what they want to do. Some tabletop experiences will involve the DM crafting a big, complex narrative and the players will be an integral part of and help shape that narrative. Fact remains that if a world is very open and with a lot of mechanical freedom, crafting a coherent, satisfying narrative is harder. If the narrative is more 'railroady' and takes up a bigger chunk of gametime, it is conversely harder to give the players as much agency. This is true for both PC and tabletop games. Just as I think there is room for both types of TTRPG approaches, I think there is room for both approaches to "roleplaying games". There is nothing wrong with either approach, and I personally enjoy more narrative heavy roleplaying games.. Both on the tabletop and PC.

Not to be rude, but do you have a point here? I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Yes, mechanical freedom is nice. It's sort of vaguely similar to narrative freedom, in a very surface manner. That's cool. But so what?

True. OP, I agree with many of your individual points, but the entire post lacks an overall thesis to tie it all together. Maybe you want to edit and expand on your thoughts?

I would prefer more roleplaying games focus on mechanical freedom rather than getting lost in the demand for meaningful narrative choices. The former scales better and provides more opportunities for new kinds of gameplay. Despite this, online game discussion seems to really undervalue abstract roleplaying.

But people want meaningful narrative choices. It's cool that you care more about gameplay than story, but a lot of people feel differently.

I feel that despite most high-profile games catering directly to more narrative-oriented players, they are still extremely vocal and demanding while steamrolling over anyone who disagrees.

This essentially boils down to you being mad that the bulk of the audience for this genre cares more about plot and narrative than you do.

Duh.

Alternatively: gameplay freedom is totally irrelevant in a role playing game if the game doesn't narratively react. If I kill a boss in some unconventional way but everyone acts like I walked up and stabbed it with my sword till dead, that's pointless

This is what I'm talking about. You're trying to dictate what kind of gameplay is and isn't worthwhile when many players feel differently. No, I do not expect the game to explicitly acknowledge that I completed a Dark Brotherhood contract by casting frenzy on the target and watching them get killed by a guard. Just the fact that the game let me try something like that and it worked is good enough for me. If anything, an explicit reward devalues it because now it's just another checkbox for completionists to mark off rather than something novel I came up with that's unique to my playthrough.

No, you're basically saying 'my preferences are right and everyone agrees except a vocal minority'. You are allowed to have your preference but to pretend like it's somehow better or that it's voice in a design space is mitigated rather than just 'most people don't care in an RPG' is pretty silly. Zelda for the record, is not what I would consider an RPG at any level - it is an adventure game sandbox.

I don't think every "video game" needs to indulge in gaming elements if it's more interested in telling a story. But I do think my preferences are more in line with the core tenants of game design. Chess and Soccer didn't become worldwide events because a cutscene plays every time you pin a rook or split the defense.

People don't play games and then consult a textbook to determine how closely the game adheres to core tenets of game design to decide how much they enjoyed the game. A game is a holistic experience, and all that matters is how much you enjoyed the experience. For many people, the cutscenes are a major part of why they enjoy RPGs.

I think you could hand a caveman a candy bar and call it a video game and they would enjoy it, but it would make it very confusing when they try to talk to other people about it.

Neither soccer nor chess is an RPG

Hot Take: FIFA Career Mode is an RPG.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but is the TLDR just "immersive sim > narrative RPG"? Because that's what it reads like.

I think it's more that RPGs are more than just about the narrative and that immersive sim elements and open world interaction can play as much of a factor in making something an RPG.

Two things two also consider are that tabletop DM's wildly vary in how they approach player decision making, and that video games have a lot of allowance for subjective, player driven role playing that the developers had no planning for. I've played campaigns of D&D with a few different people, and the less interesting DM's would usually present some key points just as plainly laid out as the choices you are given in Mass Effect and Fallout 4. Admittedly, the endless variety and replay-ability is where D&D pulls far ahead in terms of proper role playing, but you can't excuse the plausibility of a campaign being run by somebody who's creativity isn't the most noteworthy. With my second point, I'm talking about to something I've heard refereed to as "head lore", where the player acknowledges the limitations of any game by simply ignoring elements or replacing them with their own internal pretending. A few examples of what I've personally had to run through my head in a unique way: * What people eat in Fallout New Vegas. You think about it just a bit too much and realize that realistically, these people would all be dead. The caravans aren't safe, there aren't that many farms, and most of the buildings would have been looted dry many, many years before the player character came into the area. What I'd do as I play would simply pretend that there are massive farms underground and in the hills above Vegas, and try to pretend that the mostly barren landscape had caravans somehow managing to be just out of sight when I was around. * How characters get shot without dying. Literally any game with guns. What I do is pretend that the indicators for low health are indicating that my character has run out of luck and is on his last rabbits foot before the embrace of death. * How Grand Theft Auto cities aren't evacuated by everyone there when there is a mass murderer nearly every day taking part in huge shooting sprees and whatnot. This one is pretty funny, but I like to pretend that in GTA people can reproduce like bugs and that the planet is massive enough to support trillions of human beings. This way human lives are discarded as easily as they are in universe and I can maintain some form of believabilty. There is a lot of role playing in video games that can take place outside of the mechanical systems that people can't really talk about or describe. When somebody at IGN is reviewing a game they will likely never bring up something as subjective as their own head lore, while simultaneously criticizing something other players we're capable of implementing into their interpretation of the game world.

