Delicieuxz
Cipher
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2010
- Messages
- 766
This is my understanding.
An RPG is a game where player agency is created through the game world responding to the player’s unique thought-processes, choices, and actions, resulting in a dynamic narrative.
The “role-playing” in “role-playing game” refers to the player’s own thought-processes and choices playing an essential role in shaping the particular narrative that unfolds. The term RPG originates with pen and paper games, where the player’s choices are responded to by another person who is fulfilling the role of a game master / dungeon master and is dynamically creating outcomes and new situations based on the player’s input to create what is called “player agency”.
In video games, the term RPG means the same thing as it does for PnP and board games. But in video games the game master is replaced with scripted AI and game systems that emulates a game master’s dynamic thinking by pre-preparing a variety of possible game-world responses to different possible player choices and actions.
When the player-role aspect, which is the player’s choices and actions changing the world around them, is taken out of the mix of a game’s elements, then the game is no longer a role-playing game. Where there is only one player possibility, there isn’t role-playing.
When the role-playing aspect is taken out of a game that also features combat and exploring as core gameplay elements, what’s left is an Action-Adventure game. An Action-Adventure game is an RPG minus the role-playing / player agency element.
In an RPG, the player is presented with information that they must figure out what to do with. And they might do any of a variety of things with that information, and the game world will react in different ways depending on what the player does do. And the outcome of that is a unique narrative.
In an Action-Adventure game, the player is not left to figure out what to do but is given clear quest directives and often a quest marker telling them exactly where to go and what to do. That lets the player focus on the game's combat and exploring - which is literally Action and Adventuring.
The design elements of an RPG:
- a necessary emphasis on player agency
- can have action
- likely has adventuring
- focuses on presenting the player with information and leaving them to figure out what to do with it
- may or may not have character building, skill systems, inventories, etc
The design elements of an Action-Adventure game:
- has action
- has adventuring
- relies on quest directives and often quest markers to guide the player and move the narrative forward
- may have token choices, often boolean and presented only during dialog
- may or may not have character building, skill systems, inventories, etc
It is common for modern video game publishers to label and market games which have no or no significant role-playing in them as RPGs despite the fact they are not RPGs. Examples of this are Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Witcher 2 and 3, Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Odyssey. Those games are labelled as RPG despite not having strong player agency and only the most token of boolean player choices presented during unavoidable dialog sequences. They’re labelled as RPG by their publishers for the purpose of attracting more sales because the idea that a game is an RPG is alluring due to the RPG concept’s much more expansive scope than the Action-Adventure concept.
Oblivion, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed Origins, are not RPGs because they remove the element of independent player thought-processes from how the narrative unfolds and instead present on-rails and point-to-point questing so that the player, instead of thinking situations through and figuring out what to do, can just focus on the combat and the exploring while the game’s quest directives and quest markers always tell the player where to go and what to do.
Yes, they have some token choices, presented in boolean ‘this or that’ format during unavoidable dialog sequences. So, you could technically say they’re Action-Adventure games with faint RPG elements at very rare moments in their entire durations.
But, what’s the point of that? That would be akin to saying that because GTA has drivable cars in it that it’s genre is Racing, or that because Super Mario World’s environment changes depending on whether the player unlocks the red, yellow, blue, and green switch palaces that it’s an RPG. That‘s reaching so far that it isn’t sensible or genuine at that point and it’s really abusing the genre labels and using them in misnomer fashion — just as Bethesda does when they call Skyrim an RPG.
Claiming that a game without player agency is an RPG is the same thing as claiming that a 3rd-person building game is a FPS. If you don’t have the first-person and the shooter elements then you literally don’t have a First-Person Shooter. And when there isn’t player agency AKA role-playing, then you literally don’t have a Role-Playing Game.
Without an emphasis on player agency, a game can’t be an RPG because that emphasis on player agency is literally THE specific element which is the role-playing referred to in “Role-Playing Game”.
