What Even is a RPG?

Cactus_LFRez

I found a good video by Adam Millard about the origin of RPGs and their "speciation" into subgenres.

26:30 minutes but worth the watch,



I like how he formulated the subgenres and it is interesting to think how this applies to MMORPGs.

I am curious, what do you think about his model, and where do your preferences lie?
(18:45 for a neat graph)

Based on his model my favorite subgenre is actually Narrative Adventure, my favorite MMO is City of Heroes so I am not sure how that works out.

Ralphie2449

It is definitely not a genre that is meant to be competitive by design yet many try to esportify it.

And we have countless elitists and tryhards in a genre that includes critical hits and RNG as core part of its design xD

It truly fits the "If you are too bad to compete in actual competitive genres, come and pretend to be l33t in mmorpgs" xD

Dwaaawfful

One thing is certain:

Way too may NPCs seem intent on droll playing.

Neoyoshi

The video starts off with the evolution of Finches, i'm already 120% invested in this video. (frick'n genius segue btw)

Aeander

An RPG is all about choice. Choices in playstyle and/or choices in story. If you aren't making some kind of significant choice in something, it's actually an action adventure game with numbers.

Unfortunately, we've just come to believe that the numbers and progression are the actual qualifier when they're really just one flavor. Arguing that vertical progression is required to be an RPG is little different than arguing that an RPG has to be set in a medieval fantasy. It's just that most RPGs are.

Nanfoodle

RPG comes from PnP, Role Playing Game. Where you would assume a character and play that role. Everything from ticks to positives of what you created. Its gotten muddied since RPG game becomes a video game term. Mostly now it refers to being able to progress your char and have options to do so. Most people dont care about the character they are playing and what their back story is and often making choices in the game, they would do as themselves or what gets them to the path they want to play. 

Conclusion: IMO, the term RPG and MMO both have become so watered down. I think they have lost all meaning. Often labels are slapped on just to get a target market and little work is do to really deserve the titles. 

Scot

It would seem an RPG is whatever game designers want it to be.

olepi

To me, an RPG is an artificial world or environment that your character navigates and "lives" in. The character decides what role to play in this vitrual world/environment. Part or most of the fun comes in picking different roles to see how they play differently in the world.

"Last time through, I played as a fireball throwing wizard, I think I'll try a shaman that transforms into a bear next time".

As you play, you make choices about what kind of role you want to play. Your choices affect what kind of abilities you have, and also can affect the storyline or other conditions of the game.

Theocritus

This is why alot of us here loved early Everquest....It was truly a role playing game and you played the role of whatever class you chose....Quite often, the better you played that role, the more success your group/guild would have, so there was a benefit for understanding how the roles worked.

Nanfoodle

Theocritus said:

This is why alot of us here loved early Everquest....It was truly a role playing game and you played the role of whatever class you chose....Quite often, the better you played that role, the more success your group/guild would have, so there was a benefit for understanding how the roles worked.

See for me, I went to EQ after years and years of PnP gaming. Between pulls as we med to get back mana and health. We used to role play. As in pretend to be the chars we rolled. As more and more MMOs came out, the less people Role Played. The real RPG side of the game. I was thrilled to Role Play in a real 3D world. Now we just mostly kill crap and hope to not run into other players, as they just get in the way and take your stuff you wanted to kill or pick up. 

nate1980

Cactus_LFRez said:

I found a good video by Adam Millard about the origin of RPGs and their "speciation" into subgenres.

26:30 minutes but worth the watch,



I like how he formulated the subgenres and it is interesting to think how this applies to MMORPGs.

I am curious, what do you think about his model, and where do your preferences lie?
(18:45 for a neat graph)

Based on his model my favorite subgenre is actually Narrative Adventure, my favorite MMO is City of Heroes so I am not sure how that works out.

