General Discussion

Think about that for a second,

Now to me a RPG always meant a game in which players can create their own role within the game.

Pretty vague so I will explain, this pretty much means options, you have to have options, from what you look like, to what you can do, to how you act.  So you have to be able to create your character, or at least heavily edit a preexisting one.  You have to be able to choose what you want to do, meaning you are not given an unchangable character with no options, at least have options between different character types, like classes.  And if there is a story you have to be able to significantly change the outcome of it.  The character after all is an extention of you.

If a game had a few elements of what I described but not all of them then I always considered it having RPG elements.

Now here is where I come into conflict with other people's definitions, games like Final Fantasy by my description are not RPGs, yet they are commonly excepted as RPGs.  I would say FF has RPG elements, since you can usually pick different abilities for your characters, but even that is rather small.

So what does industry labeled RPGs ,both MMO and single player have in common, statistical character advancement and character centric gameplay.  The ability to make your character statistics stronger, either levels or skills, gear, whatever, as long as your character has the ability to become stronger and having the game driven by character statistics is a mainstay in RPGs.  MMORPGs consistantly add statictical advancement and character centered gamplay as the backbone of the game.

But here is the thing free-form RPGs which have no statistical advancement and reliance on the players ability to imagine senarios, obviously called RPGs for a reason, technically wouldn't fit in the definition, neither would LARPing.

Really I find statistical advancement and character centric gameplay to add nothing of value to a game, in fact I find it a burden and counter productive to playing a role, as my character does most the playing for me. 

Not saying that most MMORPGs are not really RPGs, I would say they are, some are a little on the light side though.  I just think a RPG need not have statistical advancement or character centric gameplay to be an RPG, and the assumption that those features are what make a RPG a RPG actually holds back the genre as a whole from becoming more diverse.  And really if that is what RPGs are all about then I can honestly say, I do not like RPGs.

But hell maybe I am just "out of touch" with roleplayers.  Anyway rant over, so...  What to you makes a RPG?

well , in my opinoin ... i define a role playing game , by the main charachter role in the story and its progression ... a big example for me r like the jrpg's ...shin megami tensei series or wut so ever ,,, so by my definiton final fantasy series as u spoke about that it has some elements of rpg in my opinoin is a complete rpg . i hate an wut so called rpg when u play the game to progress a charachter but there is no enough story to go on or its too open to see ur role in the complete picture . for me thats not rly an rpg , but anyways each person has his view ...

and i guess its not simple to define rpg becauuse each company try to do something diffrent that in the end it may strey away from the normal idea of an rpg but they still call it that :) .

I think by that definition many games could be called RPGs as many games have choose and play the role of a character.  Even FPS and action games have this.  Your definition sounds very much PnP D&D.  For me I generally look at RPG games having a story that you play through, character development through many different things, and uses more of a turn based style combat instead of FPS/Action style games.  IMO Final Fantasy games were roleplaying games because they fit this and the character you played developed throughout the game.  I'm sure a lot of people will disagree because the character development was already set in many ways before the game started and it's more like reading a story then playing a character, but in many ways reading a book is like roleplaying the main character in the book.  You experience everything the main character experiences.

They're really not RPGs in the strictest sense, only in the sense that games like the later Final Fantasy series that called themselves RPGs but were not.  In the strictest sense, your character needs to be unique and under your control and what you do must impact both your character and the world around them.  Final Fantasy cast players in the roles of pre-formed characters and dragged them through overblown stories by the nose that could not be significantly changed.  That's often how MMOs operate.  You have a generic character, your customization is limited and everyone does the same thing, usually mindless grinding to level, because that's the only purpose of the game.

That's not roleplaying, sorry.

When I think of RPG I tend to think about games that have a predifined story with various people in it.  At the beginning you decide to pick one of them and play their role, hence the role playing.

Now, one of the definitions of "role" in the dictionary is "function or position" and I think that perhaps defines it the best for me.  You decide to pick a position among the characters in the predefined story and you take them through it.

What CactusmanX said in his post would fall into the open world, sandbox kind of game for me.  If you ask me at that point I'd not be playing any role in particular.  I'd just be going about my busyness and doing as I see fit often not fitting into some of the "roles" presented in your mmo or rpg such as the tank or caster or healer or whatever there might be because I think my choices of skills and abilities would so wide and eclectic that I would not fit properly with the definitions.  I'd think I'd also have controll over my stats where if I wished I could go do certain things in the game that would boost my strenght so that perhaps I could lift more weight and be able to either have a greater backpack to carry more stuff in or swing a bigger sword... but this has all been said in all the other sandbox threads poping up.

