In his column this week, MMORPG managing editor Jon Wood takes apart the acronym "RPG". As he states, the way one interprets the meaning of those three letters determines what is expected from an MMO-RPG. See if you agree with Jon's thoughts about what RPG means.

As someone whose job it is to follow both the development and player sides of the MMORPG industry, I get paid to think about a lot of strange things, some of which might seem irrelevant or not worth too much thought. This topic, I’ll admit, may be one of those but while (finally) playing Dragon Age: Origins, I had a thought. What you expect an MMORPG to be probably has a whole heck of a lot to do with how you interpret the last three letters of the acronym. While the fact that it stands for Role Playing Game isn’t in question, the exact meaning of that term obviously is.

Be sure to read RPG: Dissecting the Acronym.

To my mind it is about adopting a character and fleshing out his/her abilities and attrbutes in order to mold that character toward some type of role while you make your way through some semblance of a story.

In a best case scenario the role that you adopt can affect the world you are on or vice versa.

I guess I fall under the second classification, because I don't believe that MMO should change RPG, it should just scale it up.

However, RPG in and of itself, is comprised of more than just classic table top pnp games anymore.  So I don't see why it is so difficult for game companies to make an MMORPG that contains the best of all three that were described (in particular the latter two).

Look at Polysemy and Metonymy

The term Role-Play has common origins, but means different things. In computer games it refers to a verifiable set of game rules (which do not include what players do with them).

RPG: Traditional

A type of game where each player assumes the role of a fictional character, as if the character was part of a novel. The player tries to make decisions that matches the knowledge and interests of this fictional character. The fictional world is controlled by the game master. This character is embodied by a set of values which determine the competencies of this fictional character (how good she is at something). bla bla …

RPG: Computer Games

A type of game where each player takes control of a "game character" whose competencies are determined by values. When the in-game character meets a challenge of some form, these competencies are used for die-rolls to determine whether or not the character succeeds. bla bla …

Issue

Since the introduction of chat and multiplayer, you CAN apply the extended traditional role-play rules to computer games (e.g. "acting in the role" etc), but they are irrelevant to the definition of computer RPGs.

Originally posted by Stradden
Next, there are those who believe that a video game RPG should mimic, as closely as possible, the original pen and paper RPGs from which they evolved. This tends to be the crowd that believes that the only true MMORPGs are sandbox MMORPGs where players are able to make their own fortunes and affect the world around them with their actions.

For better or for worse, it is this model that has emerged as the predominant structure for today’s modern MMO, either because of the convenience of developing in terms of quest design, the popularity of a computer RPG modeled game like World of Warcraft, or because more players look to the computer roots of the MMORPG than the table top roots.

 

This isn't true. For one, the dungeon crawl (raid dungeon, kill the monsters, steal the treasure) a kind of hack and slash "gameplay" predates computer RPGs. Then DikuMUD entered the scene and refined it for CRPGs. Then EverQuest built on that, then World of Warcraft entered the scene etc. 

Traditional pen and paper has very little to do with sandboxes (unless you use a very loose definition). In fact, many game masters wrote key points of their adventures and would make sure players pass them, sometimes having multiple at their disposal. This is not that far away from "directed content", albeit human game masters are more flexible and can introduce random encounters and re-arrange things.

Procedurally created content (as often in sandbox titles) was the basic design of Rogue (and rogue-like) RPGs, which are … dungeon crawl hack and slash.

RPG to me is exactly what you get at a PnP game. Exploring a world, advancing your character, battling evil creatures and following an involving story, all alongside a group of friends. However, when it comes to computer games I'm a bit more open minded. I started off with MU's and that was vastly different to the PnP style, as everything had to be typed out, emotions, actions, statements. It was much more involved than I think you can get around a table having a laugh with your friends. After that was EverQuest and, though the roleplay was gone, I was quite happy to imagine a character battling through a world and slowly levelling up alongside a group of friends.

Where it's all gone wrong is the modern MMO's where the story is told to you rather than made for yourself. Roleplay is about creating a character and interacting with the world around you - modern MMO's give you a distinct lack of freedom, they funnel you from one quest to the next, one area to the next, and you never really feel like you're in control. Once the freedom of roleplay has gone then I think it ceases to be a roleplay game. It becomes a game that's telling you a story.

That's how I view a lot of these single player RPGs. They're RPG's in the loosest sense that you have a character to advance. But really they're just games that are telling you a story as you play along.

RPG combine a few things for me:

• most important the random element
• an interesting campaign setting (made up geography, NPCs, lore)
• depending on the campaign world even a magic system
• combat and combat rules
• the freedom to build different and individual player characters (the degree of freedom is debatable, because of aspects related to combat)
• Following a red line (main plot line), but with the freedom to go astray from time to time (side plots which may effect the main plot line) and sometimes even completely ignore the red line

An ideal adaptation of an RPG for computers (either single player offline or MMO) would combine these aspects. Although I'd welcome a lesser focus on gear acquisition and combat. The truth is that I'm slowly getting tired of these two predominant aspects in current games. Either I'm getting old or I'm just looking more for some kind of adventure (interactive novel) with roleplaying elements (Planescape Torment comes to my mind).