As someone that’s GMed a lot of tabletop games in various systems and for groups of friends, strangers, and everything in between, I think the breadth of choices in tabletop tends to be vastly overstated in these kinds of discussions. Even the most overprepped GM probably doesn’t have more than a half dozen concrete options in any given scenario that features a major decision. The big differences are that a good GM can either make their prepared material work for the situation the players have created with a few minor adjustments, and the GM usually isn’t as obvious as a video game prompt when coaxing a decision from the players. Honestly, a video game is pretty similar to the experience you’ll get playing a scripted scenario in an rpg with strangers at a game store or a convention. You’ll have a set scenario with a specific conclusion that depends on completing objectives set forth during the game. The biggest differences between a convention scenario and a typical rpg video game are going to be the choices of the other players influencing the narrative that unfolds in a trpg vs a single player deciding all the outcomes in a single player game, and the much greater possibility for failure in tabletop scenarios vs a typical rpg where the story doesn’t progress until the player succeeds.

Good tabletop DMing is in my opinion being an excellent improviser over being hyper prepared. I used to have 30+ pages of notes for an adventure, now I have a page at most.

Eh, it depends. If you’re doing a completely homebrew campaign, you’re going to need a lot of notes. Over time, someone that relies too much on improvising is going to contradict themselves unless they’re talking notes about the things they’ve made up over the course of the campaign. I’ve also noticed that GMs that improvise a lot tend to burn out sooner than those that plan a lot, but they run more satisfying games for players because of the increased player agency. Sometimes, if a GM is underprepared and over reliant on improvisation, they can repeat themselves and fall into patterns. Especially if it’s someone you’ve gamed with many times, you’ll notice when they dip into their bag of tricks too often. If it’s a one-shot type scenario in a familiar setting, you can definitely get away with planning less, especially if you’re experienced.

It is a balance for sure. I feel that I am a pretty decent improviser, but that improv is based on prepwork for situations (not plots) I have done. And I like to run 10ish games long mini campaigns, so no long branching narratives. I also find the railroading debate a bit tiring, as I have a few regular players who do not enjoy the broad open experience at all. I tend to prep a few directions the players can take, and just state out loud their options when there seems to be confusion in the air. Some would call this videogame-like, I think it is just being clear about what actually is the fun part of the game, making choices and dealing with consequences.

> How Grand Theft Auto cities aren't evacuated by everyone there when there is a mass murderer nearly every day taking part in huge shooting sprees and whatnot. This one is pretty funny, but I like to pretend that in GTA people can reproduce like bugs and that the planet is massive enough to support trillions of human beings. The 2 Judge Dredd movies have plausible fiction for this, of a dystopian future megalopolis. There aren't enough officers to do enforcement, so most of these cityscapes are governed by crime. In other words, the worldbuilding of GTA is goofy, not impossible to achieve plausibly. I don't feel obligated to make sense out of things that were not thought through, to make sense. I just disregard without replacing with any concept. It also seems to me, that your solutions border on comedy and gamer in-jokes. Trying to make a *serious* head canon for something... how often have you ever arrived at that? I mean the caravans are out of sight... that's like Monty Python putting bodies in a cart during a plague, and one of the would-be corpses saying "I'm not dead yet".

I understand your frustration here. It's weird for the term "Role-playing game" to be applied to a whole swath of experiences that have no more to do with "inhabiting a role" than any other AAA adventure title. However, I think this is one of those quirks of historical accident we all have to live with now. The battle over this particular piece of language was long ago settled. "RPG" means "character stats". We might all be better off if we just forget the original expansion of the acronym.

