"Role-Playing" Games that are an Example of the Illusion of Free Choice

[Beans00]

Daggerfall. It seems to be lauded on here as some kind of gold standard for RPG when nothing you do matters. You can go to generic town 1 or generic town 2 and choice between 100 dungeons, non of which are distinct in any way. If Daggerfall only had 1 town, 1 house, 1 dungeon and 1 NPC, the experience would be no different.

Well it would be a lot shorter. So that's a pretty big difference right there.

 

[Serious_Business]

Choice is a limited form of interaction. By definition, when you have a choice, you don't choose your choice ; it isn't "free" in that sense. C&C in crpgs are mostly about trees ; the interactivity is linear and narrative, the best it can do is "branch" from given nodes, to varying degrees of "consequences". In the end you make choices that were planned for you. This actually can imply a tremendous amount of work from the developpers and the results aren't always so convincing, even if the branches are multiple. It's still a tree, and you still follow it like a good boy. The reality is that most of the "freedom" in crpgs probably comes from messing about with the systems, with classes and so on. It is the complexity of interacting system that creates the depth of interaction, more than the narrative beats that form a tree. In the end a free choice in a game is one that wasn't planned by the designer, probably. More often than not that means abusing glitches and whatnot, or crashing the balance of the game. Otherwise, it's about giving tools and not really knowing what they can amount to in advance, a bit like in immersive sims.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

There's two ways to roleplay. To roleplay a made character and to roleplay a created one.

The world as a setting, however, needs to be believable in both cases. Roleplaying is about immersion, essentially. Acting. It's about the quality of the setting, and the more time passes the more I'm convinced that making a quality setting is the most important thing for an rpg. Everything else is secondary and it can be modded or added.

It's about the premise/your role in the setting moreso than the setting itself. You can have the best, most unique setting and still squander it with a retarded call to action that makes no sense & vice versa.

The setting can make sense and be well crafted but if the PCs place in it isnt, then it fucks up the experience.

On the other hand, you can have a shit, cliche setting but the journey you take within it is well crafted enough that it's still a good RPG.

 

[Saldrone]

But is the definition of an RPG really CYOA-style story choices? So games like Fallout where the first RPGs? I would put forward that what defines an RPG is progression, getting XP and levelling up.

Hey man you commited the mistake to post an image using Discord as a source. Try to use an image link generator next time