I played many of the rpg board games before anything like them was available on a computer.  They were fun with a small group as the article mentioned.  

Pen and paper rulesets were never designed for use in a computer world.  Take DDO, really the first MMO to use a board game ruleset .  Turbine had to make major modifications to the D&D ruleset to make it acceptable to the player base.

If the owner of an board game IP is going to be strict on the interpretation of their ruleset, the developers should run before trying to make a MMO out of it.

RPG, to me, means choices, a lot of choices. It all starts at the character creation with basic choices like gender and race and building your way up to some sort of skills specializaiton or classes. After that there is a certain amount of exploring and chosing where to go. Unfortunately, traditional RPGs are losing out on character creation choices (Bioware), but the MMORPGs still allow for a rich character creation process.

RPG has become widely used term cothering a plethora of things not necessarily related to another. To reiterate: Basicly  "RPG" stands for "role-playing game". Role-playing, which you may have done some of at school, at work, or on the analyst's couch, just means pretending to be someone else. Game-wise, it can pretty obviously be a very broad term, covering such fare as wargames, where the player pretends to be a commanding officer,  business sims, where you pretend to be a CEO, etc. But those aren’t usually considered to be "RPGs" by the gaming community.

True, certain conventions were born with paper Dungeons & Dragons some 40 years ago, and the CRPGs in general continue to be defined by those conventions instead of by the dictionary definition of "role-playing". Under the D&D-ish definition, an RPG is a game where you play a "Character" with "skills" defined by his or her "class". You perform game tasks, usually consisting of combat, to gain "experience", and once you gain enough experience you "level up", gaining in "skill" and toughness. Along the way you gather "loot" from fallen foes and hidden places which you will either equip your character with or sell at an in-game store for money that you use to buy other equipment or skills.

This combat/loot/leveling cycle has been at the heart of most MMORPGs.

I admittedly love to roleplay in the classic sense as in games such as Mafia for example. Therefore, I feel some disaffection with the current crop of MMORPGs, which I see determined to remove any aspect of such. Don't get me wrong, WoW & Co can be good fun, but I suppose they got old for me. Still, even the oldest ideas are new to someone, so they will probably prosper for years to come.

First offf, nice article Mr. Wood! Though I won't miss stepping on D4s, I would still love to see a game with RP servers that cost a few more bucks per month (this helping keep a lot of non-RPers away) and supplemented with active GMs who host and supprt regular events. Back in the day seemed like GM events happened weekly in EQ1. Nowadays they seem completely gone from all the popular MMO titles. Also as time goes by those who grew up with P&P and still have time to play MMOs are dwindling. Also video games are now very much part of popular cutlure and most folks out there problablyknow little of P&P RPGs outside of D&D (Insert Teenagers from outerspace reference here). I think games like Ryzom might be small enough and has enough player generated content to touch back to these P&P roots a lot better than the bigger titles out there. Though I still think the big companies could step up and add more RP into their worlds.

Oh and to be nitpicky RPG is an initialism not an acronym. Acronyms always spell out something and are pronounced as a word, such as NATO, while with initialisms we pronounce each letter individually, like FBI or RPG.

The thing that always makes me scratch my head when this subject is broached is how many people think that back in the day we were all sitting around a table "play acting" when we were playing RPG games, and that that is what is also encompassed in the term.

I mean I guess there were some people that did do that.. somewhere...but I never ran into them in all my years of playing them. We just played the game. These were new types of games where yes a game master wove a story (usually scripted anyway, but they had choices to make), but we just played along and rolled the dice. "Role playing" to us wasn't "acting a part". It was that we were filling a role within the construct of the game. We were part of a group and filled a role in that group. Be it  a Barbarian, or a Cleric, or a wizard, etc etc etc.  Our actions weren't determined by some story we wer acting out. They were determined by the choices offered to us by the GM and then dice rolls.

It wasn't until somewhere back in the late 90's that I first saw this trend develop where some people believed that they should be "acting", and then somehow from that grew this belief that companies should cater to this new play style because, darn it, that is what RPG games were all about afterall.

It really is funny how things go sometimes, and also funny how history often gets changed if just enough  people keep saying something long enough. It's like how many people that now say the release state SWG was a great game ........

Well, first off RPG isn't an Acronym, it is an Initialism.

:: takes off ring of grammar nazi plus 6 ::

Sorry.

That said, I find your question very hard to answer due to the fact that my definition of what constitutes an RPG changes with the venue in which it is presented.

Table top PnP games, old school text based single adventures, multiplayer MUDS, graphical based computer role playing games and last but not least Massively Multiplayer Role Playing Games are all far different animals which I do not feel should be lumped into one category.

When it comes to MMORPGs -

To me, the ROLE of mmoRPG does not reference bringing one's avatar to life (through chat, storytelling, etc...) using an acting performance.

Instead, the ROLE references the specific contributions one's toon makes that support group achievements in game.

That's right - to me, ROLE references class (archetype, job, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it).

That's it.

That's all.

