What's more important for an RPG: Char creation/customization or leveling up?

[Bruma Hobo]

storyfags who should be playing wargames

It don't add up, cap'n.

It works either way.

 

[samuraigaiden]

An RPG remains an RPG also between level ups.

Agreed, hence the question posed on page 3 which was sadly ignored or not understood:

How many campaigns of D&D were abandoned before the players made it to Level 2?

Anyone voting that levelling up is most important or the core of an RPG is thereby suggesting that a game cannot be an RPG until the player has levelled up. This means that possibly the majority of tabletop roleplaying campaigns in history were in fact not RPGs, since many thousands of campaigns have been abandoned before any meaningful progress was made.

Sure, and if you ignore character creation and use a pre made character, it’s not a RPG anymore too.

 

[Norfleet]

I argue that you don't actually need either of these things. Consider "Smart Kobold". Is this an RPG? It has neither custom character creation (You're Generic Fighter Guy), nor levelling up (Generic Fighter Guy has achieved full competency in his craft as a Generic Fighter Guy and thus has no need of XP). Is Thief an RPG? You don't customize Garrett and he doesn't level up: He starts and finishes the game competent in his craft.

Your typical MMORPG ostensibly has levelling up, but not really: What it has is a level cap, and a tutorial designed to get you to that level cap, after which you can finally start playing the game.

So I argue that neither of these elements is actually required and both are just fluff elements commonly associated with RPGs, without actually being core to being an RPG.

All of these games, obviously, still retain some sense of progression, a sense of actions you take and milestones you reach to advance your play in the game (acquiring a ranged weapon, getting new gear, accumulating more money so that you can accumulate more money faster).

 

[JarlFrank]

People choosing level ups over customization believe The Linear RPG is an actual RPG, while NEO Scavenger isn't. This faction's comprised of dopamine addicts, weeaboos, retarded combatfags and storyfags who should be playing wargames and visual novels instead of further declining RPGs, and the occasional idiot not understanding what this thread's about.

Deport them all to the watch so we can finally achieve massive incline.

Yep, and finding out how many people are this retarded was the entire point of this thread

 

[JarlFrank]

Is Thief an RPG? You don't customize Garrett and he doesn't level up: He starts and finishes the game competent in his craft.

That is correct.
That's why Thief is not an RPG.
It's one of my favorite games of all time but it's definitely not an RPG.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Anyone voting that levelling up is most important or the core of an RPG is thereby suggesting that a game cannot be an RPG until the player has levelled up. This means that possibly the majority of tabletop roleplaying campaigns in history were in fact not RPGs, since many thousands of campaigns have been abandoned before any meaningful progress was made.

Sure, and if you ignore character creation and use a pre made character, it’s not a RPG anymore too.

Absolutely not, the important matter is that character creation and customization (and by that i mean attributes/skills/class/feats not fucking colors and hairstyle) is available.

Pre-gens are made for greenhorns/storyfags, it also exist for PnP.

Arguably, a good cRPG could skip character customization and still be a RPG if he does everything else right.
Still, character creation is more important than level ups.
Both are necessary though.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Is Thief an RPG? You don't customize Garrett and he doesn't level up: He starts and finishes the game competent in his craft.

Not an rpg though.

 

[octavius]

Pre-gens are made for greenhorns/storyfags, it also exist for PnP.

Pre-gens are nice when your characters are just a bunch of numbers and there's not much you can do to customize them anyway, like in the Might&Magic names.
You could just as well argue that making your own characters and naming them is for storyfags, while combatfags don't have the same emotional attachment to their characters.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Pre-gens are nice when your characters are just a bunch of numbers and there's not much you can do to customize them anyway, like in the Might&Magic names.
You could just as well argue that making your own characters and naming them is for storyfags, while combatfags don't have the same emotional attachment to their characters.

So how do you define PnP players?
Storyfags? Combat amateurs or just RPG players?
When you create your own character, you're attached to it, and the more complex it is, the more you put into it.

 

[octavius]

So how do you define PnP players?
Storyfags? Combat amateurs or just RPG players?

I think they come in all shapes, from storyfags to people who like to paint miniatures. I'd say a PnP game with a good GM should be able to provide better story and C&C than a CRPG can give, so I don't feel the contempt for PnP storyfags that I do for the "I play video games for the story" crowd.

When you create your own character, you're attached to it, and the more complex it is, the more you put into it.

Yes, to a degree. But the more complex the game is, the harder it may become to make informed choices. And it also depends on how much the game lets you actually role play your character. Using a pregen in Fallout, for example, feels rather pointless to me. But in a game like Might&Magic 2 where race plays very little part, and the starting characters are defined only by class and six stats, pregens are much more valid. To me some of the older CRPGs (blobbers) are games where my characters are more like football players; anyone on the squad can be replaced. And in (Open)Xcom some of the squad are literally expendable.

Another thing, not directed at you, but more in general: customizing hair colour and style, clothes and and basically the appearance of your characters, isn't that kind of girly?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Yes, to a degree. But the more complex the game is, the harder it may become to make informed choices. And it also depends on how much the game lets you actually role play your character. Using a pregen in Fallout, for example, feels rather pointless to me. But in a game like Might&Magic 2 where race plays very little part, and the starting characters are defined only by class and six stats, pregens are much more valid. To me some of the older CRPGs (blobbers) are games where my characters are more like football players; anyone on the squad can be replaced. And in (Open)Xcom some of the squad are literally expendable.

UFO is something different and however brilliant it is, i don't consider it a RPG.

As for M&M characters, i never considered them expandable and always reroll them.
My M&M parties are always led by a Barbarian named Crag Hack, or a Knight/Minotaur for later installments.

Another thing, not directed at you, but more in general: customizing hair colour and style, clothes and and basically the appearance of your characters, isn't that kind of girly?

And yet, most games which don't allow for real customization offer to change your appearance, what does it says on the millennial "RPG gamers".

 

[Bastardchops]

It don't add up, cap'n.

Crusader Kings 3 might work for them? Also is Crusader Kings enough in line with the orthodoxy to be allowed into the church of RPGs?

 

[Riddler]

I answered char-gen but I don't really care about customisation that much, in-fact I believe it often can be detrimental with too much up front decision making.

What I'm speaking of is the ability to choose to play different roles. The actual customisation options are less important than the ability to choose between playing different roles. A highly customizable system/class less system often devolves into playing some kind of jack of all trades, faceless character.

My preferred system is choosing some kind of archetype at the start and then having tons of customisation after that, but if I have to choose I prefer having distinct roles(plural!) than having customisation.

In theory a classless system could work but in reality it either is brain-dead easy, fairly rapid progression to master of all or devolves into autistic number crunching and meta gaming.

 

[Zombra]

Building a character (or party) based on a number of parameters that will determine its performance and even playstyle in the game is fundamental to an RPG. Levelling up as a means to strengthen or diversify a build is an expected complementary system but not strictly foundational.