Roll Vs Role
Role Playing Games are an interesting bunch. I haven’t really played much of them but they are one of the genres I think that do really hold the future of gaming.
There has been a common misconception about RPGs in which people I know (and also myself used to) believe in. A lot of people I know think that RPGs are about ‘leveling up’ your character, fighting monsters and gaining loot, roaming through dungeons and doing side quests. It’s true many RPGs contain these elements but that is not what the core of the genre is about. RPGs are exactly what they say they are; Role Playing Games. You take a role of a created (or a pre-defined) character and you make choices which reflect the personality of your character and the world responds to these choices appropriately.
By taking on that definition, this means there hasn’t been many RPGs made (argueably none at all), with Fallout being the many few. This is true, the genre itself has kind of lost its direction. I guess this is because of the early games that came out which did not have the technology to make worlds that responded to your actions and instead they focused on combat, monsters and dungeons. Also, games like Final Fantasy introduced the RPG genre to the Japanese market and they then began to take a different, more story-focused approach the genre.
I don’t know if there will ever be ‘true’ RPGs anytimes soon. After all, the worlds the developers make must respond to all different sorts of characters in appropriate ways. But what I would like to see is a more of focus of what RPGs are about. A little less focus of statistics and more on choices and consequences.
~ by dinopoke on 17 February, 2009.
Posted in Game Design, Games
Tags: Game Design, Games, Role Playing Game, RPG
I’m with you–role playing in digital games is hard–just by the nature of having to do all that programing to offer users choices, conversation trees, factions, all the shades of gray that go along with it … but have you looked at tabletop RPGs? When the engine behind the game is a real person, the game becomes so much more fluid!
Honestly, I’ve never played a tabletop RPG before. They greatly interest me but I’ve never had the time to try any. When the engine is a human, I guess you are only limited with your imagination.
However, the direction has changed a bit with CRPGS. They aim to create immersive worlds in which imagination is not needed as the player can see and interact with the things that form a part of the world.
Well … I’m with you–wishing that imagination was still a requirement of a CRPG! (Though I might classify Final Fantasy as more of an interactive story than a true RPG where you can make choices). So along that line here’s a question–if a game has swords and magic, is it by default an RPG? I would say No, but they are often classed that way because of the setting alone … So what is an RPG?
You do mention a great example: Fallout 3–RPing my character in that game has been fantastic. I think games like these demand much more from you–to understand what would your character do, given the limited (in-game) information he/she has. So, with the Fallout example: Would I accept money to blow up the town of Megaton? Hell no, in fact, in my imagination my character was Paladin-like, a justice bringer of the wasteland. Just knowing that Burke and Tenpenny wanted me to do it was enough to make me go “end” them. lol. Could I have played the game without actively imaging my character? … like just a FPS? Well, I don’t know–I guess so … but what’s the fun in that?