Originally posted by Hagonbok

I mean I guess there were some people that did do that.. somewhere...but I never ran into them in all my years of playing them. We just played the game.

 

That was us, back from 1974 on, and as of last week, still is. Most of my town and local game clubs too.

 

That aside, to me, Role Playing is a contextual thing. I spend time "playing" the "role" of Tank or Blaster in City of Heroes, but just as much paid-for time acting out my character in the base going through her life and trials with no actual "gaming" going on, followed often by communially edited short stories.

Its a valuable term with contextual variance.

It means the second definition that you list to me. But, as you said, the problem is when you have thousands of people come into the game. I disagree that providing content is the problem here, though, I believe it is more that when you have those thousands and thousands of people come in you start having more and more people who have never played a pencil and paper game around a table with 4-5 close friends. Those folks in the majority don't know what RPing is from that standpoint and as they far outnumber those who have rolled dice (and are far more vocal) you don't see companies support roleplay elements in the traditional D&D (TSR era) sense.

That and the mindset back then was to create a world/environment to live in that goes on and on and evolves. Today it's create a game with an "end" that can be beaten. That influx I mentioned above wants to get to an "end game" and raid for the "top gear" so they can stand on their piece of the "top of the hill" and claim superiority over all who have not gotten there. The dice rolling crowd for the majority wants to just live another day in the world and see what adventures can be had. THey don't want to get to an "end" in the sense of of the aforementioned but that doesn't mean they don't have goals.

In response to post #11

So why do you propose the manufacturers decided on terming D&D expletively a roleplaying game? Why the emphasis on that? If roleplaying games like Dungeons&Dragons were supposed to be played similar to other dice games like backgammon or craps, where did the roleplaying context come in? I play the role of a capitalist in Monopoly, but neither Parker Brothers or Hasbro have ever bothered to call it "the capitalist roleplaying game".

Isn't it rather that the "acting out a role" part came first, and then later the mechanical rule framework? Out of necessity? Since without a preagreed algorithm on how to resolve combat you may have to extensively discuss with Gorn the Barbarian, played by Steve, on why he failed to win against the ancient dragon Bloodbane, which is likely to significantly break gameflow and immersion. I offer as supportive argument that the available roles in PnP games were fashioned primarly after the protagonists of contemporary fantasy literature and I claim that this was done because the players wanted to act like them.

Wouldn't it be a logical step that after a ruleset is established that players would start acting economically within those rules to maximize their chance of "winning" (i.e. beating Bloodbane, the ancient dragon). At first maybe just to progress the story/campaign, but it soon becomes an end in itself. It is an attractive system since it provides a tangible numerical benchmark against which you can measure yourself and also others. Waggling a little spreadsheet around and announcing you're such an awesome warrior comes much more naturally to most than acting as one. Also you don't need any imagination or social skills to master it, a very basic understanding of arithmetics is sufficient.

Would it perchance even be possible that in time some players start to disregard the whole roleplaying in favor of playing said rules for maximum effect? Probably because these people lack even the basic wit to do so. (See? Condescending works both ways.)

Yes, it is indeed funny how things go sometimes. May I quote further? "And also how history often gets changed if just enough people keep saying something long enough". - I love sentences like that, they are not smug and precocious at all, when backed by nothing but personal opinion. I must remember to use that one myself on occasion.

I will not claim all this to be the ultimate truth, but this reasoning congruates more with my experiences and also my line of argument doesn't need to rely on 'some people somewhere' having the strange notion of bringing role acting into a game genre that apparently never ever had the slightest bias towards it by design.

To me a Rpg is.

Role=  the character the birth life and death of a the individual within the game world.

Playing=  created upon the classic actor.  As in a Player in a theater.  One who becomes their Role.

Game=  Something done for entertainment.

So a RPG to me is a person becoming something they are not within a game world in order to have entertainment.  How a person does this is upon their own shoulders.

RPG is simple. You go into lala land and be the thing you will never be in RL(Only retards warp there views on reality to say otherwise).

Then again your supposed to take RPG, same with video games, with a grain of salt. Not supposed to be real. For enjoyment and fun just like with video games. Go crazy, get a beer, have a laugh or two, and just enjoy yourself.

Select a role within a game construct and play it by fleshing out your character with personalized touches. Essentially, as the character grows, so does the role you play, and character may equal role for this purpose.

A role-playing game at its core requires that a group of roles are filled by players, and if roles are required, there must be a purpose for these roles. In other words, a true sandbox game ... (hm, never thought about this in this way) cannot be an RPG. A lot of sandbox characteristics may exist, but for a role to have any relevance to a game, there must be a story or plot around which those roles must work to grow and overcome obstacles.

At best, a true sandbox game with no story and no quests, nothing to achieve or complete or overcome, can best be described (in this context) as a CPG: a character-playing game. Roles require purpose; characters do not.

By the way, Jon, thanks for a great topic for discussion, and a chance to consider perspectives about something few people can mutually define.

Baldur's Gate defined RPG for me. If I was born a decade earlier, then the pen and paper DnD would've been my definition of RPG.

Guess it just depends on your age.