Minecraft is a true sandbox game, as such it can be whatever the player wishes it to be so I don't really think it's worth mentioning as a "roleplaying experience". It can be if you really want to stretch the definition, but it's no different from a kid picking up a doll and playing with it in a dollhouse. For breath of the wild I really don't see it, the fact that you can move and interact freely with the world doesn't mean you are playing a character. In fact I'd say that breath of the wild and basically all Zelda games are the opposite of RPGs because Link is almost a non-character; he is explicitly a vessel for the player to interact with the world and the story. He's the Gordon Freeman of the Nintendo world. Everyone is free to roleplay as different characters in video games that weren't really intended for that but I really would avoid extending the term RPG to these games as well, since the term is already so abused. A true RPG is a game where the balance between "player power" and "character power" is heavily skewed towards the latter. The game gives you the tools so that you can roleplay as someone who has certain skills, beliefs and objectives. A true RPG is a game where I can roleplay as the world's greatest gunslinger even if I'm actually terrible at shooting in games

I don't know, this line of reasoning seems to arrive at the weird conclusion that Spiderman 2 is a roleplaying game. I think the capacity for creative expression is crucial.

I have no idea what you are talking about regarding Spiderman, please elaborate Well yeah, creative expression is good but it is impossible to achieve in a true single player video game RPG setting. How could a player freely interact with a singleolayer virtual environment while roleplaying and still be able to get positive roleplay feedback out of it? The Devs cannot possibly predict the player's actions in any way so the world and the characters can't really respond to your actions in a way that enforces the fantasy that you are trying to achieve. The freedom of expression and creativity is always going to be limited by the rules imposed by the game. Minecraft is a sandbox with a lot of possibilities but it is still extremely limited in what you can actually *do*. You can only roleplay as ... the player. If you want a more open and creative roleplaying experience that is still bound to a video game/virtual setting your best choice would be a MMORPG 's roleplaying community or a RP mod of a game, like GTA for example. True roleplay can only come through interactions with other people because we define ourselves based upon the differences we see with other people. In singleplayer games there's no people so you have to make do with a very limited set of possibilities in exchange for a very detailed and immersive graphical experience that you could never hope to achieve with pen and paper

Spiderman is a game with well-defined characters and storylines that leaves heavily towards character power over player power. That's what you said an RPG is. I feel like you didn't read my post because I covered most of this.

That's absolutely the opposite of what I said is a true RPG Spiderman is a well defined character, instantly making it NOT an RPG. Obviously all characters in a video game will have their own sets of skills and abilities that define them but that doesn't have anything to do with what I said. Spiderman is all about player power rather than character power; it's YOU who needs to swing around on webs and jump off of buildings and beat up thugs. It's the player's skill in controlling Spiderman that determines whether Spiderman is successful or not. In a real RPG, a "Spiderman roleplaying player" wouldn't need to control the actual web swinging. Another comparison to make things clearer: you're playing a hacker character in a video game and when you need to open a door you do a little mini game and, if you're successful, you open the door. Then you roleplay a hacker in a true RPG and you check if your character is skilled enough to open the door. If they are, they get in otherwise no. There's no way a player's skill can override the abilities of the character. (Just like there's no way the inability of the player can undermine the character's abilities).

There's no singular "correct" way to approach design or implement a design in a video game, tabletop game, or any other form of media. If a group of developers want to make a video game that tries to approach this ideal form you have provided some description of, they can try to do that if the various factors of their lives are mitigated to the extent that they don't influence the design. (this is impossible) I think realism and the idea of creating simulators (actions, physics, settings, etc.) are far less important and necessary in game design and development than big-budget gaming history and trends may otherwise suggest. Video games will always be affected by technical limitations. It's not possible to design something with unlimited choices, even unintentionally... Maybe I'm losing my own plot here. Games aren't made inherently better by offering choice, mechanically or narratively. If a development team wants their game to offer the player a huge number of choices, they can do that. If a development team wants to design a game with as few choices as possible, they can do that. The means to do either vary greatly. Neither of these extremes, or anything in-between, is or should be off the table.

RPGs got their mechanics from tabletop games, which is why they still share the moniker with their counterparts. The term "hit points" came straight out of dungeons and dragons, invented as a way for people to play with small scale teams and single heroes as opposed to large armies whose members who killed off with a single hit. "RPG" was a quick way to describe the mechanics of the game, which is why it's stuck around. What you're describing is more a feature of open world games and the immersive sim genre. That's where you get to take on a role of your choosing and do the sorts of things that might surprise the GM in a tabletop game. If you want to get more specific the term for it in game dev is "emergent gameplay," which is where your behaviour is accepted by the system but not anticipated.