There are a few idea behind this in my opinion.

FF series and other RPG games are mostly the Story-Driven RPG, while many people's experience with PnP and whatnot are more Character-Driven RPG.

Both are RPG at core, but uses different method to bring out the RPG.

Personally I want both... (Story-Driven and Character-driven)...

This is because I love the ideas behind the novels I read (which not only contains the story, but character development...)  So I like the Story-Driven part of FF series and whatnot (come on, who doesn't like to be the hero?), but I also want the Character-driven part in my RPG (So I can pick and choose my character's destiny...)

If any MMO, or any RPG that has both Story-Driven and Character-Driven down, that'll be the RPG to play...

Anyway, that's all I have to say on this...

I always used the terms sandbox and character driven differently, not suprising since it seems that I define things differently than other people.

To me a sandbox is merely a game were the main story and or objectives can be ignored and the player still able to play the game and have the ability to roam freely.

Character driven, or I think I used the word centric, to me means that the character is a large factor in the outcome of various actions in the game.  The opposite of this would be player centric.

But I would say that there would definatly have to be some form of character customization, pertaining to abilities of the character, in the game for me to consider it a RPG.

The big difference is while I require character customization I do not require statistical character advancement in the game.  Statistical advancement being your character growing numerically as in more damage, HP etc.  this is usually done by levels, skill levels or gear.  Nor do I require the game to opperate around the character, as in rolling to determine success or failure. This to me is a more sim style of game play, where the character and the adventures are simulated by the system, which is not neccesary in a RPG. It seems that most developers take these as givens in MMORPGs though, which I find to be a pitty because I think that they are A) missing the point of RPGs and B) trying to make RPGs too formulaic.

One of the best Roleplays I have done was on Garry's Mod, a Half-Life 2 mod, there we use to set up senarios, make and edit our characters and then act out the senario, making decisions all the way.

The area all MMORPGs usually drop the ball is giving the player the ability to choose how their character behaves and lives.   In most RPGs you are the hero and you will do this, seldom can you ever decide to become a murderer or actually join the villain.

Single player RPGs seem to be more eager than MMORPGs to disrupt the RPG formula and get down to what I think a RPG is about

When played pen and paper RPGs I created the kind of character I wanted to roleplay.

In a MMO I think about how builds do, solo vs pvp - role on team.

Its still a role but it's changed from imagination to strategy.  Which isn't a bad thing.  I just wish people would realize that MMORPGs are actual strategy games, and make them more in that light.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

I always used the terms sandbox and character driven differently, not suprising since it seems that I define things differently than other people.

To me a sandbox is merely a game were the main story and or objectives can be ignored and the player still able to play the game and have the ability to roam freely.

Character driven, or I think I used the word centric, to me means that the character is a large factor in the outcome of various actions in the game.  The opposite of this would be player centric.

But I would say that there would definatly have to be some form of character customization, pertaining to abilities of the character, in the game for me to consider it a RPG.

The big difference is while I require character customization I do not require statistical character advancement in the game.  Statistical advancement being your character growing numerically as in more damage, HP etc.  this is usually done by levels, skill levels or gear.  Nor do I require the game to opperate around the character, as in rolling to determine success or failure. This to me is a more sim style of game play, where the character and the adventures are simulated by the system, which is not neccesary in a RPG. It seems that most developers take these as givens in MMORPGs though, which I find to be a pitty because I think that they are A) missing the point of RPGs and B) trying to make RPGs too formulaic.

One of the best Roleplays I have done was on Garry's Mod, a Half-Life 2 mod, there we use to set up senarios, make and edit our characters and then act out the senario, making decisions all the way.

The area all MMORPGs usually drop the ball is giving the player the ability to choose how their character behaves and lives.   In most RPGs you are the hero and you will do this, seldom can you ever decide to become a murderer or actually join the villain.

Single player RPGs seem to be more eager than MMORPGs to disrupt the RPG formula and get down to what I think a RPG is about

Playing a role, as in roleplay, by defintion means assuming another identity.
 

The persona you want to play with can be literally anything as long as it is reasonable in whatever universe you are playing. Unfortunately, you cannot change yourself or your actual real skills, that is why a system is used for virtually all RPGs.

The system is there so that you CAN play an aeronautic engineer even if YOU, the player, knows nothing of airplanes. From that point of view, yes, it is your character that is trying to fix the airplane while flying over the antartic ocean, not you, so you roll a die to determine if your character succeeds or fails.

It is possible to remove dice rolling from the equation but you need a really experience group for that and then action outcomes