I've been purposely avoiding any information regarding BG3 because it hasn't released yet and I don't any spoilers for the game. So I don't appreciate that the video had scenes and gameplay from a game not released to the public yet. Early Release doesn't count, because I believe it to be an unethical practice of releasing an unfinished game; preying on the gamer addicts out there who can't wait for a game to be finished before scratching their itch. ANYWAYS, back to the topic.

Since the 1980's, for me, a RPG has always been a game where you can create and customize your character and how it plays. Nothing more complicated than that, and yes, the concept has become so popular that sub-genre's seem to have sprung up from the roots of the genre to specialize in a type of RPG that players can quickly recognize and thus buy to avoid buying a type of RPG that doesn't appeal to them. 

For example, to name a few, you have: FPS RPG's, Co-op RPG's, Action RPG's, MMORPG's and turn-based RPG's. Because the RPG genre is so expansive now, it's valid to separate them into sub genre's because they play completely different from each other. My favorite are RPG's similar to Elden Ring where I can create a character and customize my playstyle and explore the world. My least favorite are RPG's where I have to manage an entire party and listen to a hundred hours of dialogue options. 

cameltosis

I haven't watched the video (i never ever do) so no idea what his categories for RPGs are.

To me, an RPG is any game that lets me play a role.

Play requires interaction, so in order to "play a role", I have to be able to interact with that role. That means making choices about the role, rather than having the role be pre-determined.

Also important to note that a character is not the same thing as a role. A character can have a role, or multiple roles. but they are separate things.

A really good comparison to illustrate this point is comparing action / adventure games like the Assassins Creed series or Zelda series, with an RPG like The Witcher.

In AC or Zelda, I am playing a character. The characters are pre-determined and any choices the game gives me tend to have no effect on the role that character has. Even since introducing more progression into those series, the progression is fairly linear and doesn't change the way the game plays from playthrough to playthrough.

This is very similar to The Witcher. Geralt is a character, not a role. Most of the progression has zero impact on changing his role. However, The Witcher series gives you a ton of choices to make as part of the story, and those choices do have an impact. This type of roleplaying is called "personality roleplaying", as in you are choosing the personality of Geralt. Are you selfish or generous? Brave or cautious?

MMORPGs are / were the best form of RPGs in my opinion. Mostly just because, as far as games go, MMORPGs tended to give you the most choice of what roles you want. They had combat roles, economic roles, personality roles, plus they gave us a bunch of sandbox tools to allow us to come up with our own ways of roleplaying.

Cactus_LFRez

cameltosis said:

I haven't watched the video (i never ever do) so no idea what his categories for RPGs are.

His model basically uses two intersecting axis (like the political compass but not stupid) to plot the main forms of character interaction within RPGs, with each subgenre emphasizing different forms of character interaction.

The axis are,

Narrative progression vs mechanical progression

Player agency vs designer(DM) control



Combining them you get

Mechanical progression + designer control = dungeon crawler (example Diablo)

Narrative progression + designer control = JRPG (example Final Fantasy)

Mechanical progression + player agency = CRPG (example Divinity Original Sin)

Narrative Progression + player agency = narrative adventure (example Disco Elysium)



He relates each subgenre to an aspect of table top RPGs

Dungeon crawlers emphasize the numbers and theory craft

JRPGs emphasize grand narrative 

CRPGs emphasize creative problem solving

Narrative adventures emphasize character roleplay

Scot

I bet this has never happened at a studio, they always seem to know what they are doing:

"Ok guys, the creative director has got his blindfold on, get that big chart by Millard up on the wall...give the CD his dart, he shots he scores and we are going to make a "Mechanical progression + player agency" MMO. Yea!"

Cactus_LFRez

Scot said:

I bet this has never happened at a studio, they always seem to know what they are doing:

"Ok guys, the creative director has got his blindfold on, get that big chart by Millard up on the wall...give the CD his dart, he shots he scores and we are going to make a "Mechanical progression + player agency" MMO. Yea!"

I do think it is interesting to trace this lineage into the MMO space.