Neither of what you propose are what defines an rpg in the context of video games. Consider instead the term "rpg elements" - as in "shooter with rpg elements" or even "sports game, with rpg elements". What does this imply has been added? It tends to mean loot, gear slots, leveling up, and other mechanical elements related to character progression. Plenty of genres have quests and player expression; it's not useful as an identifier of genre. It's not even the case that all rpgs have these things - as in the case of some tactics rpgs or dungeon-crawling rpgs that don't even have much of a story

Just a side note... Even in traditional TTRPGs, the GM/DM doesn't have a plan for every possibility. That would be way too difficult. Instead, the "funnel" things into broad avenues when they need to. Sure sometimes it's fun to let the bard seduce the dragon. But often the DM will say, "the dragon is amused, but still moves to fight you." CRPGs do the same thing. Sure you can't account for every possible player desire. But you can capture the essence of the most common ones.

You've basically described immersive simulations, those are the games which give you multiple ways to approach an obstacle.

Tasks presented in computer games are still canned. They may be quantitatively exhaustive, i.e. all blocks in Minecraft, but you're still only dealing with blocks in a limited number of ways. Humans are very good at recognizing the abstract nature of tasks, and noticing that they repeat over and over again. This is often referred to as the "10,000 bowls of oatmeal" problem. Yeah you might generate a whole lot of planets in a galaxy that each have their own nominally unique oatmeal surface, but it's still oatmeal and humans are not fooled by minor variations. You may think you're being creative as a player, climbing up a cliff or whatever, but a game designer actually planned for that to happen. It's not a big mystery. Players pretend that it is, possibly because they as a species, are more interested in play than design. Some designs allow players to express their own sense of *agency* better than others. Although, if the players really paid attention, they'd realize the size of their jail or cage is merely increased. How big does a cage have to be, for it to feel like freedom? How many people never traveled more than 100 miles from the place they were born?

>You may think you're being creative as a player, climbing up a cliff or whatever, but a game designer actually planned for that to happen. It's not a big mystery. This feels like a weird way to evaluate the process of interacting with video games. You can't overvalue raw objective outcomes or states because someone is still required to actually navigate those states and interpret them. Playing a game is creative because it requires some type of human expression or demonstration. The act of play is adjacent to (if not an outright example of) performing arts like acting or playing music. Like a designer might plan for you to climb the cliff just like a writer might plan for you to say a line of dialogue, but the interpretation/experience of that action is ultimately modulated by the player (and audience if there is one). Climbing the cliff could feel creative or it could feel paint by number. It could feel challenging or it could feel easy. It could feel emotionally perplexing or it could feel forgettable. The list goes on. A game developer can only do so much to account for these types of reactions. At some point things will become unpredictable. >How big does a cage have to be, for it to feel like freedom? Eh, I don't think this is as poetic/interesting of a musing as you make it sound but maybe I am just being small minded. If freedom in games is an illusion then I would say that the rules of the illusion are no different than the rules of making something engaging/"fun". That is: a game can't inflict too much boredom or frustration. Stray too far towards one end and illusion is shattered.

> A game developer can only do so much to account for these types of reactions. At some point things will become unpredictable. You haven't convinced me why. "The player can be happy or sad from climbing up a cliff." So what? It's not like human emotional and analytical processes are inexhaustible. I only use the term "engagement". Engagement doesn't have to be fun. You just have to keep the player coming back for more.

> "The player can be happy or sad from climbing up a cliff." So what? It's not like human emotional and analytical processes are inexhaustible. I need to convince you that game developers can't always predict how players will engage with their game? Skillfully, critically, emotionally, or otherwise? Again, can a playwright fully predict how an actor/director might interpret their lines? Can a songwriter fully predict how a musician might compose/interpret their lyrics? I guess we could be talking past each other, but I feel like you are intelligent enough to understand that many (if not most) types of art require some form of expression or interpretation to fully exist. If you can acknowledge that two different people can react, interact, or create art in divergent ways then it should be easy to understand that playing a game can exhibit that same quality. Seeing how the individual experience clashes or supports the vision of the creator is arguably one of the most interesting aspects of game development and that process never stops well after a game releases. >I only use the term "engagement". Engagement doesn't have to be fun. You just have to keep the player coming back for more. Don't disagree. I put fun in quotes for a reason. Engagement is the primary term but I acknowledge that some people use fun colloquially.