An RPG is a game where player agency is created through the game world responding to the player’s unique thought-processes, choices, and actions, resulting in a dynamic narrative.
The “role-playing” in “role-playing game” refers to the player’s own thought-processes and choices playing an essential role in shaping the particular narrative that unfolds. The term RPG originates with pen and paper games, where the player’s choices are responded to by another person who is fulfilling the role of a game master / dungeon master and is dynamically creating outcomes and new situations based on the player’s input to create what is called “player agency”.
In video games, the term RPG means the same thing as it does for PnP and board games. But in video games the game master is replaced with scripted AI and game systems that emulates a game master’s dynamic thinking by pre-preparing a variety of possible game-world responses to different possible player choices and actions.
When the player-role aspect, which is the player’s choices and actions changing the world around them, is taken out of the mix of a game’s elements, then the game is no longer a role-playing game. Where there is only one player possibility, there isn’t role-playing.
When the role-playing aspect is taken out of a game that also features combat and exploring as core gameplay elements, what’s left is an Action-Adventure game. An Action-Adventure game is an RPG minus the role-playing / player agency element.
In an RPG, the player is presented with information that they must figure out what to do with. And they might do any of a variety of things with that information, and the game world will react in different ways depending on what the player does do. And the outcome of that is a unique narrative.
In an Action-Adventure game, the player is not left to figure out what to do but is given clear quest directives and often a quest marker telling them exactly where to go and what to do. That lets the player focus on the game's combat and exploring - which is literally Action and Adventuring.
The design elements of an RPG:
- a necessary emphasis on player agency
- can have action
- likely has adventuring
- focuses on presenting the player with information and leaving them to figure out what to do with it
- may or may not have character building, skill systems, inventories, etc
The design elements of an Action-Adventure game:
- has action
- has adventuring
- relies on quest directives and often quest markers to guide the player and move the narrative forward
- may have token choices, often boolean and presented only during dialog
- may or may not have character building, skill systems, inventories, etc
It is common for modern video game publishers to label and market games which have no or no significant role-playing in them as RPGs despite the fact they are not RPGs. Examples of this are Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Witcher 2 and 3, Assassin’s Creed: Origins and Odyssey. Those games are labelled as RPG despite not having strong player agency and only the most token of boolean player choices presented during unavoidable dialog sequences. They’re labelled as RPG by their publishers for the purpose of attracting more sales because the idea that a game is an RPG is alluring due to the RPG concept’s much more expansive scope than the Action-Adventure concept.
Oblivion, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed Origins, are not RPGs because they remove the element of independent player thought-processes from how the narrative unfolds and instead present on-rails and point-to-point questing so that the player, instead of thinking situations through and figuring out what to do, can just focus on the combat and the exploring while the game’s quest directives and quest markers always tell the player where to go and what to do.
Yes, they have some token choices, presented in boolean ‘this or that’ format during unavoidable dialog sequences. So, you could technically say they’re Action-Adventure games with faint RPG elements at very rare moments in their entire durations.
But, what’s the point of that? That would be akin to saying that because GTA has drivable cars in it that it’s genre is Racing, or that because Super Mario World’s environment changes depending on whether the player unlocks the red, yellow, blue, and green switch palaces that it’s an RPG. That‘s reaching so far that it isn’t sensible or genuine at that point and it’s really abusing the genre labels and using them in misnomer fashion — just as Bethesda does when they call Skyrim an RPG.
Claiming that a game without player agency is an RPG is the same thing as claiming that a 3rd-person building game is a FPS. If you don’t have the first-person and the shooter elements then you literally don’t have a First-Person Shooter. And when there isn’t player agency AKA role-playing, then you literally don’t have a Role-Playing Game.
Without an emphasis on player agency, a game can’t be an RPG because that emphasis on player agency is literally THE specific element which is the role-playing referred to in “Role-Playing Game”.
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