I don't think MMOs are an actual genre but an expression of other RPG genres,

From this perspective I would say,

MMO dungeon crawler - WoW or Everquest, even if you aren't always in a dungeon

MMO JRPG - FFXIV, and looks like Blue Protocol will fit in here as well

MMO CRPG - Ultima Online, Eve

MMO narrative adventure - none really, SWOTOR, gave us a tiny bit by choosing light side or dark

This language could help us better express genre conventions and preferences
Of course few games perfectly fit into a single category, which is why it is mapped on to continous axis'

I would like to get away from the generally useless terms theme park and sandbox and get more specific.

cameltosis

Cactus_LFRez said:

cameltosis said:

I haven't watched the video (i never ever do) so no idea what his categories for RPGs are.

His model basically uses two intersecting axis (like the political compass but not stupid) to plot the main forms of character interaction within RPGs, with each subgenre emphasizing different forms of character interaction.

The axis are,

Narrative progression vs mechanical progression

Player agency vs designer(DM) control



Combining them you get

Mechanical progression + designer control = dungeon crawler (example Diablo)

Narrative progression + designer control = JRPG (example Final Fantasy)

Mechanical progression + player agency = CRPG (example Divinity Original Sin)

Narrative Progression + player agency = narrative adventure (example Disco Elysium)



He relates each subgenre to an aspect of table top RPGs

Dungeon crawlers emphasize the numbers and theory craft

JRPGs emphasize grand narrative 

CRPGs emphasize creative problem solving

Narrative adventures emphasize character roleplay

Thanks very much for the summary, I appreciate it!

I don't agree with his axis, or his general approach to categorising RPGs. But, I'm struggling to think of something better. I also don't think his examples are good either. I've never associated JRPGs with grand narrative, but rather with grind. CRPGs always felt like they were more story-focused than JRPGs to me, with a much greater focus on narrative progression....which makes sense, as CRPGs are supposed to be the closest representation of tabletop RPGs like D&D.

Still, for all that, I appreciate the attempt, it sparks some good thoughts and conversations :-)

Cactus_LFRez

cameltosis said:

Cactus_LFRez said:

cameltosis said:

I haven't watched the video (i never ever do) so no idea what his categories for RPGs are.

His model basically uses two intersecting axis (like the political compass but not stupid) to plot the main forms of character interaction within RPGs, with each subgenre emphasizing different forms of character interaction.

The axis are,

Narrative progression vs mechanical progression

Player agency vs designer(DM) control



Combining them you get

Mechanical progression + designer control = dungeon crawler (example Diablo)

Narrative progression + designer control = JRPG (example Final Fantasy)

Mechanical progression + player agency = CRPG (example Divinity Original Sin)

Narrative Progression + player agency = narrative adventure (example Disco Elysium)



He relates each subgenre to an aspect of table top RPGs

Dungeon crawlers emphasize the numbers and theory craft

JRPGs emphasize grand narrative 

CRPGs emphasize creative problem solving

Narrative adventures emphasize character roleplay

Thanks very much for the summary, I appreciate it!

I don't agree with his axis, or his general approach to categorising RPGs. But, I'm struggling to think of something better. I also don't think his examples are good either. I've never associated JRPGs with grand narrative, but rather with grind. CRPGs always felt like they were more story-focused than JRPGs to me, with a much greater focus on narrative progression....which makes sense, as CRPGs are supposed to be the closest representation of tabletop RPGs like D&D.

Still, for all that, I appreciate the attempt, it sparks some good thoughts and conversations :-)

I will say, the language he uses I think should be different,
The term mechanics is vague, surely how you build your detective and which voice you listen to in Disco Elysium is a mechanic, yet Disco Elysium is on the narrative side.
And most RPGs have narratives, even Diablo.

I think the real distinction is between,

Who your character is (roleplaying) vs what your character can do (playing a role)

And

Player agency vs player execution

So JRPGs are driven by who your character is, who is largely fixed, and the player executes on that character's story

CRPGs are driven by what your character can do, with players having a lot of agency over what that is.