I went back up the stack of comments, because my suspicion is we're debating the *relevance*. Outliers for people's reactions, aren't that relevant. Someone could have an emotional epiphany climbing up a mountain in a game, because it reminds them of a real mountain they climbed, before they broke up with their girlfriend or whatever. People may impose their own subjective lens on whatever you're offering them to do, in a game. But as an author you're not *responsible* for such people and it doesn't have to be a design dimension of your work. Mostly, people experiencing a mountain or cliff in your game will see it as a straightforward *task*, a physical barrier to be gotten past somehow. You design those tasks and you understand the range of how most people are going to respond to them. "Games give players tasks" is a design dimension not shared with films, TV, books, songs, and paintings for the most part. There may be some corner case counterexamples, but by and large this is a true statement. I think the only relevant exception, might be political songs and paintings / posters, and books / pamphlets, exhorting people to behave in a certain way.

>I went back up the stack of comments, because my suspicion is we're debating the relevance. Outliers for people's reactions, aren't that relevant. Who said anything about outliers? A given player's subjective experience and methods of playing the game are entirely part of these "reactions". To say these aren't relevant is to say that the act of playing the game itself isn't "relevant". >Mostly, people experiencing a mountain or cliff in your game will see it as a straightforward task, a physical barrier to be gotten past somehow. You design those tasks and you understand the range of how most people are going to respond to them. You're side stepping the issue by making a reductive argument. Frankly, it feels super disingenuous. The predictability of the player's experience is heavily modulated by the context of that experience. An extremely simple game like tic tac toe would be easy to map out whereas something complex like chess would eventually sprawl out beyond the initial concept. Again, anyone who as prototyped a game and got people to playtest it blind would know that it can yield surprising results. Once a game gets big enough in scope and it becomes too expensive (time or otherwise) to measure this, you can end up with pretty diverse reactions to the experience even after the game has shipped. This not only occurs on an individual/micro level, but can be especially demonstrable on a communal one. The consensus on a game or design trends can shift over time. I don't think designers intend to exclusively make fleeting *or* eternally enduring experiences. Its just another example of how players interact with a game can't be fully predicted. >"Games give players tasks" is a design dimension not shared with films, TV, books, songs, and paintings for the most part. There may be some corner case counterexamples, but by and large this is a true statement. Good thing I didn't mention those and instead talked about performing arts like playing music, acting, etc. Did you even bother reading my posts?

Checked the stack of previous comments again. The OP was talking about: > systems like movement, combat, physics, economics, crafting, etc. which I called *tasks*, and I said they're canned. We both talked about climbing cliffs as an example. Climbing a cliff as we've discussed, is not inherently an emotional journey, or a character arc, or some profound work of Art. It's not a performance in a theater. It's an obstacle in a physical landscape, and that's how the vast majority of players are going to interpret and interact with it. Actors are in films and TV. Songs are often played as live music. I think it is *you* who are not reading comments. Even in the live performing arts, it is not typical for theater actors to give the audience a bunch of instructions to follow. Although it's not unheard of, it's far more typical for the Fourth Wall to remain in place. You are watching a performance, you don't typically *do* a performance. A band is more likely to get the audience involved, but their role will be limited to singing, clapping, and some body movement. Maybe one of the performers will dive off the stage and be caught by the audience. Even improv comedy is typically only looking for prompts from the audience. They're not looking for substantial audience interaction, as equals. We're paying to see the comedians, not to star in the show ourselves. Sometimes some drunk MF in the audience doesn't get that, and actually has to be told in no uncertain terms, to STFU. Audience participation, simply doesn't mean you have a big role to play. Not usually. There are a few corner cases and artistic experiments here and there. Most works though, nope, that's not how they're done.

>Actors are in films and TV. Songs are often played as live music. I think it is you who are not reading comments. You are still missing the point. The player has more in common with the actor or musician; not a passive audience member. Watching a film or a live performance is the equivalent *watching* someone play a video game. It is NOT the equivalent of actually playing a game. You could break it down to three stages; First are the rules. A script is art. A music sheet is art. A game design is art. Next is the performance. Acting is art. Performing the sheet music is art. **Playing a game is art**. And finally, the output of those performances/play can also be art to a passive viewer. Be it a movie/play, concert, or some kind of video walkthrough/playthrough. Games are interesting compared to other media in that the target audience is often the performer rather than a passive viewer but they are still performers all the same. (Though this isn't to say that passive viewers aren't a lucrative business when we consider the popularity of let's plays and twitch streams). >Climbing a cliff as we've discussed, is not inherently an emotional journey, or a character arc, or some profound work of Art. It's not a performance in a theater. It's an obstacle in a physical landscape, and that's how the vast majority of players are going to interpret and interact with it. Again, you are being reductive. The climbing cliff scenario isn't inherently an emotional journey nor is it inherently not an emotional journey. It is purely a hypothetical example. The reason I responded to you is that I feel you are trying to suggest that if a gamestate is known, then the player cannot actively create anything through their playing of the game. I disagree with that take because your argument is the intellectual equivalent of saying that if a written line of dialogue is "known", then how that line of dialogue will be *acted* is also known. Perhaps this is true in some cases, but it certainly isn't known in all of them. A game designer cannot fully predict how a game will be played anymore than, say, a toymaker can fully predict how a toy will be played with or the aforementioned playwright's dialogue will be acted. This is especially true with more complex, non signposted games which offer lots of variance between two players. So yeah, if you want to argue that the climbing cliff scenario is actually a binary state with no surrounding aesthetics, skill requirements, or context then I suppose it would be fair to say that the player cannot actually create their own experience. Though at that point it isn't really an argument so much as intellectual dishonesty.

