Insightful Commentary on RPGs




Posted by Big Boss

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/on_role-playing_games/

Here's an excerpt to read before jumping into the rest of the article:

[quote]And don't dare think even for a second that this a trivial issue of naming conventions -- the problem could not possibly be more immediate and real. We'd have hundreds of Deus Exes by now if the term 'RPG' hadn't been debased to virtual meaninglessness. If players do not one day start asking for real CRPGs they will never get them, except perhaps once a decade or so as happened with Deus Ex, after the necessary cattle sacrifices have been performed according to the rituals prescribed by the village elders, and when the stars in the northern sky align as foretold by the prophecies handed down to us by the ancients. For lovers of real RPGs who long to see -- within their lifetime -- what can be accomplished through the power of digital computing, hoping and praying would seem to be all that's left to us.




Posted by Linko_16

I hate to say it like this, but sounds like it is a trivial issue of naming conventions. They may share a name with their tabletop ancestors because of their inspirational roots, but they're a distinctly different genre of entertainment now. You know what you're getting in a CRPG - a game of number strategy with a (hopefully) interesting story tacked on to keep you driven. CRPG's that try to break away from the conventions of a petty numbers game aren't powerful and revolutionary because they're trying to be more like classic RPG's, it's because they're stretching the limits of their genres for a unique experience.

Don't be upset with gamers for lapping up conventional, uninspiring CRPG's, be upset with them for lapping up bad games.




Posted by Speedfreak

I agree wholeheartedly that RPGs are not about the Goddamn numbers. There's a scary amount of people on my course that think RPGs need the numbers to even be RPGs.

I don't really agree with his last few points about a next-generaton RPG that doesn't have action gameplay, is based purely around decision-making and doesn't have any cutscenes. Maybe it achieves a computer version of a tabletop RPG, but I don't think those goals achieve what tabletop RPGs were trying to achieve in the first place. I think if he looked to games that weren't labelling themselves RPGs, but that let players play a certain role with only reasonable limits he'd see that we're already there. Games like Grand Theft Auto IV, Metal Gear Solid and Gears of War could possibly fit that description, even if the roles they provide are limited in the context of their world (Marcus Fenix can only really choose to keep fighting, for example).