Dungeon crawlers are driven by what your character can do (killing dudes), and players execute on doing that the best way possible

Narrative adventures are driven by who your character is, and players have agency to choose what that is, like Disco Elysium

I don't have a nifty way to summarize that into a chart though.

Kyleran

Regular Progression Game....RPG. 

Always was, always will be about steadily progressing one's character.

Soon as that comes to an end, I bounce from most any game.

Not really relevant to what I posted, but I just have to use this one. 

Dattelis

The whole NPC social media trend thing going on now has made me wish the internet never existed, or at least a certain subset of people weren't allowed on the internet......like what the actual hell is the appeal in that stuff? I seriously dont get it....

Scot

Cactus_LFRez said:

Scot said:

I bet this has never happened at a studio, they always seem to know what they are doing:

"Ok guys, the creative director has got his blindfold on, get that big chart by Millard up on the wall...give the CD his dart, he shots he scores and we are going to make a "Mechanical progression + player agency" MMO. Yea!"

I do think it is interesting to trace this lineage into the MMO space.

I don't think MMOs are an actual genre but an expression of other RPG genres,

From this perspective I would say,

MMO dungeon crawler - WoW or Everquest, even if you aren't always in a dungeon

MMO JRPG - FFXIV, and looks like Blue Protocol will fit in here as well

MMO CRPG - Ultima Online, Eve

MMO narrative adventure - none really, SWOTOR, gave us a tiny bit by choosing light side or dark

This language could help us better express genre conventions and preferences
Of course few games perfectly fit into a single category, which is why it is mapped on to continous axis'

I would like to get away from the generally useless terms theme park and sandbox and get more specific.

I think theme park and sandbox have their place, but like any word they can be misapplied. They are descriptive of a games elements to varying degrees rather than a label you can put on a MMO.

I have always been one for having better categories for games but baring in mind these are labels in themselves. One you don't have is MMOFPS (mostly MP plus DC?), which is quite generally accepted but I would be the first to say that many games under that banner are not really MMORRGs at all.

Gorwe

And ofc YT wouldn't suggest this to me, why would it? But it sure does want to auto-delete my comments. Piece of shit. Alphabet / Google is the worst.

With that said, let's see what AoG has to say.

mekhere

Combining them you get

Mechanical progression + designer control = dungeon crawler (example Diablo)

Narrative progression + designer control = JRPG (example Final Fantasy)

Mechanical progression + player agency = CRPG (example Divinity Original Sin)

Narrative Progression + player agency = narrative adventure (example Disco Elysium)


AI gaming will disrupt this person's definition of an RPG. 
AI Gaming = player driven + mechanical progression. 

An RPG is a role-playing game. You log into a game and enjoy broken game mechanics that make your experience better no matter how hard you argue it doesn't. No one would have taken an arrow to the knee, without broken game mechanics. Thank you for the bad code. It made roleplaying more fun.

Aodha

I think that modern MMOs can trace their lineage directly from the original graphical MMOs like Ultima Online, but what is often missing from these discussions is how Ultima was preceded by online text based MMOs (or 'Multi User Dungeons'), which themselves were originally inspired by tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Also, while most text games worked with a fairly basic 'choose class, grind levels, kill monster' format (thousands of MUDs out there follow this format and use similar codebases), online real-time competitive pvp gaming also was first possible in the multiplayer online text game known as 'Avalon'. That game was subscription based and is now dead, but there is a free game called Akanbar still running which uses code based on the early Avalon game which I would totally recommend. I would agree with what Nanfoodle wrote above, the RPG term has probably been broadened and watered down over time, 'Fantasy' and 'RPG' have become synonymous and interchangeable, the roleplaying part no longer matters in most MMOs for example.