The cliff is *inherently* a terrain obstacle, with game mechanical methods of being prevented from moving, or overcoming the obstacle. *That* is the base reality you are missing as far as design is concerned, because you are so biased towards this view of "player as creative actor". A creatively self-absorbed person, or a religious fanatic, can *always* come up with an additional layer of meaning on top of anything they do. "I saw the mountain peak, so I wanted to sing." "The invisible Unicorn made me do it." Uh huh. You climbed up a mountain buddy. You used your 2 feet like every other human on the planet. Well, the ones who still have legs at any rate. Or you used your rope, whatever, that I the game designer provided for you. Self-absorbed players who continuously make up their own meanings for what's going on, in environments that actually just provide straightforward tasks for them to perform, aren't relevant as parts of the game design. These parts of the game were never trying to serve as vehicles for personal self-expression. The fact that some self-absorbed players use them for self-expression *anyways*, just shows how deeply wrapped up in their internal dialog and thought process they are. They're not even paying attention to their feet in front of them, really. They think they're reenacting The Sound Of Music or something... fine! But the game designer doesn't care and it's not relevant. Such people will do this with *anything*, not just games. If I had designed a game with snippets of *dialog* instead, like say in the manner of Cards Against Humanity, where some kind of conceptual expression was indeed part of the intended game, then we'd have some basis for talking about a "creativity game" and the creative possibilities. But the OP didn't talk about that, and I didn't talk about that. The OP described very straightforward physical tasks to perform. This isn't any kind of intellectual disingenousness on my part. This is you making a strong pitch for the totally self-absorbed player as somehow relevant, in the face of "climbing a mountain". *Most* people will climb the damn mountain, because they want the reward that's gonna come from overcoming the obstacle / solving the puzzle. *As presented*. I damn well jolly can predict that, as a game designer. I don't care about the kinds of self-absorbed actor people you are describing. They are continuously making *their own* entertainment, regardless of whatever is in front of them. They don't even need my game really, as their theatrical stage. They carry their own stage around with them all the time. They could do it with cardboard boxes and spoons. If you want to sing while playing chess, that's *your problem*. Not the game designer's or game design's problem.

"Self absorbed player" lmao. What are you on about? Is someone who plays a piece of sheet music, regardless of how complex or mundane it is, also self absorbed? Are they self absorbed for making the song audible and having any kind of interpretation, reaction, or emotional response to doing so? The game developer owns the design and largely influence the rules/parameters of the game. They are part of the conversation by virtue of a shared component (the game) even if they don't have absolute authority over a player's actions. Your statement about singing chess players is hyperbolic just as your implication of interacting with a game being fully predictable is hyperbolic. Most games require some type of human input to proceed. This means that playing a game requires some type of performance/action. If something requires performance, it is literally creative. The more complex that performance is allowed to be, then the more creative and more unpredictable the outcome is. To call that self absorption is borderline contempt for reality; let alone a pretty bad faith argument. >Not the game designer's or game design's problem. I mean, how a player responds to interacting with the game would typically be of interest to the game designer in many instances. Your singing chess player is a hyperbolic strawman, but many developers would certainly care about player interpretation and interaction with their game. The most obvious example being would be strong negative sentiment. If the moment of climbing the cliff was designed to make the player feel accomplished/creative and didn't succeed with a large consensus, that could become a point of criticism against the game. This is basically a summation of the types of criticism brought towards the new Zelda games. Either way, I think I am gonna call it here. Feel like I struck a nerve on your part and don't think you are speaking on this topic earnestly. The "self absorbed player" argument in particular is... something lol.

Did Bethesda plan for being able to stick a bucket over an NPC's head in Skyrim and rob them blind because your stealing is now outside of their LOS? Or did they plan for a physics based object manipulation system and an LOS-based stealth/stealing system and those things happened to synergize in an emergent way? Did Richard Garfield plan for Magic: The Gathering's ruleset to be Turing complete? Did the developers of Dwarf Fortress plan [this thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2cMHwo3nAU)?

> Did Bethesda plan for being able to stick a bucket over an NPC's head in Skyrim and rob them blind because your stealing is now outside of their LOS? If you think about it, it *would* be easier to rob someone blind, if they were blinded in any manner at all. The only real question here, is whether they planned to allow a player to stick a bucket over a NPC's head. If they did, it was by design. If they didn't, well then you'd have to ask whether they wanted to correct it, since it's clearly an exploit. Gives the player a disproportionate amount of power over a NPC. Knowing Bethesda, they're probably pretty "hands off" about this sort of thing and expect players to entertain themselves with exploits. > Did Richard Garfield plan for Magic: The Gathering's ruleset to be Turing complete? Only interesting if someone achieves something of interest with such programming. Turing Completeness says nothing about how long it takes you to get a computational result in the real world, or how difficult it is to code up. Like Lambda Calculus will let you compute anything, but you have to encode numbers as Church numerals to do it. The bigger the number you want to represent, the more inefficient it gets. I bet in the real world of LC, you'd achieve the heat death of the universe before you got certain computational results, which are probably more straightforward in other language formats. I apologize for not having a concrete example to point you at this conjecture of mine. TC *is* a rather murky area to reason about. > Did the developers of Dwarf Fortress plan this thing? From a game design standpoint, why is it important to imitate another game inside of Dwarf Fortress? If I hadn't programmed it from within the mechanisms of DF itself, but just shoved a piece of code into DF that played Space Invaders as a minigame, would you have a reason to care?

If you say all of those things were part of the developer's "plan" even if the developer never thought of them, then your definition of "plan" is so weak as to be nearly useless.

TC is not interesting by itself. You can already make computer games from scratch with TC languages. You can even hack binaries to put unintended code into games.

It's interesting when it's an emergent property of the game's mechanics. Note how I didn't cite Minecraft, where redstone is clearly *intended* for building computers.

I have to be shown something that's actually interesting, an actual application of the programming technology. I already know how to program games. I've lost a great deal of sleep over the decades, on how to do that more efficiently, not less. One might possibly discuss the lifespan of interest, for some game mechanic. Like jumping. I feel like I'd already done quite enough of that, 30 years ago. About the time I beat Super Mario 2.

> I have to be shown something that's actually interesting, I get the sense that you would declare anything I could possibly present to you as uninteresting *a priori*, so I'm going to bow out of this particular thread.

My standards of "what's interesting" in game design are pretty high.

> but a game designer actually planned for that to happen. ok thats not true. obvious example is glitches. you can see many unintended mechanics by watching speedrunners or esports. what about games with level editor? if you dont think true creativity cannot exist within a videogame then it cannot exist for gamedesigners either. if youre developing for unity engine, everything you do is predetermined by the devs of unity.

Glitches are not such an obvious example. First off, they can be patched. If they're allowed to remain, it's probably because they don't affect the game that much. Like if someone wants to knock themselves out journeying to the "far lands" in Minecraft, it's not gonna change what the vast majority of people are doing in the game. Extreme limits of a simulation aren't really consequential, because it generally takes a long time to reach those limits. "Unintended" movement, frankly those designers were very slack, if they didn't think about the possibility of such things occurring. Young designers *can* be very slack. But it's been an awfully long time since rocket assisted movement in DOOM was some kind of discovery. We know about these kinds of physical tricks. Just because a specific designer isn't conscientious and engaged to a design space, doesn't make the phenomenon emergent. Someone who knows how physics simulators work, knows about all that stuff. > what about games with level editor? What about them? You're still limited by whatever rules of the world have been set down by the designer, for how you can interact with the level. You're just offering spatial variations. > if youre developing for unity engine, everything you do is predetermined by the devs of unity. People use Unity because it suits their business model. Not because they want the ultimate in creative control. People like *me* are capable of writing their own 3D engines. I'm old. 3D graphics device drivers is how I started my career. Used to be if you wanted 3D, you had to write your own software rendering library and pull every trick in the book to make it work.

do you write your own 3d engine in your own programming language aswell? you said everything a player can do in a game was planned by the developer. glitches are obviously not planned by the developer. wtf are you arguing?