Amaranthar

Aodha said:

I think that modern MMOs can trace their lineage directly from the original graphical MMOs like Ultima Online, but what is often missing from these discussions is how Ultima was preceded by online text based MMOs (or 'Multi User Dungeons'), which themselves were originally inspired by tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Also, while most text games worked with a fairly basic 'choose class, grind levels, kill monster' format (thousands of MUDs out there follow this format and use similar codebases), online real-time competitive pvp gaming also was first possible in the multiplayer online text game known as 'Avalon'. That game was subscription based and is now dead, but there is a free game called Akanbar still running which uses code based on the early Avalon game which I would totally recommend. I would agree with what Nanfoodle wrote above, the RPG term has probably been broadened and watered down over time, 'Fantasy' and 'RPG' have become synonymous and interchangeable, the roleplaying part no longer matters in most MMOs for example.

To me, "roleplaying game" simply means that you are playing a character, a group, or even a kingdom. You make decisions for that character (et.al.). Those decisions may be few in many games, but that's more about the depth of the RP in a game. 

Many games probably should be called MMOMRPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Minimum Roleplaying Gamer). lol

Aodha

Amaranthar said:

Aodha said:

I think that modern MMOs can trace their lineage directly from the original graphical MMOs like Ultima Online, but what is often missing from these discussions is how Ultima was preceded by online text based MMOs (or 'Multi User Dungeons'), which themselves were originally inspired by tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Also, while most text games worked with a fairly basic 'choose class, grind levels, kill monster' format (thousands of MUDs out there follow this format and use similar codebases), online real-time competitive pvp gaming also was first possible in the multiplayer online text game known as 'Avalon'. That game was subscription based and is now dead, but there is a free game called Akanbar still running which uses code based on the early Avalon game which I would totally recommend. I would agree with what Nanfoodle wrote above, the RPG term has probably been broadened and watered down over time, 'Fantasy' and 'RPG' have become synonymous and interchangeable, the roleplaying part no longer matters in most MMOs for example.

To me, "roleplaying game" simply means that you are playing a character, a group, or even a kingdom. You make decisions for that character (et.al.). Those decisions may be few in many games, but that's more about the depth of the RP in a game. 

Many games probably should be called MMOMRPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Minimum Roleplaying Gamer). lol

Hehe. I read that as MOMRPG for a second, Rpgs for moms. But yeah that makes sense, there are levels to it, from the light kind of just making decisions for your character stuff to the serious roleplay enforced environments.

Amaranthar

Aodha said:

Amaranthar said:

Aodha said:

I think that modern MMOs can trace their lineage directly from the original graphical MMOs like Ultima Online, but what is often missing from these discussions is how Ultima was preceded by online text based MMOs (or 'Multi User Dungeons'), which themselves were originally inspired by tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. Also, while most text games worked with a fairly basic 'choose class, grind levels, kill monster' format (thousands of MUDs out there follow this format and use similar codebases), online real-time competitive pvp gaming also was first possible in the multiplayer online text game known as 'Avalon'. That game was subscription based and is now dead, but there is a free game called Akanbar still running which uses code based on the early Avalon game which I would totally recommend. I would agree with what Nanfoodle wrote above, the RPG term has probably been broadened and watered down over time, 'Fantasy' and 'RPG' have become synonymous and interchangeable, the roleplaying part no longer matters in most MMOs for example.

To me, "roleplaying game" simply means that you are playing a character, a group, or even a kingdom. You make decisions for that character (et.al.). Those decisions may be few in many games, but that's more about the depth of the RP in a game. 

Many games probably should be called MMOMRPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Minimum Roleplaying Gamer). lol

Hehe. I read that as MOMRPG for a second, Rpgs for moms. But yeah that makes sense, there are levels to it, from the light kind of just making decisions for your character stuff to the serious roleplay enforced environments.

I'd go for "enticed RP" over "enforced RP" every day of the week. 
"Enforced" entices players to rebel against the rules. 
"Enticed" causes players to RP because it feels right. 
You do that by creating a world where RP fits "like a glass fits water."