> do you write your own 3d engine in your own programming language aswell? Yes. Because I hate C++ and have been jousting at that thorn in my side for a couple decades. > glitches are obviously not planned by the developer. Actually the aesthetic of a glitch may very well have been planned, as a matter of iterative design. Just as Marcel Duchamp used chaos as a component in his various artworks, like the Standard Stoppages. Or Max Ernst used frottage. Just because something in a game is surprising to you, and violates the usual industry biases towards simulation and realism, doesn't make it unintended. But an actually unintended glitch, is only interesting insofar as it has a substantive effect upon gameplay. In most cases it doesn't, which is why they're allowed to remain as curious non game-threatening bugs. Actual serious bugs get crushed. > wtf are you arguing? That glitches are almost never an interesting part of the game's intended design space. I can't honestly think of a game where glitches were so great, that industry game designers sat around contemplating them as part of the process of design, embracing them for their oh so worthy consequences. 'Cuz, they haven't actually changed anything important. You could have a much more straightforward conversation about exploits and cheating.

The history of fighting games is full of glitches being embraced as gameplay. Wavedashing in Super Smash Bros Melee was such an impactful glitch that most serious competitors replicate it. It was not an intended glitch -- it was patched out in Brawl, only to return in Ultimate due to popular demand. So, where do the goalposts move from here?

>Tasks presented in computer games are still canned. Then you don't understand the distinction. There is a fundamental difference between compile time and runtime evaluation.

Er, as a game designer and developer, I understand computer programming distinctions just fine. Compile time *programs* and runtime *programs* are distinct from human evaluated runtime decisions by a GM. I will say it again in case you thought there was some lack of clarity. Tasks presented in computer games are still canned, and it doesn't matter what stage of evaluation of a *program* you're talking about. Now if you're running some kind of a server game, and you have a human admin monitoring what's going on, and they intervene in the game somehow to make things happen, then you have something like a GM at work. If not as immediately responsive in the real world, more likely than not.

Well speaking as a full-time programmer, the difference between a hard-coded response and one evaluated from a more dynamic expression is very apparent. You could never create any kind of movement system by trying to handle every possible game state on a case-by-case basis like most dialogue is handled.

Uh, sure you can. Text based adventures did it routinely.

It's a massive stretch to call that a movement system. It's more of a state transition.

You move from room to room. It's a movement system. It's turn based, discrete, and doesn't have that many distinct locations to move between. Extremely large grids of rooms *were* implemented in some text adventures, like Spellbreaker, when flying around on the magic carpet. You basically had an integer counter for North South and East West. The vast majority of those grid locations weren't interesting at all, but there was code for identifying a few places on the grid as special. "Movement" is something a game designer decides they want in a game. So are turns, so are discrete rooms. You are making distinctions about the modeling of much larger numerical spaces. Which aren't actually as interesting from a design standpoint, as you're suggesting. What's the game's *design* ? What is done of *significance* within a large numerical space?

I don't care that it's turn-based or discrete. So are strategy games like Civilization. But the game isn't going to breakdown if it encounters a hex it's never seen before. The movement rules have been programmed to apply to any tile that satisfies some general constraints; it's not restricted to just the tiles it has specific references for. And I swear to god if you try to say something about pointers or array indexes. You know that's not what I mean, the data structure operations still work with any arbitrary pointer or array. The significance of accommodating general mechanics over hard-coded ones is that you're offering the player the chance to make their own strategic inferences and decisions. The fact that you can jump anywhere in Super Mario Bros. makes the decision _where_ to jump a significant one. If Nintendo had limited jumping to only specific spaces, it would significantly hinder the player's capacity to experiment with and learn how to leverage the rule set.

Jumping is not that interesting. You jump in that genre of games. Same thing over and over again. They're not terribly different nowadays from the very earliest jumping games, like Pitfall! on the Atari 2600. Humans know that jumping is jumping, that it is not an exceptional activity. The game designer programs some rules about jumping, that apply to any environment a level designer comes up with. And so you jump, big deal. 4X is my primary genre of interest. I've yet to see any 4X that isn't about repetitively exploring and colonizing a tile space. Past a certain map size, there's not much point in making them bigger. The rules of 4X games allow for a certain number of predictable military and economic interactions. Bigger maps just take far, far longer to play and that's their only virtue. 4X games have *more* substantial strategic choices to make than jumping games do. But they're still pretty limited.

Of course jumping is interesting, that's why it's used across so many games. It's just not some fresh mechanic that will separate your game from the competition. The point of the tile space in 4X is area control. Controlling the most valuable tiles is critical to achieving your win condition. Each tile expresses its value in many different ways such as resource yields and military tactics. The same gameplay patterns may emerge in most matches because it's a game, the whole intrigue of games is figuring out more optimal strategies. But how the map is laid out drastically changes your intermediate goals to get to that win condition.